20,000 words exposed: Behind Wall Street’s mad rush to buy Bitcoin

Author/Source: Mark Goodwin and whitney Webb @BitcoinMagazine

Compiled by: Qin Jin

Following the recent approval of a Bitcoin ETF, BlackRock’s Larry Fink revealed that soon everything will be “ETF-ified” and tokenized, threatening not only existing assets and commodities; The fragmentation of the natural world has reduced most living things to Wall Street financial products, traded on a single universal distributed ledger.

On January 11, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved 11 Bitcoin spot ETFs (including BlackRock’s iShares A day after the IBIT Bitcoin Trust, BlackRock Chairman and CEO Larry Fink joined Bloomberg's David Westin to discuss the world's largest asset manager's entry into the Bitcoin market. Influence. Fink didn't mince words, laying out a clear framework for the company's approach to Bitcoin and BlackRock's intention to replicate ETF-like products for other assets. If we could have an ETF for Bitcoin, imagine what we could do for all financial instruments. Fink went on to talk about Bitcoin itself, saying, I don’t believe Bitcoin will ever become a currency. But I believe it is an asset class.

Bitcoin: a commodity, not a currency

Although The BlackRock chairman has not been shy about expressing other aspects of the potential construction of tokenized digital markets, but these two sentences in particular shed light on how Wall Street's largest financial institutions intend to carefully integrate Bitcoin into the coveted traditional financial system. The way forward. Fink even turned the abbreviated noun "ETF" into a verb, gloating that he wanted to transform the Bitcoin protocol into another speculative commodity - all the efforts of global miners and nodes to decentralize issuance and settlement trust. will be reduced to a piece of paper for its iShares division.

The largest players in the dollar system are scrambling to offer such products to their retail customers because they understand that this axiom will weaken Bitcoin as a The status of a viable currency makes it unable to compete with the daily bargaining and settlement functions of the US dollar. There are many reasons to believe that the U.S. dollar system would benefit greatly from the appreciation of Bitcoin in U.S. dollars, but the benefits would be significantly reduced if the Bitcoin protocol itself could meet the daily transaction needs of billions of people around the world. One of the most common rebuttals to the argument that Bitcoin cannot scale to be an effective currency is the Lightning Network. While the trustless approach of sharing unspent transaction outputs (UTXOs) via payment channels via Hash Time Locked Contracts (HTLCs) is very novel, the endgame of this model of serving billions of people will require locking up massive amounts of liquidity within the network (in terms of bits) currency calculation). A centralized Lightning Network would bring with it many issues around privacy, transaction censorship, and even user access restrictions, not to mention the mathematically realistic demands on Bitcoin’s limited block space when opening a billion channels.

Many fintech companies, such as Lightning Labs and Blockstream, have spent millions of dollars developing tokens using the Bitcoin network. Methods for assets, such as stablecoins like Tether’s USDT, to trade USD-denominated tokens via lightning channels or federated sidechains. While the institutional adoption of Bitcoin that early Bitcoin adopters dreamed of has indeed materialized, the reality and approach of these institutions is clear: Bitcoin must remain an asset, and all efforts to expand it as a currency All should point to the US dollar. Fink himself said in an interview with Bloomberg: "We believe that ETF is a technology, just like Bitcoin is an asset storage technology." Bitcoin spot ETF has encouraged many people in the nearly 15 years since Bitcoin was born. Well beyond the normative practices of typical Bitcoin users. Like entrusting your keys to a custodian, limiting exchanges to U.S. business days and business hours, and aggregating individual risks into collective paper claims managed and overseen by highly regulated brokers.

The anti-state revolution that has dominated most Bitcoin discourse since 2009 is now covered in red, white and blue. As of January 31, MicroStrategy reserves 189,150 Bitcoins, the Department of Justice has seized 215,000 Bitcoins, Block.one reserves 164,000 Bitcoins, Grayscale reserves 487,000 GBTC, and now the newly issued US spot ETF reserves a total of 170,174 Bitcoins . There is no doubt that this is a significant portion of the circulating supply of Bitcoin, not to mention that U.S. investors are likely to hold even more Bitcoin. Bitcoin has already made history for U.S. ETF inflows, as the combined growth in the first two weeks has exceeded the silver spot ETF market in decades combined. Any liquidity required by the institutional Lightning Network that competes with traditional payment providers such as Visa or Mastercard is already securely located within the United States and therefore fully within the regulatory purview of the Department of Justice, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Treasury Department, and the Federal Reserve .

In the S-1 registration statement filed by iShares' Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), there is a clause that states: "If... a U.S. federal or state court or regulatory authorities, or applicable legal or regulatory requirements require the trust to be closed, or force the trust to liquidate its Bitcoins, or seize, seize or otherwise restrict the use of the trust assets, the trustee will dissolve the trust."

While this may appear to be just due diligence for securities issuances, iShares products have recently been liquidated under pressure from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission due to geopolitical developments, particularly Russia's invasion of Ukraine. precedent. In a press release on the same day, the iShares MSCI Russia ETF (ERUS) announced a suspension of fund share redemptions effective August 3, 2022 "pursuant to an exemption order issued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission" to "allow the fund to liquidate its portfolio". Two weeks after the announcement, a press release stated that "BlackRock will begin liquidating ERUS and distributing its current liquid assets to shareholders," minus estimated costs associated with the liquidation and transaction. The Russian military's invasion of Ukraine triggered capital controls and sanctions from relevant U.S. government regulatory authorities, which in turn restricted BlackRock and all non-Russian investors from participating in the Russian securities market. The final clause of the press release stated that due to unknown circumstances, "there can be no assurance that shareholders will receive any liquidating distributions with respect to Russian securities and depositary receipts following the initial distribution."

We don’t need to look too far back in recent history to see that the last time the United States faced its own geopolitical crisis was during the COVID-19-induced lockdowns and special During the stimulus policies spearheaded by the Trump administration. BlackRock was picked by the Federal Reserve to manage three debt purchase programs in the third week of March 2020, not to mention the Bank of Canada hiring Fink’s firm to advise on commercial paper purchases, and the EU banking system giving them help making them sustainable sexual contract. "People like Larry Fink, we're talking to, and that's BlackRock -- we have the smartest people and they all want to do this," Trump told reporters at a White House press conference , he announced the largest economic stimulus package in U.S. history - a $2 trillion bill at the White House press conference.

Before entering the White House, Fink helped Trump manage his finances. After meeting with the Trump administration in 2017, Fink mentioned his previous relationship, he said: "In every meeting we had, he talked about doing more... I don't think 'doing more' meant (becoming) president." Not surprisingly. , just three years later, Trump rehired Fink to manage the stimulus distribution plan with Bank of America, BlackRock’s former majority shareholder. "I believe this will continue to create opportunities for us," Fink said in a 2020 earnings call, referring to government mandates. In a 2011 interview with Bloomberg, Fink even said: "The market doesn't like uncertainty. .In fact, markets like totalitarian governments...Democracies are very chaotic.”

However, BlackRock and Fink's habit of assisting governments in times of crisis began long before 2020, with the asset management company in 2008. It also played a huge role after the crisis. The financial turmoil of 2008 greatly affected the transformation of financial markets, and investors increasingly favored ETFs. According to Bloomberg data, these funds held just $531 billion in 2008 and now hold about $4 trillion in the United States -- a huge increase.

BlackRock's rise is largely due to its strategic embrace of ETFs. The firm initially focused on bonds and had assets under management worth about $1.3 trillion at the end of 2008. In 2009, BlackRock acquired Barclays Global Investors, which was a key step for BlackRock to enter the ETF field. It was during this merger that BlackRock acquired the iShares brand from Barclays. New York-based BlackRock paid London-based Barclays $13.5 billion, doubling assets under management from $1.44 trillion to $3.29 trillion by the time the deal closed in early December 2009 . This made BlackRock the world's largest fund management company, a title it still holds today. Currently, BlackRock is also the world’s largest ETF issuer.

After the outbreak of the 2008 crisis, BlackRock participated in government advisory services, thus consolidating an important partnership with the government. The firm leveraged CEO Fink's expertise in structured mortgage-backed securities to land assignments managing toxic asset portfolios from entities such as Bear Stearns, AIG, Freddie Mac, Morgan Stanley and others. is a field Fink helped pioneer.

As Fink said in 2020:

I started working at First Boston in 1976, and I was the first Freddie Mac bond trader, when the mortgage market was just getting started...In 1982, we had computers on our trading desks. Before this, computers could not be installed on the trading desk. It was clear to me that if we could have computing power on the trading desk, we would have the ability to dissect mortgage cash flow. In 1983, we split mortgages into tranches for the first time. So, we created the first CMO.

Fink began his career on the trading desk at First Boston in 1976 and was quickly named The head of a little-known mortgage-backed securities markets unit that ultimately added an estimated $1 billion to the company's books. He also played a key role in the $4.6 billion GMAC auto loan securitization in early 1986 and was appointed managing director at the age of 31, becoming the youngest member of the company's management committee. In the late 1980s, then-Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker implemented unprecedented interest rate manipulation policies, which implicated First Boston. His department lost $100 million in the second quarter of 1986. First Boston made it clear that when Fink finally left the company in 1988, he had been fired.

Despite Fink's difficult exit from First Boston, Fink's new company, BlackRock, would become the dominant public-private merger in the U.S. dollar system over the next two decades. an indispensable figure. For example, in the summer of 2011, then-U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner was negotiating to raise the debt ceiling. After the deal was reached on the last day of July, Fink was the second number dialed by Geithner's office, after then-Fed Chairman Bernanke. The Treasury Secretary also called Goldman Sachs Group’s then-CEO Lloyd Blankfein and JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon that day. Geithner reportedly made at least "49" phone calls to Fink in the past 18 months - evidence of BlackRock's political clout.

Just like during the global economic crisis in 2008 and 2020, BlackRock has very close relationships with regulators and governments so that it can maximize profits from the private sector . Today, BlackRock finds itself closely aligned with the public sector as the U.S. grapples with the downstream effects of the largest economic stimulus package in history and the U.S. dollar system prepares to embrace Bitcoin in a meaningful way.

Many popular arguments as to why Bitcoin is a better store of value than gold or other precious metals are based on the idea that due to the The auditability of blockchain and the potential price discovery in its markets reject fragmentation, gamification and tokenized re-hypothecation. In the coming tokenized world, the practice of “papering” gold is outdated. "We already have the technology for tokenization today," Fink told CNBC. "If you have a tokenized security... when you buy or sell an instrument, you know it's on a on a jointly created ledger. Market makers like BlackRock entered the Bitcoin space relying on “Number Go Up”-induced amnesia about their long involvement in asset manipulation and a misunderstanding of blockchain technology’s ability to limit fraud. Fink finally said bluntly: "With a tokenized system, all corruption can be eliminated."

Broken Ledger: Market Manipulators

12, 2023 On March 23, just two weeks before the Bitcoin spot ETF was approved, BlackRock listed U.S. banking giants JPMorgan Chase and Jane Street Capital together as "their authorized participants" in a document submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. ”. At the time, this made BlackRock the first to choose who would be responsible for acquiring the necessary Bitcoin spot ETF applicants, which in this case was issued on behalf of iShares. This was seen as a surprising move due to JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon’s recent negative comments on Bitcoin. "I have always been deeply opposed to cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin, etc.," the New York Fed board member told a Senate Banking Committee hearing in December. "The only real use for it is by criminals, drug traffickers... ...money laundering and tax avoidance. He later added: "If I were the government, I would shut it down."

Despite Dimon's public rhetoric, JPMorgan Chase still closed it in October 2023 Launching the Tokenized Collateral Network (TCN) for the first time, the largest U.S. bank by assets facilitated the transfer of tokenized money market funds from BlackRock to Barclays as collateral in over-the-counter derivatives transactions. A few years before it dabbled in blockchain settlements and participated in Bitcoin ETFs, JPMorgan won the rights to manage more than $1 trillion in assets for BlackRock, in a deal struck in January 2017. Taking over this business from Rich Bank, JPMorgan Chase is second only to Bank of New York Mellon in terms of total assets under custody. Subsequently, BlackRock announced in 2021 that it would cooperate with Bank of New York Mellon and Citigroup to custody the assets of its iShares unit, thereby further moving away from State Street Bank's custody business. BlackRock said Citigroup would handle about "40% of the funds," JPMorgan Chase would take 30%, and "BNY Mellon and State Street would each take 15%."

While Fink may believe that blockchain technology will go some way to eliminating corruption in financial markets, he often finds himself at odds with Dimon’s notorious of crime bank corporate pairings. After a three-week trial in late summer 2022, Michael Nowak and Gregg Smith - the former head of JPMorgan's precious metals business and chief gold trader - were indicted by a federal jury in Chicago. The group was found guilty of fraud, manipulation and deception. The U.S. Department of Justice alleges that "JPMorgan Chase's precious metals business operates as a criminal ring" and this is their largest financial fraud case in history. In closing arguments, Chief Prosecutor Avi Perry said, "They have the ability to move the market and they have the ability to manipulate global gold prices."

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission stated in a press release in September 2020:

From at least 2008 through 2016, JPMorgan Chase placed hundreds of thousands of buy or sell orders through numerous traders on its precious metals and Treasury trading desks, including the heads of both desks Certain orders for gold, silver, platinum, palladium, Treasury bonds and Treasury note futures contracts with the intention that those orders will be canceled prior to execution. Through these fake orders, these traders intentionally send out false supply or demand signals in order to deceive market participants into executing orders contrary to other orders they hope to fill. According to the order, in many instances, JPM traders acted with the intent to manipulate market prices and ultimately did create artificial prices.

The order also finds that J.P. Morgan Securities, as a "registered futures commission merchant," "failed to identify, investigate and stop inappropriate Behavior". Despite "numerous red flags, including internal surveillance alerts, inquiries from the CME and CFTC" and even employee allegations of misconduct, JPMorgan Securities "failed to provide adequate oversight to its employees to enable JPMorgan Securities to identify, Fully investigate and stop inappropriate behavior." The CFTC order also states that at the outset of the investigation, JPMorgan "responded to certain requests for information in a manner that caused the department to be misled."

JPMorgan was forced to pay nearly $1 billion to settle fraud charges in the precious metals and Treasury markets, culminating in a $920 million fine since BlackRock shareholders Bank of America was fined nearly $17 billion for its role in the 2008 financial crisis, the largest fine ever paid by a financial institution found to have manipulated markets. Tony West, then Deputy Attorney General, once said: "Today's nearly $17 billion agreement with Bank of America is the largest fine issued by the Department of Justice against a single entity in U.S. history."

Then Attorney General Eric Holder and West revealed on August 21, 2014 that the Department of Justice had finalized a deal with Bank of America Corp. A $16.65 billion settlement, the largest civil settlement with a single entity in U.S. history, resolving claims against Bank of America and its past and present subsidiaries, including Countrywide Financial Corporation and Merrill Lynch Federal and State Claims. As part of the settlement, the bank committed to paying a $5 billion penalty under the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act (FIRREA), the largest FIRREA penalty ever, and pledging to provide data to distressed homeowners. Billion dollars in relief. The Justice Department and the bank settled several ongoing civil investigations involving the "packaging, marketing, sale, arrangement, structuring and issuance" of residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS), collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), and the Bank practices in the underwriting and origination of mortgage loans. The settlement includes a statement of facts in which the bank admitted that it failed to disclose key facts to investors about the quality of the securitized loans when it sold billions of dollars of residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS). The bank also admitted making risky mortgage loans and providing misleading information about the quality of those loans to Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Housing Administration (FHA).

As for BlackRock itself, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission fined the company $2.5 million in October 2023 for "failing to accurately describe investments." ” in addition to a $12.5 million fine imposed on the company in April 2015 for “failing to disclose a conflict of interest of a portfolio manager operating other businesses” and a $340,000 fine “to resolve the dispute.” Allegations that the company improperly used severance agreements in which departing employees were forced to give up their ability to receive whistleblower awards." Outside the United States, the UK Financial Services Authority fined BlackRock nearly £10 million in September 2012 for "failure to protect client funds". This was the second largest fine issued by the Financial Services Authority. --JPMorgan Chase paid £33 million over the same accusations.

BlackRock and its partners have been involved in some of the largest financial crimes in U.S. history, not to mention that in the wake of certain geopolitical developments, the U.S. ERUS suddenly liquidated iShares under pressure from the Securities and Exchange Commission. Fink wants everyone to believe that tokenizing real-world assets via blockchain will eliminate corruption -- something his company and affiliates have been demonstrating for decades that corruption is outright a problem in so-called highly regulated markets. may happen.

In the announcement of JPMorgan’s tokenized collateral network, Tom McGrath, global deputy chief operating officer of BlackRock Cash Management, said : Money market funds play an important role in providing liquidity to investors during times of severe market volatility. When parts of the market face severe margin pressure, the tokenization of money market fund shares as collateral for clearing and margin trading will significantly reduce the operational friction of meeting margin calls. Fink's firm was well-positioned to navigate "severe market volatility" and "severe margin pressure" in both 2008 and 2020. Now it seems to be no exception.

In anticipation of ESG (environmental, social and governance) related issues downstream of energy use, BlackRock has made a sharp shift from shying away from Bitcoin to fully embracing it Blockchain and making it the foundation of the future of financial markets, which BlackRock intends to dominate, looking back at Fink’s recent deals in “green finance” reminds us not to follow their rhetoric, but to follow the dollar itself flow.

Nature, the new gold

BlackRock's manipulation The strategy also applies to its stance on environmental, social and governance investments and carbon markets, two areas Fink had long supported until anti-ESG sentiment prompted him to soften his public stance. Despite Fink's decision to avoid using the term "environmental, social and governance" (ESG), he and BlackRock remain committed to "climate finance" and "green finance" not because of the environmental benefits they may generate , but because it seeks to create new markets and asset classes.

In 2020, BlackRock, JPMorgan Chase and Disney were criticized by a Bloomberg investigative report for their heavy involvement in The Nature Conservancy’s carbon offset projects. More specifically, BlackRock, JPMorgan Chase, and Disney purchase large amounts of credits from The Nature Conservancy to offset their carbon dioxide emissions. However, these credits were ultimately found to be meaningless, as many were tied to forests that were in no danger of being logged, but were simply publicly framed as endangered and therefore "preserved" by the carbon offset credit scheme. In other words, BlackRock and other companies are buying "empty" carbon offset credits so that they can project a "green" posture and put themselves in a very strong position when global carbon markets are implemented in the future (Finland Gram often promotes this).

While The Nature Conservancy is technically a nonprofit environmental organization, it has been a Wall Street bank testing the waters for a range of "green" finance and climate finance Initiatives, including but also far beyond carbon markets. For example, for many years the Nature Conservancy's board of directors was chaired by Henry "Hank" Paulson, a longtime Goldman Sachs executive who served under George W. Bush and during the 2008 financial crisis. Serves as Finance Minister. The company's most recent president, Mark Tercek, also came from Goldman Sachs. The company's current board of directors includes senior executives from JPMorgan Chase, Santander, The Carlyle Group and Goldman Sachs. Until a few years ago, Larry Fink himself was a board member of The Nature Conservancy.

In 2014, the banker-led Nature Conservancy established NatureVest, the group’s influential investment arm, “with the aim of Helping institutional investors and wealthy individuals understand and take advantage of natural market opportunities for investment." NatureVest’s founding sponsor is JPMorgan Chase, which has been actively involved in its activities. The current head of NatureVest, Matthew Arnold, was the head of JPMorgan’s impact and sustainable finance department. NatureVest is one of the major groups pioneering debt-for-nature and debt-for-conservation. These exchange programs, like one overseen by The Nature Conservancy in Belize in 2021, restructure part of a country's debt through "blue" or "green" loans linked to powerful banks such as Credit Suisse , these loans are then used not to fund any real protection, but to force a country to buy private insurance to "mitigate the financial impact of natural disasters" as well as "political risks." Countries participating in these exchange projects brokered by The Nature Conservancy are also forced to adopt marine spatial plans designed by The Nature Conservancy, some of which prevent local people from using coastal ecosystems for essential economic activities and livelihoods, such as artificial fishing. .

In 2021, the same year that The Nature Conservancy implemented its debt-for-conservation program in Belize, Larry Fink publicly stated the need to "reimagine" World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Fink’s remarks during COP26 are directly related to the efforts of the Global Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ) to rebuild the “global financial governance system”, of which Fink is one of the leaders. This "reimagining" ultimately involves an expansion of the "debt slavery" model, for which the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are heavily criticized (and rightfully so) for promoting "sustainable development". Notably, the World Bank calls debt “a key form of financing for the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals,” especially in emerging economies. Most recently, in November, a unit of BlackRock set out a plan to reform multilateral development banks, including the World Bank, which they claimed would "unlock up to $4 trillion in climate change finance."

GFANZ Co-Chairman, current United Nations Special Envoy for Climate Action, and Central Bank Governor Mark Carney, who oversaw the establishment of GFANZ under the auspices of the United Nations for several years He has stated before that it is necessary to restructure the global financial system. In 2019, Carney, then governor of the Bank of England, gave a speech in Jackson Hole, calling for the construction of a new financial system around "multipolarity" and "inclusion." At the end of his speech, he said, "Let us end our malicious neglect of the IMFS (International Monetary and Financial System) and build a system that matches the emerging diversified, multi-polar global economy." After that, Carney made it clear that the new The international monetary and financial system should include new "multipolar" currencies, including CBDC and global carbon markets.

GFANZ, made up of some of the world's most powerful private banks and financial institutions, have been very public about their ambitions. Their goals include merging the powerful private banks and institutions that make up GFANZ with the multilateral development banks (MDBs) to take advantage of the "huge business opportunity" - namely leveraging the existing model of MDBs to trigger market easing through "debt slavery" regulations to promote “green” investments by GFANZ members, all under the guise of promoting “sustainable development”, “multipolarity” and “inclusion”. GFANZ’s ambitions also include creating a global carbon market as part of its wider push to rebuild “global financial governance” by “seizing the new Bretton Woods moment”.

Since COP26 in 2021, both GFANZ and Larry Fink have suffered PR setbacks related to the public and political backlash against ESG investing. However, Fink’s recent comments on ETFs and tokenization, as well as his dramatic shift in views on Bitcoin, suggest that a powerful figure like Fink is still determined to reshape the global financial system, but is looking to do it in a different way. Frame their ambitions to avoid backlash from anti-ESG campaigners and influencers.

Fink's recent comments suggest that they want to structure the new global financial system in a way that is more palatable to the political right, rather than describing their plans as The Net Zero Initiative and other environmental, social and corporate governance related indicators are consistent with the "Planet Imperative" - ​​a way to reduce crime and corruption, and the key to the wealth and finance of the next generation. Despite vastly different frameworks, Fink and his allies’ ambitions in building a new global financial system still rely heavily on climate finance and the tokenization of natural assets.

For example, calls from Fink and GFANZ to "reimagine" the International Monetary Fund and World Bank are rapidly coming to fruition, with these institutions adapting to better to impose new products and models on developing countries. For example, last November, the International Monetary Fund and World Bank joined forces with the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and the Swiss National Bank to tokenize “some of the financial instruments that underpin their global work” (particularly promissory notes). The press release for the partnership, officially titled "Project Promissa", aims to simplify "the process of providing development finance to emerging and developing economies" (GFANZ's target market), as well as implement the provisions issued by central banks and commercial banks. Programmable currencies such as CBDC. A BIS official quoted in the press release commented that the tokenization process allows "policy and regulatory requirements" to be codified into a "common protocol" to deal with money laundering and illegal activities - an apparent addition to the built-in " A tribute to the "Know Your Customer"/"Digital ID" function.

The World Bank in particular has been exploring tokenization extensively with the aim of creating "a modular, interoperable end-to-end digital ecosystem for carbon markets ”. Through its Digital for Climate (D4C) working group, the World Bank and its partners, including the United Nations Development Program and the European Space Agency, seek to build "next-generation climate markets." D4C hopes to concretely achieve this goal by guiding countries to create national carbon registries, based on models produced by the United Nations Development Program and the World Bank that rely on blockchain technology. The data produced by these registries will be "linked, aggregated and harmonized" by D4C's metadata layer - the Climate Action Data Trust (co-founded by the World Bank and Google Philanthropies, among others).

The key to this digital ecosystem is D4C's tokenization engine, which allows "original issuers" to issue tokens that receive carbon credits " Environmental attributes" and conduct transactions on the chain to facilitate transactions. D4C uses the “green” Chia blockchain developed by BitTorrent inventor Bram Cohen. D4C’s “Climate Tokenization Suite” includes a climate wallet (currently an extension of Chia Wallet) for trading carbon credit tokens. It requires an active connection to the Climate Action Data Trust node to function.

As Unlimited Hangout reported last year, the World Bank has been busy developing a global interoperable digital ID database through its ID4D project. The World Bank’s D4C project also aims to establish a globally interoperable registry and digital infrastructure for global tokenized carbon markets. These markets will without exception include digital ID functionality, ostensibly to reduce the “double counting” of carbon. ” and illegal financial activities. As Fink noted in his statement on mass tokenization, there will eventually be “a ledger” where everyone and every asset has its own number. At present, it seems that the "reimagined" World Bank is establishing "decentralized", interoperable databases and other infrastructure, and this "unified ledger" is taking shape. The World Bank announced in December that it planned to launch carbon markets in 15 countries, all in the global south, starting this year. According to the press release, these countries will take advantage of "cutting-edge technologies" and standards developed by the World Bank through D4C and related initiatives.

While the World Bank appears to be leading the development of carbon credit tokenization and carbon credit trading infrastructure, the products offered by the private sector are likely to be closely related to the World Bank D4C The infrastructure developed by other projects is compatible with each other. For example, Ripple, which recently pledged $100 million to "elevate" global carbon markets, is one of the blockchain networks used by the World Bank in its study of the Interledger protocol, which the World Bank called "very promising." ”. Ripple's remittance products have been recognized by the World Bank, and Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen has served as a blockchain technology advisor to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Another private player in the global emerging tokenized carbon market is Flowcarbon, a company backed by Adam Neumann, the WeWork founder ’s founder, infamous for mismanagement and fraud. The company plans to “accelerate the decarbonization process by tokenizing carbon credits and retaining transaction records on the blockchain.” Reuters describes Flowcarbon as a "blockchain-enabled carbon credit trading platform" that has raised millions of dollars through an ICO for the company's "Goddess Nature" token, which "is powered by certified carbon credits from nature projects." Packages provide support". Flowcarbon’s tokenized carbon credits are included in the Gold Standard registry, a carbon credit standard and registry whose data will be collated and managed by the World Bank’s Climate Action Data Trust. Flowcarbon’s CEO said that Flowcarbon’s partnership with Gold Standard will allow Flowcarbon to “create high-integrity tokens backed by the credit of the Gold Standard company.”

However, in order to fulfill Fink’s promise that “everything will be tokenized,” efforts to tokenize nature have gone far beyond carbon. For example, the Inter-American Development Bank, the Latin American arm of the multilateral development banking system, along with the Rockefeller Foundation, helped create the Intrinsic Exchange Group (IEG), the entity behind the Natural Assets Corporation (NAC). According to IEG, Natural Assets Company pioneers "a new asset class based on natural assets and a mechanism for converting natural assets into financial capital." The panel noted that these natural assets "include biological systems that provide clean air, water, food, medicines, stable climate, human health and social potential". Once a new asset management company makes a claim on its confirmed natural assets, it will launch an initial public offering, become an issuer of shares of the natural assets, and then sell the shares to institutional and individual investors, companies, sovereign wealth funds, etc., thereby making Fragmentation of natural assets created by new asset management companies to access natural assets. While the International Environmental Governance Group claims that the funds raised by the new asset assessment will help conservation efforts, they have elsewhere acknowledged that the new asset assessment aims to build on the commodification and fragmentation of the natural world and remove this huge Make huge profits in new asset classes. While the International Environmental Governance Group's collaboration with the New York Stock Exchange appears to have fizzled out in part (at least for now) due to political resistance, NAC pilots are continuing in Latin American countries such as Costa Rica.

Some companies have begun to tokenize these natural assets to promote and accelerate their financialization and fragmentation. For example, Estonia-based venture capital firm Single Earth “tokenizes land, forests, swamps and biodiversity: any area rich in ecological significance.” Companies (and ultimately individuals, they promise) can then "purchase these tokens and own a share of these lands and natural resources, receiving returns on carbon offsets and ongoing ownership." These tokenized forests and other natural assets are backed by Single Earth’s proprietary MERIT token, which media outlets such as Forbes consider “more legitimate” than fiat currencies and Bitcoin. The company's goal is to "make nature the new gold" and monetize it, creating "a captivating combination of environmental impact and economic profit."

Central African Republic is one of several governments that have developed plans to monetize their land and natural assets. One of Africa's poorest countries, the Central African Republic has been working since 2022 to tokenize its land and natural resources, including timber and diamond reserves, and passed legislation last year to advance the effort. The move stems from the country’s digital currency hub, known as the “Sango” project. In addition to efforts to tokenize natural resources that have never been integrated into the financial system, efforts to tokenize the most well-known natural resource commodities such as oil and gas have also made great progress, and some companies have developed oil and gas reserve tokens. trading platform. Renewable energy is also increasingly being targeted for tokenization.

Other venture capital firms such as Union Square Ventures have approached the issue of large-scale tokenization of natural assets from another angle. Union Square Ventures does not claim that tokenizing natural assets will “save the planet” as is commonly the case with organizations such as “Single Earth,” but rather believes that tokenized natural assets will soon “form a "The foundation for a new type of digital collateral" that can be used for "lending, insurance, stablecoins and other on-chain financial products." They suggested that “new stablecoins could be primarily (or entirely) backed by natural assets.” Proposals for such stablecoins have been made before, such as the proposal for the International Monetary Fund to issue a climate currency. The proposal calls for the coin’s collateral pool to be made up mostly of sustainable asset reserves, eventually reaching 55% land and forests, 25% renewable energy initiatives, 15% the top 500 most ESG-compliant companies, and 5% Biotechnology research program coverage.

In January last year, National Australia Bank, one of Australia's largest banks, announced plans to cooperate with an agricultural technology company called Geora to develop a "green" stable currency. The bank calls the stablecoin tokenized deposits, is intended for use in "carbon credit trading activities," and will use blockchain to verify the "green" assets that back the stablecoin. The partnership’s ambitions clearly extend beyond their “green” stablecoin. For example, the bank’s partner Geora envisions a future in which “tokenized agricultural products, agricultural assets (i.e. land ownership, expected harvests, etc.) will be used as collateral for loans,” and the bank plans to use blockchain to “track borrowings. Whether people abide by the green contract of their "green agricultural loan" products.

In fact, Geora's future vision has been realized. A Visa-backed company called Agrotoken bills itself as “the first global agricultural tokenization infrastructure,” offering stablecoins tied to grains grown in Argentina and Brazil. The company urges farmers to "tokenize their grains and pay whatever they want," and farmers can then exchange "agricultural tokens" for "seeds, vehicles, machinery, fuel, services," or even "use them as collateral for loans." .

Existing stablecoins, such as Celo’s USD and EURO stablecoins, already invest a significant portion of their reserves in tokenized natural assets, such as tropical rainforests. The Celo Network has also partnered with the aforementioned company FlowCarbon to create the first real-time liquid market for carbon credits on the chain, aiming to make carbon offsets widely available and transparent. Celo also recently announced a partnership with Circle, whose USDC stablecoin will be launched natively on Celo and is expected to become the network’s gas currency. Celo, which is backed by the likes of Jack Dorsey’s Block, Reid Hoffman, Coinbase Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz, has been vocal about its desire to tokenize real-world assets. Especially one of the major public chains for tokenizing natural assets. For example, Celo co-founder Rene Reinsberg commented as follows after announcing the partnership with Flowcarbon: “From the beginning, we designed Celo to bring natural assets on-chain in a meaningful way, enabling a regenerative financial system. ”.

Tokenized World

We believe that the ETF revolution has just begun... Everything will be ETF-ified... We believe that this is just the beginning. ETFs are the first step in the technological revolution in financial markets. The second step will be the tokenization of all financial assets.

- Larry Fink, January 12, 2024, Bloomberg TV

On January 17, 2024, during a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, USDC stablecoin issuer, Jeremy Allaire, CEO of BlackRock affiliate Circle, referred to comments Fink made on Bloomberg a few days ago about tokenization. This demonstrates confidence that tokenization will emerge in a significant way. This year we will see some of the largest asset issuers in the world issue tokenized versions of these assets. This means a lot.

Whether it is through blockchain technology (such as Circle’s USD tool USDC) or the traditional ETF model (such as iShares’ IBIT), asset tokenization issuance The impact on commodity market pricing cannot be underestimated. In fact, among the risk factors listed in the IBIT S-1 document, it is clearly stated that "the price of Bitcoin may be affected by stablecoins (including Tethe and USDC), the activities of stablecoin issuers, and their regulatory treatment." The S-1 also mentions that an affiliate of the issuer “owns a minority stake in the USDC issuer” and “serves as an investment manager for the money market fund Circle Reserve Fund,” which Circle uses to “hold cash, U.S. Treasury securities , notes and other debt issued or guaranteed by the U.S. Treasury in principal and interest, as well as repurchase agreements secured by such debt or cash," all of which "serve as reserves for the USDC stablecoin."

In the spring of 2022, Circle announced that it had received US$400 million in financing led by BlackRock, which included establishing a "strategic partnership" and becoming a "USDC cash reserve" major asset manager and explore capital market applications for its stablecoin, among other goals.” Allaire told TechCrunch at the time: “The broader strategic partnership we are announcing today with BlackRock will allow us to explore new use cases and make USDC an effective resource within the financial services value chain.” According to BlackRock The Circle Reserve Fund product website on the website has a size of $23.6 billion, including Citigroup (13.45%), Royal Bank of Canada (11.59%), Goldman Sachs (10.41%) and Wells Fargo (10.35%).

Just two days before the Davos 2024 panel discussion, Allaire wrote an article for the World Economic Forum titled "Blockchain emerges from the cold winter." "Come - Stablecoins will forever change the financial system" article, Circle CEO mentioned in the article that traditional banking institutions are increasingly interested in stablecoins, tokenization and blockchain, and BlackRock's Circle Reserve Fund illustrates this point. “The growing interest in blockchain among traditional financial firms reflects the growing embrace of blockchain. In just the past few months, BlackRock, JPMorgan Chase, Standard Chartered, HSBC, Goldman Sachs and other major financial institutions have announced In order to deepen our involvement in blockchain projects."

Fink said in a previous interview with CNBC: "I think we will create digital currency, and we will do this. Use technology. We will use blockchain." Allaire continued to further promote the importance of stablecoins as "a key element underpinning this new Internet financial system," predicting: "In the next few years, the multi-trillion-dollar real economy Activities may occur in the Internet financial system."

In September 2023, Deutsche Bank, in which BlackRock holds more than 6.3% of the voting rights, announced its cooperation with Taurus , Taurus received regulatory approval from the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) to offer tokenized securities to retail customers in January 2024. Notably, retail users can now access accounts within regulated securities markets to purchase digital assets and tokenized securities. “Our core philosophy at Taurus is that Private Markets 2.0 should be digitized so that buying private securities becomes as easy as buying a book on Amazon,” said Yann Isola, head of product. "The growing demand for the tokenization of real-world assets, the fastest-growing segment in the digital asset space, validates this concept.

This is not Regardless of Isola or Allaire’s personal position, the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), the World Economic Forum (WEF), the Bank of New York Mellon and Citigroup all boldly predict that the market share of tokenized assets will increase significantly. According to BCG’s predictions, in the future By ten years’ time, asset tokenization will exceed $16 trillion, accounting for 10% of global GDP. However, the World Economic Forum (WEF) points out that this 10% share will not be reached before 2030; will be reached before 2027. BNY Mellon, Circle’s USDC reserve custodian, said that “because tokenization utilizes smart contracts, it can both manage financial investments and facilitate investment-related transactions. Voting rights and/or ownership”, taking us from the shareholder capitalism model to “integrating into the stakeholder capitalism model”. BNY Mellon succinctly explained the advantages of the tokenization model, and finally put forward the premise that through tokenization, all assets can be fragmented:

Asset tokenization involves the process of digitally representing real, physical assets on a distributed ledger, or issuing traditional asset classes in the form of tokens. In the context of blockchain technology, tokenization is the process of converting something of value into digital tokens that can be used in blockchain applications, with the tokens representing a share of ownership of the underlying asset. This process applies both to tangible assets such as gold, real estate, debt, bonds and art, and to certain forms of intangible assets such as ownership or content licensing. What’s even more exciting is that tokenization can transform ownership, allowing traditionally indivisible assets to be divisible into token form.

Investment bank Citi takes a similar approach to the discussion of tokenization, claiming that by the end of the decade, "lock-in The value of real-world assets on the blockchain will increase 80 times compared to today.” Citibank stated in its March 2023 Currencies, Tokens and Games report that they “forecast tokenized digital securities to reach $4 trillion to $5 trillion by 2030, based on distributed ledger technology (DLT) trade finance will reach $1 trillion.” Citibank claimed that “private/unlisted markets are more suitable for blockchain adoption” due to the “liquidity, transparency and fragmentation it brings”, For public securities, tokenization offers advantages such as “efficiency, collateral usage, gold data sources, and ESG tracking.” The report again mentions fragmentation in a section titled “Tokenization of Traditional Securities,” claiming that “using DLT to record securities transfers can increase the efficiency of existing processes as paperwork and manual processes can be eliminated… Allow fragmentation and use as collateral”.

Citibank went on to clarify that "once this intermediate, semi-formalized 'crossover' state is crossed," tokenizing RWAs via the blockchain will "We get rid of the old state and develop in an ideal direction towards the envisioned end state." The aforementioned end state is further described as “a digitally native financial asset infrastructure that is globally accessible, operates 24/7, and is optimized with smart contracts and DLT-enabled automation capabilities to enable use cases not possible with traditional infrastructure.”

One ​​day after the Bitcoin spot ETF was approved, on January 12, 2024, BlackRock announced the acquisition of Global Infrastructure, one of the world's largest infrastructure fund management companies. Partners (GIP). The agreement includes US$3 billion in cash and approximately 12 million BlackRock shares, with a total value of approximately US$12.5 billion. In the announcement, Fink expressed his thoughts on the long-term financial impact of modernizing through digitization and tokenization of the infrastructure sector:

" Infrastructure represents one of the most exciting long-term investment opportunities as a number of structural shifts are reshaping the global economy. We believe this will continue to grow as governments improve domestic industrial capabilities, energy independence and the onshoring or nearshoring of key sectors. Outsourcing, prioritizing self-sufficiency and security, and the expansion of physical and digital infrastructure will continue to accelerate. Policymakers are just beginning to implement once-in-a-lifetime fiscal incentives for new infrastructure technologies and projects."

Fink made it clear in a conversation with Andrew Sorkin on CNBC that day that "the future of the private market will be infrastructure." His The company's partnership with GIP doubles BlackRock's $50 billion infrastructure assets under management, adding more than $100 billion in client assets across "infrastructure equity and debt." Notable investments by GIP include international airports such as Gatwick, Edinburgh and Sydney, CyrusOne data centres, Suez (water and waste), Pacific Nations and Italy (rail), Peel and Melbourne ports, as well as Clearway, Vena, Atlas and Eolian and a few other leading renewable energy platforms. Following the acquisition, BlackRock also appointed GIP Chairman and CEO Adebayo Ogunlesi to its board of directors. Speaking on CNBC, Fink further elaborated on his rationale for M&A and offered a comprehensive explanation of the future of merging infrastructure and private markets:

I have long argued that deficits matter. Going forward, it will become increasingly difficult for governments to fund deficits on their own balance sheets. We are in conversations with a number of governments about additional public-private deals. We are seeing more and more companies selling assets rather than divisions. Sometimes it’s 100%, sometimes it’s 50%, and then the partnership builds the infrastructure. We all know that as everything digitizes, we need to realign the grid. We all know that more and more countries are focusing on energy independence, and some of them are focusing on decarbonization. Across all these investments, we're talking trillions of dollars. We believe the macro trend going forward will be greater reliance on private capital - retirement assets - to co-invest in infrastructure with companies and governments.

BlackRock continues a trend of private sector investment in infrastructure through pension funds, which is hardly new. In July 2021, after the Biden administration passed a $3.5 trillion infrastructure deal, Alan Synnott, global head of real estate research and product strategy at BlackRock, told Business Insider Commented during the interview, "Direct government spending on infrastructure is an important initiative. It is part of financing the maintenance of existing infrastructure and the development of new infrastructure. In addition, policies, tools and regulations can help promote the private sector Opportunities to participate." Sinnott later added, "In any case, the growth of U.S. pension investments in infrastructure is happening."

GIP's Ogu Nalesi, a former partner at Fink at First Boston, was named lead director to Goldman's board in July 2014 but will step down from that role when the deal closes. Notably, Ogunalesi also served as a member of President Trump’s Strategy and Policy Forum alongside Fink. Other forum members include Jamie Dimon, former SEC Commissioner Paul Atkins, Disney CEO Bob Iger, Boston Consulting Group CEO Rich Lesser, Walmart CEO Doug -McMillan, Boeing CEO Jim McNerney, IBM CEO Ginny Rometty, former member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System Kevin Warsh and Ernst & Young CEO Mark Weinberg.

The forum is chaired by Stephen Schwarzman, CEO and founder of Blackstone Group, who worked for Fink and Bailey in 1988 De's founding team provided a $5 million credit line in exchange for 50% of the company.

Universal distributed ledger

Fink recently The speech about the coming tokenization "revolution" also highlighted how this huge shift will be achieved by everything that will be tokenized and the people who interact with the tokenized economy have unique identifiers and " This is achieved by tracking every transaction on a universal distributed ledger. In particular, he stated:

We believe that the next step will be the tokenization of all assets, which means every stock and every Each bond will have its own CUSIP, the system used to identify most financial products in North America. This will be a general ledger. Each investor, including you and me, will have his or her own number and identification. By tokenizing.... we can get rid of all the issues surrounding bonds, stocks and digital illicit activities. We will achieve instant settlement. Think of all the costs of bond and stock settlement, but with tokenization everything will be instant because it’s just a classified item. We believe this is a technological change in financial assets.

Fink's remarks were clearly a reference to the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs, sometimes called the 2030 Agenda) In recognition, BlackRock has long supported these goals, both in terms of public support and in pressuring companies affected by them to implement SDG policy goals and tracking progress towards their implementation. SDG 16, in particular, contains provisions for the private sector to develop biometric and interoperable digital IDs that comply with technical standards set by the UN-backed ID2020 (now part of the Digital Impact Alliance). This is done to create the illusion of decentralization, when in fact, these different identification systems all need to export data obtained from digital identification systems into a global, interoperable database. This database is likely to be the World Bank's ID4D.

The United Nations document on the Sustainable Development Goals directly links digital IDs to the implementation of what it calls "financial inclusion." Elsewhere, UN officials described improving financial inclusion as an "urgent priority" to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. As previously reported by Unlimited Hangout:

The United Nations Task Force on Digital Financing of the Sustainable Development Goals explores how to "promote and recommend the use of digital Financing ways to accelerate financing for the Sustainable Development Goals”. It issued a "call to action" with the aim of leveraging "digitalization to create a citizen-centric financial system that is consistent with the Sustainable Development Goals". The United Nations Task Force’s “Action Agenda” recommends “building a new generation of global digital financing platform with significant cross-border and spillover impacts.” According to the system, this will of course require strengthening "inclusive international governance". Cross-border spillovers, or "externalities," occur when actions and events in one country have intended or unintended consequences in other countries. It is claimed that cross-border spillovers can be managed by integrating “digital IDs and data markets” into a system of “digital financing consistent with the Sustainable Development Goals”.

Another related United Nations document is titled "People's Money - Harnessing Digitization to Finance a Sustainable Future" , the United Nations describes how long-term funding for the SDGs and related infrastructure should come directly from “people’s money,” that is, ordinary people, after implementing “citizen-centric digital finance aligned with the SDGs.” Bank Account. The document states that the necessary prerequisites for such a system "include core digital connectivity and payments infrastructure, digital IDs and data markets, enabling financial innovation and low-cost service delivery. Universally available, reliable, secure, private, unique digital ID cards are essential to enable people to access digital finance". Other documents related to the implementation of the SDGs and "digital finance aligned with the SDGs" provided by entities such as the Bank for International Settlements call for every business entity, from the largest to the smallest, to have "decentralized "identifiers", that is, DIDs. In other documents, the Bank for International Settlements and the United Nations regard CBDC and digital IDs, including DIDs, as synonymous and critical to achieving the so-called "financial inclusion" agenda. Transactions across different but interoperable CBDCs and their private sector equivalents would be tracked on a single, globally accepted distributed ledger, not unlike a digital ID. In fact, it appears that all transactions will be stored on the same universal distributed ledger.

As Peggy Johnson, co-founder of ID2020 and then a Microsoft executive, said in 2018:

These projects by ID2020 and the United Nations World Food Program tie an individual’s iris biometrics to a digital ID card, digital The ID card is directly connected to the individual's digital wallet, where aid funds will be released, meaning that if refugees want to eat, they must participate in a cashless, biometric-based financial system in which financial transactions and key aspects of identity, including educational credentials and health records, are stored. The World Bank, through its "ID4D" initiative, is preparing to serve as a database in the large-scale development of these infrastructures, so it is likely that the upcoming "digital finance aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals" and "digital ID" systems will also be included The above-mentioned "Climate Wallet" function developed by the World Bank through its "D4C" program. As mentioned earlier, this will enable large-scale participation in tokenized carbon markets. One of the reasons Larry Fink calls for "reimagining" the World Bank is to help "the (energy) transition in emerging markets," which presumably includes promoting the development of carbon markets.

In the past few years, Larry Fink has criticized environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) issues, and asked BlackRock as an important shareholder There is pressure from numerous companies to develop decarbonization policies. However, in the face of pushback from the "populist" right wing of politics, Fink abandoned the pseudo-collectivist rhetoric that justified these policies and even stopped using the term "environmental, social and governance" (ESG). At the beginning of this shift, Fink argued that his motivation for promoting ESG was "the pursuit of long-term returns" rather than politics or ideology. He also described BlackRock's approach to sustainability as being rooted in "stakeholder capitalism," which is built on an interlocking network advocated by Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum. An economic system based on a global public-private partnership network. In the same document, Fink called decarbonization, including voluntary carbon markets, "the greatest investment opportunity of our lifetimes." Fink has since changed his rhetoric around these agendas, from claiming they are necessary to avoid the end of the planet to claiming they are the key to unlocking the next generation of wealth.

The Dialectic of Tokenization

Last week, Argentina Anarchocapitalism leader Javier Milei met with Larry Fink to discuss potential new investment opportunities for BlackRock in Argentina, focusing on infrastructure. Milei came to power campaigning against Argentina's existing establishment and those who had drained the once-rich country into near economic collapse. Whereas BlackRock is one of the "vulture capitalist" entities that sought to become the owner of Argentina's resources and assets after the country was held in debt slavery by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other "development"-focused financial institutions. , so his decision to meet with Fink is all the more bizarre. Fink is not the first such figure to be courted by Milai after his election victory, filling his cabinet with establishment figures from the previous Macri government and even putting the same former JPMorgan executive and central bank governor in charge Economic, mining, agricultural, industrial and other affairs. Dario Epstein, one of Milley's senior advisers, was particularly close to Fink and BlackRock and helped BlackRock with Pampa Energía, Argentina's de facto power monopoly. ) holds a large number of shares.

According to Pagina 12, Fink expressed "interest in purchasing companies from the Argentine government" as Milais continues to promote the privatization of state-owned assets, including energy and Communications infrastructure. BlackRock has already made inroads in Argentina, holding positions in “almost every major company both domestically and internationally, including Tenaris, Banco Galicia, Macro, Telecom, Pampa Energía, McDonald’s and Mercado Libre (the latter owned by Argentina’s richest man) Owned by Marcos Galperin). Before the ninth default in Argentina's history in May 2020, BlackRock was called "one of Argentina's largest creditors" by Bloomberg, holding nearly $1.7 billion in bonds at the time. The default came after Argentina missed its April 2020 repayment deadline and a BlackRock-led group initially rejected a plan to restructure the country's debt. Firms including BlackRock, Ashmore Group Plc., Fidelity Investments and T Rowe Price Group Inc. rejected the restructuring plan, which a spokesman for Fink said sought to "put a disproportionate share of Argentina's long-term adjustment efforts on the table." on the shoulders of international bondholders". This was the only counteroffer made to the South American country.

Despite Milai's fiery rhetoric, the Argentine president's friendly attitude towards "market makers" appears to have been the result of his invitation to speak at last month's World Economic Forum annual meeting. Part of the reason for speaking. Although Milley was seen as rebuking the establishment at the World Economic Forum, his remarks were welcomed by those in power. According to journalists who attended Milley's speech, attendees at the World Economic Forum - which included people whom Milley called "heroes" of the capitalist world who were simply led astray by neo-Marxists and their allies - were very Enjoy this superficial war of words. One reporter wrote of Milley's speech: "The elites in Davos were taught to lose their way, and they loved it." One World Economic Forum attendee who was particularly optimistic about Milley was the second-in-command at JPMorgan Chase. Daniel Pinto, his deputy, told the Financial Times that Milley - who has several JPMorgan alumni in senior positions in his government - is doing all the right things in the economy.

Millay's speech did not seem to "destroy Davos" as some said, but instead urged the forum to emphasize the private sector in the public-private partnership model that the World Economic Forum has been advocating. department. Arguably, despite the fact that public-private partnerships are known to be one of the most effective models for corporate capture of regulators and other government agencies, the World Economic Forum tends to make rhetoric that appeals to those on the left who support the public sector. Can the "market-friendly" Milley help the World Economic Forum usher in a new era of "trustworthiness" and replace its "sober" rhetoric with a "liberal" perspective? Time will tell, but World Economic Forum director Larry Fink is already making the shift.

It is worth noting that, represented by Millay, the World Economic Forum has begun to provide a platform for political speech and promote it. Does Klaus Schwab suddenly not care about digital identities and programmable currencies? Has Fink recently woke up and decided that carbon credits and typical environmental, social and governance discourse are no longer worth promoting, despite the inherent control it gives infrastructure maintainers over the masses? Liberalism, anarchism, and capitalism have become meaningless partisan buzzwords that guide the ill-informed right-wingers to promote corrupt corporate and private grabs of the public sector. “Long live the free market!” they cheered. Milley put a former JPMorgan Chase and Deutsche Bank executive in charge of the central bank and reached out to outside financiers to further dollarize Argentina. “Down with socialism!” they cheered. Private companies used stablecoins to spread treasury Ponzi schemes across the global South while tokenizing land and natural resources.

You will allow BlackRock to use Americans' retirement funds to build "Tokenized EarthTM" under the dialectical excuse of owning libertarians. )’s surveillance system, unknowingly linking all aspects of ownership to centralized databases, walled identity gardens, and fractional reserve assets transmitted and issued on Wall Street banks’ private blockchains. Warring factions within Davos socialites squabbled over the spoils but never opposed the plans. Achieving the 2030 Agenda requires collusive cooperation and compromising businesses. Free market capitalism is not to be confused with nepotism or cartelism, which is the model of “capitalism” embodied by Fink and his Wall Street colleagues.

The new tokenized economy must bring new prosperity to individuals under the guise of free markets, not misunderstood user agreements, biometric certificates and Digital serfdom is paved with false collectivist rhetoric. Snap a selfie, submit your Social Security number and date of birth to unlock a certified old-growth forest in your backyard. The new face of economic freedom is your face, sent along with selected credentials to a privately owned database: one ledger to rule them all. Your existence is reduced to a JSON string, your world property is regulated and demarcated by CUSIP, but at least you get half the shares in BlackRock's latest Moss-On-A-Rock ETF. The “for the greater good” narrative of the post-Occupy liberal economic rebound has lost its relevance, replaced by the “liberalism” of tokenized private capital. This is the enterprise-captured molecule: a new and improved universal distributed ledger of protons in fragmented atoms—provided by Larry Fink and his tokenization company.

Original link:

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/tokenized-inc -blackrocks-plan-to-own-the-fractionalized-world-