Everything Hurts
My Body... Digital Asset Markets... The Whole Shabang
I’ve been battling COVID for over a week now and my body is still shot, so I’m going to make this quick.
Let’s dive right in…
No CEX Is Safe
I wrote a piece for Nasdaq on behalf of Finder this week entitled “For Hardcore Crypto Enthusiasts, There’s No Such Thing as a Safe CEX”.
Here’s a section of it:
“Most of us look at the balances in our bank or brokerage accounts on a computer screen and don’t think twice about whether our money or assets are safe in the hands of the institutions that custody them for us.
Few of us — if any — would think to call our broker at Charles Schwab and say, “Hey, Mike — So, instead of you guys holding all of those claims to my stocks on your database, how about you send me some physical copies of them, and I’ll just store them in my safe at home.”
Call me crazy, but I get the feeling Mike doesn’t often get that call.
But this is essentially what you’re doing when you transfer your assets from the custody of a CEX to a non-custodial wallet.
Obviously, the Bitcoin or other digital assets that you transfer don’t become physical when you make such a transfer, but your ability to access them becomes, in part, only as good as the 12-to-24-word recovery seed phrase that you have to write down on paper when you set up your non-custodial wallet.
And this seed phrase should probably go into your safe at home — right where you’d otherwise put all of those stock certificates that Mike sent you.”
More Job Cuts
OG crypto exchange Kraken is cutting 30% of its staff due to “macroeconomic and geopolitical forces,” which is a bummer.
I shared my thoughts with The Street on both the job cuts and the exchange’s former CEO, Jesse Powell (the good J Pow), stepping down in September.
How Developed Countries Financially Exploit Developing Countries (Hint: They Use the IMF and the World Bank)
Great interview with the prolific Alex Gladstein, Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) for the Human Rights Foundation, below.
Also, feel free to check out his article for Bitcoin Magazine on this topic: “Structural Adjustment: How the IMF and World Bank Repress Poor Countries and Funnel Their Resources to Rich Ones”
Fun fact: I believe Gladstein was one of the first to call Bitcoin “post-colonial money” (in his book Check Your Financial Privilege: Inside the Global Bitcoin Revolution). Interesting way to think of the asset.
If you’d like to learn more about how the IMF and World Bank exploit the developing world, read the following books:
Globalization and Its Discontents, by Joseph Stiglitz
Confessions of an Economic Hitman, by John Perkins (This book will make your stomach turn.)
Some Thoughts from a Favorite of This Newsletter
Winner of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences Imitating Ronald McDonald, Paul Krugman now believes that the US Government/the Fed should be able to steal 3% of your purchasing power per year — not just 2%.
And he apparently thinks that 7.7% inflation (a completely juked stat) is close to 3%. I’m too tired and filled with COVID to even make a quip here…
…so, I’ll let Lyn do the honors.
Thoughts on Digital Asset Markets
No idea what comes next — so tired.
The FTX debacle still has me feeling quite sad and disillusioned. The fact that SBF is speaking at New York Times events and on Good Morning America and not in jail makes my body shake with rage.
Plus, COVID brain fog is real, and I’m in the thick of it.
But I’ll leave you with this seemingly uplifting tidbit of info:
I guess all isn’t lost in the Bitcoin/crypto space for now.
Okay… that’s all from this hot mess of a person for today.
Best,
Frank
Twitter: @frankcorva
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