1/ JUST BACK from an amazing #roadtrip across my beautiful native state. Here’s #YellowstoneFalls from Artist’s Point—yep, this is real.
Next—warning, I’ll post photos of historically important firearms at Buffalo Bill Museum in Cody, #Wyoming to illustrate 2 points about tech.
2/ Point #1: after centuries of no major advancement in firearms tech, a MASSIVE innovation occurred w/in a 10-yr period right before the US civil war & it’s visible in this exhibit. Invention of the repeating rifle changed the world—literally. Details abt why aren’t important...
3/ ...for this tweetstorm. What matters is that the invention MASSIVELY advanced tech in the industry by rendering everything that came before it utterly obsolete.
The analogy to payment/ledger technology is obvious. This is what #blockchain is doing to legacy payment systems.
4/ Point #2: When govts are slow to adopt new tech they may pay a big price. The rifle on the left was used by the US military at Battle of Little Bighorn. It was outdated but US govt didn’t realize it at the time. Native Americans had traded for repeating rifles (4th from left)
5/ ...& their superior technology was a major factor in their massacre of the US Army at Little Bighorn (also known as Custer’s Last Stand) in 1876. Thereafter the US govt adopted the new tech, and history changed again. The battle over which side controlled the superior tech...
6/ ...went back & forth. Ultimately the US Army won.
The point? Tech matters. It sometimes changes course of history by creating an inflection point. I think we’re approaching one of those inflection points in money & payments now—tho it will only be clear in retrospect.
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1/ NEW BLOG: "How To Keep The #Bitcoin Strategic Reserve From Morphing Into A Bailout Fund." Did you know SBF publicly advocated for a crypto bailout fund just 1 month before FTX failed? Story 👇Lesson: don’t let future Sams hijack the SBR for a bailout!!! caitlin-long.com/how-to-keep-bi…
2/ In the blog I analyze #bitcoin as a reserve asset (key is its favorable inflation rate differential)--but condition my support for a BSR on drafting legislation w/ 4 specific prohibitions to prevent insolvent-but-politically-connected people from ever using it for a bailout:
3/ The favorable inflation rate differential between #bitcoin & US dollar + strategic benefits make bitcoin worth considering as a reserve asset, but the consensus mechanisms of other #crypto can be too easily changed to permit higher inflation so I don't support including them:
🚨HUGE NEWS on #debanking & #OperationChokePoint2.0: a little birdie told me that @FDICgov Vice Chair Travis Hill just spoke at an ABA meeting & said there is no place at the FDIC for those who explicitly or implicitly supported its debanking initiative. Transcript not avail yet
Travis Hill is a Republican & is vice chairman of the FDIC—has been outvoted by Biden/Warrenites on the FDIC board, but that will change on Jan 20 when Gruenberg steps down.
It'll be soooooooo interesting to see if Hill went off-script. Don't forget Gruenberg's people still control the FDIC (head of comms is allegedly trying to silence online critics of #debanking, so I doubt such remarks would've made it thru official editing of his speech, which should be posted at this site soon): fdic.gov/news/speeches
1/ 🚨THE FED'S DEBANKER-IN-CHIEF IS OUT! Michael Barr, the last remaining Biden/Warren appointee who architected #OperationChokePoint2.0 at a federal financial agency, will resign as vice chair for supervision in Feb (see @nic__carter's March 2023 map👇). federalreserve.gov/newsevents/pre…
2/ It was an open secret in DC that Trump was likely to fire him. He had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad reign as Fed Vice Chair for Supervision--the WSJ covered only some of why 👇, calling him "a favorite of Elizabeth Warren" but omitting a lot: wsj.com/opinion/a-fede…
3/ Barr siloed information within the Fed, as of Oct 2022 sending Fed supervision staff a memo prohibiting them from talking to other Fed governors unless they’d spoken with him first👇
1/ NEW FACTS REVEALED: 2 years ago today, the Fed quietly hammered 5 banks & thereby kicked off its industry-wide dragnet against banks serving the #crypto industry. @joerogan & @pmarca recently made discussions about #debanking go mainstream, which makes today’s anniv notable.
2/ On the Sunday after Thanksgiving 2022 (11/27/22), the Fed hit the first of these 5 banks w/ regulatory actions targeting their crypto activities, and its blitz carried into the following work week. Thus began what @nic__carter would later dub #OperationChokePoint2.0.
3/ How did I learn these facts? I pieced together public info + info from insiders who came forward & filled in puzzle pieces for me. I know the 5 banks’ names but won’t disclose them here. Publicly-available info confirms @custodiabank was one of them.
1/ HOW TO FIX THE U.S. DEBANKING PROBLEM, a 🧵by someone who set out to solve it but ended up repeatedly targeted by it (+ whose bank has a lawsuit against the Fed pertaining to it).
This is a #MeToo-type moment in banking, as stories are now pouring out.
How to fix it?
2/ As @pmarca alluded on @joerogan, the levers of power used/abused by federal bank regulators to effectuate #debanking are subtle & insidious. Multiple attempts have already been made to fix the problem. Why did they all fail? bc it's a multi-faceted problem that runs deep.
3/ Truly fixing the problem will require overhauling the federal bank examination process for operating banks. Why? a) subjective levers in federal bank exams have proven to be too easily politicized, b) confidentiality of supervisory info & c) no checks & balances in practice.
1/ CALLING OUT A DOUBLE STANDARD: I chewed on @CampbellJAustin's great🧵about selective enforcement against #crypto while protecting #tradfi, which prompted me to review the FTX fraud. Lo & behold, there seems to be ANOTHER pattern of selective enforcement
2/ The FDIC's Inspector General disclosed that 11 US banks "may have had involvement in alleged wire transfer fraud," & I tweeted the below screenshot of it on February 22, 2023: