If you are new to the Equibit story, please read The Assassination of Equibit, originally released in 2023.

When the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989, the world celebrated the end of one of history’s most oppressive regimes. East Germans stormed the headquarters of the Ministry for State Security — the infamous Stasi — desperate to seize and protect the mountains of files that documented decades of tyranny. What they uncovered was more horrifying than most could have imagined.

Among the archives was Directive 1/76, issued in 1976 by Stasi chief Erich Mielke. This document formalized Zersetzung — “decomposition” or “corrosion” — a systematic program of psychological warfare designed to destroy “hostile-negative” individuals and groups without the messiness of arrests, trials, or overt violence. The goal was simple and demonic: fragment, paralyze, disorganize, and isolate the target so completely that they could no longer function as a threat — all while maintaining the appearance of normal life.

The Sheer Evil of Zersetzung

Historian Hubertus Knabe, one of the foremost experts on the Stasi, described it chillingly: “The Stasi didn’t try to arrest every dissident. It preferred to paralyze them… by damaging their reputation, by organizing failures in their work, and by destroying their personal relationships.”

Tactics included:

• Covert home invasions to move furniture, change alarm clocks, or swap everyday items (classic gaslighting)
• Systematic smear campaigns using true, false, and twisted information
• Engineered professional and social failures
• Provocation, anonymous threats, and orchestrated “coincidences”
• Destruction of marriages, friendships, and family ties through rumors and planted evidence
• Sabotage of careers, vehicles, and medical care

Victims often had no idea the Stasi was responsible. Many believed they were losing their minds. Mental breakdowns and suicides were common outcomes.

One victim, Jürgen Fuchs, a writer and dissident, called it “psychosocial crime” and “an assault on the human soul.” Many survivors suffered lifelong trauma, paranoia, depression, and shattered trust. Some received modest compensation decades later, but for most, the damage was irreparable. Families were torn apart. Careers evaporated. Lives were slowly, methodically erased from within.

The Stasi built an enormous network of civilian informants — the Inoffizielle Mitarbeiter (IMs). By 1989, there were roughly 91,000 full-time Stasi employees and between 173,000 and 189,000 unofficial informants. This meant roughly one in every 50 to 60 East German citizens was actively collaborating with the secret police — an astonishing level of societal penetration. Some estimates, including occasional informants, run as high as one in six or seven adults.

These informants came from every walk of life: neighbors, colleagues, friends, even family members. Recruitment methods ranged from ideological appeal and bribes to blackmail and threats against loved ones. Once enlisted, they were used to spread rumors, provoke conflicts, sabotage opportunities, and report intimate details for the creation of detailed “psychograms” — psychological profiles used to exploit every weakness.

From East Germany to Canada: The Equibit Case

What happened to Chris Horlacher and Equibit Group bears unmistakable hallmarks of this same strategy — updated with 21st-century digital tools and operating within a Five Eyes democracy.

As documented across the Equibit Factum, technical forensic reports, live videos, court filings, and interviews on equibitlawsuit.com, the campaign against Horlacher and his company included:

• Prolonged surveillance and contact by prime-suspect Marc Godard beginning as early as 2010 — when Chris was engaged in online liberty activism.
• What appears to be the recruitment and corruption of Sergei Sachkov, lead Core developer at Equibit Group, by CSIS.
• Intense and malicious harassment by the Ontario Securities Commission, and demonstrable entrapment efforts.
• Marc’s attempts to involve Chris with questionable individuals post-Equibit, more entrapment schemes via financial crimes.
• Router compromises via the TR-069 protocol, with logs showing impossible 1981 timestamps and persistent remote access.
• DNS man-in-the-middle attacks rerouting traffic through U.S. servers.
• Microsoft ecosystem intrusions where private memos were observed copying themselves in real time.
• De-banking, institutional pressure, and coordinated defamation campaigns.
• Insider betrayal, code forking, rebranding (OCEAN → Tesseract), a coordinated effort to dismantle Equibit Group from within.

Marc Godard’s background in Cognitive Science would have been particularly useful in constructing the kind of detailed psychograms the Stasi relied upon — mapping personality weaknesses, relationships, and pressure points for maximum psychological effect.

This was not random crime or bad luck. It was a sustained, multi-vector operation designed to isolate, financially ruin, discredit, and psychologically break a founder who dared to become a fierce advocate for limited, constitutional government.

Zersetzung Has Gone Global

The Stasi needed a vast human network because they lacked today’s digital omnipresence. In the Five Eyes countries (Canada, USA, UK, Australia, New Zealand), agencies no longer need millions of informants on the ground. They have tools that allow remote, deniable, scalable decomposition: compromised routers, operating system-level access, financial system cooperation, and institutional capture.

What Horlacher has experienced — and meticulously documented — strongly suggests that modern Zersetzung is not only possible in Canada and its allies, but is likely already being deployed against innovators, dissidents, and threats to the established order throughout the country.

A Call to Global Conscience

This is cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment. It is extrajudicial psychological torture dressed up in the language of national security. It violates every principle of human dignity and the rule of law.

We call on readers to take immediate action:

1. Visit https://equibitlawsuit.com — read the evidence, watch the videos, review the technical reports.
2. Submit a detailed complaint to the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture (sr-torture@ohchr.org), including all available documentation and requesting an urgent inquiry into the use of modern Zersetzung-style tactics by intelligence agencies in democratic nations.
3. Contact appropriate NGOs and oversight bodies:  Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, Privacy International, and the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency.
4. Share this story relentlessly. Public awareness is the greatest threat to these shadow operations.

What was done to Equibit and Chris Horlacher must not be allowed to become the new normal. If governments in the West can wage silent war on their own citizens — innovators, thinkers, builders — using the refined cruelty of the Stasi, then none of us are safe.

The Berlin Wall fell. The files were opened. The world saw the evil and recoiled in horror.

Today, new walls are being built in the digital realm — invisible, pervasive, and far more sophisticated. We must tear them down with the same courage and determination.

The time for silence is over. The time for exposure, outrage, and accountability is now.

Demand an international inquiry. Demand justice for the victims of digital Zersetzung. Demand that this hideous violation of human rights ends.

Because if we do not act, the decomposition will spread — until freedom itself is nothing but a memory.

Stay tuned to equibitlawsuit.com for more updates on the Equibit lawsuits against CSIS and related actors

If you are new to the Equibit story, please read The Assassination of Equibit, originally released in 2023.

Chris Horlacher has documented multiple sophisticated intrusions through his Microsoft ecosystem. These incidents go well beyond ordinary malware and align with key moments in his legal activities. They indicate a close collaboration between Microsoft and the Five Eyes to deliver undetectable spyware onto targeted devices in order to steal information and interfere with the normal functions of the computer.

Key Incidents of Unauthorized Access

• July 19, 2025 – Unauthorized Sharing of Sensitive Memo
  A confidential memo was suddenly made publicly shareable via OneDrive using Chris’s own Microsoft account. He did not perform this action. During the event, his computer’s built-in screen recorder was disabled. Luckily Chris was able to capture the event with his cell phone’s camera.

Watch the incident:

• August 27, 2025 – Spontaneous File Movement
  A critical security report analyzing router compromises was mysteriously moved to the desktop.
• October 27, 2025 – Camera Roll Breach
  OneDrive logs showed someone browsing the Camera Roll folder containing images taken directly by the device, as well as two files related to psychology that provide insight as to the hacker’s identity (more on that in later posts!)

Watch the Camera Roll intrusion:

Mass Windows & BIOS Updates – Highly Suspicious Timing

On August 18, 2025, immediately before a strategy call with his lawyers about upcoming discovery sessions, Chris’s computer began installing an unusually large wave of updates — including Windows, BIOS, and more than a dozen other components. He described it as one of the largest simultaneous update pushes he had ever experienced. Call quality then rapidly deteriorated and the connection was terminated exactly when the discussion turned to sensitive topics.

This event is especially concerning in the context of Bill C-22, Canada’s proposed Lawful Access Act. Part 2 of the bill would require electronic service providers (including software and operating system vendors) to build and maintain technical capabilities to facilitate authorized access to information by law enforcement and CSIS. Critics argue this could effectively compel companies like Microsoft to enable mechanisms for delivering signed updates or payloads that Windows would trust by default. Because Microsoft-signed updates are automatically trusted by the operating system, they represent a powerful and nearly undetectable vector for delivering targeted tools to specific users.

For more on Bill C-22:

• Department of Justice Backgrounder
• Michael Geist Analysis

Nightmare Eclipse Zero-Days and Browsergate

These incidents occurred against the backdrop of major Microsoft security controversies. In 2026, researcher Nightmare-Eclipse (also known as Chaotic Eclipse) publicly released several high-impact Windows zero-days, including exploits targeting Windows Defender and privilege escalation mechanisms. Some researchers have speculated that certain vulnerabilities may have been known internally for extended periods before public disclosure.

Additionally, Browsergate exposed serious allegations against LinkedIn (owned by Microsoft). According to a detailed report by Fairlinked e.V.:

• LinkedIn allegedly injected JavaScript that scanned users’ browsers for over 6,000 Chrome extensions.
• The script reportedly collected detailed device telemetry and extension data without clear user consent or prominent disclosure in the privacy policy.
• This allowed LinkedIn to build extensive user profiles, potentially identifying competitors, corporate tools, and other sensitive software.

The revelations led to privacy lawsuits and widespread criticism. You can read the original report here: BrowserGate.eu

Broader Implications

These events demonstrate deep access into Chris’s systems, precise timing aligned with legal activities, and the ability to manipulate core operating system functions. When combined with other documented technical attacks, they highlight growing risks around proprietary platforms and the potential for state-level exploitation.

Further Reading & Updates:

• Additional technical evidence and interviews in the Media section
• Ongoing lawsuit developments at equibitlawsuit.com

This case raises important questions about digital privacy, corporate responsibilities, and the balance between security and individual rights. Share this post if you believe these issues deserve greater public scrutiny.

Stay tuned to equibitlawsuit.com for more updates on the Equibit lawsuits against CSIS and related actors.

If you are new to the Equibit story, please read The Assassination of Equibit, originally released in 2023.

In the ongoing campaign of digital harassment and sabotage documented by Chris Horlacher, one of the most technical and intrusive episodes involves repeated compromises of his home routers in Mexico. These incidents directly affected Chris Horlacher’s ability to work, communicate securely, and access the internet—targeting only specific devices while sparing others on the same network.

This pattern aligns with advanced persistent threats, often linked to state-level or ISP-enabled capabilities.

Background: Part of a Broader Pattern

After fleeing Canada due to chronic digital intrusions and other events stemming from what he believed to be the lawsuits he just filed, Chris continued facing disruptions. VPN instability, selective device blocking, and unexplained connectivity issues prompted deeper investigation. Factory resets provided temporary relief, but problems returned rapidly—classic behavior of persistent malware or remote management exploits

The Attacks: Huawei HG8145V5V3 and ZTE F670L Routers

Key Anomalies Observed:

• 1981 Timestamps: Multiple log entries show dates like 1981-01-01. This is a strong indicator of Real-Time Clock (RTC) reset or deliberate log tampering/manipulation, often seen when firmware is altered or during boot-level interference. Security analysis reports explicitly flag these as “Backdated logs to 1981 (RTC reset or tampering).”
• Custom Firewall Rules & Selective Blocking: Firewall settings changed to “user defined.” Specific devices (Chris’s and his wife’s) lost internet access while others worked, consistent with targeted rules or a Remote Access Trojan (RAT).
• Rapid Re-infection Post-Reset: Issues returned within hours, even on a replacement router from the ISP (Telmex).

From the ZTE Log (August 2025, post-reset):

2025-08-04T16:16:01Z [Error] |dnsmasq| bind interface socket failed 99
2025-08-04T16:16:01Z [Error] !!!!!![high Alert for send msg in POWERON]...
[Warning] RunPCB process[omci] Event[0x3e81]...

High-priority OMCI/GPON messages immediately after boot, IPv6 route injections before full WAN negotiation, and MultiAPD errors point to remote provisioning activity.

From Huawei Logs (July 2025):

Numerous 1981-01-01 entries alongside PPPoE renegotiations, deprecated SSL methods, and DHCP NAKs (potential MAC spoofing or rogue activity). Frequent PPPoE sessions suggest possible DoS or disruption attempts.

Expert Security Analysis

Independent analysis by a professional (using SIEM-style detection) on both routers confirmed:

• TR-069/OMCI remote provisioning activity.
• Backdated logs and tampering indicators.
• Potential RAT presence and DoS patterns.
• Recommendations: Replace/reflash router, disable TR-069, scan devices, and isolate vulnerable hardware (e.g., older Smart TV).

Huawei Router Analysis Report (PDF)

ZTE Router Analysis Report (PDF)

TR-069 (CWMP) Vulnerabilities: This Broadband Forum protocol enables ISPs to remotely manage Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) like routers via an Auto-Configuration Server (ACS), often over port 7547. While intended for legitimate management, it is notoriously exploitable. Compromised ACS servers or weak implementations allow attackers full remote control, DNS redirection, firmware backdoors, and persistent access. It has been weaponized in botnets (e.g., Mirai variants) and enables exactly the selective targeting and re-infection seen here. Many ISPs do not allow users to fully disable it.

Video Evidence: Router Investigations

Watch Chris document the issues in real-time:

Part 1: Initial router access and strange behavior.

Part 2: Firewall changes, selective blocking, and admin interface interference.

Part 3: Factory reset, log downloads, and post-reset observations.

Part 4 (Short): Post-reset functionality vs. actual device connectivity failure.

Implications

These attacks go beyond typical criminal hacking. The precision (device-specific blocking), persistence across hardware swaps, use of ISP-managed protocols, and alignment with other documented sabotage (e.g., Microsoft OneDrive tampering, email spoofing, bank disruptions) point to sophisticated actors with significant resources—potentially leveraging intelligence or ISP cooperation.

Combined with the broader evidence in the Factum (honeypot hits from government networks, Keybase anomalies, etc.), this leaves little doubt that Chris Horlacher’s infrastructure was under targeted surveillance and disruption.

What You Can Do:

• Demand transparency from ISPs on remote management (TR-069/OMCI).
• Support calls for accountability in intelligence oversight.
• Share this post—stories like this highlight risks to innovators and due process.

Full logs and analysis reports (Huawei and ZTE PDFs) are available for review upon request for credible researchers/journalists.

This is not paranoia. This is documented technical evidence of invasive digital warfare against a Canadian entrepreneur and litigant, across national boundaries, violating the property of a foreign ISP.

Stay tuned to equibitlawsuit.com for more updates on the Equibit lawsuits against CSIS and related actors.

The Walls Are Going Up: Capital Controls Have Already Arrived in the First World

Originally via @JoeyTweeets on X

They’re Coming For Cash, Too

Cash is the last truly private way to transact in the traditional system. So naturally, it’s being systematically restricted.

The EU passed Regulation 2024/1624 (the Anti-Money Laundering Package) with a vote of 482 to 47 in April 2024. Starting July 10, 2027, businesses across all 27 EU member states are prohibited from accepting or making cash payments above €10,000. This applies to single transactions or multiple payments over time that “appear to be linked.” The language is deliberately broad.

But the €10,000 cap is just the ceiling. Cash transactions above €3,000 now trigger mandatory identity verification: government-issued ID, KYC procedures, records retained for five years. Businesses must monitor payment patterns to detect structured transactions designed to circumvent the limits.

And now the net is expanding to crypto. The OECD’s Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF) is being adopted by jurisdictions globally. The UK enacted CARF regulations effective January 1, 2026. This closes what was the last significant gap in the automated reporting regime.

***Excerpt from the July Issue of The Bitcoin Capitalist – ‘The Stablecoin Standard’

Here is the the argument for this section of the Bitcoin Capitalist entitled ‘Bitcoin and Crypto Macro’:

“This sums up everything we’ve been seeing over this past cycle – Bitcoin settling in as the base layer for the next generation of financial instruments, with stablecoins acting as the rails between the legacy dollar system and new fintech-enabled one.”

Here is the whole section.

—

I want to reiterate something I used as the opening quote to our Bitcoin Treasuries Playbook, by way of Willy Woo:

“The biggest fintech opportunity in the next decade is not DeFi.

It’s the merger of BTC + TradFi.”

This sums up everything we’ve been seeing over this past cycle – Bitcoin settling in as the base layer for the next generation of financial instruments, with stablecoins acting as the rails between the legacy dollar system and new fintech-enabled one.

Billionaire investor and VC Tim Draper remarked on Bitcoin’s continued dominance, making the argument that what we are witnessing is an example of a “winner-take-all” phenomenon:

Bitcoin recently hit 61% market share, up from 40% after the first boom-bust cycle and 50% after the last one.

 

There is a gravitational pull toward Bitcoin. All the successful innovations on other platforms are being now ported to Bitcoin.

 

This matters so much more than people realize.

 

All the innovation that started in altcoins (smart contracts, blockchain applications, ordinals) is moving to Bitcoin.

 

I liken this phenomenon to Microsoft in the operating system days.

 

When Lotus 1-2-3 took off, Microsoft created Excel and brought it into the OS. WordPerfect succeeded, so Microsoft built Word. Then Microsoft bought PowerPoint early. All of these applications became standard with Microsoft, while the early startups were marginalized. 

 

Bitcoin is worth $1.8 trillion. The next largest token, Ethereum is only worth $250 billion. Bitcoin gets most of the programmers now. They are gravitating toward Bitcoin.

 

The five applications that really matter are being built on Bitcoin—DeFi (Peer to Peer Payments, Trading, Exchanges, financial inclusion etc), Smart Contracts (supply chain transparency and traceability, asset trading and resource tracking), Ordinals, Runes, and Layer 2 solutions like low cost micropayments.

 

This gravitational pull is accelerating.

 

Every entrepreneur building on Bitcoin has the entire ecosystem’s momentum behind them.

 

Smart entrepreneurs are always building on the platform with the strongest gravitational pull.

 

That platform is Bitcoin.

 

When people ask what Bitcoin will be worth in 5 years, I say it will be worth one bitcoin. It may be infinite against the dollar as the dollar continues to inflate into nothingness.

 

Bitcoin’s dominance was 61% when Draper posted that less than a week ago – it’s now 64%:

Meanwhile, Ethereum continues to languish, although there are those who say it’s undervalued and poised for a spectacular comeback – I just don’t see it.7

As noted in the Treasuries Playbook, we’re now starting to see ETH Treasury companies springing up; we mentioned SBET in that report – currently trading even lower than when we first cited it.

Now a Bitcoin miner of all things, BitMine Immersion Tech (NYSE: BMNR) has appointed Tom Lee (not the Motley Crüe drummer) as Chairman – and closed a $250M funding round to build an ETH treasury.

BitMine has the 62nd-largest corporate Bitcoin treasury at 161 BTC – and it’s unclear if they plan to liquidate that for more ETH purchases. I advise against it.

Bit Digital (BTBT) – also eschewing my advice – will be exiting Bitcoin mining entirely to “become an Ethereum pure-play”: they will sell off their Bitcoin (which according to their March investor deck was 742 BTC) in order to acquire ETH – and sell off or wind down their entire Bitcoin mining operation. We’ve never owned BTBT, good luck.

We did hold Sol Strategies, who set out to build a Solana Treasury company about a year ago, and we managed to ride that one near perfectly – exiting our position (for a stellar 2043% return) when I surmised that the memecoin trade was over, and there would be no alt-season as we’d seen in previous cycles.

Sol Strategies also had a BTC treasury – which I had hoped they would keep as an anchor – but they sold it off to buy more SOL, close to the highs – meanwhile Bitcoin has gone on to fresh new highs.

Future MBA and finance students may someday look back on this era and surmise that crypto treasury strategies can only succeed when the asset being stockpiled is the dominant asset, and it probably needs to be over some magical hurdle like 50% market dominance.

It also needs to have a rolling four and ten year CAGR that is higher than anything else, otherwise there’s no point in stockpiling it versus something with a higher RoR (see the “Bitcoin is the new Benchmark” section in the Playbook).

In other words, it has to be Bitcoin and all other treasury plays will stiff. Bank on it.

So, if Bitcoin is the only game in town for corporate treasuries and for the base layer of the next-gen financial system, “why isn’t BTC going up?”, is the question we’re seeing a lot of on social media…

Especially after that horrific crash all the way down to (checks notes), $98K on June 22nd – losing the psychologically important $100K level for nearly a whole eight hours.

People were permanently scarred – most likely from the Class of ’24.

One of the things I’ve been wrong about for this entire cycle was that we should be expecting a couple of 30% to 40% drawdowns, at least.

But there hasn’t been anything over 30% since November 2022, when the crypto winter ended, and Bitcoin bottomed at $16K (yes, really).

The chart below has the two major drawdowns of this cycle: the pull back after the spot ETFs approvals and post-halving hangover look like a single grind down – and that little squiggle in there in August was when the entire financial system shit itself after the Bank of Japan spoiled everything with a surprise rate hike that was a measly 15 basis points over expectations.

In this look at the very question of why “number not go up”, Bitcoin Magazine examined the HODL waves and concluded that there are just a lot of whales sitting on ultra cheap BTC who are taking their lifetstyle chips off the table, with over 240,000 BTC being sold by wallets that have been holding for one to five years in recent months.

“This selling has largely counterbalanced institutional accumulation. Given that daily miner issuance still adds another ~450 BTC to the market, we see why price has struggled to break higher: the market is in a state of supply-demand equilibrium”

 

Given the systemic shocks and seemingly existential crises that have been arriving at a steady clip (Japan imploding, bond yields, Middle East war, Ukraine War, etc), “Why isn’t Bitcoin Up?” isn’t the foremost question in my mind.

“Why isn’t it going down more during these periods?”, is what I’ve been wondering.

It is possible, even looking likely, that the market structure has fundamentally changed, possibly to the point where (dare I say it?) the four-year cycle could be a thing of the past.

Or maybe elongated, this other Bitcoin Mag piece looks at the 200-week Moving Average compared to prior cycles, noting that:

“a remarkably consistent pattern has emerged when the 200WMA surpasses its prior all-time high level. Across multiple cycles, when this crossover occurs,

Bitcoin has either peaked or come extremely close to peaking in price.”

Should that pattern hold up, we seem to be looking at somewhere around May or June 2026 for this cycle to top out (we would normally expect BTC to hit a cycle-top in Q4 this year or early ’26, if the four-year cycle holds up).

—

***Excerpt from the July Issue of The Bitcoin Capitalist – ‘The Stablecoin Standard’

***This is an excerpt from the June issue, a macro analysis of The Bitcoin Capitalist.

—

The emerging theme – perhaps timed by many participants to align with the big conference – is a veritable Cambrian explosion in Bitcoin treasury companies in the public markets.

Leading up to the conference we saw announcements from the Cantor Fitzgerald-backed, Jack Mallers-led Twenty-One Capital – ticker will be “XXI”, currently still “CEP” – we added that one as a supplemental.

There was also Bitcoin Magazine’s David F. Baily’s Nakamoto, which executed a reverse takeover of Kindly MD (Nasdaq: KDLY) and then went absolutely parabolic:

(We’ll wait and see if that one settles back).

Anthony Pompliano announced a SPAC of his own, currently PCAPU; he has yet to announce his merger target, but he’s raised $220 million (upsized from $200M) – this is one where I think we should pick up a few shares just on spec. As I’ve come to call him “Pump”, I think this one will probably move at some point and since it hasn’t blasted off yet, we could enter here.

Trump Media & Technology (Nasdaq: DJT) announced a $2.5 billion dollar capital raise to buy Bitcoin for their treasury – in this case the stock dumped on the announcement: 

$2.5B worth of BTC on DJT’s balance sheet would put their market cap to BTC at under 2X at this level – but this is a pass for me.

Similarly, Gamestop (NYSE: GME) – the original memestock – had already announced a Bitcoin treasury strategy; and many were loading up on shares in anticipation of them actually following through and hitting the “smash buy” button .

At the Bitcoin conference, CEO Ryan Cohen announced a 4,710 BTC purchase (around a half billion dollars). 

It underwhelmed expectations (GME is sitting on nearly $5 billion in cash), while Cohen’s address to the conference crowd was delivered via video and came across as uninspiring and tepid…

“If the thesis is correct, Bitcoin can be a hedge against global currency devaluation and systemic risk.”

It wasn’t exactly a “F*ck yeah!”-level dopamine hit.

GME shares also tanked – in this case in sharp contrast to the pump they enjoyed over the anticipatory run up: 

Are “Bitcoin treasuries” the new “.COM” ? Or even before that… “Linux” (there was a period in the late 90’s after the VA Linux IPO, when penny stocks were simply changing their names to “Linux”-something and announcing a “new strategy” involving it, in order to garner truly moonshot (albeit short-lived) stock pumps.

Probably elements of both – some more opportunistic than visionary – and if I had to guess, I’d say DJT and GME are in the former camp.

I think the market sniffs this out and rewards the companies that have more of an ideological grounding in the space.

The Bitcoin maxis who did pile into GME bailed quickly.

I was just teasing the Bitcoin Therapist, but when it comes to this theme, what is the best way to play it?

I think MSTR is still the Big Kahuna here with an insurmountable head start – Metaplanet followed the strategy for the right reasons (Japan falling apart, fiat debasement), while Nakamoto and Twenty-One have the pedigrees. Pomp is Pomp, everything he touches turns to gold, so that will likely continue for now.

There is also a new pure play Bitcoin treasury company called Strive Asset Management and Asset Entities (Nasdaq:ASST) – the name I recognize there is Swan CIO Ben Werkman. 

They’ve done a $750M private placement to acquire Bitcoin and look to be creating a vehicle into Bitcoin that can be accessed via 401Ks, ETFs (they operate a family of ETFs already) and direct indexing.

Then there are more under the radar plays like LQWD – which we added recently and has been on a good, sustainable run – now close to double from where we entered.

(I’ve lost track of who wanted info on the private placement so the details on that are included in this edition).

Jesse Myers, Head of Bitcoin Strategy for HK Asia Holdings Ltd., thinks that over 50% of all BTC will be held in corporate treasuries within 20 years:

This would not surprise me. As Bitcoin matures and grows into its role as a kind of financial bedrock, I’m expecting the vast majority of it to be held and financialized via collateralization.

As Lyn Alden likes to say “Nothing stops this train”, despite best efforts to derail it. By that I mean both Bitcoin as a base layer asset, and the emergence of crypto and fintech in general as a tectonic upgrade to the industrial-era monetary system.

The “Anti-Crypto Army” tried to derail the GENIUS stablecoin bill, citing possible ethics violations on the part of President Trump and his World Liberty Financial (WLF) stablecoin initiative.

In the end, the Senate voted 66-22 to advance the bill despite the aforementioned objections.

Trump seems to be inviting opposition: the Trump and Melania token launches, the WLF alt-coin pumps – I can see down the road should the Dems ever take back either chamber or even get the chance to reset the regulatory table, they’re probably going to have Trump & family in hearings and investigations for decades around all these maneuvers while in office.

—

CBDCs, Ripple = XRP, GreenPeace and Bitcoin

There’s a lot a hubbub going around the interwebs (again) about XRP and their situationship with bitcoin. I hope for this write-up to serve as an aggregation of information and nexus of source material for those wishing to both gain understanding of what XRP (“Ripple”) was, is, and how the crypto token and the company have a relationship with Bitcoin.

Genesis

A friend of mine from Clubhouse and Twitter, who also happens to be a lawyer with explicit and long-standing experience in the crypto space, Preston Byrne, has discussed the Ripple XRP topic ad nauseam. As many have. And yet the facts and evidence continue to go unacknowledged.

Ripple Labs Inc.,” (2013) previously named “Opencoin Inc.,” (2013) which was previously named “Newcoin Inc.,” (2012).

As noted by Preston,

“Anything done by Newcoin/Opencoin/Ripple Labs (CA) was done by a direct predecessor of the current Ripple entity that runs the business. All those names refer to the same company. For the sake of [this] analysis, therefore, each of the four names should be treated as if they refer to the same enterprise.”

The Ripple Software

The Ripple software was gifted to Newcoin/Opencoin/Ripple Labs/Ripple by Arthur Britto. With a statement that any future contributions by Britto (or others) would be done so in an open-source format.

The number of tokens in existence (referred to as “credits” in the paperwork), were agreed to be anticipated (as pointed out by Byrne, did not exist at the time of the agreement being drafted and signed) as totaling to be 100 billion in count. With an agreement to allow Britto to maintain a 2% ownership of the total supply, accounting for potential increased dilution in the future. At the time of writing the XRP token was not conceived but was later named XRP.

Preston has put together a phenomenal deepdive on the ownership and business relations of Ripple/Ripple Labs, Inc./Opencoin, Inc./Newcoin, Inc. and I do not want to risk even the slightest confusion of who has done the work. For the nittygritty on the topics such as Copyright and the like, I suggest visiting Preston’s own writing by clicking the image above or following the hyperlink here.

XRP IS Centralized

80% of the total supply of the XRP token was provided to the company for use at the company’s discretion — what is known as a premine. With 55% of the allocation getting locked up into escrow accounts that release every month.

“The escrow consists of independent on ledger escrows that release a total of one billion XRP each month over the next 55 months.” [Source]

If XRP were truly decentralized, why are over 30,000 blocks missing??

Ripple’s Use Case

According to this 2014 article published in The Banker, Mr. Larsen suggests that Ripple would be a “currency agnostic” system for transferring ‘conventional’ fiat currencies. That XRP would be the basis for an ‘internet of value.’ Unfortunately for Ripple, in 2023 the Federal Reserve announced FedNow going live.

What Larsen couldn’t have expected at the time was the development of the Lightning Network to facilitate the ‘internet of value’ and was the enabler for the development of NOSTR — which has multiple social media functions, including streaming. The Lightning Network went live in 2018, with gains in use and popularity growing between 2020 and 2021.

CBDCs — Ripple’s New Use Case

“Moving money on the CBDC Private Ledger will be cost-effective, reliable and close to instantaneous. Transactions can also happen at volumes required by Central Banks. The CBDC Private Ledger will handle tens of thousands of transactions per second (TPS) initially with the potential to scale to hundreds of thousands TPSs over time.

Transactions on the CBDC Private Ledger are verified by the same consensus protocol used by the XRP Ledger, which is far less energy intensive, and therefore less expensive and 61,000 times more efficient than public blockchains that leverage proof-of-work.

In addition to leveraging the XRP Ledger technology, the CBDC Private Ledger is also supported by RippleNet technologies, and the Interledger suite of protocols to enable ultra-high throughput use-cases such as micro-payments.

The CBDC Private Ledger meets even the highest of security standards for Central Banks with each having complete sovereignty and ability to customize based on their own unique privacy and policy requirements. The core technology behind this new CBDC Private Ledger has been running for more than 8 years without incident and with billions of dollars of value transacted everyday.”

Then Ripple partnered with Palau to pilot their CBDC program starting in 2021, 7 months after the above posting. With Phase 2 of the Palau Project progressing in 2023.

Ripple claimed to have 10 countries onboard with its CBDC project during summer of 2024.

I have had numerous conversations with individuals on Twitter over the years that claim to be against CBDCs and the over centralization of financial power and economic surveillance YET THEY LOVE XRP AND RIPPLE. I mean are you insane, or just re[dacted]? I have provided evidence, from the horse’s mouth, that Ripple is pushing the development of CBDC’s forward. A patently anti-liberty initiative.

Political Interference

My man Pierre Rochard popped a shot at Garlinghouse and Ripple recently stating that regulation is being held up, not because of bitcoin but because of Ripple’s obfuscation of understanding via their tomfoolery with political lobbying efforts. On a similar point is Ripple’s funding of blockchain research at prominent universities to the tune of $50 million — an effective manipulation tactic made evident by revelations over actual climate and environmental data challenging activists that have been screaming for decades that we would most assuredly be burning up (or drowning) due to ‘Global Warming.’ A story that has persisted since the 70s but has not yielded any actual evidence that holds water.

Ripple Labs — Energy and Climate Experts?

Ripple has been attacking bitcoin for years in a clever, but still laughable, strategy — climate change and climate catastrophists.

“Larsen said Bitcoin’s power consumption issue could be fixed via a soft or a hard fork — both changing the network’s code to make Bitcoin less power hungry. A soft fork would preserve Bitcoin as a single blockchain. A hard fork would split Bitcoin into two separate networks, one supporting miners and the other running different code — perhaps Proof of Stake.”

Too bad Bitcoin’s energy consumption is a boon for a number of reasons: (1) the energy consumption is a strategy for securing the network, the energy cost of maintaining attacks against the network disincentivize offensive strategies; (2) the energy consumption of the Bitcoin network provides an opportunity for power producers to establish a line of revenue that is separate of societal power demands; (3) these power demands allow for bitcoin miners to act as power arbitrators, enabling them to reduce consumption in order to protect the integrity of the grid in times of need (acting as cannon fodder to take the hit so Ma & Pa can keep the lights on); (4) the energy consumption allows for oil production operations to consume the energy yield of associated natural gas rather than venting or flaring — both being negative impacts on methane emissions.

GreenPeace

GreenPeace has been trying and failing, abysmally, for years to attack bitcoin over it’s supposed negative impacts on the environment. These attempts have fallen flat on their face over the years as meme campaigns like the famous skull sculpture were reversed by the bitcoin community and truth-seekers like Daniel Batten have come out to bat for bitcoin mining.

In Conclusion

Ripple XRP is not a good faith actor in any sense of the crypto space. Not that there are many of those in the sector to start with. But Ripple and Garlinghouse are amongst the worst transgressors. Ripple XRP is not an ally to anything bitcoin or freedom related and is not in the best interests of any individual that values either, or both. They are an organization that preys upon the inexperienced and uneducated pleb that is hoping to invest in the future.

We have opportunities to invest in great projects and scrape together a little generational wealth for our loved ones, but XRP is not it. It is my position that anyone that is hoisting the flag of XRP on the social media platforms is a bad actor and their opinions over anything in the crypto space is not to be trusted, as Ripple XRP is one of the oldest projects in the space (alongside Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, and Litecoin) and lacking understanding of any (and all) of these stories makes them an ignorant source of information.

A Few Other Interesting Sources:

• Ripple CEO responds to accusations of lobbying against Bitcoin reserve
• Ripple Claims Bitcoin Is ‘Chinese-Controlled’ While Announcing New Lawsuit From SEC
• Greenpeace, Ripple co-founder campaigning to change Bitcoin code
• XRP is the next Bitcoin if we solve a multi-trillion-dollar problem, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse
• According to Brad Garlinghouse, mining Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) consumes a lot of energy, leaving too much carbon footprint, and this should worry climate change activists. Do you share the view of Ripple CEO
• Brad Garlinghouse vs the energy consumption of Bitcoin
• Ripple’s Garlinghouse disses Bitcoin’s energy use in advance of Biden administration
• Brad Garlinghouse Disagrees with Coinbase’s New Apolitical Stance – InsideBitcoins.com
• Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse Says Bitcoin Maximalism Hurting Crypto Industry’s Lobbying Efforts: Report – The Daily Hodl

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From zero to $30 billion FDV in under 24 hours

This alert was sent out to The Bitcoin Capitalist subscribers earlier today. I am including it here as a free post.

At 9.44pm ET Friday night, the Donald Trump twitter account tweeted an announcement for the release of an “official” $TRUMP memecoin.

It instantly rocketed and hasn’t really looked back – as I type this around noon Saturday it’s “paused” for a breather, at after running from zero to just under $30 billion market cap (fully diluted) in about 12 hours.

It peaked at $32B or so in the early hours.

My first reaction to it was that somehow Trump’s X account had been compromised and this was a very skillfully executed and timed pump-and-dump.

There was a subsequent announcement posted from Trump’s TruthSocial account – and other analysis concludes that the domain name and websites involved are of the same cohort as previous Trump NFT launches.

In other words, the $TRUMP memecoin is the real deal in that it was launched by the incoming president (or those within his circle) on the day SEC Chairman Gary Gensler left the office for the last time, and on the eve of Trump’s inauguration.

If you remember, Trump’s World Liberty Financial launch in the closing weeks leading up to the election, also raised eyebrows (including mine).

That episode is still somewhat shrouded in mystery (the much vaunted “Trump launch” event was a rambling 45 minute campaign speech, which mentioned the word “crypto” once, and never spoke about WLFI) – although it that too, was announced via his X account, and then quietly, mostly, forgotten.

Last night was different, in that where $WLFI token hasn’t started trading yet – the $TRUMP token did, with only 10% float released to public and the rest held by insiders, and trade it did, unlike anything ever seen by anyone before:

Co-incidentally, I started working on a piece last night about how we’re in a crack-up boom, into the post-singularity and an alternate reality all at the same time.

Then this happens. (Note, that post is now up: Frazzledrip Overdrive)

I have to admit I’m concerned about it, because I think the optics are bad, the cap table is garbage:

According to some observers, Trump has already pulled $500 million out from this (basically the dump part of “Pump and Dump”).

Many are welcoming this as auguring well for the Bitcoin Strategic Reserve which could be announced as soon as this coming week.

I was already bracing for disappointment there – with crypto sh*tcoiners circling the like vultures (i.e. Trump met with Ripple execs last week), we really don’t know what will be in such a reserve, especially if it suddenly becomes a “Strategic Crypto Reserve“.

Takeways:

I’m not buying $TRUMP, I know some serious degens who got in within the first 30 minutes who are laughing today. That moment has passed.

The risk / reward is not there and this thing is just too bizarre to go near.

In keeping with our own approach, Solana is up 17% since $TRUMP launched (it’s a memecoin on SOL), and Raydium ($RAY) which we added as a “picks and shovel” play on the entire Solana memecoin space is also up 17% on the day.

Which is all fine, but this episode has me thinking deeply about what this means for the entire crypto cycle.

On Monday: Trump will be inaugurated.

On Tuesday: The US hits the debt ceiling (however, with a lock on the house and senate, the debt ceiling almost certainly gets raised).

All indications are that we really are in a crack up boom and the sector telling us this the loudest is the memecoin space.

More to come, for now – don’t do anything, and don’t count on another 10X from $TRUMP from here (but don’t be surprised if it does).

If you must ape into this, be sure you are getting the $TRUMP meme coin on Solana

The followups to the Trump tweet are saturated with a scams and knock-offs, which is why I think this was such a mind-boggling irresponsible thing to do.

Unreal.

Disclosure: No position.

My aforementioned piece on the Post-Singularity, alternate universe crack-up boom we find ourselves in may still come out this weekend over on Bombthrower.

P.S Mark Carney, heir apparent to the Liberal Party leadership in Canada is taking victory laps for raising $125K the same day Trump catapulted a shitcoin into a $30B valuation. There is all kinds of societal and geopolitical symbolism in there…

Mark Carney: “We raised $125,000 in 24 hours!”

Donald Trump: “Hold my beer”. pic.twitter.com/GYN5tr8OTE

— Mark Jeftovic, The ₿itcoin Capitalist (@StuntPope) January 18, 2025

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As human civilization has evolved, one thing has remained constant; change.

During major shifts, the root desire for change is typically ignored. I believe that these generational shifts, our societal shifts, are tied to a mismatch in the speed with which people and money need to move. Let’s take a moment to look at our major revolutions.

• Agrarian Revolution: a move from hunter-gatherer to farmers.

  

• Industrial Revolution: a move from farmers to factory workers.

  

• Digital Revolution: a move from assembly lines to skilled/knowledge workers.

  

Each of these waves caused a drastic shift in how society operated. They disrupted every industry and old line of thinking. These periods experienced major shifts in lifestyle, access, and money.

Each major revolution was propelled by our ability to harness new technologies and resources. In turn, allowing us to apply and realize the potential of mathematical principles that had been understood, but not fully utilized, in previous eras. For example, the Industrial Revolution leveraged Newton’s laws of motion to develop machinery that transformed production processes. Calculations, known for decades and centuries, became the powering force behind modern tools.

When we apply known calculations to new tools and technologies we typically see an unlocking of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) or “value” in a way never experienced before.

During each revolution, GDP trajectory seems unsustainable in the moment. Having a trajectory that resembles the path of a rocket ship. However, as time passes and we have the ability to zoom out, we find that the distant past looks much more normalized. Over long periods the chaos of the moment smooths, providing the continuous up and to the right movement for our economic systems.

As we enter into the revolution of money, we should expect a surge similar to the impact of the internet in the 1990s.

For instance, the adoption of e-commerce, enabled by the internet, contributed to a substantial increase in GDP, with online retail sales in the U.S. growing from $27.6 billion in 2000 to $1.1 trillion in 2023.

Integration of digital currencies into the global economy is expected to reform banking and create new industries, reduce transaction costs, and open up previously inaccessible markets. This shift can be seen in dashboard data from Coinmetrics.io which shows the Stablecoin market having grown from roughly $0 prior to 2019 to about $160B+ today. Thus, Bitcoin and protocol innovations should continue to be big drivers of innovation for our next major wave of growth.

How Does This Relate to Today?

Much of the math that drove the industrial revolution was understood in 17th Century. In 1687, Isaac Newton published “The Principia“, laying the foundation for the laws of motion and gravitation. His work provided a mathematical framework for understanding force and motion in a way that led to the creation of mechanical systems which powered the industrial revolution of the 1800s.

Much of the math that drove probability theory and our understanding of the distribution of outcomes (Pareto’s Principle) was derived between 1500 and the late 1800s. The work of math mathematicians Gerolamo Cardano, Blaise Pascal, Christiaan Huygens, and Vilfredo Pareto powered much of our understanding and calculation of business margins in the 20th century. One could argue the genius of their work was not fully appreciated until post-1950 and again post-1980. A time when the American middle class was built. When sales and consumerism became the primary goal.

Much of the math that powers our digital and telecom networks was formulated between the mid-1800s and mid-1900s by mathematicians like George Boole, Harry Nyquist, Claude Shannon (the godfather of AI), Ralph Hartley, Alan Turing, and John von Neumann. Their foundational works were later expanded on by Paul Baran, Donald Davies, Richard Hamming, Vint Cerf, Bob Kahn, and Robert Metcalfe. These pioneers stood on the shoulders of giants before them and integrated our understanding of information (bits and bytes) with global business, enabling the digitization of industries and business models between 1970 and the early 2000s.

While probability theory served us well in the analog and early digital eras, the complexities of today’s networked world demand a more sophisticated approach. This is where Information Theory offers a framework that can support exponential growth and the interconnectedness of our modern economy.

Previously, Information Theory was not widely understood, nor were the resources and compute power available to make it work at scale. Its math, formulated in the early to mid-1950s, gave us what we know today as Artificial Intelligence (AI), noded networks, social graphs, and graph-based database technologies.

Why is this Important?

Each revolutionary moment brought major change to the world, creating a new state. During these major shifts, we often see confluence of human understanding of past fundamental laws (math), availability of resources (technology), and the ability to serve human needs (money/value). In short, today’s shift is because of a broader understanding of math derived by Claude Shannon, power laws, and the availability of new age chipsets and compute resources.

Today, we are transitioning from a digital/analog world, where systems operate independently or in linear sequences, to a ‘networked world’ where everything is interconnected through complex, node-based systems. In this new paradigm, relationships—both social and economic—are managed through decentralized networks, much like the structure of the internet.

However, our base money still operates off of probablistic principles rather than exponential laws. As our economic system evolves, it’s clear that traditional forms of money are not a good fit. Given the limitations of speed, scalability, and adaptability of fiat currency it makes sense that we commonly refer to our money as broken. Paper money no longer meets the need of our increasingly digital and interconnected world. We need to transition to a new form of currency that can grow and adapt at the pace of technological advancements. There is a critical need to shift from traditional monetary systems, which grow linearly or incrementally, to one that operates in an exponential nature. One we can refer to as ‘exponential money’—a form of currency that grows and scales at a much faster rate due to its integration with digital networks and information theory.

We are transitioning from relying primarily on probability theory—which deals with predicting the likelihood of different outcomes—to leveraging information theory, which focuses on quantifying, transmitting, reducing noise in communication and processing information. Particularly in complex and interconnected digital systems.

During the digital era from 1980 to 2009, probability theory played a central role in business and decision-making, as it was well-suited for predicting and optimizing likely outcomes in a relatively stable, linear environment. Businesses relied on algebraic models to maximize profit margins and manage risks based on historical data and statistical analysis. With money that’s lightly integrated into the system and conditioned to handle probabilities this works. However, in the cloud era our lifestyles became integrated and the connectivity to our money fell behind in it’s ability to compute.

Post 2000 as the world shifted to exponential systems that were increasingly connected, the money no longer moved at the pace of human need. More importantly the heart of the modern economic system shited from oil to Data. “Data is the new oil”, or rather, information is the new oil and money is information.

As digital data became integral to our economy, the limitations of traditional currencies, which were not designed for rapid scalability, became increasingly clear. The introduction of Bitcoin in 2009 provides a solution to this problem. By utilizing principles of Information Theory and Power Laws we have a currency that can scale for the digital age. For instance, Bitcoin’s decentralized network relies on the exponential increase in network participants, as described by Metcalfe’s Law, which helps explain its growing value and adoption. This is evident in Bitcoin’s market capitalization growth, which surged from nearly zero in 2009 to over $1 trillion in 2024, reflecting the currency’s ability to scale alongside the digital economy.

Prior to now, these scaling behaviors and distributions were only common in nature, viruses, physics, and network theory. Though this type of scaling was also common in economic theory, it was foreign to our money.

Money Powered By Networks

Moving forward, all our people, business, and money will operate off the same math that powers our networks. As AI and Bitcoin become integral to our financial systems, we can expect a dramatic increase in economic growth and efficiency, similar to the productivity gains seen during previous technological revolutions. Bitcoin and stablecoins’ ability to facilitate near-instantaneous cross-border transactions at lower costs than traditional financial systems offers a glimpse into the future of more efficient global trade. A 2020 report by PwC estimates that AI alone could contribute up to $15.7 trillion to the global economy by 2030, demonstrating the potential scale of these technologies.

This is the crux of the chaos and geopolitical battle we see. Multiple parties are jocking for power and control of the joystick of the new world order. Log of time and price will bring forth another revolution. A revolution of money.

For us to progress as economies and to unlock the full GDP value of the future, we will need money that operates at its core on mathematics that is conducive with principles rooted in network theory. Dollars, fiat money in general, cannot by nature of the math basis do this. Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, which operate at their core using digital information (bits and bytes), are built on the principles of Information Theory.

With the internet, in the 1980s, we broke the barrier to information. Exploding the world with new growth and business opportunities. As we enter into the revolution of money. We will do the same. As we break the barrier to money, with these technologies, we will witness another explosive round of growth and business opportunities that will power the next wave of GDP. For the first time, we will see value, information, and energy integrated seamlessly within our networked systems, creating the conditions for rapid economic expansion. A precedent for this can be seen in the rapid adoption of the internet, which led to the dot-com boom in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Companies like Amazon and Google, which harnessed the power of digital networks, grew exponentially and reshaped entire industries. Similarly, the combination of blockchain technology and AI is expected to unlock new levels of economic productivity by enabling secure, real-time data exchanges and automated decision-making across global markets.

Our relationships are now deeply interconnected, both socially and financially. Yet, our monetary systems still rely on outdated probabilistic principles and human subjectivity rather than embracing the exponential laws that drive modern communication technology. It’s time to transition from a flawed, morally bankrupt currency to a new form of ‘exponential money’—one rooted in the same mathematical principles that govern nature.

As we stand on the brink of another revolution, it’s clear we must move beyond the limits of probability theory to something far more profound.

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If this is real, there’s a serious fucking glitch in the matrix…

Sometime on September 11th I started noticing that there were tweets showing up in my timeline referencing some “Trump Crypto”, called “World Liberty Financial”, but I didn’t recognize any of the handles and didn’t really spend any time on them, mentally dismissing them as pushing one of the countless crypto scams, memecoins or otherwise flakey endeavours that may enjoy a brief “pop” before ultimately flaming out.

The emails from my Bitcoin Capitalist subscribers started rolling in on the 12th, asking me about it. One reader asks:

“Wondering if you will do a special on Trump entering  the fray of Crypto with worldlibertyfinancial[.]com and how this plays out on many different fronts.  Most importantly here in the States why he would do this at this time?   

We would love to know your insight.” 

Indeed. My off-the-cuff response:

Frankly, this has “shitcoin” written all over it and I can’t believe he’s doing this in the run up to the election.

I thought the entire thing was an celeb endorsement scam but it looks like the Trumps are really behind it.

Shaking my head, frankly.

That’s my first take. I’ll dig into it.

I’ve since done so and at first it really boggled my mind that this could possibly be something that is really backed by the Trumps. At first it looked like something his kids are mixed up in (Eric Trump and Don Jr are purportedly listed in a leaked white paper as the project’s “Web3 ambassadors”, and Baron, who is eighteen years old, is their “DeFi Visionary”).

On August 22, @realDonaldTrump and @DonaldTrumpJr Twitter accounts – tweeted a Telegram channel called Defiant1s  announcing the time to take back finance “from the elites”.

Then there is a tweet on August 29 where the @TheRealDonaldTrump account posts a video montage of Trump’s crypto plan for the US,  cribbed from prior speeches, including his keynote speech at the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville in July – and that tweet also tags @worldlibertyfi – the “official” account for World Liberty Financial that was created in July.

Then on September 12th, the @realDonaldTrump account tweeted out an announcement of the coming launch, which is purportedly happening on a Twitter space on September 16th:

The announcement was presented by “Rug Radio”(!) and “World Liberty Financial.

In the world of crypto the phrase “rugged”, “rug pull” and “rugging” has a very particular meaning: it’s the equivilent of a “pump-and-dump” in the stock world, where some garbage penny stock gets promoted and pushed and the insiders, who loaded up beforehand, unload at the top.

In the crypto version, a “rug pull” is when people are lured into some token project, like an ICO, the funds raised ostensibly to be used to carry out the project’s stated mission – but, what happens instead is the project founders either disappear with the funds, leaving the investors with now-worthless tokens – or they just sell the token itself into the hype-cycle, before the inevitable crash.

Even the WLFI tokenomics scream “rug-pull”

We don’t know much about the WLFI tokenomics. Coindesk apparently has a copy of a  “leaked” whitepaper but nobody else has seen it, and Coindesk haven’t released it, nor have they even replicated any screengrabs or choice excerpts from it – which I’d expect if somebody had a copy of something like that.

The tokenomics behind WLFI – the governance token for World Liberty Financial are a throwback to the 2017 ICO boom, but even more egregious.

According to Coindesk:

“A whopping 70% of Trump-backed World Liberty Financial’s WLFI tokens will be reserved for the project’s insiders…Of the remaining 30% of the tokens distributed via a public sale, the founding team will also receive a portion of the proceeds”

and,

When asked if a 70% allocation to insiders is high, one source who advises projects on such matters replied, “LMAO. Nice joke, ser.”

Apparently the public tokens will also be locked indefinitely, meaning non-transferrable, and thus – it would appear, much harder to actually profit from selling (they could, in theory, earn protocol fees, but we’d have to actually see the white paper to know for sure).

The Coindesk article goes on to break out some of the principles behind World Liberty Financial, including a founder of a DeFi platform that got hacked in July and another that runs a competitor to OnlyFans.

It all just looks so really, obviously bad that I’m having a hard time believing it.

There are two possible scenarios: Shitcoin or Rat-fuck

When I sat down to research and write this piece, the entire angle was “I can’t believe Trump is pulling a shitcoin launch this close to the election”.

The original title was “Tump Backed Crypto Smells Like A Shitcoin”.

The more I started digging into it, the less sense any of this made.

Scenario #1) Trump really is the “Chief Crypto Ambassador” for World Liberty Financial

After winning over much of the Bitcoin space in Nashville just a couple months ago, this is the surest way to to alienate them:

Scam pump and dump promoter.

Right before an election.

Insanity.

— FRANCIS – BULLBITCOIN.COM (@francispouliot_) September 12, 2024

Pretty well sums it all up.

Let’s keep something else in mind:

Trump has already been fighting lawfare on all sides, the Dems are trying to block his path to the presidency any way they can – and now – after he just promised to fire SEC Chair Garry Gensler on day one if he wins in November, he’s going to hand the guy the perfect setup to indict him before the election?

The more I worked on this piece, the more something just feels off

Scenario #2) This is some sort of psyop

The more I look at it, the more I think the Trump World Liberty Financial deal is either a psyop or a serious glitch in the matrix.

The announcement is presented by “RUG RADIO” ffs.

Like what the hell? pic.twitter.com/1UkW0g5BIW

— Mark Jeftovic, The ₿itcoin Capitalist (@StuntPope) September 13, 2024

The worldlibertyfinancial[.]com domain was registered in June, and there isn’t much more than that Telegram channel. Nothing wrong with that, per se – but it’s also where 100% of the memecoins and 110% of the shitcoins and 1,000% of the scamcoins are run from.

It was created August 6th and started posting about the Trump DeFi project on August 15:

Donald Trump hasn’t mentioned any of this from his Truth Social account. Neither Donald Jr. nor Eric Trump have mentioned World Liberty Financial by name on Twitter.

In early September Lara Trump and Tiffany Trump also  tweeted about World Liberty Financial, but claimed they were hacked.

As weird as it may seem, those videos posted via @realDonaldTrump  tagging @WorldLibertyFi and together with the one from @DonaldTrumpJr promoting the Telegram channel would fit if those accounts were also compromised (tbh, the one from Sept 12 with Trump announcing the coming livestream could seem like a deepfake, who knows these days).

But if that were the case, why aren’t the Trumps or anybody else commenting on it or denying the affiliation or deleting those tweets?

If so many Trump family accounts were hacked, and limited to Twitter and no other social media platforms, one possibility could be a security weakness particular to twitter, or how the members of the Trump family interact with that platform, or perhaps a rogue operator within the company.

But even if this were the case, to what end? Is this just the mother of all shitcoin pumps? Or a more complex rat-fucking psyop to discredit Trump? I can’t believe I just typed that because it sounds like something straight out of the bowels of Qanon.

In their Telegram channel, World Liberty lists multiple smart contract auditors reviewing their code, and state the entire project is a fork of Aave, whom they are actively collaborating with.

None of those accounts have ever mentioned World Liberty or acknowledged the WLFI project.

Well @peckshield @fuzzland_ @zokyo_io @BlockSecTeam – can you confirm you’ve audited the code?

Can @aave confirm collaborating with @worldlibertyfi ? pic.twitter.com/HwxkGsykKH

— Mark Jeftovic, The ₿itcoin Capitalist (@StuntPope) September 13, 2024

But something doesn’t add up, and if this is just a pump-and-dump crypto scam and Trump the candidate is involved then it truly is mind-boggling.

I guess we’ll have a better idea come September 16th.

Update: Martin Shkreli (re-)enters the picture

After I posted this last night, I received an email from a credible source who wishes to remain unnamed (hey, if the MSM can do it…) that disgraced pharma CEO,  and convicted felon, Martin Shkreli is behind it (“he is controlling Barron”).

In June, Shkreli reportedly launched a different shitcoin, the “DJT” token on Solana, and claimed he was doing so in partnership with Barron Trump. I remember the story, I had it in my notes for the July issue of TBC but cut it as I surmised then that Shkreli was up some to sort of celebrity endorsement scam and even suspected at the time it was all a ruse to damage the presidential campaign of The Donald (in other words, a psyop).

I asked my source if there was confusion with the earlier DJT token and he/she/they/them/xat replied:

“He [Shkreli] is the mastermind behind all their crypto affairs “

Some mastermind. The DJT token provides a textbook case of what our aforementioned story arc of a rug-pull:

The fully diluted valuation is only $2.4 million (although effectively zero because there’s no liquidity) – down from a peak of $169 million when it launched (10 billion token supply, at 0.017).

This is what most altcoin, and all memecoin and scamcoin charts look like, over the long haul – and this is what I expect WLFI will look like, whether Shkreli is mixed up in it or not. Neither the Coindesk or Bloomberg piece mentions him.

If the Trumps really are putting their name to this, they either don’t understand what they’ve gotten themselves into, or they think they can make so much money off it when it pumps that it won’t matter.

Sign up to the Bombthrower Mailing list today and get a free copy of the aforementioned Crypto Capitalist Manifesto – I’ll also send you my forthcoming e-book The CBDC Survival Guide when it drops this fall.

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