Mic Drop

This explanation seems completely new to me... I no longer see the gravity as some "force".

The Plunge Protection Team is late. Feels like 2008.

The Canadian Truckers just left for Ottawa yesterday to protest the jab, that means NO food deliveries or any other deliveries.. Now, the Rail Road is thinking about striking, not good...

No big deal.... nothing big is happening. 😉 Well, the S&P 500 (-10.47%) just joined Nasdaq (-15.41%) in formal correction territory this morning. The Dow (-8.22%) isn't too far behind. The façade is falling away.

China’s crashing housing and commercial real estate markets are making the headlines once again as the country’s biggest property developer has been hit by a liquidity crunch and is now at risk of collapsing. Since last year, the slow collapse of the nation’s second-biggest developer, Evergrande, is keeping investors worldwide on edge as they fear the company’s bankruptcy is going to have a knock-on impact on China’s entire real estate sector and send the world into a financial crisis. And now that Country Garden Holdings – the largest investment-grade developer in the country – is in major trouble with international bondholders, it seems that we’re one step closer to a global financial meltdown. The company was one of the few remaining large, better-quality private developers that had been unscathed by the liquidity crunch, even while other big groups, such as Shimao, faced dramatic reversals in their credit ratings. In December, Shimao’s implosion was viewed as “more devastating than debt crisis at Evergrande and Kaisa”. And now it seems like Country Garden is the final and most visible property giant for contagion risk, as extraordinary levels of stress in the offshore bond market threaten to drag credit ratings down. Just as Evergrande and every other developer peer that relied on debt to fuel growth, Country Garden needs access to funding in the offshore credit market to pay for its projects. But given that the Chinese government has recently shut that door, the company is now coping with a debt load to the tune of US$11.7 billion, representing its total outstanding US dollar bonds, as Bloomberg reported. According to Bloomberg, the main risk plaguing the developer right now is its limited access to funding. “Any sign of doubt in the firm's capacity to weather liquidity stress risks may prompt a widespread repricing of other higher-quality developers,” analysts wrote. In other words, if the company doesn’t prove that it’s capable to obtain financial support to finish its projects, it may end up downgrading the credit ratings of its peers and triggering a sizable crash in the nation’s housing prices. With over 3,000 housing projects spread across every single Chinese province, Country Garden's financial health has enormous economic and social consequences, far greater than Evergrande. Even more worrying, if the group starts showing signs of weakness, it will dramatically damage the already fragile investor and homebuyer confidence, compromising China's economy and even social stability. Experts argue that’s when China's Lehman moment will finally emerge. Now, investors are paying close attention to Country Garden's capacity to raise funding from a variety of channels, especially considering that the offshore credit market remains effectively closed to most developers. The company must repay or refinance about US$1.3 billion on bonds this year, the majority of which are dollar notes. Its next bond maturity is a US$425 million bond due on January 27. Any indication of default can make the situation far more complicated. Keeping in mind that investor confidence is at historic lows, and the dollar bond market is essentially shut for developers, the sector currently has very limited refinancing options, which increases the risk of companies failing to pay the debt on time. “Risks across the Chinese property sector are rising, evident from difficult refinancing conditions for even the most well-regarded firms,” said Wei Liang Chang, a macro strategist at DBS Bank. “Greater clarity on the disclosure of liabilities as well as asset sales are crucial to shore up confidence,” he added. Bloomberg estimates also point out that at least seven Chinese developers have defaulted on dollar bonds since October. And this crisis is about to hit a whole new level as the very foundation of the property market loses financial support. If you’re wondering why does all of this matters, the truth is that as investor and consumer confidence evaporates in China, the inevitable collapse of these massive companies will hamper at least 25 percent of the Chinese GDP and set off a tsunami of bankruptcies this year, leaving a dent on global financial markets and slowing down the global economy. In the best-case scenario, Beijing will have a recession on its hands. In the worst-case scenario, a depression may follow, which will leave the world’s central banks scrambling to bail out the second biggest economic superpower on the planet. Regardless of the outcome, the impacts are going to be very painful. In short, this means that we’re heading to an era of credit tightening while inflation continues to soar and eats up a larger share of our purchasing power with each passing month.

You definitely caught my interest on this one.

And to top it off... here is the ETHEREUM Foundation actually trading against its users. Still want to own ETH?

This can't be helping the overall situation:

What will conventional aircraft do against modern cruise missile capabilities? Can aircraft even deploy before the missiles are are past anymore

Intel has signed a four-year contract with crypto-mining startup GRIID for its "BMZ2" mining ASICs. Intel will begin delivering the ASICs this year. The chip is designed for ultra-low-voltage and energy-efficient Bitcoin mining. Intel won't confirm nor deny if the chip will be made available to customers.

I suspect you have to make an account on them that creates a wallet for you but I have never done it because I didn't want to create an account.... it could also be that you’re supposed to give it a wallet address to send it to ... just not sure how that is handled in most cases. Bitcoin ATM markups are wild. Between 10-20% markup before the actual on-chain transaction fee. But it may be the only viable way for some people to get a hold of some BTC.

Never knew the history behind the green colored chairs of Parliament and the Magna Carta

the app can receive bitcoin payments but immediately converts the cryptocurrency to USDT. He said the Strike wallet only holds USDT Three days after announcing it was launching services in Argentina, the Lightning Network-powered app Strike is only supporting Tether’s USDT stablecoin in the country. Argentine users have complained the app will not allow them to buy, sell or hold bitcoin as Strike users in other countries can. The company made no mention of supporting only Tether at the time of its Tuesday launch announcement.

The company said Tuesday that Argentines will be able to make bitcoin remittance payments, receive bitcoin tips on Twitter and use Strike's peer-to-peer transaction services. Argentina is the first step in a 2022 Latin American expansion that will include Brazil, Colombia and "other Latin American markets," the company added in a statement. The company launched its payment app in El Salvador last March. Strike is currently working with merchants, consumers and individuals in Argentina, according to the statement. So far, the company has launched initial integrations and activations in the southern city of San Martin de los Andes, located in Patagonia. The company quadrupled its Latin American team for its Argentina start and plans to continue hiring in the region. "Argentina is one of the most exciting countries for building the Bitcoin economy, leveraging Bitcoin as both a superior asset and a superior payments network," Strike founder and CEO Jack Mallers said in the statement.

If Russia starts buying BTC then watch the u.s. change their tune about not banning crypto. It's an arms race. If the US were to ban Bitcoin in response to Russia buying, it would be like banning nukes because your rival has some.

There is very high stakes game theory at play here, whereby if bitcoin adoption increases, the countries that secure some bitcoin today will be better off competitively than their peers," Fidelity analysts Chris Kuiper and Jack Neureuter wrote in a note, adding they "wouldn't be surprised to see other sovereign nation states acquire bitcoin in 2022 and perhaps even see a central bank make an acquisition." ...even a 1% allocation is prudent in light of game theory. the asymmetric risk vs reward is too enticing even if you are anti-bitcoin. if bitcoin fails no harm done. but if you’re wrong and bitcoin continues to be adopted by nations and institutions you’ll lose out immensely. also institutions and high networth individuals are constantly navel gazing that if one of their peers outperforms them with bitcoin they will not idly stand by. tick tock.