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My dog has been doing this thing the last week or so where he wants to go outside at like 3 in the morning. It’s sUpeR fUN. He hasn’t done it every night but he did it again this morning. This time I couldn’t really get back to sleep. I spent the next two hours or so tossing and turning, thinking about the situation that we are currently in as citizens of the world. Our freedoms have been under attack for decades now but it feels like it’s starting to get more extreme. Especially in the last 2 to 3 years.
I know that others may disagree about where our focus should be as a society at this point in time. But right or wrong, I take the view that without preserving our freedom to transact without a central authority, we will fail at our other social improvement initiatives as well. It is absolutely imperative that we preserve the right to self-custody assets; be it cash, crypto, or precious metals.
While I recognize the majority of my subscribers here at Heretic Speculator are probably half-willing crypto spectators rather than crypto participants - I’d wager many of you are more likely to support metal or dollars over the speculative ‘thin air coins’ - let me at least ask that we can all agree on one thing; we must never give up the freedom to have peer to peer transactions.
After a night of sort of sleeping on that hearing yesterday, it seems clear to me that it was very much kangaroo court theater. The feds are playing dumb. They know what they are going to attempt to do because what is at stake for them is the very control structure they’ve been building over the last several decades. There are a few in congress playing ‘good cop’ but their efforts will probably fail.
If you’ve been paying even a slight amount of attention to what I’ve been saying in the second half of 2022 you may recognize a not so subtle warning; we need to entertain the possibility that simply holding crypto in a self-custodial wallet will be deemed illegal in a last ditch effort to save the dollar hegemony. Go back and read these recent posts if you missed them:
Our CBDC Future Awaits
Information: A War Worth Fighting
Crypto: We’re Not Doing it Right
Born out of Crisis
In The End We’re All Criminals
The Regulation Ruse
If I have any problem with the crypto industry it’s that it has turned Bitcoin into B!tcoin$. But whether Bitcoin is $10, $10,000, or $10 million, the ethos of the idea needs to be championed despite the Bitcoin’s very obvious limitations. The state has finally caught on. First they laughed and said Bitcoin could never take the place of the petrodollar even as they’ve been undermining the “petro” portion of that structure. Now they’re scared. And they should be.
Like the eNaira and the crypto ban in Nigeria, the potentially forthcoming US crypto ban will fail. It is a certainty. Elizabeth Warren can propose and pass anything her heart desires. That doesn’t mean the risk/reward calculation will favor compliance. But something hilariously beautiful just happened that perfectly illustrates the absurdity of recent history…
Trump Trading Cards
Donald Trump has launched an NFT collection. He’s doing so with the Polygon (MATIC-USD) blockchain. Of all of the things that have happened this year, I didn’t have Donald Trump possibly onboarding baby boomers to crypto rails on the bingo card. But here we are. Look, I’m not saying you should go buy Trump Trading Cards. In fact, I would probably advise doing so unless you really want to give the man your money for some reason.
But forget for a moment that he’s essentially selling lottery tickets with digital pictures. He could do this with physical goods as well. It doesn’t need to be a picture. It could be a physical cardboard trading card. It could be a bobblehead. It could be a coin. NFTs, in this form, are just collectibles that live on the blockchain. Buying one of these digital cards means you now have a Polygon wallet without realizing it.
This is really what I’ve been trying to explain to the Warren Buffett lapdog anti-crypto sh!tposters in the comments section of Seeking Alpha for the last year or so; get over the monkey pictures and the manias. Focus on the technology underpinning these things and recognize what it enables.
Let’s say Trump released these cards through legitimate physical trading card companies like Topps or Panini, would it be okay for the federal government to create a law saying that you don’t own those Trump cards? Would it be okay for the federal government to create a law saying you can’t trade those cards freely with another person without a custodian? The answer, I hope, is of course not.
So this should wake everyone up to the battle then going forward. If we allow congress or any other ruler by declaration to criminalize the self-custody of crypto assets, it is akin to criminalizing physical cash. Left or right, I hope we can at least all agree that any bill banning the self-custody of cash, gold, crypto, or any other value transfer vector that is removed from the state-approved custodial apparatus is a non-starter.
Disclosure: I am not a financial adviser. I am not a law expert. I share what I do and why I do it for informational purposes. This blog simply reflects my personal opinions. I have exposure to equities, precious metals, cryptocurrencies, and various other alternative assets. I am staunch supporter of third-party risk minimization when applicable. Meaning, do it yourself and hold it yourself. If you don’t know how, learn. If you can’t manage your wealth yourself, talk to a professional wealth manager. Of course, please remember nobody cares about your money as much as you do.
