Geopolitical Compass #50

Bitcoin adverts from the IMF and New Zealand Reserve Bank hit the screens.

This Week:

• Which remittance solution do you think the developing world will increasingly take up?

• Climate realities setting in.

• The Putin Interview; don’t miss the point.

• Navalny is not ‘Putin’s biggest enemy’ but he can still be useful in death to others.

• The UK establishment’s attitude on Ukraine laid bare.

Bitcoin

The IMF released it’s advertisement for Bitcoin this week:

Lowering the average (money transfer) service charge to just 3% would mean an extra $30 billion for low income and developing countries.

Or people in the developing world can switch to Bitcoin for remittances as more are every day and pay virtually nothing for transferring value using second layer solutions like Lightning Network enabled wallets.

Bitcoin also doesn’t require onboarding into the legacy banking network which is not possible for billions around the world with it’s onerous AML/KYC conditions and controls.

Which solution do you think will win out; the gatekeeper legacy banking system with high costs and hurdles to join. Or the permission-less network with extremely small fees that can be joined by anyone with a phone?

The days of Western Union and legacy banking for international remittances are numbered.

Central Banks

Not to be outdone by the IMF, the head of the New Zealand central bank wants to throw in his contribution:

It's a great business to be in, Central Banking. We print money and people believe it. Adrian Orr, Governor of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand

This isn’t AI. Taken directly from the NZ Reserve Banks’s live stream this week.

Wider ETF Adoption

After the recent launch of pure Bitcoin ETF’s, Fidelity has been the first to move to add a Bitcoin allocation to their wider market ETF baskets in Canada.

The allocations to Bitcoin vary from 1.1% in the conservative ETF, to 3.4% in the growth ETF.

Expect to see this across many more fund managers in the future. All just adding to the demand for Bitcoin. Demand that will continue to grow, but to which supply cannot respond. 21 million, period.

Climate Realities

More governments and businesses are realising ‘go woke, go broke’ and backing out of idiotic climate change commitments. Recently it was the UK government, this week its the world’s largest bank and the world’s largest fund manager.

JPMorgan Chase and institutional investors BlackRock and State Street Global Advisors (SSGA) on Thursday announced that they are quitting or, in the case of BlackRock, substantially scaling back involvement in a massive United Nations climate alliance formed to combat global warming through corporate sustainability agreements.

In a statement, the New York-based JPMorgan Chase explained that it would exit the so-called Climate Action 100+ investor group because of the expansion of its in-house sustainability team and the establishment of its climate risk framework in recent years. BlackRock and State Street, which both manage trillions of dollars in assets, said the alliance's climate initiatives had gone too far, expressing concern about potential legal issues as well.

Putin Interview

There were the expected reactions in the West to the Tucker Carlson interview of Vladimir Putin. “Putin is a war monger… Tucker is a tool… I didn’t have to listen to it - Putin is evil and we are righteous…” etc etc.

Whether you like it or not, the Russians have a different view of history and current events and actions than that of Europe and the US. Russia believed the situation in Ukraine had reached the point of becoming existential to the future of the Russian nation and people.

Leaders in the West think this is ludicrous (at least that’s what they say in front of the camera). That the Russians have no right to feel that way, therefore Western leaders are justified in their actions of ignoring Russia’s perspective. “We don’t care what you think, because we think you’re wrong and we’re right. Therefore we’re justified to do whatever we like to Russia in response.”

The problem with that attitude is that it leads to increasing tension and violence. Russia tried to negotiate in late 2021 and were told to go pound sand. So they felt left with no choice but to launch kinetic action against Ukraine.

In turn Russia was told that it was still wrong, sanctioned to hell (ineffectively) and weapons and money continue to be thrown against them via Ukraine (after a decent amount of siphoning off first).

If you refuse to listen to another parties opinion because you believe you’re right, so therefore can ignore the other because you “feel” he’s wrong - this doesn’t solve anything, in fact it is bound to lead to larger conflict, whether we are talking on small or large scale.

If Jim and Bob are at a bar and get into an argument about something, regardless of what the issue is - if Bob refuses to listen to Jim’s side, instead just escalating the matter by becoming more abusive and verbally threatening Jim - physical violence is likely to ensue.

It is no different between nation states, just much more dangerous. You don’t have to agree with someone, but if you refuse to listen, negotiate and continue to ratchet up hostility and tension - violence will ensue.

Last weeks interview proves yet again, the West refuses to even listen to the Russian side, let alone conduct talks to increase understanding and lower the violence.

Navalny

The death of Alexei Navalny in a Russian prison will be used as more propaganda and distraction against Russia and Putin leading into the US presidential election cycle.

While cause of death is yet to be established, it didn’t take more than ten minutes for Western leaders and media to accuse Putin of having Navalny murdered. This is despite the fact Navalny was already in prison on a fraud conviction since March 2022, during which time Putin could have at any point had him murdered if that was his aim.

Is it more probable that Putin decided now was the perfect time to eliminate Navalny, a figure who’s organisation could barely muster 1,000 protestors in its more recent event - hell the Wikipedia entry on the event takes longer to read than the protest took. Keep in mind when you see him represented in the Western media as ‘Russia’s opposition leader’ or ‘Putin’s largest opponent’ - this is pure fairy tale.

In Siberia, it proved to be an unprecedented success. In the student town of Tomsk, the head of Navalny’s local office Ksenia Fadeyeva won a seat on the local council, as did her colleague Andrei Fateyev.

In Russia’s third-largest city Novosibirsk, vocal Navalny ally Sergey Boiko won a local council seat and so did several members of his “coalition” of opposition-minded politicians.

This is from 2020 Russian regional elections. Phew, what a political powerhouse! No wonder Putin must be shaking in his boots about Navanly a mere four years later!

The largest opposition party in Russia is the Communist Party which garners around 19% at the national level, led by Gennady Zyuganov for the last twenty-one years, but shockingly Putin hasn’t killed him yet. Navalny’s party on the other hand doesn’t have enough support amongst Russian people to even make in into federal parliament, only managing to gain some meager success in regional elections years ago - by the admission of the West’s own mouth pieces.

So did Putin have this political colossus murdered in prison for fear of his massive political sway in Russia? 🤦🏼‍♂️ Or is it more likely that MI6 and CIA finally decided that it’s asset Navalny’s waning popularity and usefulness in Russia has meant the best way to utilise him moving forward is as a martyr to drum up further support and funds in the West for the Ukrainian grift in the hopes it will finally be able to swing public sentiment in the West enough to increase the conflict in Ukraine sufficiently to bring in NATO troops? To put it bluntly, Navalny was worth much more dead than alive for Western bureaucrats, leaders and media.

No I don’t wear rose tinted glasses on Russia. There is still corruption and if MI6 wanted Navalny murdered in a Russian prison, it can be done. In the same way Epstein was murdered in a US prison.

Perhaps both theories are wrong and he simply just died from the Covid clotshot like so many other men in their 30s and 40s currently are?

Also keep in mind Gonzalo Lira when you see all the outrage from Western leaders about Navalny. Who’s Lira? Exactly. A US blogger critical of the Ukrainian regime who died four weeks ago in a Ukrainian prison, despite pleas to the US consulate who completely ignored their own citizen and allowed him to die in prison in Ukraine as well as a complicit Western media who have yet to utter his name because it doesn’t fit the approved narrative. Let’s not even bother to get onto Julian Assange’s treatment.

Ukraine

The British establishments attitude exemplified by the Editor-in-Chief of the Economist magazine, one of the regime’s mouthpieces:

Just another of the countless examples of the UK aristocracies visceral hatred of Slavs. “It’s America’s money and Ukrainian bodies.” Win-win for UK right?

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