The last two calamities that investors have traded – pandemic and Ukraine – both found a bottom in equities well before they were over.
That is all I am going to say about that.
new @NewYorker column: I talked with the Iranians behind the viral AI LEGO videos that are turning the war into absurdist cartoons and winning American fans by making fun of Trump
Wife, who's a biologist, says the biggest goal of everyone in Iran who studied medical sciences, biology, and related sciences was to work, research, and study at the Pasteur Institute.
A biologist friend says they feel paralyzed. And similar stories.
Who is trying to murder the negotiations?
You get one guess.
BREAKING: US oil prices surge above $112/barrel, now up +13% on the day.
BREAKING: Iran has told the Philippines that it will allow Philippine-bound and Philippine-flagged ships to pass through the Strait of Hormuz.
This comes just 9 days after the country declared an "energy emergency" in one of their worst energy crises in history.
Sehr guter Text: "Ein Krieg erzwingt die Unterordnung der Wirtschaft unter die Bedürfnisse des Militärs. Es beansprucht immer größere Teile des Sozialprodukts für seine Bedürfnisse."
The latest round of quantum panic is brought to you by the rising star VC that invested in a company that helps blockchains against the quantum “threat,” and an Ethereum guy posing as a Bitcoin security researcher.
Meanwhile, real progress is being made. Slow and steady.
J.D. Vance im April 2025: „Ich denke, viele europäische Nationen hatten mit ihrer Kritik an unserem Einmarsch in den Irak Recht. Ehrlich gesagt, wenn die Europäer etwas unabhängiger und etwas entschlossener gewesen wären, hätten wir vielleicht die ganze Welt vor dem strategischen Desaster des von den USA angeführten Einmarsches in den Irak bewahren können… Ich will nicht, dass die Europäer einfach alles tun, was die Amerikaner ihnen sagen. Ich glaube nicht, dass es in ihrem Interesse liegt, und ich glaube auch nicht, dass es in unserem Interesse liegt.“
Ein Google-Team hat nachgewiesen, dass Quanten-Computer die Bitcoin-Verschlüsselung mit wesentlich weniger Aufwand knacken können als gedacht. Jetzt ist die Aufregung groß in der Bitcoin-Szene. @PhilippMattheis fragt: Wie ernst ist die Bedrohung wirklich?
https://www.tichyseinblick.de/podcast/tichys-boersenwecker-am-2-april-2026/
"For oil tankers, the starting price in the negotiations is typically around $1 per barrel of oil, paid in yuan, or #stablecoins — cryptocurrencies pegged to the value of hard currency."
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-04-01/strait-of-hormuz-ships-paying-iran-yuan-and-crypto-tolls-for-safe-passage
Trumps Rede an die Nation hört sich an, wie eine "Zusammenfassung seiner Posts auf Truth Social der vergangenen Wochen"...
Auf jeden Fall: Keine Deeskalation. Ölpreis steigt wieder
From “liberating” the people to blasting them “back to the Stone Age”. Yes, your objectives have always been clear and your execution (of 157 school girls) flawless.
Trump right now in his live address: "We're going to hit [Iran] extremely hard over the next 2 to 3 weeks, we're going to bring them back to the stone ages where they belong."
Pure savagery. And textbook genocidal: saying the Iranian people "belong" in the stone ages means he's targeting them as a people, which is the definition of genocidal intent.
That's where letting Gaza happen without consequences gets you...
Also pretty ironical to call others primitive while sounding like a barbarian king on bath salts.
Tonight's situation is incredibly puzzling.
In President Trump's address to the nation just now, he effectively reread many of his recent social media posts out loud.
Between threatening Iran's power plants, saying the Iran War would last 2-3 more weeks, and calling out NATO, there was nothing new.
Yet, the market is now trading like the Iran War is ramping up for another month-long escalation.
Why? Because he didn't explicitly de-escalate.
Ironically, President Trump's address to the nation just now has imposed more pressure on the US through the market's reaction.
The market, which was finally beginning to show some signs of calming, is now highly agitated, with US oil prices back to $104/barrel, stocks down sharply, and the bond market melting down again.
Ironically, President Trump is now back to solving the problem he fixed earlier this week:
How will he contain the market?
Getting war on terrorism vibes
BREAKING: The IRGC is now charging tolls, with rates starting at $1 per barrel of oil, on ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz, paid in Chinese Yuan or stablecoins, per Bloomberg.
The process includes:
1. To pass, ship operators must first contact an intermediary company linked to the IRGC
2. They then provide their vessel’s ownership, flag, the cargo manifest, destination, crew list, and transponder information
3. The intermediary then passes the file onto the IRGC Navy’s Hormozgan Provincial Command for background checks to ensure no link to the US or Israel
4. Iran has a ranking system of 1 to 5 for nations, with ships from countries that are seen as friendly more likely to get better terms
Once the toll is paid, the IRGC issues a permit code and route instructions for the ship to pass.
The shares of Louis Vuitton's owner, LVMH, fell by almost 30% over the quarter due to the war in Iran and a drop in sales in Dubai.
This is the worst result in the company's history since 1989 even in 2008-2009.
Ferrari's shares also fell, as the company suffered from logistical problems that led to a decline in sales.
The arrest of dozens of IRGC-linked money changers in the United Arab Emirates is one of the most serious blows yet to Tehran’s sanctions-evasion network, laying bare how heavily the Islamic Republic has depended on Dubai as an economic lifeline.
Sources familiar with the matter told Iran International that UAE authorities detained dozens of money changers tied to financial entities linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, shut down associated companies and closed their offices.
According to @miadmaleki , a former senior US Treasury sanctions strategist and now a senior fellow at FDD, the UAE is not just one sanctions-evasion hub among many.
“The UAE is the single most critical jurisdiction in the Iranian regime’s sanctions-evasion architecture,” Maleki said.
Dubai’s exchange houses have long given the IRGC and the Quds Force access to the hard currency needed to finance proxy groups including Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis and militias in Iraq.
The detention of trusted IRGC-linked money changers threatens networks that took years to build.
“These trust-based sarraf (money changer) relationships, bank accounts and corporate structures are not quickly replaceable,” Maleki said.
https://www.iranintl.com/en/202603319804
We’re are at the point of history where most April Fool’s jokes are indistinguishable from totally real things that happen regularly now. 😅
Just when you think you're getting the hang of Germany, @derspiegel puts duzen on its cover at the precise moment a security, diplomatic, energy and economic crisis heads Germany's way.
Omg the speaker of Iran's parliament is Do Your Own Research posting.
COLUMN: The farming industry is better prepared to handle the shockwaves of a war than when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2002.
The usual caveats apply: A prolonged conflict would change all. But for now, there’s not risk of a food crisis in 2026.
@Opinion
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2026-04-01/iran-war-are-we-headed-for-another-food-price-crisis?utm_source=website&utm_medium=share&utm_campaign=twitter
BREAKING: Iran has struck Amazon, $AMZN, servers hosting Amazon Web Services in Bahrain.
Meanwhile in Germany:
The Manufacturing PMI, measuring sentiment among German manufacturers, rose to the highest level since May 2022, or almost four years.
A near U-turn in the willingness to focus on things like bureaucracy, competitiveness, energy-security, and defense, and less on climate, to stoke some old-fashioned 'animal spirits.
Lockdowns und Fahrverbote - was kommt da auf uns zu? Und was bringt das?
Heute im Börsenwecker👇
Since Exxon was kicked out of the Dow Jones "Industrial" Average and replaced by Salesforce in August 2020, Exxon is up 325%. Salesforce is down 32%
Some thoughts on the latest flood of news re: the Iran war.
1) The Pakistani-Chinese peace plan has little actual content and addresses nothing needed by either side. But it shows people are rightly starting to panic, as we knew they would at this time, as the consequences of what could be about to happen economically become crystal clear.
2) Trump has made equally clear, again, that the war ends in 2-3 weeks, in line with our base case - but also still 2-3 more weeks away, with an escalation in attacks likely during that window.
3) The Israelis and U.S. agree most of their key targets of regime power and military-industrial and nuclear sites will be taken out by then.
4) Leaving Hormuz as an Iranian tollway is a geostrategic disaster for Trump and the West. The GCC and Israel wouldn’t accept it, and violence could rumble on there, threatening energy flows longer term.
{https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/uae-iran-war-strait-of-hormuz-9836ecbb}
5) Despite threats to ‘blow it up and walk away’ re: Hormuz, this therefore still looks like a negotiating tactic making clear nobody can say, “Not our war,” and everybody has to say, “Our ‘Peacekeeping’.”
6) Do NOT believe all that you read. Trump may have struck an emerging deal with pragmatic Iranian elements —and NOT necessarily frontmen like Ghalibaf— who are prepared to ‘do a Venezuela’ in the background…. **but it only works in the background** until they have cemented power in a fluid fog of war situation.
7) Obviously, there are <<huge>> fat tail risks here:
🖐️ A TACO that is the whole enchilada for the U.S. and the West in term of negative geopolitical and geoeconomic outcomes.
🤚 A war that grinds on and on and/or escalates to suck in many others - and becomes a true global energy crisis.
However, what we are seeing so far is still —even if behind the scenes rather than served on a silver platter to people who want their Middle East geopolitics spoon-fed— in line with our base case of serious pain now but then a slow return to ‘normality’ on inflation… if not in geopolitics.
BREAKING: Iran’s Foreign Minister Araghchi says what is happening between Iran and the US is an exchange of messages, either directly or through "friends," not "negotiations," per Bloomberg.
Details include:
1. Araghchi says he is receiving messages from US Middle East Envoy Steve Witkoff
2. Message exchanges are happening within a "defined" framework across government and under the supervision of Iran’s national security council
3. Araghchi says Iran has NOT sent a response to the US "15-point" proposal
4. Araghchi says Iran has not made any decisions regarding negotiations but has some remarks and Iran’s conditions are "clear"
Talks appear to be slowly materializing.
Whether the US leaves now or later, Iran has achieved a decisive and irreversible strategic victory.
The US will never reclaim its bases in the Persian Gulf region, and they will never again be able to exert control over the Strait of Hormuz.
And the Arab sheikdoms are doomed.
My best guess is that we have bottomed now.
At least it is typically peak fears when WSJ finally catch up on an angle that FinTwit (and I) have been talking about for a month
Ein Google-Team hat nachgewiesen, dass #Quanten-Computer den #Shor-Algorithmus schon mit wesentlich weniger Aufwand knacken können als bisher gedacht. Eine Bedrohung für #Bitcoin? Im DeepDive von BlingBling geht es genau um diese Thematik:
https://blingbling.substack.com/p/deepdive-quantum-computing
Saw some people panicking or asking about quantum computing's impact on crypto.
At a high level, all crypto has to do is to upgrade to Quantum-Resistant (Post-Quantum) Algorithms. So, no need to panic. 😂
In practice, there are some execution considerations. It's hard to organize upgrades in a decentralized world. There will likely be many debates on which algorithm(s) to use, resulting in some forks.
And some dead project may not upgrade at all. Might be a good to cleanse out those projects anyway.
New code may introduce other bugs or security issues in the short term.
People who self custody will have to migrate their coins to new wallets.
This brings to the question of Satoshi's bitcoins. If those coins move, then it means he/she is still around, which is interesting to know. If they don't move (in a certain period of time), it might be better to lock (or effectively burn) those addresses so that they don't go to the first hacker who cracks it. There is also the difficulty of identifying all his addresses, and not confuse with some old hodlers. Anyway, it's a different topic for later.
Fundamentally:
It's always easier to encrypt than decrypt.
More computing power is always good.
Crypto will stay, post quantum.