Sharp Shotta

investor | geopolitical analyst | HODLer | freelance sterring

[Sony Thăng @nxt888]

Here is the complete architecture of how you keep a poor country poor while convincing its educated class that this is their own fault:

Step one: During colonialism, extract capital, destroy domestic industry, structure the economy around export of raw materials.

Step two: Grant formal independence while maintaining the economic structure, the debt obligations, the currency arrangements, and the trade relationships established under colonialism.

Step three: When the economy underperforms, as it must, being structurally designed for extraction, not development, offer loans conditional on policies that deepen the existing structure.

Step four: Train the country's economists in Western universities where the theories taught do not acknowledge steps one through three as economically relevant.

Step five: Staff international institutions and domestic finance ministries with these economists.

Step six: When the policies fail, attribute failure to cultural factors, corruption, and weak institutions.

Step seven: Publish a report with recommendations.

Step eight: Return to step three.

The machine runs on its own now.

The colonial administrator retired.

The indebted finance minister presenting his structural adjustment plan to the IMF board doesn't think of himself as administering colonialism.

He has a PhD from LSE.

He genuinely believes the model.

This is not a conspiracy.

It is an education system.

[Maitreya Bhakal @MaitreyaBhakal]

There was a time when western media would regularly portray the death penalty in China for heavy corruption as a human rights violation. But that narrative quickly got shot to hell when their audience back home not only praised it, but wanted it implemented in their own countries.

So now they barely report on it at all, lest the people get any more ideas. 😅

[Sharp Shotta @sharp_shotta]

@camelfinance Reading through Howard Marks' Mastering the Market Cycle and have come to appreciate what you meant by there being many factors at play. Various cycles have interrelationships that continuously affect each other... The markets are more akin to a philharmonic orchestra.

[Sharp Shotta @sharp_shotta]

@camelfinance these are the musings of a relative novice so please take it with a heavy dose of salt.

You've clearly established that what happens in the M2 Rate of Supply tends to show up on the CPI chart 18 months later.

The conflict in the Red Sea has adversely affected...

[Sharp Shotta @sharp_shotta]

@camelfinance Understood

[Sharp Shotta @sharp_shotta]

... global shipping as reflected in WCI/CFI as pictured below. Given that what happens in said indices usually gets reflected in the CPI chart 6-9 months later, could its inflationary pressure eat away at the deflation expected due to the M2 Rate of Supply in Q4?

[Sharp Shotta @sharp_shotta]

@apeswarms Looks like she chose the bear.

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

In China BMW sell their brand new 3-series EV for the equivalent of $25k, because the local market is so competitive.

They just tariffed Chinese EVs because they want to avoid this in the West. So ironically Europeans will buy their BMWs for twice the price as the Chinese 😅

[Sizwe SikaMusi @SizweLo]

He wrote: "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organised habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in a democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power."

[Sharp Shotta @sharp_shotta]

@camelfinance when you look at the Atlanta Fed's Flexible CPI, the evidence of your deflationary bust thesis playing out is already there.

J. Powell's CPI weightings mislead with nonsense like OER & essentials that don't budge like tuition/healthcare.

https://t.co/P2Z7N0Onsa

[Michael Burry Stock Tracker ♟ @burrytracker]

China has been buying Gold and dumping US Treasuries like never before in history

[Sharp Shotta @sharp_shotta]

https://t.co/hdsy7TMdTv

[Sharp Shotta @sharp_shotta]

What you're not being told is that despite the burgeoning strength of the Nikkei & Hang Seng indices, Asia has been hoovering Spot Gold & BTC over the last few months.

They didn't wait for the change in monetary policy from the BoJ to sound the alarm. Asia knows what's coming.

[Sharp Shotta @sharp_shotta]

If the volatility is anything to go by, $70 000 might be the new $20 000. #BTC

[Sharp Shotta @sharp_shotta]

Think of the ETH ETF as the catalyst for cross-pollination of capital into crypto. The industry as a whole will be the biggest beneficiary. 💰🐝

[Jim Bianco @biancoresearch]

My guess is that ETH will not have the retail Degen adoption that BTC ETF has. So, my concern about the "orange FOMO poker chip" overwhelming ETH is not as great. But it is still a risk.

But more importantly, the bigger story with the ETH ETF is that it is part of a massive and unexpected regulatory relief accompanying it. FIT21 passed the House yesterday, along with the SAB 121 vote last week, both on a bipartisan basis, which are huge signals that Proof of Stake is finally getting relief. Martin Gruenberg's resignation from the FDIC is icing on the cake. Operation Chokepoint 2.0 is over!

The regulatory relief is so significant that it almost does not matter how much adoption the ETH ETFs get. The regulatory relief alone makes this week a huge ETH (and SOL) winner.

And if you really want to see adoption, remove the regulatory uncertainty around Proof of Stake and watch how Wall Street runs to ETH. Wall Street gets this. It is an entire ecosystem with borrowing, lending, insurance, tokenomics, staking (yield), stablecoins, NFTS, primitives, L2s, and on and on. Plenty for them to work with here as opposed to hodl-ing one coin.

My other concern is that the ETF will remove incentives for development, as it is easier to HODL in a regulated brokerage account than on-chain. I don't worry about this as much with ETH because it already has an entire ecosystem. For instance, if regulatory relief allows the staking of stablecoins without the fear of a Wells Notice from the SEC, this is a game-changer (hello https://t.co/gF5sQJC2bR!). Again, stand back and watch Wall Street rush in.

BTC does not have this eco-system. It is viewed as a HODL coin without many other options. It is easier and cheaper to HODL in an ETF than on-chain.

This works against BTC devs developing a financial eco-system around it. Build it, and they will not come but instead sit in their BTC ETF waiting for the "number to go up." But without building it and getting more on-chain adoption, how does the number go up? BTC chicken/egg dilemma worsened by the existence of the BTC ETFs.

In conclusion, a truly great week of ETH. BTC is not dead but will now have to surf in the wake of ETHs coming regulatory freedom.

Flippening before the next halving?

@TrustlessState @RyanSAdams @nic_carter @EricBalchunas @JSeyff @JuliaLaRoche @natbrunell @nlw @NateGeraci @APompliano @LynAldenContact @profplum99

[Sharp Shotta @sharp_shotta]

But everything is fine, they say.

[Lance Roberts @LanceRoberts]

With younger generations tapped out, and seriously #delinquent #debts on the rise, the risk to consumption, and #economic growth is growing.
https://t.co/Dn1GDKFBkf

[Sharp Shotta @sharp_shotta]

The stag and the flation J. Powell can't see ⬇️

[World Affairs @World_Affairs11]

⚠️BREAKING NEWS⚠️

After controlling Red Sea and Persian Gulf and strikes vessels,

Yemen’s Houthi have threatened to extend their attacks on Israel-bound shipping to the Mediterranean Sea.

[Sharp Shotta @sharp_shotta]

Naive as it may sound, the ISDS should've been created to avert the challenges laid out in this article well before they became problematic.

It's not look it serves much of a meaningful function at this juncture, anyway.

https://t.co/EQfF0KaTVa

[Craig Shapiro @ces921]

Powell removed the phrase "we believe that our policy rate is likely at its peak for this tightening cycle" from his prepared remarks.

[Sharp Shotta @sharp_shotta]

@MomAngtrades If what I'm seeing on the charts is anything to go by, the markets are undecided as evidenced by the erratic choppiness.

Powell offered little by way of actionable intel and none of the many geo-economic narratives have the reflexivity to capture the financial zeitgeist.

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

People don't realize just how dangerous this rhetoric is. This is in effect the US demanding China become hostile to Russia by stopping to supply items that "power its industrial base"... meaning asking China to join the West in trying to weaken Russia as a country.

As a reminder this is exactly the reason why during WW2 Japan went to war with the US: the US at some point stopped supplying oil to Japan and this directly led to Pearl Harbor. Countries typically don't take it very constructively when you're trying to strangle them economically...

The worst part is that the only rational they give China for doing this is 100% stick and 0% carrot: "if you don't do this we in turn will be even more aggressive towards you than we've been to date". With of course, in the back of China's mind the knowledge that the US's calculus is that they want to be done with Russia in order to fully concentrate on containing them.

So they're presenting China with a completely lose-lose proposition: be hostile to your neighbor now so we can contain you faster down the line, or don't be hostile to your neighbor and we'll ramp up our containment now. How attractive is that? 🙃

China will of course not start being hostile to Russia, in fact if anything this will convince them that the US is even more unhinged and unreasonable that they thought.

It's very hard to predict what they'll do... An ideal scenario for China would be to secure peace in Ukraine on terms that are agreeable to all except the US, weakens the transatlantic alliance and unites Eurasia. By the way, objectively speaking this would also be the best scenario for Europe's interests because it stands to reason that a long-term Korea-style divide with Russia would be a complete disaster. President Xi is going to Europe shortly and I am ready to bet he'll argue for something along these lines. But the thing is that he'll be speaking to Europeans who, if anything, are even less reasonable than Americans so I don't think we can be very optimistic about that prospect...

The more realistic scenario is that China does nothing and reacts to additional hostile measures against it in ways that weaken the US more than it weakens them. Some sort of Kung Fu move where you use your opponent's strength against them. For instance the US floated the idea of expelling Chinese banks from the global financial system: China, the biggest trading partner of almost all countries, can then say "from now on to trade with us, you need to use our system", which would be a big blow to the US dollar's status as the world's preeminent currency.

All in all, we're well and truly in Cold War 2, which is pretty sad. Just like WW1 was really different from WW2, Cold War 2 is different from the first one: this time it's not an ideological competition between 2 blocs, but it is still a war in all respects except a direct military fight between the world's 2 largest great powers, which is what makes it a cold war.

The key cause is because the US cannot bear to lose its global hegemony and wants to restore a unipolar order where they call the shots and try to transform the world in their own image... which is the very reason why it's a 100% certainty they won't succeed: to win a cold war you need to convince a significant share of the world that your cause is worthy and this is anything but. The whole world saw what happens when the US achieves unipolarity: insane hubris where they don't hesitate to destroy entire nations and kill millions in the process. No-one wants to get back to that, except maybe a few die-hard vassals in the West.

China's cause on the other hand is a multipolar world order, an order where the US simply doesn't call the shots, something a good 80% of the world's countries can get behind. Furthermore China can point to 1,800 years out of the past 2,000 years when it was the world's preeminent power and never tried to submit the whole world: colonialism, transforming the world in their own image or being "the world's policeman" is just not in their DNA.

So I think we can safely predict that this transition towards a multipolar world order is unavoidable, in fact we're probably already there. The question now is when will the US stop challenging this reality and start being a constructive actor in this new world as opposed to waging war and sowing conflict everywhere. And I'm afraid we can wait a long time for that... In fact it's already a de-facto characteristic of the new order: it's a multipolar world order with a revisionist power in its midst that wants to restore its former hegemonic imperial status.