Today both Bitcoin and $TRUMP jumped in price per coin, the former from $63K/coin a week ago to roughly $77.5K/coin today, the latter from $1.42/coin to $1.80/coin. Folks who took a bet on the latter coin a week ago and sold at today’s high, which was $1.90/coin, did quite well, up some 25%.
For a memecoin, this is all madness.
YESTERDAY this article came out and puzzled me:
Normally quiet, the bond market can occasionally send warning signals loud enough to hit stock markets worldwide and even grab the attention of U.S. presidents and other world leaders.
After the bond market’s alarm bells rose in volume through the summer, the Trump administration announced on Wednesday a move that could help calm it down. The U.S. Treasury Department said it will more than double the amount of U.S. government bonds that it will buy back, and the move worked in getting longer-term yields lower, for now at least.
Yields worldwide had earlier climbed to heights not reached in years and, in some cases, decades, because of the jump in oil prices due to the war with Iran, worries about big and growing debts for governments and other concerns. [AP]
I was bothered because the selling of government bonds constitutes the vast majority of government borrowing, so how can they buy back government debt when they’re already so deeply in debt? This sounds suspiciously like someone using one credit card to pay off the balance of another credit card. It seems there may be some creative accounting used in order to raise the buyback funds, unless the government has unallocated piles of cash lying around that they’re not telling us about. Yeah, it all seems a little dubious.
And then today this came popping out:
A shift in how the US government manages its long-term debt could remove one of the biggest macro pressures weighing on Bitcoin (BTC), according to macro strategist Mark Connors, chief investment officer at Risk Dimensions.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Aug. 20 that the government plans to conduct regular buybacks of long-dated bonds and could increase their size beyond the $4 billion figure previously announced. “We want to show that [bond] yields do not reflect underlying fundamentals,” Bessent told CNBC. “We have a big toolkit.” The 10-year Treasury yield was trading around 4.68% at the time of the remarks, up three basis points on the day. Bitcoin added to its gains following the comments, approaching $73,000. [“Bitcoin Eyes $180K as Treasury Buybacks Ease Key Macro Headwind,” Ayesha Aziz, CMC Crypto News]
Well. That’s certainly good news for Mr Trump, isn’t it, as his company has a lot of Bitcoin? And he’s so lucky that President Trump can order such moves, even if they’re coming under the aegis of Secretary Bessent, isn’t he?
For those investors who fail to see the moral facet of investing, this must be a time of puzzlement. The corruptive element, true or not here, is both undeniable and lends an element of unpredictability to the market for cryptocurrency. Predicting the moves of government officials, after all, isn’t a matter of looking at a possible market and who dominates and who doesn’t. Instead, we have a President with probable dementia who is seeking to return to the days of his youth, when glory could be had and all that rot.
Yes, rot. Corruption may seem predictable, but it’s not, the external factors that can be used for basic prediction are fewer and chancier than straight up investing in public corporate entities. That makes it nice to have insider information to act on, and even nicer to be able to actually manipulate the markets for one’s own enrichment.
But really, I suspect this is all about extra fancy lipstick on a boar. You can make it seem attractive when it sleeps, but when it’s awake it’s a rare naturalist or hunter who wants to face that boar on the ground.
