Just read a great/disturbing column about the games CNN/Harry Enten is playing with "predictions." See Judd Legum and Arron Ruper column from today: https://popular.info/p/how-kalshi-infects-the-news.
I admit I’m out of my depth when it comes to crypto. Oh sure, I understand the basics but I also remember reading an article/interview regarding Warren Buffett’s opinion on crypto and it wasn’t positive.
This is a new danger though. Seems there always is another and another just around the corner.
#Holdfast
~Susan
PS. Think I’ll stick to the quiet work where at least I know what I’m doing. Maybe I can make a tiny difference in the outcome of the midterms. So concerned about that.
Susan...hold on, because you buried the most important sentence in your P.S. and I'm digging it back out.
"I'll stick to the quiet work where I know what I'm doing."
Susan, that's not a consolation prize. That's the ENTIRE ballgame. The crypto maze exists PRECISELY to make people feel too out-of-depth to act.
But...influence-buying has exactly ONE antidote...and it isn't understanding blockchain...it's ELECTIONS. Every HOUR of quiet midterm work...does MORE damage to the leverage-merchants...than a THOUSAND hours of studying wallets. You're not retreating from the fight. You're standing at the ONLY lever that actually moves it!
As for Buffett...you remembered right, and notice WHY he passed: he never buys what he can't understand or value. The old man's rule wasn't anti-crypto. It was anti-MURK.
Same instinct I'm preaching... wearing an Omaha suit.
And...one small adjustment to "something else to worry about": don't file this under worry. File it under WATCH. Worry is the TAX; watching is the job. You've already held the funeral for worse than this.
The quiet workers decide the loud outcomes. Always have.
"Follow the money" still holds true but as you point out Jack it has gotten a lot more murky. I will be the first to confess the world of Cryptocurrency is not in my wheelhouse. What I do notice is that this administration seems to benefitting "biggly" in this game. The lack of oversight does make me worry. The influence it can have over anyone is intense but terrifying when those in power are reaping huge gains. To your point Jack it is not just about Trump and family but, anyone in power. The oversight and ethics around crypto/stock trades needs to revamped and made a whole lot stronger. #Holdfast
Kristine...your confession is actually your credential, my friend.
"Crypto isn't in my wheelhouse...but I notice who's benefiting" is EXACTLY the right analytical posture.
You don't need to understand the plumbing...to notice which direction the water flows. The con ALWAYS depends on convincing ordinary people...the subject is too technical for them to have an opinion. It isn't.
Follow-the-money NEVER required a computer science degree...just working eyes ...and the nerve to KEEP them open.
You passed the harder test, too: "not just Trump...anyone in power."
That's the difference between a partisan...and a citizen. Partisans want the loophole closed on the OTHER team. Citizens want it closed, PERIOD...because they know their OWN team will eventually find it too.
Jack is correct that money is a quieter instrument than a suitcase of cash, and history bears him out. Authoritarian capture rarely arrives with an invoice attached. It arrives as an investment, a licensing fee, a stake in a family venture — instruments common enough to survive daylight, opaque enough to survive scrutiny. File the date: January 16, 2025, four days before an inauguration, a $500 million stake in a presidential family’s crypto venture changes hands. Note which entity signs it — not the president, but his son. Note which foreign official is on the other end — not an ambassador, but a national security adviser known inside his own service as the “Spy Sheikh.” Note what follows within months: chip export restrictions imposed for documented national security reasons, reversed.
None of this required a bribe in the cinematic sense. It required only what every serious student of authoritarian capture eventually learns: that leverage is not seized, it is deposited, and it accrues interest quietly while everyone argues about something else. The Founders wrote an emoluments clause into a Constitution not yet a decade old because they had just finished fighting a war against a monarchy whose foreign entanglements were legendary, and because they understood something that later generations keep forgetting and rediscovering — that a republic’s vulnerability is never a single act of treason. It is a thousand small transactions that nobody was watching closely enough to call by their name.
It is worth distinguishing the instruments here, because the distinction sharpens rather than softens the indictment. The World Liberty stake is an equity transaction — a real percentage of a real company, purchased by a real foreign official, with real proceeds landing in a real family’s accounts. The memecoin holdings are something else again: an asset with no underlying claim on anything, no earnings, no product, whose entire value is the expectation that someone else will want it tomorrow. File the date on that distinction, because it matters for what comes next. A regime does not need its capture instruments to be substantial. It needs them only to be believed in, and belief is cheaper to manufacture than equity. A financial disclosure listing over a billion dollars in crypto-linked wealth is not a balance sheet in the way a previous generation would have recognized one. It is a confidence structure — value that exists because enough people agree it does, sustained by the same mechanism that sustains an authoritarian’s popularity, which is to say: nothing underneath but the agreement to keep believing. Note which entities profit whether the coin’s value is real or not — the family collects royalties and trading fees regardless of what happens to the million outside investors left holding a token backed by nothing more than that agreement.
History offers precedent for this exact architecture, and both cases ended the same way. In 1720, Parliament granted the South Sea Company debt-monopoly privileges, and its directors bought the votes with discounted shares — a valuation built on political appearance rather than trade, until an inquiry exposed the bribery and ruined the ministers who’d taken it. Nearly three centuries later, Malaysia’s sovereign fund and an Abu Dhabi state investment vehicle moved billions through shell companies with near-identical names to legitimate ones, until officials on both sides were shown to have taken payoffs and one prime minister ended up in prison. Note what both cases share with this one: the mechanism was never a briefcase changing hands. It was paperwork, equity, and a foreign sovereign fund — and in both precedents, the arrangement held only until someone finally looked.
Jack is correct, too, that this indictment cannot be partisan, because the mechanism does not care who is in office. A loophole built for one family survives to serve the next. That is precisely why the remedy he proposes — disclosure, modernized ethics law, investigative capacity — reads as modest. It is modest. It is also the only kind of remedy that outlasts an administration. The alternative, the one history offers as a cautionary tale rather than a policy option, is a citizenry that shrugs at $187 million flowing to a family’s coffers on the eve of a presidency and calls it business as usual. Systems that tolerate that shrug do not stay republics for very long. They become something else, slowly, without anyone voting for the change.
P.S. - The search for a historical comparison took longer than it should have — not for lack of looking, but because this exact configuration is rare enough that the closest matches are three centuries old or half a world away. That scarcity isn’t reassuring. It’s the point.
If you follow the money it takes you to the Billionaires. Here and around the world. We can't eliminate them worldwide but we can tax and regulate them out of existence here. It would be a good start.
I don't understand crypto, barely understand dollars and cents, but I am pretty sure if trump, dumb and dumber and the gang, musk and the other billionaires, domestic and foreign, are making billions off of it, while the suckers, I mean small investors lose something is rotten. It didn't evolve. It exploded on the scene, without regulation and oversight. I doubt banking laws that already have more loopholes than grandma's afghan will offer any guardrails.
Your actions are right on. They point in the same direction that a lot of your actions have pointed. Professional integrity offer elected officials. Crypto is the wild west of financial exchange. Maybe we will get to the point where "money" is no longer needed as was theorized in Star Trek Four, The Voyage Home.
Jack’s right. Assume you want to get a country to do what benefits you. You can invade, conquer, and then run it yourself. That’s a lot of work and expense. And success is not guaranteed. Or, you can buy it. All you need is a shadowy, labryinthine pathway to move money and corrupt officials in the target country to receive the money and then provide a good return on the investment to the “investor”. Because this method operates largely out of sight and understanding, it’s usually pretty successful if the aforementioned elements are in place.
I believe the donny crime family is currently on a smash-and-grab mission. Get as much as they can in their pockets before donny’s reign of terror, hopefully, comes to a close. Ever wonder what that Albanian island was *really for?? We have had an extradition treaty with Albania since 1935. Biden tried to modify it to include financial crimes (money laundering, etc.) in 2022 (hm…wonder who he was thinking about lol). As far as I can tell, it was never ratified so the 1935 treaty is still in place.
Usually when I read about crypto my eyes glaze over and my hearing lessens, but somehow you managed to prevent that when I read this issue tonight! I automatically assume crypto is crapto because of the support from the likes of Elon Musk, DJTJ, Eric Trump, etc. I realize the only safe investments are ones that DO NOT have any of the Trump’s or the Regime involved. It’s like they smell a grift the same way you and I smell delicious bacon and eggs…. #HOLDFAST
PS. What do you wanna bet Trump is planning a 3 day funeral/rally to compete with the Iranian leaders multi day funeral? Prove me wrong. Can’t be done.
.Crypto is the new Enron. It is the giant pyramid scheme of dark, illicit money. It is easy to grift, grant payola, and enrich oneself. It is also vastly untraceable. Just the ideal money grab for the most corrupt ‘president’ and his scheme. How do you get out of jail free? Send some, a lot, of crypto his way. Want a favor? Send a whole lot more.
Thanks again for the essay. I will keep my US dollars and insured bank accounts. I hope that insurance holds. I know there is a bill floating to remove those safe guards that were created after Wall Street 1929.
And the predictions market make it even more difficult. What a tangled web. #HoldingFast
Roberta...THAT...might deserve an article all to itself. You're right!
-Jack
Just read a great/disturbing column about the games CNN/Harry Enten is playing with "predictions." See Judd Legum and Arron Ruper column from today: https://popular.info/p/how-kalshi-infects-the-news.
Oh good grief. Thank you for sharing.
Thank you, Jack. Something else to worry about.
I admit I’m out of my depth when it comes to crypto. Oh sure, I understand the basics but I also remember reading an article/interview regarding Warren Buffett’s opinion on crypto and it wasn’t positive.
This is a new danger though. Seems there always is another and another just around the corner.
#Holdfast
~Susan
PS. Think I’ll stick to the quiet work where at least I know what I’m doing. Maybe I can make a tiny difference in the outcome of the midterms. So concerned about that.
Susan...hold on, because you buried the most important sentence in your P.S. and I'm digging it back out.
"I'll stick to the quiet work where I know what I'm doing."
Susan, that's not a consolation prize. That's the ENTIRE ballgame. The crypto maze exists PRECISELY to make people feel too out-of-depth to act.
But...influence-buying has exactly ONE antidote...and it isn't understanding blockchain...it's ELECTIONS. Every HOUR of quiet midterm work...does MORE damage to the leverage-merchants...than a THOUSAND hours of studying wallets. You're not retreating from the fight. You're standing at the ONLY lever that actually moves it!
As for Buffett...you remembered right, and notice WHY he passed: he never buys what he can't understand or value. The old man's rule wasn't anti-crypto. It was anti-MURK.
Same instinct I'm preaching... wearing an Omaha suit.
And...one small adjustment to "something else to worry about": don't file this under worry. File it under WATCH. Worry is the TAX; watching is the job. You've already held the funeral for worse than this.
The quiet workers decide the loud outcomes. Always have.
#Holdfast, Susan.
-Jack
Got it, Jack. Thank you!
"Follow the money" still holds true but as you point out Jack it has gotten a lot more murky. I will be the first to confess the world of Cryptocurrency is not in my wheelhouse. What I do notice is that this administration seems to benefitting "biggly" in this game. The lack of oversight does make me worry. The influence it can have over anyone is intense but terrifying when those in power are reaping huge gains. To your point Jack it is not just about Trump and family but, anyone in power. The oversight and ethics around crypto/stock trades needs to revamped and made a whole lot stronger. #Holdfast
Kristine...your confession is actually your credential, my friend.
"Crypto isn't in my wheelhouse...but I notice who's benefiting" is EXACTLY the right analytical posture.
You don't need to understand the plumbing...to notice which direction the water flows. The con ALWAYS depends on convincing ordinary people...the subject is too technical for them to have an opinion. It isn't.
Follow-the-money NEVER required a computer science degree...just working eyes ...and the nerve to KEEP them open.
You passed the harder test, too: "not just Trump...anyone in power."
That's the difference between a partisan...and a citizen. Partisans want the loophole closed on the OTHER team. Citizens want it closed, PERIOD...because they know their OWN team will eventually find it too.
SYSTEMS... outlast personalities. Guardrails don't check jerseys.
The murky water isn't an accident...by the way. Murk IS the product. Clarity is what we're fighting for!
#Holdfast
-Jack
A story as old as time itself. No doubt.
#HoldFast
Rae...right?! As old as time, indeed.
-Jack
Jack is correct that money is a quieter instrument than a suitcase of cash, and history bears him out. Authoritarian capture rarely arrives with an invoice attached. It arrives as an investment, a licensing fee, a stake in a family venture — instruments common enough to survive daylight, opaque enough to survive scrutiny. File the date: January 16, 2025, four days before an inauguration, a $500 million stake in a presidential family’s crypto venture changes hands. Note which entity signs it — not the president, but his son. Note which foreign official is on the other end — not an ambassador, but a national security adviser known inside his own service as the “Spy Sheikh.” Note what follows within months: chip export restrictions imposed for documented national security reasons, reversed.
None of this required a bribe in the cinematic sense. It required only what every serious student of authoritarian capture eventually learns: that leverage is not seized, it is deposited, and it accrues interest quietly while everyone argues about something else. The Founders wrote an emoluments clause into a Constitution not yet a decade old because they had just finished fighting a war against a monarchy whose foreign entanglements were legendary, and because they understood something that later generations keep forgetting and rediscovering — that a republic’s vulnerability is never a single act of treason. It is a thousand small transactions that nobody was watching closely enough to call by their name.
It is worth distinguishing the instruments here, because the distinction sharpens rather than softens the indictment. The World Liberty stake is an equity transaction — a real percentage of a real company, purchased by a real foreign official, with real proceeds landing in a real family’s accounts. The memecoin holdings are something else again: an asset with no underlying claim on anything, no earnings, no product, whose entire value is the expectation that someone else will want it tomorrow. File the date on that distinction, because it matters for what comes next. A regime does not need its capture instruments to be substantial. It needs them only to be believed in, and belief is cheaper to manufacture than equity. A financial disclosure listing over a billion dollars in crypto-linked wealth is not a balance sheet in the way a previous generation would have recognized one. It is a confidence structure — value that exists because enough people agree it does, sustained by the same mechanism that sustains an authoritarian’s popularity, which is to say: nothing underneath but the agreement to keep believing. Note which entities profit whether the coin’s value is real or not — the family collects royalties and trading fees regardless of what happens to the million outside investors left holding a token backed by nothing more than that agreement.
History offers precedent for this exact architecture, and both cases ended the same way. In 1720, Parliament granted the South Sea Company debt-monopoly privileges, and its directors bought the votes with discounted shares — a valuation built on political appearance rather than trade, until an inquiry exposed the bribery and ruined the ministers who’d taken it. Nearly three centuries later, Malaysia’s sovereign fund and an Abu Dhabi state investment vehicle moved billions through shell companies with near-identical names to legitimate ones, until officials on both sides were shown to have taken payoffs and one prime minister ended up in prison. Note what both cases share with this one: the mechanism was never a briefcase changing hands. It was paperwork, equity, and a foreign sovereign fund — and in both precedents, the arrangement held only until someone finally looked.
Jack is correct, too, that this indictment cannot be partisan, because the mechanism does not care who is in office. A loophole built for one family survives to serve the next. That is precisely why the remedy he proposes — disclosure, modernized ethics law, investigative capacity — reads as modest. It is modest. It is also the only kind of remedy that outlasts an administration. The alternative, the one history offers as a cautionary tale rather than a policy option, is a citizenry that shrugs at $187 million flowing to a family’s coffers on the eve of a presidency and calls it business as usual. Systems that tolerate that shrug do not stay republics for very long. They become something else, slowly, without anyone voting for the change.
P.S. - The search for a historical comparison took longer than it should have — not for lack of looking, but because this exact configuration is rare enough that the closest matches are three centuries old or half a world away. That scarcity isn’t reassuring. It’s the point.
#HOLDFAST
💙🩵💙
If you follow the money it takes you to the Billionaires. Here and around the world. We can't eliminate them worldwide but we can tax and regulate them out of existence here. It would be a good start.
I don't understand crypto, barely understand dollars and cents, but I am pretty sure if trump, dumb and dumber and the gang, musk and the other billionaires, domestic and foreign, are making billions off of it, while the suckers, I mean small investors lose something is rotten. It didn't evolve. It exploded on the scene, without regulation and oversight. I doubt banking laws that already have more loopholes than grandma's afghan will offer any guardrails.
Meanwhile, I need to roll my pennies.
Sue
I’m with you Sue! Our pennies might be our ace in the hole!
Your actions are right on. They point in the same direction that a lot of your actions have pointed. Professional integrity offer elected officials. Crypto is the wild west of financial exchange. Maybe we will get to the point where "money" is no longer needed as was theorized in Star Trek Four, The Voyage Home.
Jack’s right. Assume you want to get a country to do what benefits you. You can invade, conquer, and then run it yourself. That’s a lot of work and expense. And success is not guaranteed. Or, you can buy it. All you need is a shadowy, labryinthine pathway to move money and corrupt officials in the target country to receive the money and then provide a good return on the investment to the “investor”. Because this method operates largely out of sight and understanding, it’s usually pretty successful if the aforementioned elements are in place.
I believe the donny crime family is currently on a smash-and-grab mission. Get as much as they can in their pockets before donny’s reign of terror, hopefully, comes to a close. Ever wonder what that Albanian island was *really for?? We have had an extradition treaty with Albania since 1935. Biden tried to modify it to include financial crimes (money laundering, etc.) in 2022 (hm…wonder who he was thinking about lol). As far as I can tell, it was never ratified so the 1935 treaty is still in place.
Follow the money. Always.
Usually when I read about crypto my eyes glaze over and my hearing lessens, but somehow you managed to prevent that when I read this issue tonight! I automatically assume crypto is crapto because of the support from the likes of Elon Musk, DJTJ, Eric Trump, etc. I realize the only safe investments are ones that DO NOT have any of the Trump’s or the Regime involved. It’s like they smell a grift the same way you and I smell delicious bacon and eggs…. #HOLDFAST
PS. What do you wanna bet Trump is planning a 3 day funeral/rally to compete with the Iranian leaders multi day funeral? Prove me wrong. Can’t be done.
I would learn how to trade, become the best one in the industry and start making money out of thin air.
.Crypto is the new Enron. It is the giant pyramid scheme of dark, illicit money. It is easy to grift, grant payola, and enrich oneself. It is also vastly untraceable. Just the ideal money grab for the most corrupt ‘president’ and his scheme. How do you get out of jail free? Send some, a lot, of crypto his way. Want a favor? Send a whole lot more.
Thanks again for the essay. I will keep my US dollars and insured bank accounts. I hope that insurance holds. I know there is a bill floating to remove those safe guards that were created after Wall Street 1929.
#HoldFast