SharperDingaan

Friends in low places tell me that it's all about the context ..... Opposition is opposition; it just looks different, dependant upon which side of the table you're on SD

Today's 8% rise in the price of WTI says otherwise Even if processing facilities could be quickly brought back on line, there's limited/no egress with tankers blocked at the SOH; life is good! No disputing that the Iranian regime has to go, but it's done via coalition (GW I, GW II) ... not renegades doing their own thing. It goes wrong ... and Americans abroad, become a target for fanatics near everywhere. Not much freedom when you are already branded an 'ugly american', and cannot leave the homeland compound gates without threat of an incident. Everybody tarred with the same brush. Support the troops; but see the world as it is, not how you would like it to be. The US is not making any friends, allies are backing away, and this will be an ugly bar fight. The US/Israel may be big and strong; but they are only two, and there are many more of 'them' ... eventually the US/Israel drowns atop a heap of skulls. Another Vietnam. SD

Nice spike in WTI this morning to USD 77 (+8%). The great hope is a release from the US SPR at USD 80/bbl ... of course, the reality is that there is very little heavy oil in the SPR (the required), most of what is available is light (not required), and Venezuelan heavy is limited via degraded infrastructure. Fixable .... but not for a while yet The Hail Mary is that the Iran war is over within 5 weeks (35 days), everybody comes home in time for the FIFA World Cup (100 days), there are ticker tape parades for the great saviours, a weeks long party, then off to the polls to vote the saviours back in. The problem is that this does NOT look like the Iran war is going to be done in 35 days, it will be body bags ... not servicemen coming home < 35 days, no party, and a a lot of the FIFA games in either Canada or Mexico as players/supporters can't play in the US (banned countries). Great for Canadian and Mexican tourism ... not so much for US tourism, and the mid-terms. Have to think that WTI will be going a lot higher than USD 77/bbl Buckle up. SD

Iran was never going to be a 'quick fix'; most would have expected resolution via another coalition Gulf War. When even the usual coalition partners are noticeably absent, and limiting participation (Diego Garcia) .... it's very telling. It's only 3 days in, and everyone is optimistic; unlikely to remain the same after the SOH has been closed for a week, and more oil infrastructure has gone up in flames. While the rise in oil prices is being 'managed', higher prices are just a matter of time. It would seem that it isn't going as planned ... timelines are now being dropped, and troops on the ground proposed. The other reality is that pipelines and facilities cannot be realistically protected from anonymous ground attack. Simple thing to blow pipelines and drop explosives via drone, and there are lots of radicalised warriors .... Ukraine does it every day. There's always a short honeymoon after a major strike ... then reality starts catching up. All that expensive ordinance raining down like water, and high-tech planes burning their operational hours .... is this thing only supposed to last 4-5 weeks, 'cause after that it's used up ??? and a good chunk of the air fleet is now out of service ?? SD

The US/Israel are just trying to temporarily fill the power vacuum with something other than the clerics, and obtain feet on the ground via an uprising. Of course, for it to work .... the son has to both remain alive, and deliver on the US/Israeli promises made. Assassination resolves a lot a problems. It would also not seem to be going as the US/Israelis hoped. Timelines have now slipped to 4 weeks from 2-3, Israel is now fighting on multiple fronts vs just Iran (ie: stretched), the SOH blockage is starting to bite, gas prices are now USD 3/gallon in many parts of the US, and more planes are being lost to friendly fire than the Iranians. Iranian skies buzzing with planes like flies on sh1te ... yet Iranian missiles are still flying ??? This is also sucking a lot of gas; there will be an impact on the API/EIA numbers this week. SD

Shuush ..... SD

A lot of people are going to make a great deal of 'funny money' in this cycle as energy prices spike upward; particularly those in the safer supply and more disciplined WCSB. It isn't just oil prices, it is rotation out of tech as well, momentum, west coast egress availability, hedging via Canadian vs US holdings, and the much cheaper valuations. Everybody is a millionaire, when there are positive press articles every day, and the share price has risen 2-3x. But .... holding onto the 'funny money' when the hangover arrives ... is what makes you rich. Enjoy yourself, dance with all the pretty girls, help yourself to the punch .... but systematically keep taking the gains off the table. As the cycle progresses, less stock and more calls ... to near 100% of the position May the pillage be awesome, and may we all make, or remake, our biggest fortunes to date . Just keep in mind that there will be a lot of very depressed people and suicides, once the hangover has persisted for a time. One of the hardest things is seeing friends and neighbours go to the wall (despite your warnings) ... when you've both kept the 'funny money', and also tripled it on the way down. Compassion is a hard won lesson. Bookends. SD

WTI opens at USD 72+, Brent at USD 79. Have to think there will also be an upward bias as the prospective days long closure of the Strait of Hormuz begins to penetrate. Higher still as tanker traffic continues to back up. SD

Correct, it should be the Revolutionary Guard. Praying for the military to implement a coup is a long shot. They were under the revolutionary guard for a long time, and the potential leaders will be known ... simple matter to return the policy of leader assassination. This is a time when the next crop of viscous killers will make their reputations ... all that a Mossad can do is try to snuff them in the crib, before they do their thing. Useful to keep in mind that orange boy has also made a lot of enemies of late, and made his head an assassination trophy. What goes around comes around, and as in pool .... break the frame, and there is lots of opportunity. State on state assassination is a legitimate policy these days. Not what many want to hear. SD

Round 1 to the Americans/Israelis .... but even by their best estimates, this a 2-3 week sustained event (14-21 days). 21 rounds, with every round going their way ... have you ever seen that in any kind of extended fight ??? ... there is almost never a walkover. Don't want to talk about it. The Ayatollah is dead; good riddance, the man was scum! Congratulations .... the Ayatollah is now a martyr, right after his Friday declaration from the pulpit that Satan's demands were just unacceptable .... the Americans/Israelis are now fighting a holy war against the Great Satan. How do you think it's going to go at Friday prayers this week, after you've just assassinated the supreme leader, along with the senior leadership of the religions protective guard ??? One of the great hopes is that enough of the republican guard now lays down its arms, and successfully implements a coup d'etat returning the monarchy, with the population in the streets supporting it. Just after the republican guard has been radicalised via the execution of their leadership, there is strong incentive to suppress via the use of live ammunition on the crowds of would be supporters, and assassinate the replacement as rapidly as possible. What if the newly installed, just doesn't live very long ??? Another of the great hopes is that oil production/shipping is left alone (Kharg Island, Strait of Hormuz), so that the people of Iran might still benefit, post regime change. No possibility that the newly radicalised intentionally choose not to go 'scorched earth' ??? and simply destroy it ..... as the pulpits now proclaim as acceptable revenge upon the Great Satan .... reliant upon that oil. No possibility that Saudi Arabian radicals quietly arm Houthis with ship killing missiles, to maintain attacks on tanker traffic, so as to keep oil prices high ??? Bin Laden, and Khashoggi excepted, we're friends now! Awesome planes, awesome navy, raining hell upon earth ... but largely unable to stop it, if it doesn't go their way. Not once and done; high risk, high return for a reason, and not much one can do against fanatics with little to lose.. Don't want to talk about it. Obviously, we hope it works out as planned, but that usually isn't the experience; buckle up. SD

No denying that Bibi is very good, and in a class by himself. Whereas Orange Boy can sell, but everything else ... not so much. The great hope is that regime change can be achieved cleanly, without US boots on the ground; alternatively a UN force on the ground, for an indeterminate period, acting as 'peacekeepers'. Maybe it works .... but the pragmatic would assume it doesn't go smoothly, and that the worst case is maybe another Vietnam. High risk, high return. SD

Think in terms of apples-to-apples .... 3.45:1 (69/20) vs 2.08:1 (125/60). The ratio being the 'weight' of the drop on a HODLer still there at the bottom of the drop . As BTC becomes progressively more 'main-stream', the lower value rises as the supporting BTC eco-structure (ETF's, L2 solutions, stablecoin, etc) becomes larger and more robust. BTC crashes, and the individual HODLer now feels less of the 'weight' as 1) there are now more HODLers than there were before, and 2) experienced BTC speculators are now also intentionally buying the dip. i.e: Resilience. We would classify as one of those experienced BTC speculators .... intentionally buying the dip (as the Iran war develops); whereas even as little as one year ago ... we wouldn't have been there. Improving resilience. Different PoV. SD

The reality is that as the industry gets both bigger, and more fragmented, it takes both a cascade failure and much bigger losses to put the industry down; i.e. the industry becomes progressively more anti-fragile. It's one of the chief reasons why we are comfortable with repurchasing BTC in quantity, once there has been a significant industry shake out. BTC at < USD 60,000 is a lot less risky that BTC at < USD 70,000, primarily because the ecosystem has also been sold down; the USD 10,000 price difference is just bonus. Post repurchase ... we just need to wait for mean reversion, then predatorily take that USD 10,000 price difference off the table. Not the industry pitch SD

Hate to say it ... but it's one of the reasons that assassination keeps rising to the top of the heap. Were this the Ayatollah in Iran there would be little discussion as to the desirability/method of regime change; quite a bit different though, when it's your own guy. Same as in pool, break the rack wide open (No Trump, No MAGA, etc), and there are now opportunities ... for the young and ambitious, of both sides. Little different to the 1923 Sherman Anti-Trust Breakup of the Rockefeller Standard Oil Trust .... when the scum were way more ruthless, and much better at what they did . Point is that if the political process can't fix it, the US has a long history of precedents that do. Few would dispute that the US might have developed very differently had a Kennedy, or a Martin Luther King not been assassinated. Same thing had the attempts on Reagan and Roosevelt ultimately been successful. Not what many would prefer to consider, and sadly, no longer a remote possibility. Many a German, Italian, and Japanese fortune, post WWII, owes its genesis to founders who successfully hedged against the potential of their respective nation loosing the conflict. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presidential_assassination_attempts_and_plots SD

It would seem that the replacement Section 122 tariffs are not going to work either ... the choices are either to get permission from the headmaster (Congress), or drop it. Section 122 is a legal tool designed to address international payments problems “of a kind that can only really exist under a fixed-exchange rate regime,” argued Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason University. Prof. Somin was co-counsel on one of the cases against the previous iteration of global tariffs, filed on behalf of several U.S. businesses. Such a regime does not currently exist, and Prof. Somin expects the first legal challenges to the new set of tariffs to arrive within weeks. “Section 122 tariffs are vulnerable on a number of grounds. And I think there’s at least a good chance they would be struck down – I certainly hope they would be,” he said in an interview. But opposition to what the Trump administration has done has come from a particularly unusual place: the administration’s own lawyers. In arguing for the previous tariffs, under IEEPA, they argued that Section 122 did not “have any obvious application here, where the concerns the President identified in declaring an emergency arise from trade deficits, which are conceptually distinct from balance-of-payments deficits.” If Mr. Trump “wants sweeping tariffs, he should do the American thing and go to Congress,” lawyer Neal Katyal, who argued before the Supreme Court against the previous tariffs, wrote on X. “If his tariffs are such a good idea, he should have no problem persuading Congress.” https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-trumps-new-tariffs-may-be-illegal-too/ SD

One of our takeaway's from the address, was that Orange Boy's success is not just his salesmanship; it is also how bad his opposition is. Politics is a blood sport, and the higher one goes .... the bloodier, and more corrupt it gets; at this level, and after this long, the opposition should have a bench full of hard-ass scum well capable of defeating a 78 year old. Rulers rule, atop a pile of skulls; there's always someone younger than you, and it's a limited term engagement until your head joins the pile. Winner takes all, and regular turnover, working in everyone's best interests; the parliamentary 'first past the post' simply being being a less messy way of body disposal. Janitors complained ..... Orange Boy is an old and dated product ..... offer the market a viable, fresh, and 'this century' product; and the calculation will change very quickly. Unlikely to happen by choice, so the change agents .... need to make it happen. Different approaches, dependant upon where in the world you are . Different point of view ... SD

Still making a profit .... but sadly, not as much ; the former Trudeau era making it quite a bit harder in the o/g sector. SD

State of the Union address: No denying that Orange Boy is one hell of a salesman, and that one really has to seem him in action to believe it; quite the skill, and not hard to see why he won two elections. The reality though, is that he is still a melting ice cube, his name is not on the upcoming voting card, and this speech burnt a lot of his remaining political capital. His best chance of a mid-term win is a war with Iran, Iranian regime change, and a exit by the mid-terms; entangle boots on the ground, and he looses. Lot of lipstick on this pig, but the reality is that tariffs have imploded. Threatening higher 'other' tariffs if you back out of existing 'deals' is just admission of defeat, and admission that a US signature on any kind of agreement is 'non-binding'. Orange Boy looses the mid-terms ... compliance with these agreements disappears, and foreign state intervention is fair turnaround. We saw a 'Hail Mary' pass last night, that has to land as hoped; it doesn't work, and it's game over. The economy is not delivering for most people; he fails, and Orange Boy's highest value 'brand exit', is assassination ... a long standing US tradition. While investment opportunities continue to abound, one must be nimble ...... WEB punch-card opportunities, in volume, that happen rarely in a life-time of investing. Help yourself, and run hard , as the asymmetric payoffs are just adding to the opportunities. May we all do well SD

Having the tools doesn't mean I know how to use them. Knowledge is just a multiplier, but 10x zero is still zero. Great tools (lots of knowledge) in the hands of a shitty painter ... still produces a shit job. But in the hands of a gifted painter ... you get the Mona Lisa. The ability to apply is valuable, the tools ... much less so. SD

2 weeks ago there was less CPU on line overall; but it came back with more/faster CPU power. A Bitdeer with slower processing exited and someone with faster processing stepped in; hash difficulty rose to compensate for the faster speed. SD

The buyer don't pay, the goods stay in bond, production stops, and there is US unemployment. No votes comes the mid-terms. SD

There is a fairly good possibility this drops below 60K. We're still believers ... but if we can save 10%+ on our cost by simply waiting, it 's foolish not to let the opportunity develop SD

It just indicates that there is more CPU power on line, and faster processing. To maintain the target 10 minutes the hash calculation has to be more complex. SD

Nobody waits for tariffs to be 'refunded', they just refuse to pay any go-forward tariffs .... take it out of what you owe us. Tariffs are also paid by the buyer ... so tariff free import flow is now wide open But best of all .... who buys all the debt that Orange Boy needs to issue to pay for the coming Iran war ? .... Eff you, should be worth a few thousand points on the Dow Grab 'em by the balls ..... and SQUEEEEZE. Duck a la orange! SD

Useful to keep context in mind. Lots of people looking for a 'story' at the moment; tell me what to think, and where the price is going! Everyone throwing sh1te at the wall, and hoping for something to stick ... Everyday users are primarily those in 2nd/3rd world countries where inflation, banking, and corruption are a problem. Local coin in local applications, wealth stored in wallet balances, or 'things', not BTC-ETF. Motley Crew is looking primarily at 'rich' people (vs the 2nd/3rd world), and those based in NA/Europe. Not quite the same thing! It is pretty clear that the price of BTC is biased downward. Small BTC Treasuries have already begun selling off their entire reserves (Coin Telegraph), and hash difficulty has been raised 15%. Higher prices largely depend upon the US opening the money tap to pay for the upcoming Iran war (inflation), and creditors swallowing more USD debt (Fed not having to buy it) ...... the same creditors that are not fully rolling over existing maturities. BTC priced in USD looks great .... just not so much in the other currencies! At present, there is little reason to buy and lots of reason to simply let the industry shake out. Nothing prevents buying bullion ... the long standing alternative . Obviously .... not what the industry is trying to sell. Hence the fear, and prayer for something to work. SD