The world has experienced several unusual events since 2022 began.
As if the last two years haven’t been enough, it’s becoming more surreal.
We had the Russia-Ukraine conflict begin at the end of February.
Then came the spike in the oil price amidst accelerating inflation that is putting more pressure on household budgets.
We also saw how Russia managed to squeeze around trade sanctions and asset confiscations in the wake of the conflict with Ukraine by reflating the ruble’s value using gold and imposing a ruble for oil and gas policy.
Then the broader asset markets began to slide in the second half of last month, accelerating with the RBA’s rate rise last Tuesday and the Federal Reserve’s last Wednesday.
How about the sudden city-wide lockdowns in Shanghai as the Chinese government seeks to implement their zero-COVID policy in a vain attempt to eradicate the virus? The lockdowns are appearing to occur in a few more major cities around the nation.
There’s so much more, but you get the idea that you’re living through unprecedented times.
It’s time to buckle up and get ready as things get rougher!
The fiat currency system strikes hard…against cryptos
It’s almost like there’s no way to hide from the fiat currency system right now. It hit the cryptocurrency space in a big way last week.
Cryptocurrencies have been on a bearish run since last November, slashing the value of the entire market by almost 50%. Bitcoin [BTC] and Ethereum [ETH] have lost more than 50%, with many crypto tokens falling even more.
Just when things couldn’t get worse, Terra Luna [LUNA] saw its tokens drop more than 99% from over US$80 to trade at around 8 US cents as of Thursday evening Sydney time.
Terra Luna was among the top 10 crypto tokens by market value. At its height, it had a market value of more than US$50 billion. The entity behind this token, Terra Labs, built its own decentralised finance (DeFi) community that would allow people to use its digital tokens for exchange. Its flagship token, USD Terra, is an algorithm-driven stablecoin whose price is pegged to the US dollar. It also offered other crypto tokens pegged to other major fiat currencies.
USD Terra was widely used in the crypto community, with a market capitalisation of more than US$16 billion earlier this year.
A raid on the peg of USD Terra began mid-last week when hedge funds saw a vulnerability in USD Terra. The founder, Do Kwon, had wanted to back the value of USD Terra with bitcoin and other cryptos. Hedge funds began selling bitcoins and USD Terra to break the peg between the USD Terra and the US dollar, causing investors to sell and trigger a liquidity crisis.
This raid is very similar to the one that George Soros launched against the Bank of England to crush the British pound in 1991, in which he pocketed more than US$1 billion in profits.
This crisis in the cryptocurrency space also attracted the interest of US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who’s been critical of the lack of financial regulation in the cryptocurrency markets. It seems like she has more ammunition to push for regulation in light of this situation.
While financial regulation on cryptocurrencies sounds good, I have my suspicion that it’s not to create a fair market.
Just think about the markets we have for shares, commodities, and derivatives. The wolf guards the hen house.
Battle of wits in the financial war
Speaking of raids on currency pegs, it reminds me of how Russia revived its ruble by temporarily pegging it to gold. I wrote about this recently.
I was initially very excited about it. After all, I’m a gold enthusiast and I’ve been waiting for someone to step up with the golden cross to fight against the fiat currency beast.
It’s not about looking to President Putin as some saviour, far from it. But anyone who stands up for gold against the fiat currency system and succeeds deserves some credit.
Some naysayers mocked gold enthusiasts for touting the peg by the Russian central bank when it announced it would move from buying gold at a fixed price to a negotiated price in early April. They claim that there’s no return to a gold standard.
They aren’t wrong about that.
I don’t believe a gold standard is the solution either.
And watching the raid on USD Terra and how that’s looking to knockout Terra Luna and the LUNA community made me see the wisdom behind Russia not going forward with pegging the ruble to gold.
You can bet your bottom dollar that the central banks will launch a raid on both gold and rubles to smash the Russian economy if Russia did keep that peg.
It’s a battle of wits, simple as that.
Our solution against ‘The Great Reset’
There’s no doubt that the current market conditions are part of the World Economic Forum’s plans to usher in ‘The Great Reset’ so the world can enter ‘The Fourth Industrial Revolution’.
Their dream is a top-down managed society driven by big data and governance systems to keep us ordinary citizens under their watchful eye.
‘You will own nothing, and you will be happy’ is the motto.
What better way to do it than to make us buy assets in a rising market using debt, then raising the interest rates, crashing the markets, and selling it in a panic back to them?
You didn’t think the central banks raised rates so late because they didn’t know what was going on, did you?
Their incompetence is such that you could even attribute it to being a purposeful plan. The bankers wanted to do that.
I call it ‘Reverse Hanlon’s Razor’.
Given that the people running the fiat currency system are now making their move, you need to prepare or be swept away.
We can help.
Our team has been working with world-renowned geopolitical and financial strategist Jim Rickards. He has formulated ‘Jim Rickards’ Fat Tail Portfolio’ project to help you prepare for what’s to come. It takes a comprehensive look at what can happen, its impact, and where you can take opportunities to come out ahead.
My colleague, Nickolai Hubble, and I are on this team. We welcome you to check it out.
The clock is ticking…
God bless,
Brian Chu,
Editor, The Daily Reckoning Australia