Authored by Eric Lendrum via American Greatness,

Drug cartels and other human trafficking groups have begun demanding higher fees for illegals seeking to be smuggled across the border in the aftermath of President-elect Donald Trump’s comeback victory.

As Breitbart reports, illegals at an alleged “charity” shelter in Sonora, Mexico told a Mexican newspaper that the smuggling fee has doubled in recent weeks, with Trump’s victory and impending return to office being given as a major reason.

The previous fees of $5,000 have risen to at least $10,000, as illegals from all around the world, including Africa, Asia, and Central America, try desperately to sneak into the country before Trump returns to office.

The smugglers have also increased their fees for additional services, such as using vehicles to cross private property, with these fees increasing from $15,000 to $20,000.

Fees have also risen dramatically for certain illegals based on how far they have traveled to try to enter the United States illegally.

Chinese illegals are paying as much as $55,000 per person to attempt being smuggled into the U.S.

In fiscal year 2023, at least 24,000 illegals from China were apprehended trying to cross the southern border.

Other illegals paying increased fees include illegals from Africa and the Middle East, due to their designation as “Special Interest Aliens.”

President-elect Trump once again campaigned heavily on the issue of immigration, vowing to finish building the border wall that he started constructing in his first term, and to carry out the largest mass deportation operation in American history.

He has announced former Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director Tom Homan as his new Border Czar, with Homan repeatedly vowing to do whatever is necessary to deport as many illegals as possible.

Last night Hunter Biden’s lawyers filed a motion to dismiss his California tax fraud case after Joe Biden issued a blanket pardon absolving him of all crimes committed over a 10 year period.

“The President’s pardon moots Mr. Biden’s pending and yet to occur sentencing and entry of judgment in this case and requires an automatic dismissal of the Indictment with prejudice,” wrote Hunter’s lawyer Abbe Lowell in the filing, adding that “this Court must dismiss the Indictment against Mr. Biden with prejudice and adjourn all future proceedings in this matter.”

Special Counsel David Weiss isn’t having it. In a Monday response in opposition, Weiss argued that “The defendant’s motion should be denied since there is no binding authority on this Court which requires dismissal.”

“As a matter of past-practice in this district, courts do not dismiss indictments when pardons are granted,” Weiss wrote – citing cases involving Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn, Joe Arpaio and Ollie North, Above the Law reports. “Instead, it has been the practice of this court that once an Executive Grant of Clemency has been filed on the docket, the docket is marked closed, the disposition entry is updated to reflect the executive grant of clemency, and no further action is taken by the Court.”

Although Weiss purported not to have seen the pardon itself (which Lowell inexplicably failed to docket), he took particular umbrage at the suggestion that the prosecution was politically motivated, huffing that “The court similarly found [Biden’s] vindictive prosecution claims unmoored from any evidence or even a coherent theory as to vindictiveness.”

Judge Mark Scarsi of the Central District of California has taken no action, thus far. But in Delaware, Judge Maryellen Noreika said in a minute order that she intends to terminate the proceedings, and instructing the government to say by tomorrow if it objects to termination by dismissal. Presumably it does, although no objection has hit the docket as of this writing. -Above the Law

Hunter pleaded guilty to the tax charges earlier this year, after a Delaware jury found him guilty of lying about his drug use on a background check form used to purchase a firearm. 

In Weiss’ new filing, he writes:

“The defendant did not docket the pardon nor has the government seen it. If media reports are accurate, the Government does not challenge that the defendant has been the recipient of an act of mercy. But that does not mean the grand jury’s decision to charge him, based on a finding of probable cause, should be wiped away as if it never occurred. It also does not mean that his charges should be wiped away because the defendant falsely claimed that the charges were the result of some improper motive. No court has agreed with the defendant on these baseless claims, and his request to dismiss the indictment finds no support in the law or the practice of this district.”

Authored by James Howard Kunstler,

“It’s a beautiful thing to watch the Biden family destroy the Democrat Party.”

– @Mazemoore on “X”

You can be sure the blobists have seen this coming from years away. The boys and girls in the agencies have behaved more than just a little badly, and they know it. They committed serious crimes against our country and its citizens under color-of-law since 2015, ranging from seditious conspiracy clear up to treason (say, just for instance, the case of Col. Alexander Vindman using his Ukraine connections to lever Mr. Trump out of the Oval Office in the 2019 impeachment scam.)

You have whole C-suites of agencies teed-up on RussiaGate for felonies, misprision of felonies, abuse of power, deprivation of rights, lying under oath, conspiracy to commit fraud, and much more. You have Judge James Boasberg playing games in the FISA Court he presided over; Robert Mueller and Andrew Weissmann running a two-and-a-half-year Chinese fire drill to cover-up years preceding of FBI / DOJ misconduct; John Brennan, James Clapper, and Gina Haspel abusing the “Five Eyes” intel arrangements to turn the CIA on innocent citizens at home; the fifty-one current and former intel agents colluding to bury Hunter’s Laptop to sway the 2020 election; the antics of Judge Emmet Sullivan in the Flynn case. . . .

And then on to a whole new round of frolics under “Joe Biden” including the malicious prosecutions of J-6 protesters; the pipe-bomb caper at the DNC; the use of several agencies to censor speech and manage the news media; the treasonous negligence of Alejandro Mayorkas on the nation’s borders; the DOJ-coordinated lawfare hounding of Mr. Trump and his adjacent lawyers; the Ukraine War project ginned up by the State Department’s Victoria Nuland and cohorts; and the sinkhole of greed, malice, and medical homicide that was the Covid-19 operation, millions killed and disabled, and likely more of that yet to come from the vaccines, trillions in wealth purloined or just plain lost, and businesses destroyed in lockdowns. It’s not a mere “swamp,” it’s a whole forbidden planet of turpitude.

Then there are the floaters and freelancers who move from one blob venue to the next, like lawfare artists Mary McCord, Norm Eisen, Marc Elias, David J. Kramer, or the girl-band of Lisa Monaco, Fiona Hill, Kathryn Ruemmler, Susan Rice, Samantha Power, Nellie Ohr. And finally, there are the real big fishes: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Bill Gates, Anthony Fauci, Chris Wray, Merrick Garland, General Milley, and “Joe Biden.”

Add William Barr to that list for failing to reveal that he was in possession of Hunter’s laptop as early as the fall of 2019. Of course, it was crammed with exculpatory evidence that could have ended impeachment No. 1 on day one of the initial hearings, yet he never alerted President’s lawyers to its existence. Weird, a little bit. And also, for the effrontery of allowing Jeffrey Epstein to be killed in his Manhattan jail, and never offering the public a coherent account of how the cameras on the cellblock failed, or why the guards who fell asleep on-duty were disciplined with only 100 hours of “community service.”

My Gawd, they must be eating Xanax like tic-tacs in their drawing rooms and boudoirs as the name Kash Patel floats across their social media screens. Kash Patel, a real-live exterminating angel, will finally step in to the FBI Director’s office and turn the investigative powers of the FBI on. . . the FBI! And its parent, the DOJ. The poetic justice is sublime. You must wonder: how does Mr. Patel get through the RINO-infested Senate confirmation process? Start with: what have they got him? Answer: probably not a goshdarn thing, not a hair out of place. More to the point: what has Mr. Patel got on them? (Especially Messers Thune, Barrasso, Cornyn, and let’s just throw in the Democrat Mark Warner, VA, who was up to his eyeballs in RussiaGate as chair of the Senate Intel Committee.)

And were Mr. Patel to land in the FBI Director’s office 49 days from now, what additional info might he uncover about years of weaponized government with assistance from John Ratcliffe at the CIA and Tulsi Gabbard as DNI — who will access a pipeline to the vast national security server farm out in Bluffdale, Utah. So, in case you think that the document-shredding party currently underway in DC will conceal all that criminality, consider what lives forever in the alternate universe of cyberspace. There are additional NSA intel server farms in Fort Meade, MD, Augusta, GA, and San Antonio, TX, all with troves of agency emails and cell phone texts. Not to mention what whistleblowers-to-come might have saved on their thumb drives. And you may be sure that the whistles will be blowing, even while the culpable rat each other out. Remember too: there is the document dossier of FBI crimes that Mr. Trump had in his personal possession after leaving office— the reason for the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago, August, 2022, and Jack Smith’s bullshit court case to justify it.

In a new wrinkle to things transitional, you have the news late Sunday that “Joe Biden” issued a blanket pardon to “the smartest person I know,” Hunter Biden, that covers every last criminal act he committed from January 1, 2014, to present, including bribery, wire fraud, money-laundering, trafficking minors for sex, handgun violations, tax evasion, crack-cocaine parties, and probably more.

“JB” assured America more than once that he would never pardon Hunter. Turned out to be the joke that all his utterances were supposedly not. But, really, did you expect anything else? Do you see now, also, why Hunter pled guilty to those tax charges in the LA federal court? I’ll tell you why: because in a trial all the mechanisms of the money transfers through a myriad of bank accounts would have been disclosed. And the money trail leads from the multiple accounts of Hunter’s Rosemont Seneca operation to the personal bank accounts of Biden family members, brother Jim and wife Sara, possibly Hunter’s half-sister Ashley, and, of course, “the Big Guy.” Where are their pardons? And where is “Joe Biden’s” pardon for Joe Biden?

It is unfortunate that the way forward (to a national government different in scale, scope, and disposition toward its citizens) will require so much consorting with what is past.

But it must be if consequence is to be restored as a basic element in our constitutional arrangements. You can’t just have people doing stuff outside the law because they feel like it.

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

Democrats who campaigned on the need for “joy” and “saving democracy” are strikingly unjoyful about the results of the democratic process in 2024.

Before the election, slips like the one of President Joe Biden calling Trump supporters “garbage” were immediately denied or deflected. But once voters had given the Republicans control of both houses of Congress, the popular vote and the White House, leading Democratic figures and celebrities dropped all pretense of civility. They are now being open about their contempt for voters, calling them “f—-ing morons” and “arrogant, ignorant” adolescents.

After calling for Americans to come together for Kamala Harris, MSNBC’s Joy Reid sent out a heart-warming holiday message to those who voted for the GOP to “make your own dinner, MAGA. Make your own sandwiches, wipe your own tears.”

Those not wallowing in Reid’s anger are increasingly voicing themes of isolation, insurrection and secession.

For years, the contempt for Trump voters has been open and obvious in much of the media.  The “Let’s Go Brandon” movement captured the lunacy of the press and politicians simply denying what citizens could see, hear and experience for themselves.

When asked for answers on issues like the economy and immigration, Harris paraded an army of celebrities to tell the public how to vote — shiny objects that they thought would be enough for shallow American voters.

They were wrong. Now that the public has made its choice, leading figures are condemning the majority of voters as a mix of misogynists, self-haters and fascists. Whoopi Goldberg, 69, even joined the “4B” sex strike against men. Others seem to be morphing into exactly what they said Trump would become as president: isolationist and insurrectionist.

Some have responded to the losses by retreating further into echo chambers protected from opposing views. Many dumped X in favor of BlueSky, a new social media safe space for liberals who fear being triggered by opposing views. Notably, censorship advocates such as Nina Jankowisz have fled to BlueSky.

The site is portrayed as a return to the good old days when liberals controlled all of the social media and maintained a massive censorship and blacklisting system over political discourse.

New York Times tech reporter Kevin Roose wrote a column last week that offered the familiar “I can breathe again” account: “After an hour or so of scrolling through Bluesky the other night, I felt something I haven’t felt on social media in a long time: free.”

It is the ultimate irony. This election shocked many on the left precisely because they were writing and commenting on each other within their hardened media and political silos. They are unlikely to improve themselves by receding further into that safe space to rave about the “f—ing morons” who make up the majority of America.

Other Democratic politicians have moved beyond the chest-pounding of leaders like Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) to pledges of more direct obstruction or inflammatory rhetoric.

Denver mayor Mike Johnson (D) declared that he was preparing the Mile-High City for its “Tiananmen Square moment” to fight the federal government in any attempt to deport unlawful migrants. Johnson warned that he would have not only Denver police “stationed at the county line to keep [ICE] out” but also “50,000 Denverites.”

Not long ago, Democrats were calling similar protests an “insurrection.” Johnson later walked back his remarks but insisted that his city would fight federal efforts to enforce the immigration laws.

Rather than such trench warfare, most Democratic governors and mayors are simply pledging not to cooperate with federal authorities, which is a lawful choice. The concern, however, is how others will react to the overheated rhetoric for months that this will be “our last election” and that Trump is the new Hitler.

Such rage rhetoric gives people license to say and do things they would not ordinarily say or do. Leaders calling on citizens to “fight” ICE and the “fascists” can easily inspire violence, as we have seen in past years. Indeed, that was the very premise of the criminal case against Trump supported by many of these same leaders, alleging that his calls to “fight” against certification was a call for insurrection.

Some liberals are very publicly fleeing the country. Sharon Stone (who called American voters “uneducated”) is reportedly off to Canada. Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi are off to a mansion in Cotswolds in England. Democratic megadonor Reid Hoffman is also reportedly exploring a departure from the country after his millions of dollars failed to produce a victory for Kamala Harris.

Some, however, want to take part of the country with them. New York State Sen. Liz Krueger (D-Upper East Side) has received praise for her call for New York to join Canada. Where Alexandre Dumas believed that ‘Nothing succeeds like success,” some believe that, after losing an election, nothing succeeds quite like secession.

Krueger previously sought to block Trump from the ballot in the name of protecting democracy. That would have barred the 45 percent of New Yorkers who voted for the president-elect, but those voters would find themselves either Canadians or refugees under her proposal.

Krueger suggested that secession simply makes sense when the majority of the country disagrees with you. She believes New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont could form a new Canadian province.

“I got back some unofficial responses and heard this is probably sellable in Ottawa,” she said.

“And look, if we were Europe, in the length of time we’ve been a nation, for Canada, if we were European countries, our borders would have moved around 20 times by now, right?”

She explained that this is all just “thinking outside of the box.”

The box that she and other liberals find themselves in is called “democracy,” and they don’t like it.

Just for the record, the last time people thought “outside the box” and seceded, we got a war with roughly 700,000 people killed.

Yet, assuming New Yorkers can get used to milk in a bag and cheese curds as a snack, there may be an obvious appeal for the left in the True North. Formerly “strong and free,” Canada has become a nightmare for free speech with the ever-expanding criminalization of political speech. One professor, who said that Trump’s plans to combat censorship has left many frightened, said that if free speech protections are restored, “I will be on a plane [out of America].”

For New York Times reporters and officials alike, they will be able to “breathe again” in the controlled, regulated air of censorship countries like Canada.

The only challenge for our displaced and disgruntled diaspora will be that Canadians tend to be nice.

*  *  *

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

It’s no secret that President-elect Donald Trump is firmly in support of Israel, despite that after a year of Israeli war in Gaza the civilian death toll is in the multiple tens of thousands. Trump has stacked key national security positions with pro-Israel hawks. 

This is why it comes as no surprise that he’s already talking tough, threatening escalation if Hamas and Palestinian militants in Gaza don’t immediately free the remaining Israeli hostages. “Everybody is talking about the hostages who are being held so violently, inhumanely, and against the will of the entire World, in the Middle East – But it’s all talk, and no action!” Trump began a post on his Truth Social.

He is warning that there will be “hell to pay” if Hamas doesn’t release the captives. “Please let this TRUTH serve to represent that if the hostages are not released prior to January 20, 2025, the date that I proudly assume Office as President of the United States, there will be ALL HELL TO PAY in the Middle East, and for those in charge who perpetrated these atrocities against Humanity,” Trump continued in the statement.

He then warned in the stern statement [emphasis ZH]:

Those responsible will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied History of the United States of America. RELEASE THE HOSTAGES NOW!

Given broad swathes of Gaza have already been pulverized into dust, it’s hard to see how the Strip could be hit any harder, also given US-supplied bunker buster bombs have been used against dense urban areas.

A total of 97 hostages remain unaccounted for, though many have been feared dead after over a year of fighting in the Strip. Israel has said that 251 Israelis and foreigners were taken on October 7, 2023.

Recent analysis in The Washington Post tallied that 117 hostages have been freed or rescued, with the bulk of this figure having come as a result of the November 2023 short-lived truce deal.

Israel’s military and intelligence believes that a total of 63 hostages remain alive. They have been in captivity for over 420 days, amid worsening conditions. Israel says that 71 have been confirmed killed, but without revealing the precise circumstances of their deaths.

“The hostage whose death was most recently confirmed by Israel is Idan Shtivi,” Washington Post writes. “There are 34 hostages reported killed whose bodies have not been recovered and remain in Gaza.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will surely take this new statement as a mandate from Trump to keep fighting. Efforts at achieving a new truce completely fell apart within the last weeks, and Israel appears bent on pursuing a military solution.

Given the situation is now essentially a ‘fight to the death’ scenario, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are unlikely to care much about Trump’s threat. The terror groups likely see the remnant hostages as the only remaining leverage they have left.

Authored by Gregory Copley via The Epoch Times,

Much of the world is at a pivotal stage in the future of money. If the physical symbolism of cash is removed or diminished, so too is individual freedom and much of the inspiration for entrepreneurship.

Proposals to make cash entirely digital gives a new meaning to governments as “controllers of the currency”; it makes them controllers of the lives of individuals.

Economists, politicians, and the avaricious tend to think that cold, hard cash – the physical kind – merely gets in the way of a deal which can be “interpreted” in many invisible currency forms, such as credits, promissory notes, and abstract assets.

Nonetheless, it is currency which reflects the prestige and power – or lack of them – of a society.

The bulk of the “value” or wealth of most societies today, however, is measured not in currency or hard assets, such as real estate or manufactured items, but in the abstracts of economies, such as creditworthiness. Our wealth, somehow, is “up in the air” out there, somewhere, to a far greater degree than at any time in human history. The old control mechanism of economic leaders, money supply (the physical amount of currency notes or coins in circulation, an aspect known as M1), no longer counts for much, a reason why central banks are less than effective in controlling economic trends.

How does this augur for the future stability of economies or the security of societies?

It first must be recognized that all currencies are “artificial” forms of value exchange. A dollar is worth a dollar if we believe it represents a dollar’s worth of value. And if inflation consistently reduces the purchasing power of that dollar (or euro, or pound, and so on), then at some stage the public will lose faith in it. Significantly, that “faith” parallels and is the handmaiden of trust in the government which issues the currency. It gets down to the reality that currency, governments, prestige, and influence—strength—are all given power only by the mind.

When a society loses its belief in the value of a currency or a government, or if a nation loses its willpower or confidence, then the currency or the government or the nation collapses. And when the overwhelming amount of wealth is measured digitally, rather than in the physical imagery of printed or minted money, it is difficult for it to be seen as anything other than transitory and ephemeral.

U.S. society has had such a sentimental association with its coinage—even the one-cent (penny) piece—that successive U.S. governments have been unwilling to risk public wrath by abandoning it. And this sentimentality has played a strong role in the limiting of inflation over the decades. That may be at an end as the U.S. government has toyed with moving to forms of a digital currency which could be used to control the movement and attitudes of all citizens. This has occurred in the People’s Republic of China.

Bluntly put, the digitalization of money is a major component in the infringement of freedom, given that digital currency is controlled not only by a central (governmental) authority, which can open or close access to funds, but is also dependent upon the absolutely unbroken delivery of electricity supply through a highly-complex structure of communications and computer links. Little wonder, then, that cryptocurrencies have gained some appeal, because they are, ostensibly, outside the grasp of governments. But they are not outside their dependence on electricity.

The appeal, then, of gold as a trading currency has increased in direct proportion to the distrust in governments, but, again, gold is an artificial currency in that it only represents value because of its global recognition and relative rarity. Gold cannot be eaten; nor can it, in itself, represent shelter or security. It is another abstract, supported as a psychological hedge against the fiat currencies of governments. Gold’s value is sustained by the fact that it is one of the “noble metals”—metals which resist corrosion—but it is only one of a number of such metals, all of which have some industrial value as well.

Where there is a significant overlapping between government-issued currencies and gold or silver coins is in the prestige given to the money by the appearance of a sovereign’s head on the paper or coin. This gets back to the concept of the psychological value of currency, tying it to the prestige of the sovereign, an image above party politics. This places great importance on the design and quality of the currency, to give it—particularly in the case of coins—an intrinsic as well as symbolic value.

The United States and other republics have had prestigious coinage, and these coins have usually had an iconic leader on them, and are minted continuously after the death of the figurehead (in the United States, such figures as Washington, Lincoln, or Benjamin Franklin). They have, like the new coins and banknotes now appearing with King Charles III on them, an imagery stimulus value; in short, prestige.

The world can no longer grow consistently without abstract forms of credit and currencies, given the reality that economic growth trajectories are driven by the ability to turn money over as frequently as possible.

So it is not that a return to a physical cash economy is desirable. Rather, it is important that the basis of a country’s economic stability is intrinsically tied to the prestige which its physical currency holds.

Inflation is—or was—held in check when the values of small coins were retained.

Many of us no longer bother to keep coins in our pockets. We relegate them to a storage jar in the kitchen. Some no longer carry paper currency. We rely on credit or debit cards, or their equivalent accessed through a cellphone (good only as long as it has electrical power). Much of this is a tribute to inflation, or the relegation of purchasing power to thoughtless electronic transactions, reflecting wealth in a world which lives only as long as the electrical spark survives.

A silver Maria Theresa thaler, however, will see you fed in areas where credit cards and modern currencies have no sway, in the mountains of Oman or Ethiopia, or the vastnesses of Arabia or Africa. Empress Maria Theresa, whose face is on the coin, ruled only from 1740 to 1780. She would have died contented if she had known how her prestige governed the lives of so many people more than 200 years after her death.

*  *  *

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

Authored by Stephen Katte via CoinTelegraph.com,

During his 2024 election campaign, United States President-elect Donald Trump made many crypto-related promises, including establishing a “strategic Bitcoin stockpile.” The idea has since picked up steam both in the United States and abroad. 

While there has been plenty of talk, a clear roadmap and timeline for the implementation of a Bitcoin strategic reserve haven’t been hashed out by lawmakers yet. 

Speaking to Cointelegraph, Tim Ogilive, global head of institutional at crypto exchange Kraken, said at its core, establishing a strategic Bitcoin reserve is a “straightforward process.”

Source: Michael Saylor

“A sovereign buys Bitcoin and secures it with a qualified custodian. This parallels how governments manage other strategic reserves, like gold in Fort Knox or oil in national stockpiles,” he said.

“Bitcoin’s digital nature doesn’t change this fundamental principle — commodity reserves require the proper infrastructure and expertise for storage and security,” Ogilive added.

According to Ogilive, El Salvador and Bhutan have already “proven that a reserve is feasible,” showing that the primary barriers to setting it up are not “technical or market-driven.”

In 2021, El Salvador adopted Bitcoin as a legal tender and bought about 200 coins. The country has since increased its holdings to 5,942 Bitcoin as of November, worth $571.6 million at current prices. 

Bhutanese officials confirmed in 2024 that the kingdom had been mining Bitcoin since April 2019 and still holds about 12,206 Bitcoin, after selling 367 on Nov. 15, worth about $117.9 million at current prices. 

A Bitcoin reserve is not without drawbacks

In July, US Senator Cynthia Lummis introduced a bill to establish a Bitcoin strategic reserve. Pennsylvania lawmakers also introduced legislation in the state’s House of Representatives to permit its treasury to hold up to 10% in Bitcoin.

Polish presidential candidate Sławomir Mentzen has vowed to create a Bitcoin reserve if he wins next year’s election. A newly proposed bill in Brazil’s Congress is also aimed at establishing a sovereign federal Bitcoin reserve. 

Source: Sławomir Mentzen

Along with the positives of the concept, such as a Bitcoin reserve being a hedge against inflation and the growth value possibly helping reduce debt, there are also concerns. 

A few drawbacks that have been flagged are the volatility of the market eroding the value of the reserve, storing the Bitcoin securely so it isn’t hacked or stolen and keeping any private keys so they aren’t lost. 

Ogilive says another potential issue may be the concentration of ownership. If a government such as the US started accumulating large amounts of Bitcoin, it could “initially concentrate ownership.” 

In the long run, though, Ogilive thinks it could ultimately bolster Bitcoin’s long-term narrative as the “premier store of value”.

Timothy Cradle, chief compliance officer at cross-border blockchain payment service Instarails, told Cointelegraph that while a Bitcoin reserve is possible, he is unsure if government involvement in crypto would be without hiccups.

Governments haven’t always made outcomes for the crypto industry, with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) under the Biden administration causing plenty of headaches for crypto firms with record numbers of fines and penalties in 2024. 

“If the US government holds Bitcoin, then it takes an interest in the price of Bitcoin, which further means it will implement policies to manipulate the price, up or down, at times when it needs to do so,” Cradle said.

“If you go back to as recently as 2022, President Joe Biden released 200 million barrels of oil from the strategic petroleum reserve to mitigate price spikes caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.”

Cradle speculates that with a strategic Bitcoin reserve, the president might unilaterally drop the price of Bitcoin in the same way. 

“I would also be curious how they decide to fill the reserve,” he said.

“If, as has been discussed, they choose to withhold Bitcoin seized and held by the US Marshals Service, this could create a perverse incentive to seize more over time and be more aggressive in seizures,” Cradle added.

The US government already holds about 213,297 Bitcoin worth over $2 billion, acquired through seizures, with the largest portion coming from shutting down the online the Silk Road black market in 2013. 

According to CoinGecko, governments around the world hold about 2.2% of Bitcoin’s total supply, some 471,380 Bitcoin. 

Governments around the world are collectively one of the largest Bitcoin holders. Source: CoinGecko

Accumulating more Bitcoin for the reserve could prove tricky. According to the Blockchain Council, more than 19.7 million Bitcoin have been awarded to miners in block rewards. 

Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto’s white paper dictates that only 21 million are available, meaning most are already in circulation.

Cradle said that while the idea of a Bitcoin reserve is feasible, he doubts it will happen soon because there doesn’t appear to be a clear rationale for the US government.

He agrees that a possible upside could include safeguarding economic stability and enhancing national security through financial independence, but “if or how well Bitcoin supports these outcomes remains to be seen.”

“At best, I would expect an executive order to explore the possibility of establishing a reserve and a final report by the end of the year with a definitive recommendation,” Cradle added.

Bitcoin reserve roadmap doesn’t exist yet 

A growing list of firms have taken the plunge and added Bitcoin to their balance sheets this year, including YouTube alternative Rumble, artificial intelligence company Genius Group and Japanese investment firm Metaplanet. 

Michael Saylor’s MicroStrategy tops the list with 386,700 Bitcoin, worth about $37 billion, according to the firm’s portfolio tracker.

MicroStrategy has been steadily acquiring more Bitcoin for its stash, which is now worth over $37 billion. Source: Saylor Tracker

Steven Lubka, head of private clients at the Bitcoin platform Swan Bitcoin, told Cointelegraph that a government looking to create a Bitcoin reserve would have a few options.  

“It can be a stockpile where they just hold the Bitcoin they already have. This can be done with the stroke of a pen by the president. It is the easiest form,” he said.

“Second, you can have a reserve where the US actively buys Bitcoin below a certain size; this can also be done by the executive easily above a certain size, meaning above a certain amount of purchases per year, you do need congressional buy-in,” Lubka added. 

According to Lubka, a Bitcoin reserve has minimal downsides, numerous benefits and could become a reality since a number of pro-crypto candidates were elected to the US Congress. 

Hundreds of pro-crypto candidates won seats in Congress, and industry leaders have suggested the US government will become the most pro-crypto in history, which should result in a more favorable regulatory environment. 

“The upsides of a reserve are that it stabilizes the US balance sheet. It allows the US in times of treasury market dysfunction or war to not be taken out by its adversaries, impairing the functioning of its debt market,” he said. 

“This is an important strategic option for the country and one that most people discount. I think the downsides are minimal. This isn’t a lot of money for the US. It costs us almost nothing,” Lubka added. 

Bitcoin reserves a forward-thinking approach 

Bil Qian, chairman of crypto investment firm Cypher Capital, told Cointelegraph that a strategic Bitcoin reserve isn’t only feasible — it’s a forward-thinking approach that “aligns with the evolving global financial landscape.”

An October report from crypto financial service MatrixPort found that global cryptocurrency adoption is approaching a significant milestone, with 7.51% of the world’s population now using digital currencies. 

“Top VCs involved in blockchain have long seen the strategic importance of Bitcoin for sovereign nations, leading places like Abu Dhabi to launch a reserve through its sovereign wealth fund back in 2022,” Qian said.

“As sovereign nations and publicly listed companies continue to enter the market, Bitcoin’s value proposition will only strengthen, likely resulting in significant price appreciation,” he added. 

The US Central Command (CENTCOM) released a statement late Sunday night detailing how two US Navy destroyers intercepted missiles and drones targeting three US merchant vessels in the Gulf of Aden near the Bab al-Mandab Strait, one of the world’s most critical maritime chokepoints.

According to CENTCOM, two Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers, USS Stockdale (DDG 106) and USS O’Kane (DDG 77), successfully neutralized ran-backed Houthi-launched missiles and kamikaze drones. These included three anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBMs), three one-way attack uncrewed aerial systems (OWA UAS), and one anti-ship cruise missile (ASCM), aimed at a flotilla of three US-owned, operated, and flagged merchant vessels transiting the Gulf of Aden over the weekend.

“The destroyers were escorting three U.S.-owned, operated, flagged merchant vessels, and the reckless attacks resulted in no injuries and no damage to any vessels, civilian or US Naval,” CENTCOM said. 

On Sunday morning, the British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations Center (UKMTO), which monitors Middle Eastern waterways, reported an “attack” on a vessel approximately 80 nautical miles south of Aden, Yemen.

There is no word if the vessel attack UKMTO reported on Sunday morning was related to the missile and drone attack on US merchants and warships.  

However, X accounts focused on open-source intelligence showed several fixed-wing US or allied military assets operating in the skies near the incident area. 

OVERLORD02 #USNavy MQ4C TRITON #UAV active Gulf of Aden, returned to UAE 1237zhttps://t.co/sx9LUbeiif pic.twitter.com/sp35y9TQ0P

— nde (@5472_nde) December 1, 2024

P8 🇺🇲#AE6844
Over the Gulf of Aden @Borrowed7Time @HusseinSalmanQ @SR_Planespotter @N214WN pic.twitter.com/CzxsPU5tWq

— 1776Girl (@sipjack1776) December 1, 2024

The Washington Institute’s Noam Raydan reported in October that Houthi rebels launched 80 attacks on commercial ships in the critical maritime chokepoint in the southern Red Sea, sinking two ships and killing four sailors. This has since sparked a global supply chain crisis, pressuring container rates higher. 

In recent days, the Syrian proxy war, which never truly ended, flared up again, as the world is on fire under a weak Biden-Harris regime. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday spoke by phone with his Iranian counterpart Masoud Pezeshkian in talks that focused on the crisis in Syria, at a moment that Turkey-backed jihadists have threatened the central Syrian city of Hama after their shock capture of Aleppo.

“Attention was focused on the escalating situation in the Syrian Arab Republic. The major aggression of terrorist groups and gangs is views as aimed at undermining the sovereignty, political, social and economic stability of the Syrian state,” a Kremlin statement said.

Both Russia and Iran pledged “unconditional support” for Damascus according to Russian state media, but there was also mention of the need to engage Turkey within the framework of the Astana agreement.

“We of course continue to support Bashar al-Assad and we continue contacts at the appropriate levels, we are analyzing the situation,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a press briefing. 

President Pezeshkian on the same day held phone talks with Syrian President Bashar Assad, who just within the last days had visited Moscow, at the moment Aleppo was being attacked.

The attack out of Idlib began on November 27 and within a few short days the major northern Syrian city, and long-time industrial hub of the country, came under the control of Al Qaeda splinter group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) and allied factions. 

An Al Jazeera corresponding reporting from the Syrian-Turkish border has said the HTS advance has slowed after its initial momentum against the Syrian Army.

“Syrian and Russian jets have intensified air attacks in Idlib city and positions in Aleppo as the government of President Bashar al-Assad tries to slow the advance of opposition fighters,” the report says.

“The raids on Monday followed big gains by the opposition over the past few days that has greatly shifted the front line in Syria’s long-running war.” According to more:

“The advances by the Syrian opposition continue on the battlefront, but not as fast as before. The acceleration is down as the diplomatic efforts to discuss the crisis have risen within the last two days,” Koseoglu said.

However, opposition fighters are still on the outskirts of Hama, south of Aleppo. Elsewhere, they have seized most of the city of Tel Rifaat, where Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are calling for a humanitarian corridor to allow Kurds to safely evacuate.

⚡️Syrian warplanes bombed Al Nusra headquarters and operations rooms in Idlib a short while ago. pic.twitter.com/aN26J57oQl

— War Monitor (@WarMonitors) December 2, 2024

In areas of northern Aleppo, Kurds reportedly been engaging the Sunni insurgents in firefights. Dozens of Iran-backed Iraqi militia units have been coming from across the border into eastern Syria, ready to support Syrian national forces.

The HTS terrorists and their political backers say they want nothing less than political transition in Syria, or essentially regime change. This has long been the goal of the anti-Assad drive for well over a decade, also generally supported by NATO intelligence services and the Gulf states.

By Benjamin Picton, Senior Macro Strategist at Rabobank

Pardon?

US stocks rose in shortened trading on Friday, with both the Dow and the S&P500 closing at fresh record highs. Consequently, November marked the best month of the year for the S&P500 as the index finished 5.73% higher, beating February’s 5.17% rise into the silver medal position.

European stocks also rose with the CAC40 up 0.78% and the German DAX up 1.03%. Confidence in Europe was buoyed slightly by a commitment from Marine Le Pen that she wouldn’t bring down Michel Barnier’s government before the weekend over deep disagreements on Barnier’s budget. Despite the stay of execution, the two sides appear to have irreconcilable views over social spending, and its hard to see a situation where Le Pen’s National Rally allows Barnier’s more neoliberal administration to survive into the new year.

Yields on 10-year OATs fell by ~5bps on Friday and French bonds underperformed German Bunds as November CPI data showed a quicker pace of disinflation in France. Nevertheless, the political instability has taken a toll on French borrowing costs as illustrated by outperformance of Greek 10-year bonds on the day and the parity between Greek and French yields (!). Bloomberg reports that some French corporates are now experiencing lower borrowing costs than the national government.

Meanwhile, over in Germany the far-right AfD published a draft policy platform outlining plans to campaign on policies to leave the EU, the Paris Climate Accord and the Euro if the party is successful in forming government at the early election expected in February. The draft policy platform also includes proposals to roll back economic sanctions on Russia and recommission the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines, but still needs to be voted on by AfD members in mid-January. The draft platform marks a break from the manifesto published ahead of EU parliament elections in June, which did not include a firm commitment to take Germany out of the EU.

USDJPY sank below the key 150 level on Friday as Tokyo CPI came in hotter than expected on both the headline and ex-fresh food measure. Even the ex-fresh food and energy measure was up 1-tick on the October reading, prompting a slight lift in futures implied probability of a rate hike at the BOJ’s policy meeting on December 19th. The OIS strip currently has a hike of 16.5bps priced in for the December meeting.

On the geopolitics front the swift dismantling of Hezbollah by Israel, and Russia’s preoccupation with its war on Ukraine appears to have come at great cost for Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. Rebel forces recaptured the country’s second largest city of Aleppo as regime troops were left somewhat stranded by Russian, Iranian and Hezbollah allies and were consequently overwhelmed by the Turkish-backed rebels.

In a situation similar to Yemen, civil war has been raging in Syria for 13 years without attracting a great deal of mainstream interest in Western media. In the case of Yemen, that all changed once the civil war impacted upon freight transits through the Suez Canal, while in Syria the ongoing competition for spheres of influence by Great Powers (Russia, USA, China, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran, Israel etc) provides a useful microcosm of the new global paradigm, but only if one cares to look.

Speaking of new paradigms, Australia’s governing Labor Party struck a deal with the left-wing Greens last week to push through proposed reforms of the RBA. The reforms will create a dual board structure at the central bank, splitting responsibility for monetary policy decisions off from the operational and governance oversight of the bank. Australia’s centre-right opposition parties dealt themselves out of negotiations with the government over the reforms due to fears that the government would use the restructure to “sack (fire) and stack” the monetary policy board with political appointments who might be inclined to cut interest rates ahead of the Federal election due by May next year.

The Greens have been vocal critics of the RBA’s tightening of monetary policy and had previously said that they would only support the government’s RBA reforms if the Treasurer invoked never-before-used powers that allow him to override monetary policy decisions. Treasurer Jim Chalmers had planned to abolish that power and another provision that grants the RBA power to direct bank lending activities. Both of those powers might be useful in a world of increased geopolitical competition where free trade is taking a back seat to state aims and industrial policy is becoming de rigeur again.

Finally, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that President Joe Biden has pardoned his son, Hunter Biden, for federal gun and tax charges despite earlier vows not to intervene. President Biden said that it was clear that Hunter had been “treated differently” by the Justice Department. While this news itself is not immediately market sensitive, Biden’s suggestion that Justice Department prosecutions have not been blind to political considerations in the case of Hunter Biden perhaps risks legitimising President Trump’s claims of unfair prosecution directed against him, and further erosion of confidence in the USA’s institutions of government.

That could certainly have long-term implications for borrowing costs, transmission of monetary policy and a host of other variables.