The stock market has continued tanking with a fourth down-day in a row. The S&P 500 index has dropped 1.2%. Bank of America has dropped 4%. United Airlines is down 10%. This is in response to concerns of the presidential election in November, just 42 days away at the time of this writing, as well as a number of other factors. COVID continues to rage, and there are horrific predictions for this winter, with world governments having spent a year at failing to contain the disease.
The cryptomarkets have shown, again, that they are not immune to the effects of a bearish stock market, with BTC and others falling into a bearish trend. Many have retreated to the safe haven of Tether, and this instability could continue for the next few months as the U.S. election brings fear and anxiety to the U.S. markets, in turn inducing caution in the rest of the globe.
But one factor stood out in the recent sell-off that is telling to the current capitalist financial system. Recent selloffs occurred when a leaked reports detailed some $2,000,000,000,000 worth of suspicious transactions travelling across the globe.
Buzzfeed and others published about the leaks, which show Deutsche Bank being responsible for $1.3tn of those $2tn suspicious transactions. In short, the transactions are likely money laundering, which is nothing new for Deutsche Bank. They are already in the shit for laundering money for Russian clients back in 2012.
HSBC is also on the list. Europe’s largest bank, HSBC got caught helping drug cartels launder cash eight years ago, so there is no surprise here, either. FT reports that HSBC was also helping an $80 million Chinese Ponzi scheme called WCM777, not bothering to close the related accounts until the scheme had finished!
The irony here is glaring, of course, as these financial entities have long considered Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies havens for tax evasion, laundering and darkweb smuggling. These same entities are, of course, guilty of all of those things as well, and to a far larger degree than Bitcoin could ever achieve at its current market value.
The global banking cartels oversee the handling of countless ‘semi-legal’ firms. They enable the world’s elite to avoid taxes by hiding their funds in overseas accounts. They manage the books of mining operations reliant on slave labor in the third world. They help foster the exploitation and legal pillage of the global south through high-interest loans and resource extraction, flows of capital which end up in the coffers of dictators and corporations, while the masses are left to rot and nature is left to fester.
There are hundreds of ways that banks can launder funds for criminals, and profit off of socially-acceptable forms of theft and exploitation. These entities will point to the dangers of Bitcoin, which, to be sure, is used in darkweb transactions. But they do so without shame, and perhaps even jealousy.
But while these banks are caught red handed, and fined in amounts that to them are pennies, they continue unabated. The dark mires of accounts and legal financial mechanisms to distort and hide illegality are impossible to do with Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is not private. Wallets can be tracked and flows of capital can be identified with any block explorer. Bitcoin is a danger to these entities, because they can not get away with their crimes using Bitcoin.
