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Bitcoin investor MicroStrategy was massively hit by the price drop

Charlene Lensburg
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Bitcoin investor MicroStrategy was massively hit by the price drop

MicroStrategy, a business intelligence software company, is one of the best-known investors in Bitcoin (BTC). Since 2020, the company has been aggressively buying BTC, making its shares a proxy for BTC. As of the end of 2021, MicroStrategy held 124,391 bitcoins, acquired for roughly $3.75 billion at an average price of about $30,159 per bitcoin, CEO Michael Saylor announced on Twitter at the time. They were worth about $4.3 billion at the current price level of $35,000.

The ongoing BTC correction hits MicroStrategy badly. As of 24 Jan 2022, BTC’s price is around $35,000 down almost 50% from its all-time high of nearly $70,000 in Nov 2021. Shares of MicroStrategy tumbled 17.8% Friday afternoon after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rejected the company’s bitcoin accounting strategy. The SEC told MicroStrategy in a filing on Dec. 3 that “…we object to your adjustment for bitcoin impairment charges in your non-GAAP measures. Please revise to remove this adjustment in future filings.”

The company’s stock had been falling in tandem with the BTC price. MicroStrategy shares are down 24.7% for the week. Analysts have highlighted that a further decline in the price of BTC could destroy MicroStrategy‘s equity.

Don’t Worry! Long-Term Crypto Perspective Is Still Attractive!

Jacob Weizman
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Don’t Worry! Long-Term Crypto Perspective Is Still Attractive!

As of January 24, 2022, bitcoin (BTC) is oscillating around $35,000, which is only nearly half of the almost $70,000 it was worth in November 2021. Recently, however, tech stocks have also suffered heavy price losses. The current macro environment is blowing massive winds against cryptocurrencies and growth stocks. Above all, the feared end of the phase of cheap money scares investors. Interest rates are to be raised to combat post-pandemic inflation. Expensive money is apparently also an enemy of Bitcoin & Co. Investors should actually invest in BTC because of inflation fears. But they don’t!

As Ciaran Ryan on Moneyweb points out, BTC is still up 18% over the last 12 months. That’s only slightly worse than the 24% gain in Apple’s stock price and on a par with the 18% gain in the S&P 500 index. If you bought and held BTC on any day since its inception and held it for five years, the worst annual return you would have would be 27%.

During the recent bull market, BTC experienced over six pullbacks of greater than 20%, and every time it has proceeded to rally more than it pulled back. The recent bitcoin pullback has been textbook in nature. The Fear & Greed Index currently shows “extreme fear.” This, however, may be considered a “buy” recommendation.

Read the story on MoneyWeb

Crypto Evangelist And Tesla Bull Face Cathie Wood Under Pressure!

Adrian Fuller
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Crypto Evangelist And Tesla Bull Face Cathie Wood Under Pressure!

Over the last two years, hedge fund manager Cathie Wood has been a superstar amid the tech stock and crypto hype. She was the face of the bull run. Her flagship Ark fund has shown an incredible performance thanks to her strategy to bet on high-growth, disruptive companies like Tesla. Ark Invest Innovation ETF (ARKK) smashed most of its competitors in 2020 and attracted billions of dollars from investors.

ARKK invested in the most glamorous players in tech, pharma, and crypto, a group that encompasses Tesla, Robinhood, Coinbase, Teladoc, and Block. ARKK still shows a Net Asset Value (NAU) of $71B. Its share price, however, has dropped 50% and shed 18% from the start of 2022 alone.

Warren Buffet‘s Berkshire Hathaway shares, on the other hand, have continued to climb steadily, narrowing the performance gap between Buffett’s investment conglomerate and the ARKK since the start of 2020 to just 8 percentage points.

The relative performance of the two fund managers has been particularly different this month, with Berkshire’s stock climbing around 2 percent since the start of January while Ark’s biggest ETF has slid 24 percent. ARKK has now tumbled 43 percent from the beginning of 2021 to January 21, 2022. Berkshire Hathaway is up 34 percent. Financial Times points out that Wood’s ARKK and Berkshire Hathaway are often seen “as prime examples of two very different investment styles” — growth and value, respectively. The reversal of their share prices reflects a jarring rotation between the two tribes in recent years.

The Financial Times reports that major investors are already pulling money out of ARKK. Faced with the feared end of cheap money, tech stock prices have plummeted, as have crypto prices. As a result, Warren Buffet‘s conservative strategy is back in vogue.

Read the story on Financial Times

The Investment Portfolio of The CyberFinance Generation!

Charlene Lensburg
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The Investment Portfolio of The CyberFinance Generation!

On Twitter, renowned blockchain and cryptocurrency expert @DeepBlueCrypto reflected on the investment and portfolio of CyberFinance generation. He thinks that the traditional 60/40 portfolio construction (60% Stocks, 40% Bonds) does not make sense anymore as bonds are broken. Most bonds around the world are either very low or negative-yielding. He argues that the CyberFinance Generation, Millennials & GenZers would rather hold 60% stocks & 40% Bitcoin in their portfolios.

We are convinced that these considerations are going in the right direction. Cryptocurrencies as a native digital currency will have a firm place in the portfolio of the new generations. In contrast to FIAT currencies, Bitcoin and Co are tailored to the needs of a cybersociety.

The Great Reset Or How GAFAM Rules The World

Charlene Lensburg
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The Great Reset Or How GAFAM Rules The World

Ivan Wecke has written an interesting article on OpenDemocracy about the Great Reset. The Great Reset was the theme of the 2021 World Economic Forum (WEF) summit and the starting point of numerous conspiracy theories amid the COVID-19 pandemic. For conspiracy theorists, the Great Reset is the global elite’s plan to instate a new world order while using COVID-19 to solve overpopulation and enslaving what remains of humanity with vaccines.

The magic words to get the spirit of the Great Reset are ‘stakeholder capitalism‘, a concept promoted by WEF chairman Klaus Schwab. The idea is that global capitalism should be transformed so that corporations become custodians of society by creating value for customers, suppliers, employees, communities, and other ‘stakeholders.’ Stakeholder capitalism is implemented through a range of ‘multi-stakeholder partnerships’ bringing together the private sector, governments, and civil society across all areas of global governance. Corporations would rule the world while governments take a backseat role,

WEF partners include some of the biggest companies in oil (Saudi Aramco, Shell, Chevron, BP), food (Unilever, The Coca-Cola Company, Nestlé), technology (Facebook, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple), and pharmaceuticals (AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Moderna).

Civil society organizations fear that stakeholder capitalism will lead to Big Tech creating a global body to govern itself. This scenario would institutionalize the Big Tech’s resistance against effective regulation both globally and nationally and increase their power over governments. Such a body would be a decisive victory in the ongoing war GAFAM (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft) is waging with governments over tax evasion, antitrust rules, and their ever-expanding power over society.

As a part of his 2020 Roadmap for Digital Cooperation, the UN Secretary-General called for the formation of a new ‘strategic and empowered multi-stakeholder high-level body.’ More than 170 civil society groups worldwide have signed another open letter to the secretary general of the UN – this time to prevent the digital governance body from forming.

Read the story on OpenDemocracy

Sinking Birth Rates, An Aging Society, And The Need For Migration!

Charlene Lensburg
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Sinking Birth Rates, An Aging Society, And The Need For Migration!

Houston, we have a problem! Elon Musk alerted us to the “population collapse” problem via Twitter this week. Falling fertility rates in nearly every country could have shrinking populations by the end of the century. 23 nations including Spain and Japan are expected to see their populations halve by 2100. Countries will also age dramatically, with as many people turning 80 as there are being born.

  • Japan’s population is projected to fall from a peak of 128 million in 2017 to less than 53 million by the end of the century.
  • Italy is expected to see an equally dramatic population crash from 61 million to 28 million over the same timeframe.
  • China is expected to peak at 1.4 billion in four years’ time before nearly halving to 732 million by 2100.
  • The population of sub-Saharan Africa is expected to treble in size to more than three billion people by 2100; Nigeria will become the world’s second biggest country, with a population of 791 million.

If the fertility rate falls below approximately 2.1, then the size of the population starts to shrink. In 1950, women were having an average of 4.7 children in their lifetime. The global fertility rate nearly halved to 2.4 in 2017 is projected to fall below 1.7 by 2100.

As a result, researchers expect the number of people on the planet to peak at 9.7 billion around 2064, before falling down to 8.8 billion by the end of the century.

The number of babies born in the U.S. dropped by 4% in 2020 compared with the previous year. It was the sixth consecutive year that the number of births has declined, down an average of 2% per year. It is the lowest number of births since 1979, the National Center for Health Statistics said.

If these predictions are even half accurate, mirgration will become a necessity for all nations and not an option.

Prof Ibrahim Abubakar, University College London

The number of over 80-year-olds will soar from 141 million in 2017 to 866 million in 2100, which will create enormous social change.

Read the article on BBC

Legal Troubles for Donald Trump And The Trump Organization

Jacob Weizman
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Legal Troubles for Donald Trump And The Trump Organization

Though his presidency ended in disgrace, Donald Trump is one of the most influential republicans. His political apparatus has allegedly raised $115 million, which would be a considerable advantage if Trump decides to run for a 2nd presidential term in the 2024 election. On the other hand, Trump and his family face severe legal problems including fraud allegations.

New York Attorney General Letitia James recently disclosed her civil investigation into the former president’s business. She said that the probe had uncovered evidence suggesting the fraudulent valuing of multiple assets and misrepresentations of those values to financial institutions for economic benefit.

James, who launched her probe in 2019, also said in the court filing that the former president “had ultimate authority over a wide swath of conduct by the Trump Organization involving misstatements to counterparties, including financial institutions, and the Internal Revenue Service.”

She further referenced two of the former president’s adult children, Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump. According to the court filing, Donald Trump, Jr., legal representative of the Trump Organization, is responsible for numerous financial statements containing misleading asset valuations.

On the other hand, Ivanka Trump would have been a primary contact for the Trump Organization’s largest lender, Deutsche Bank. Allegedly, she caused misleading financial statements to be submitted to Deutsche Bank and the federal government.

James said that her investigation would have uncovered significant evidence that suggests Donald Trump and the Trump Organization falsely and fraudulently valued multiple assets and misrepresented those values to financial institutions for economic benefit.

In early December 2021, Letitia James issued a subpoena for Donald Trump as well as for Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump, seeking to question them as part of her civil inquiry.

The Trump Organization is already faced with an indictment. In July 2021, the former Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., charged the company and its former CFO Allen H. Weisselberg with carrying out a 15-year scheme to dole out off-the-books luxury perks to certain executives. That case is scheduled to head to trial later this year.

Read the story in the New York Times

Top earners! Compensation costs at Goldman jumped 33% to $17.7 billion

Adrian Fuller
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Top earners! Compensation costs at Goldman jumped 33% to $17.7 billion

It is no secret that successful investment bankers on Wall Street are among the top earners on this globe. At Goldman Sachs, top bankers can receive tens of millions in annual bonuses. Despite the Covid-19 pandemic that has been ongoing for almost 2 years, the markets were in a bullish mood in 2021. Thus, compensation costs at Goldman jumped 33% to $17.7 billion for 2021, a whopping $4.4 billion increase fueled mostly by pay increases for good performance, executives said. That made the average per employee compensation reach about $404,000 in 2021, up from $329,000 in 2020.

The pay increase at Goldman largely tracked the year-over-year increase in non-interest revenues, a 33% jump to $52.9 billion, driven by a massive 55% gain in investment banking revenue. The story was different in 2020 when revenues climbed 24% and compensation rose just 8%.

The jump in compensation costs disclosed across Wall Street for 2021 may have surprised analysts because in the prior year, the first of the pandemic, banks showed restraint on compensation.

That’s what Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon explained on Tuesday during a conference call with analysts to discuss the bank’s fourth-quarter results. At one point during trading, shares of the bank had fallen more than 8% after a jump in quarterly expenses took investors by surprise.

Executives at JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup have made similar disclosures, saying that they were forced to pay up to retain valued employees. It makes sense that as inflation has hit nearly every type of good and service this year, it would eventually reach Wall Street personnel.

Read the story on CNBC

Trump’s 2024 march back to the White House with a $155 war chest!

Jacob Weizman
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Trump’s 2024 march back to the White House with a $155 war chest!

The Daily Mail reported that Donald Trump “really” could be on his way back to the White House. The former U.S. President allegedly amassed a $115million election war chest. This should be enough money to pave his way back to Presidency with the new slogan “Save America.” An incredible 82 percent of Republicans will back him if he decides to run again in 2024. Trump has built a cult around him. He has believers and fans more than voters. In any way, Trump is the king-maker if he decides not to run for the Presidency himself.

Joe Walsh, a former Republican congressman, said the GOP is Donald Trump’s party now. If he wants the nomination in 2024, it’s his. Another prominent Republican strategist said that everyone thought Trump was finished when he left the White House, but his base stuck with him. His fans are more in now than ever, it seems.

A recent YouGov poll showed 82 percent of Republicans have a very favorable or somewhat favorable view of Trump, with 51 percent supporting him as the Republican nominee.

On the other hand, President Biden’s approval ratings are in free-fall, with a poll this week showing they have dropped to a dismal 33 percent. Biden has already declared he will run again in 2024 when he will be 81. Trump smells blood, and he’s going for it.

Read the story on Daily Mail

FinTelegram urges German regulator to stop financial fraud ads on Google

Charlene Lensburg
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0
FinTelegram urges German regulator to stop financial fraud ads on Google

Google, like Meta (previously known as Facebook), has been massively criticized for making a lot of money from advertising scammers. The UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) issued 1,200 warnings in 2020 about scams made by fake companies on Google and social media platforms. Consequently, in August 2021, Google UK & Ireland re-regulated the advertising of financial offers, allowing only FCA-regulated firms to advertise financial services, including crypto ads. On the other hand, on Google DE, fraud scheme operators can still buy ads without any restrictions.

Google UK approach

To show financial services ads and crypto ads in the UK – including ads to UK users who appear to be seeking financial services – advertisers have to be verified by Google. As part of this KYC process, advertisers must demonstrate that they are authorized by the UK FCA or qualify for one stated exemption. In the UK, therefore, unverified and unregulated companies cannot, in principle, buy financial ads from Google.

Today, we are announcing a significant additional measure to protect users and legitimate advertisers, and help prevent scammers exploiting our platforms.

Ronan Harris, Vice President Google UK & Ireland (Source: blog post)

In a blog post, Google says the move is to fight financial fraud in the UK and protect consumers. On the other hand, scammers can still hunt down German-speaking consumers with massive ad campaigns on Google. It is no problem to run fraudulent crypto campaigns like Bitcoin Prime via fake companies and fake websites.

Google UK terminated scam ads but Google DE still accepts them

Google DE welcomes fraud ads

In our related review on January 16, 2022, we searched for “Bitcoin Prime” on Google UK. Bitcoin Prime is a notorious financial marketing fraud scheme. Google UK did not present ads to us, which is as it has to be. The exact search on Google DE presented four ads from fake websites. Searches with other relevant terms such as “Bitcoin Up” or “Bitcoin” brought a similar result. Zero ads on Google UK and massive ad campaigns from the operators of illegal financial offers on Google DE (picture left).

Scam operators use Google ads to chase victims via fake websites

Scheme operators place the fraudulent ads on Google DE through fake websites like CarProductReviews (www.carproductreviews.com), ScaryHouses (https://scaryhouses.com), or Nuevofit (https://nuevofit.com). These are Russian websites, allegedly operated by Russian entities. Clicking on the fraudulent Google Ads takes potential victims to other German websites like WarmInvest (https://warminvest.com), where fraudulent campaigns like Bitcoin Prime chase victims for broker scams.

Preliminary conclusion

Google’s approach is neither understandable nor acceptable. Evidently, Google realized the threat that fraud schemes can do via ads on the search platform. Thus, Google UK imposed strict rules to protect consumers. However, Google DE still accepts operators of fraudulent campaigns and offers on Google DE. Given Google’s algorithmic power, it would be easy to detect and decline these fraud ads. Google is apparently knowingly and willingly allowing these fraudulent Financial Ads to increase their profits. With the money that has been stolen from the victims of these fraud schemes in the first place.

German regulator BaFin has issued several warnings against websites that have run fraudulent financial and marketing campaigns in recent months. So BaFin holds itself responsible for these issues. Consequently, the regulator should at least issue a swift warning against Google DE. This would set a public sign in the fight against cybercrime and scams.

It is unacceptable that Google is apparently aware of the danger of fraudulent financial ads but does not react to it accordingly. Why is this allowed to happen on Google DE? The EU is also needed here!

Elfriede Sixt, EFRI principal

In a statement to FinTelegram, Elfriede Sixt, principal of the European Fund Recovery Initiative (EFRI) said that Google, like Meta, knowingly provides powerful platforms to fraudulent schemes facilitating financial fraud. Therefore, they are complicit in the losses of hundreds of thousands of European consumers.

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