Stablecoins Enable Uber‑Style Surge Pricing, Threatening Fragmentation
Nice to see that @HyunSongShin has officially recognized that stablecoins open the door to an "Uber Surge Pricing" type liquidity market. [Actual gas markets also clear in a similar way, notably the NBP balancing point system.] The below screenshot is from his latest BIS paper "Tokenomics and blockchain fragmentation". This is something I've been pointing to for years, though I've seen it as eventually leading to dynamic pricing and markets for intraday funds in general. The paper is more concerned about the fragility and fragmentation risk introduced in systems that rely on many different networks using surge pricing mechanisms to ration entry and exit across systems. And of course turkeys don't vote for xmas, so the central bank perspective is that all this "congestion" and cost uncertainty can be avoided if programmable money just shifts to cbank ledgers where the cbank balance sheet can absorb congestion shocks in a way that can regulate transaction costs. The BIS concludes: "These [programmable money] innovations do not require decentralised consensus among anonymous validators. They can be implemented on unified ledgers anchored by central banks, which benefit from the institutional trust of the traditional monetary system." https://t.co/TdO6kqrvXD
Stablecoin Earnings Won’t Vanish, Says BoE’s Breeden
BoE's Sarah Breeden currently doing a sterling job explaining to Lord Davies on the Financial Services Regulation Committee why money earned by the BoE on prospective stablecoin deposits wouldn't just disappear from the system. https://t.co/bdMoke431Y
FATF Regulations Fail to Stop Money Laundering
Listening to Oliver Bullough talk through his new book, “Everybody loves our dollars”. He’s giving a good account of how useless FATF inspired money laundering regs have been at actually preventing money laundering. https://t.co/9Cl6i6atJY
Polish Central Bank Gold Buys Likely Fund Wartime Plans
I've just done a deep dive on how the Polish central bank's gold purchases may have been intended for wartime financing from day one. When you look at promo NBP materials, the dog whistles were pretty brazen in retrospect. That...
Overnight Summary Highlights Hidden Stories Amid News Noise
Because of news flow intensity, the Daily Discord Linkfest is now being formatted as an overnight summary + linkfest. Why read our summary rather than everyone else's? Because our community tries to flag stories buried by the noise. https://t.co/fdU8j6eDP1
Poland Eyes Central Bank Funding for US‑aligned Rearmament
Poland’s right wing president Karol Nawrocki is hatching a plan to use the NBP (Polish central bank) to help finance Polish rearmament. Except as Bloomberg notes, legally, the cbank isn’t allowed to finance the govt. Why do they want this?...
China May Need US Cooperation on Iran Energy
Here is a picture of @TheMichaelEvery being interview by a large Dutch man in Cape Town and in the process being hit by the epiphany that the geopolitical irony of the Iran situation is that China might be put in...
Market Makers Now Serve as ETF Authorized Participants
Back in the day, Goldman Sachs was the premier Wall Street bad guy. The investment bank attracted endless scrutiny of the supposedly conflicting and asymmetric arrangements that powered its broker dealer operations. Key among these were its primary dealer arrangements....
Spanish Analyst Warns Gibraltar Shift Would Harm Spain, Morocco
The Blind Spot's resident Spaniard says Brits shouldn't worry about Gibraltar turning Spanish. Were that the case, it would set off a series of dominoes that could devastate both Spain and Morocco. https://t.co/gFok91QaFp
Short‑term Gains Ignite the Citrini Doom Loop
This is precisely how the Citrini doom loop begins. The prospect of short term gains like this outweighs concerns over longer term externalities and negative feedback loops.
Terraform Lawsuit Exposes Hidden ETF Conflicts of Interest
Below is the AI-assisted summary of today's Spaces discussion on Terraform's lawsuit against Jane Street and the wider questions it invites about the murky behind-the-scenes mechanics of how ETFs function. It also touches on the wider conflicts of interest that...
Tariffs Shift Income, Yet Better Redistribution Tools Exist
New CEPR paper looks at the economics of tariffs. Says "while tariffs can redistribute income between domestic winners and losers from trade, more efficient redistributive instruments typically exist." Not sure I agree, but I did like this chart. https://t.co/PCMMEJY9dc https://t.co/PWFT8xomhM
Inside How Liquidity Providers Power ETFs and Markets
Join me at 2pm GMT today on Spaces to discuss what’s really going on behind the scenes when liquidity providers like Jane Street support key ETFs and markets. https://t.co/a9uhteuOzP
Debate Needed: Jane Street's Role in Bitcoin Liquidity
There’s a lot of heated views about the Jane Street Terraform story. Those who say “nothing to see here” and no big market maker conspiracy. And those who think something very untoward has been happening for ages. I think both...
Solar Boom Fueled by Debt, Not True Cost Savings
I don't think the world is ready for the reality that the great solar boom wasn't as cost-efficient as everyone thought. And actually, in a round-about way, was probably predominantly subsidised by growing Western indebtedness, at the cost of middle-class...
Dollar's Dominance Will Persist Despite Trumpian Challenges
Former ECBer, Vitor Constancio, thinks the dollar debasement narrative is overstated. He says, yes, Trumpian policies are challenging the international monetary order, but they are not, as yet, leading it to crumble: "the dollar will continue to dominate for decades ahead". His...
Fed Governor Reveals Hidden Dollar Liquidity and Stablecoin Strategies
THREAD 🧵I know everyone is very excited about aliens this morning, but I ask you, is it really as exciting as super wonky insights on dollar liquidity plumbing, Federal Reserve balance sheet policy, and stablecoin statecraft? I think not. I...
Miran Says Stronger Labor, Goods Inflation May Raise 2026 Dot
Stephen Miran, long viewed as the Fed’s arch dove, tells The Peg that firm labour data and a pickup in goods inflation could justify revising his 2026 dot higher. https://t.co/qevsjpOlwA
China Quietly Amasses Dollar Reserves Despite Official Narrative
Anyone who trusts official Chinese reserve data is a fool. The blind spot in the official narrative about China "dropping the dollar" is China's continued SHADOW dollar reserve accumulation, which looks like the below chart👇 The big January increase in state banks'...
AI Layoffs Risk Turning Companies Into Stranded Assets
Something worth remembering if you're trying to value the stock market right now: 👇 A corporation can only profit from human labor displacement once. If by engaging in that single cost saving to beef up your bottom line you inadvertently destroy...