All rise for the national Anthem!

Not quite my taste.

No, as an American I much more prefer our anthem about bombs and war and imperialism and infinite profits. Also the sheer irony of living in the Land of the Free because we are constantly trying to enslave everyone else really tickles me.

In any case... The rundown:

• Truckers say no to medical mandates.
• Truckers block economy and honk da horns.
• Truckers get funded on GoFundMe.
• Truckers get defunded on GoFundMe.
  • Instead of giving the money back like they always do, GoFundMe claims anyone who doesn't specifically request it back will have their money donated to the exact political opposite places that the people wanted it to go (left-wing stuff like BLM and such).
    • GoFundMe backtracks on this stupid idea after everyone complains and calls them out for being dipshits.
• Truckers get refunded by Bitcoin enthusiasts.
  • Let's see you censor that one, Trudeau.
• Trudeau declares an unprecedented state of emergency, calling the truckers terrorists and trying to close their bank accounts and cancel their insurance with zero official paperwork.

BABYRAGE WHOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

I have never seen such babyrage in all my days of following politics. Amazing really. The funny part is, is that I know for a fact this is only the beginning of politicians having full on meltdowns because their citizens refuse to obey them, and then use crypto to avoid getting fucked over by the banks.

This is a very important test case to see if indeed Bitcoin actually is uncensorable in cases like this. The platform they are using, Tallycoin, does have some attack vectors, but one of the signers on the multi-sig wallet is an anonymous person tied to the trucker convoy with the name...

The fifth signer—known as "Nobody Caribou" on Twitter—acts as a liaison between Bitcoiners and the protest organizers on the ground in Ottawa.

Nobody Caribou? lol... k.

Again, now that crypto is involved with this situation this creates a very interesting testnet that will put theory into practice. Will be a very valuable experience no matter what happens.

We also need to look at the language being used by the outlets that report on this story. Everyone is being called 'anti-vax'. Everyone is being called a 'terrorist'. How much longer until these people lose every ounce of credibility they ever had? Obviously, being anti-medical-mandate is not 'anti-vax', but 'anti-vax' is used because intrinsically anti-vax means that they are idiot conspiracy theorists who are ruining it for everyone. That is the obvious narrative being pushed onto the consumers of mainstream media.

But there's actually a huge double whammy here.

Because not only does anti-mandate not mean anti-vax, even anti-vax doesn't mean anti-vax. This is an experimental treatment with zero long-term studies done on it, and we already see that the long-term data that should be collected and distributed and analyzed is already being suppressed. Not a great look, "science".

"If you could go ahead and lock these records for the next 50 years, that would be great."

lol. fuck you.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anti-vaxxer

Definition of anti-vaxxer

: a person who opposes the use of vaccines or regulations mandating vaccination
Some self-identified anti-vaxxers are vehemently against all vaccines. Some are skeptical of specific vaccines …

Straight out of the left-wing authoritarian playbook.

Months ago, Merriam-Webster's dictionary redefined the very meaning of anti-vax to fit into the left-wing agenda to simply call anyone who's anti-mandate: anti-vax. Amazing.

Also, notice how it says: "Some are skeptical of specific vaccines?" Also bullshit. Those "specific vaccines" in every single case are COVID vaccines. Again, trying to make it sound like some people specifically oppose random vaccines? Like, no. Stop lying: liars. I'm over it.

It's not the first time.

My girlfriend has always been heavily involved in left-wing politics, and I was actually pretty shocked when I found out that the definition of racism had been redefined, at least within her political sphere. The definition of racism has thus shifted from 'racism' to 'systemic-racism', so if you say 'racism' it is fully synonymous with the systemic version.

This has some interesting implications. First, it means that it's basically impossible to talk about racism in the context of tribalism. Black people and other minorities can't be racist within this context; it's impossible by definition. That's because white people can't ever suffer from systemic racism (except for that one time).

Hm, yeah, I actually don't have a computer science degree because of racism and I'm white, but meh, that's pretty a non-standard situation. In fact I'd say that was a pretty valuable life-lesson about how easy my life has been within the context of racism. I've got the one story... and that's it. People with dark skin have... hundreds of stories. It's gross.

Sounds bad, right?

Sounds like something democratic clubs shouldn't be doing: redefining words to fit their agenda. But I mean try joining a democratic club just to have white guys filtering in trying to talk about how black people are tribalist like everyone else. That's a tedious pointless conversation that basically just needs to be cut down at the knees and thrown in the garbage bin within this context. It's a waste of time given the goals of a progressive democratic club, so it makes sense.

But still, does a word need to be redefined to something that it doesn't mean? If you want to talk about systemic-racism, can't you just say "systemic-racism" instead of trying to completely redefine the meaning of 'racism'? Just my hot take.

In the context of 'anti-vax', the redefinition is much much worse.

It's pretty much nonsense and the only purpose of it is to dehumanize the political opposition. These people don't deserve to have opinions because they are just #covidiot terrorists who want to kill grandma.

Speaking of terrorists, spoiler alert: they don't call themselves terrorists. The only difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter is the person describing them. Doesn't matter if that person is beheading someone on national TV or honking a trucker horn, apparently.

In any case, this actually wasn't supposed to be a political post whatsoever.

I do not support or oppose the Canadian Truckers.
I'm very much a passive observer in all of this.
I think it's interesting and we can learn a lot from these crazy times.

Onto something else!

US treasury Exempts miners from reporting as brokers

The U.S crypto industry is about to score a major legal win as the United States Treasury Department plans to spare crypto miners and other “ancillary parties” from tax reporting rules.

Is that so?

Treasury Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs Jonathan Davidson said that the department’s position is that “ancillary parties who cannot get access to information that is useful to the IRS are not intended to be captured by the reporting requirements for brokers.”

So remember that vague law they made?

The one that might classify miners as "brokers" under a legal definition for regulations? They are unsurprisingly now saying, "No, miners aren't brokers," and we are supposed to count that as a victory?

Like, what? No.

Like I said before when the law was proposed, just because the law was vague and ridiculous and could possibly classify miners and other parties as brokers even though they weren't brokers... that was never going to happen in a million years. That's how the law works. When something is unenforceable it unsurprisingly doesn't get enforced. Duh. Calling this a win is... questionable at best. This is the standard.

If anything this is just another great example of how the ridiculous rules being created for crypto aren't going to work. It is so easy for devs to program around this garbage when regulators try to step in and control a certain area.

If they regulate the ISPs more the crypto mesh networks will take over. If they regulate the centralized exchanges more the decentralized exchanges will take over. If they KYC on-chain wallets the off-chain privacy wallets will takeover. We can already see that crypto can move a hundred times faster than government. I'm just waiting for them to realize this and rage-blackout just like Trudeau has done.

BSC rebrand?

Binance Smart Chain is apparently going to become "BNB Chain". Given the language I am seeing both BEP2 (Binance Chain) and BEP20 (Binance Smart Chain) are going to be called "BNB Chain". I think this is a pretty smart rebrand. Also they are saying BNB is going to stand for Build and Build, which I find hilarious. It's a smart move, but it's also dumb. Isn't crypto great?

I still think CZ is basically the best person for the job out of all the other centralized exchange executives. And honestly, that's saying a lot considering that Binance participated in the hostile takeover of our network. Water under the bridge, I say. We all know Justin Sun is a lying little worm that lied to the exchanges under the pretext of the top 20 witnesses being hackers. Binance should have pressed charges against Justin but, they didn't. Billionaires gotta stick together, amirite?

Of course Ol' Justin has been banished to regulator camp at the WTO, and it's very unclear when or even if he will get out of that prison. I don't think we'll have to worry about him for a while. Even if he gets out there's a very good chance he won't be playing it so fast and loose when he does. He wouldn't want to get banished again, would he?

Pulp Fiction NFTs

I was always meaning to write more blog posts on this but never did. Now this saga seems to be concluded. Unceremoniously, the "secret NFTs" hosted by The Secret Network pulled the plug on the project citing "volatility" as the reason. Was that really the best you guys could come up with? That's just sad. Apparently one NFT was sold for $1.1M and then the entire project was scrapped for totally unknown reasons with a given bullshit answer. Very weird.

Honestly though, what is the point of owning a "secret NFT"?

I own this property, but nobody knows that I own it and that ownership literally means nothing? Seriously dumb, just another tribute to how early in the game we are and how much dumb money is floating around still.

Market Watch: over the line!

Like clockwork, five days ago I was saying the market was looking "sexy". Of course we immediately crashed 10% after I wrote that post and everyone on crypto Twitter was very comically depressed.

Coloring outside the lines.

This seems to be a common theme now that institutions have gotten so heavily involved in the space. People are drawing lines to mark support and resistance, and this market knows exactly where to go in order to squeeze longs and shorts before it nukes and pumps. We got above $45k, I got all bullish, then we nuke to $42k. Not too long ago we broke down from $35k to $33k, but then we spike back up to $45k. This market seems to know exactly what to do to increase anxiety to the maximum, and thus extracting maximum value from weak hands and day traders. It will be interesting to see if I can start to exploit this new paradigm.

If I can actually extract my emotions from this market, I can just start betting against myself on every trade and win 90% of the time. Should be interesting: I'll give it a shot.

Goddess Moon Returns

I even got @tobetada talking about the moon cycles now. Again, these cycles are shockingly correlated to the market movements. Honestly I wish it wasn't! I'm a scientist, not a crystals-girl, damn it! Alas, this is my life now. Astrologists predict the market better than I can, so far.

When is the next bullish full moon? Tomorrow. I think it's gonna be a doozey. Expecting to at least get rejected at $50k. Hopefully more like $55k or $60k, but not gonna hold my breath.

Again, the chance that we are still in the middle of a dead bounce is pretty high. I have very little faith that this momentum can continue into March, but for now, given the history of February and the bullish new moon, I have to assume we are bullish for at least another two weeks.

But there's an even bigger cycle in play.

And that's the 18-months in between bull markets cycle. This is one that has held true all the way back to Summer 2016, into winter 2017, into summer 2019, into winter 2020. I expect that summer 2022 is going to be pretty wild.

Summer bull runs are very fun because it takes them a long time to deflate. Normally we'd peak in June, but sometimes early in May. However, July and August will usually trade sideways and volatile that entire time, which is REALLY good for the alt market, as day traders get bored with Bitcoin and jump into the riskier assets while the big dog is trading sideways. Should be interesting to see how it plays out.

I also think the FED has clearly backed itself into a corner. They keep saying they are going to raise rates, but most analysis points to the exact opposite: they can't; they are trapped. As soon they admit this the market will spike pretty fiercely, so we could be due for some kind of perfect storm, especially if the Ripple lawsuit ends favorably.

Conclusion

Lots of weird news today.
Again, didn't mean to get political with it.
These things happens.
Times they are a changing.