Russians Coups & Monday Blues
207: Need to Know Intelligence
Hope everyone had a solid weekend. The last several days have been marked on the global stage by a very sudden and extremely confusing”coup” attempt in russia by the Wagner Mercenary Army.
Safe to say we’ve entered a new phase in the Ukraine War that should have some interesting implications on the way this conflict turns out, how markets react to a lull or larger development, and how our leaders in West deal with the macro uncertainty ahead of a major US election.
Crypto continues to remain at elevated levels on the heels of Wall Street ETF filings, and the Us political race is heating up with RFK Jr. as a more likely contender for the Democrats.
Markets
Monday is off to a hot start with tech stocks doing relatively well — AAPL 0.00%↑ reached a new ATH and TSLA 0.00%↑ is showing some solid strength to start the week.
European markets are displaying a varied performance following a challenging week, marked by their most severe decline in months. Similarly, Asian stocks concluded on a negative note. Meanwhile, oil and various other commodities are experiencing slight gains as traders monitor the potential for additional unrest in Russia following the Wagner uprising.
CEO of BlackRock Larry Fink says bitcoin an "evolve into a global market."
Data on PCE inflation and consumer confidence is due to release this week
Hong Kong’s largest bank, HSBC, to offer Bitcoin ETFs to customers - it is the first bank in Hong Kong to do this (Bitcoin Magazine)
The Swiss National Bank is to issue a wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC) on Switzerland's SIX digital exchange.
Westpac Bank in Australia is reportedly restricting the amount of cash that customers can pull out of ATMs to $1,000 AUD per day, which is about $667 USD (Unusual Whales)
PacWest Bancorp’s stock rose Monday after the bank said it agreed to sell a $3.5 billion lender-finance loan portfolio to Ares Management Corp. in a deal expected to provide $2 billion before transaction costs for the bank (MarketWatch)
On Friday at 08:00 UTC some 150,633 bitcoin options contracts worth $4.57 billion and 1.23 million ether contracts valued at $2.3 billion will expire on Panama-based Deribit exchange, which controls over 85% of the global options activity (CoinDesk)
Token issuers in Japan no longer have to pay corporate taxes on unrealized cryptocurrency gains, according to a law revision by the National Tax Agency on June 20 (Cointelegraph)
Bitcoin ETF BITO had its biggest weekly inflow in a year as it hits $1 billion in assets (Bitcoin Magazine)
Goldman Sachs Group has begun firing about 125 Managing Directors globally as the firm aims to reduce its headcount amid a slowdown in deals, Bloomberg has reported.
Pfizer stock falls over 5% after halting the development of an "experimental" obesity drug over safety concerns (Disclose TV)
Student loan debt in the US totals nearly $1.8 trillion - payments are set to resume this fall, per CNBC/UW
Investors are now betting the Bank of England will raise interest rates to 6.25%, the highest level since 1998, per Bloomberg (UW)
Bybit has been given the greenlight to operate in Cyprus (BlockWorks)
As far as traditional equities go I have been adding MSFT 0.00%↑ PLTR 0.00%↑ AMD 0.00%↑ and META 0.00%↑ .
Besides those core long term holds and regular dividend/retirement contributions I am not looking at anything too closely at the moment besides BABA 0.00%↑ and a few other Chinese names.
Crypto is our main focus right now as we prepare for a broader leg higher and the short term future of ETF filings and lawsuits from the SEC.
We are the #5 ranked paid substack for crypto.
We covered most of the deeper concepts on crypto worth exploring in our recent paid posts Wall Street Wants Your Internet Coins and How to Protect Your Crypto & Profit In The Next Bull Market. If you’re up to it consider subscribing for access for less than a venti milkshake from Starbucks per month.
Bitcoin and Ethereum in my opinion look great right now — they are showing signs of consolidation and seem to be quietly burning off RSI from the overbought rip of last week without dipping substantially. Seems a leg higher up could be coming this week on the back of news relating to further adoption and financial developments in the traditional finance industry.
One of the most encouraging catalysts for crypto an Bitcoin outside of the institutional ETF announcements and sentiment improvements of the last week or so, is the trend we are seeing in terms of long term holder’s and distribution. For example according to data from Glassnode put forth by Will Clemente on Twitter, the number of addresses holding at least one bitcoin has surpassed 1,000,000.
Supply demand is especially interesting to watch with Bitcoin given it is decentralized and limited in supply.
You can probably guess what is going to happen when the largest insitutions AND retail scramble to position themselves in the coming months before the halvening.
While I can’t predict short or medium term movement on alt coins and other crypto protocols, I remain staunchly bullish on Bitcoin in the coming years and think that everyone should have some exposure in the event it gets really wild with Wall Street and other major countries getting involved in the space.
Global News
The big news this past weekend was that a coup unfolded in Russia driven by the commander of the Russian Mercenary group known as Wagner. Markets are off to a tentative start this week likely still digesting the geopolitical uncertainty and political discourse is once again ramping up stateside as more presidential hopefuls enter the race in 2024.
US intelligence agencies briefed senior officials on Wednesday of last week that Yevgeny Prigozhin was preparing to take action against senior Russian defense officials, according to Bloomberg.
Russia's foreign minister says the country's agencies are investigating whether Western special services were involved in the Wagner rebellion (Spectator Index)
Mortality rates are lowest among the unvaccinated in all age-groups, according to recent reports by the UK Government (UK Government agency, (the Office for National Statistics )
The New York City Department of Environmental Protection has drafted new rules that would order eateries using the decades-old baking method to slice carbon emissions by up to 75% (NYPost)
Iran’s president spoke to Putin recently and expressed ‘full support’ for the Kremlin
French President Emmanuel Macron told French news outlet Le Provence that the recent events in Russia revealed the "fragility of both its armies and its auxiliary forces like the Wagner group” (Kyiv Independant)
World leaders have been instructed by the World Economic Forum (WEF) to adopt a fresh global taxation system specifically designed to combat the effects of climate change. The plan was revealed by French President Macron at the Summit for a New Global Financing Pact in Paris on Friday.
The internet lost their minds this weekend after pictures surfaced of Democratic Presidential candidate RFK Jr. ripping weights and bench press surfaced.
RFK’s popularity is growing in the wake of the Joe Rogan interview and due to some of his classical democratic platforms and hot takes on vaccines and other key issues. The Biden campaign and far left are likely not too pleased with these developments and the drift RFK is taking from traditional modern democrat positions — will be interesting to see how they intend to handle him as we get closer to 2024.
These pesky coincidental environmental and infrastructure disasters just keeping happening across the US. A tanker transporting potentially explosive ammonium nitrate overturned in Hagerstown, Maryland, forcing businesses within 1,500 feet to evacuate. On to pof that — authorities reported this weekend that ongoing efforts are underway to address the aftermath of a train derailment into the Yellowstone River in Montana, where there is a possibility of hazardous materials being involved.
This incident resulted in several tankers being submerged in the Yellowstone River and causing severe damage to the railway segment of the Yellowstone Twin River Bridges in Stillwater County, Montana. It remains unclear whether the derailment caused the bridge to collapse or if the collapse was a contributing factor to the derailment, as per official statements.
According to KC Williams, the director of Emergency Management for Yellowstone County, three of the derailed railcars were transporting hot asphalt, while four others were carrying molten sulfur, as reported by ABC News.
Certainly something to keep an eye out for — as these recent developments on top of the highway collapse, food processing fires, and other recent disasters is either just getting more media coverage OR happening much more frequently.
The latter explanation opens up some troubling implications that relate to national security and potentially even sabotage efforts to cripple US infrastructure and damage biomes. More on that this week.
So What is Wagner?
for those of you that aren’t geopolitics or military nerds — you’re probably wondering what or who the hell Wagner is. The Wagner Group, also known as PMC Wagner, is regarded as a Russian paramilitary entity that operates as a private military company, encompassing a network of mercenaries and functioning as an unofficial private army under the leadership of Yevgeny Prigozhin, a businessman previously associated with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Wagner is notorious for their aggressiveness and “unofficial” mandates passed down by the Russian MOD (Ministry of Defense) and the Kremlin. The group has been used across Africa and the Middle East for years and is infamous for a wide range of humanitarian atrocities and killings.
In a significant event occurring towards the conclusion of March, the Malian Armed Forces (FAMa), with the assistance of Wagner forces, perpetrated a mass killing of over 300 civilians in the central town of Moura in Mali. This five-day siege marked the most severe atrocity in the ongoing conflict in Mali, which has persisted for a decade.
The main thing you need to understand about contractors or mercenary groups is that they are generally used for missions or mandates that governments dont want direct links to — in the event they are sloppy or messy from a PR standpoint. BlackWater was an American PMC group that got caught up in an infamous event in Iraq known as the Nisour Square massacre in which civilians were killed.
Wagner operates within loose rules of engagement and deceny — the group is comprised of many former criminals and has been accused of endless crimes involving rape, torture, murder, and executions across Mali, Libya, and the Central African Republic.
Still — Wagner has risen to become a prominent political force and piece of the Russian fighting machine in Ukraine where the group fought endlessly to win the battle for the key city of Bakhmut.
Wagner has previously come into contact with ANTO and Western force — though generally kept on the hush hush.
On 7 February 2018, a military conflict known as the Battle of Khasham, alternatively referred to as the Battle of Conoco Fields, took place in the Deir ez-Zor Governorate of Syria.
This engagement was part of the ongoing Syrian civil war and occurred in the vicinity of the towns of Khasham and Al Tabiyeh. As the battle escalated according to several reports — US special forces troops utilizing air support swiftly counteracted Syrian and Russian PMC movements leading to some estimates of 200+ Wagner troops dead.
Wagner is the tool Russia uses for some of it’s dirtiest work it wants no official ties to.
Because of their notoriety it was particularly interesting that they were the ones to stage the short lived coup we saw over the weekend.
The Coup
The alarmism and chaos on social media that followed the Russian coup news from Wagner is a great example of some the issues we are going to see in the future in regards to true misinformation, stale content, and potentially even AI generated or fraudulent content meant to mislead or serve propaganda purposes. It’s a good reminder that we need to be pragmatic and objective as events unfold
Something very real clearly happened in Russia. Wagner definitely moved into Rostov and reports indicate along the way they killed roughly 12 Russian pilots with surface to air missiles. After claims made by Wagner that Russian troops had shelled their own camps, the move began to take Rostov and allegedly move to Moscow.
Security forces were scrambled and Russia went into high alert.
The PMC army made the entire trip from the Ukrainian front to Rostov claiming they were going to move on Moscow and that they were being welcomed with open arms by regular Russian elements and even special units like FSB. They brought BTRS (a type of armored personnel carrier), tanks, toyotas, technicals (heavy machine guns fixed to the pack of trucks) and anti air capability.
Up until Saturday night it looked like there could be some serious engagements about to take place. Imagine being a Russian officer or soldier and trying to figure out which side of the coup you want to be on.
It should be noted that Wagner and other Russian elements have a storied and historical use of using misinformation and deception to cloud troop movements, strategic initiatives, and other military organizational shifts. So this very well could have been an attempt to confuse the West and Ukraine on the true state of Russian military standing and unficiation.
This entire episode this past weekend could be a psy op (psychological operation) - for those who might somehow still be unfamiliar with this term (idk how that’s possible if you read arb letter) psy ops are events, false flags, and operations that aim to confuse or psychologically manipulate the enemy or a population.
For example - the Russians may very well have had an agreement before hand that Prigozhin needed to eventually stand down. Why do that? Well the Russians could be trying to feign disorder or chaos to make them appear week.
Conversely maybe the meme really is true and the CIA or NSA paid off Wagner to revolt — the “accounting error” from the State Department and DOD had to go somewhere.
Maybe they paid them and once the direct deposit hit, Wagner called off the mutiny. After all they are soldiers of fortune….. and it wouldn’t be the first time or even the 50th time the CIA has funded rebel groups or armies to overthrow governments.
There are many possibilities and I think it’s important to keep any of these potential scenarios in mind when examining what happened since it’s certainly suspicious and odd as a whole. Perhaps it was even an effort between Putin and Prigozhin to weed out individuals who cannot be trusted — taking stock of those who turned during the “coup” and removing them quietly from the ranks of the Russian military.
With recent revelations that the Ukrainian counter offensive wasn’t as successful as many thought it would be - the war is entering a new phase. Regardless of which side you support in this war, we’ve been fed western and nato propaganda for most of it (which is to be expected).
So moving forward we should all be hyper vigilant and ask ourselves the following questions when something major appears to be happening:
Who is reporting the information
What could it mean (from Russian perspective vs. Western)
Is there video and confirmed evidence of movement, action
Could the narrative/story be a psy op or misleading information
What’s the state of the conflict TODAY, the true state, not propoganda
As of now reports are saying that Prigozhin is in Belarus. Russian military blogger Boriz Rozhin is claiming that field camps have started to be built in Belarus to accommodate upwards of 8,000 Wagner PMC fighters. Ironically in all of this chaos, Wagner is now being deployed close to Ukraine’s northern border. Certainly interesting and worth watching as the Ukraine front shifts back and forth by the day and the counteroffensive loses steam. Kind of reminds me of when I use to play Age of Empires as a kid. It was a pretty common tactic to attack or cause confusion at a point of your enemies defenses far from where you were staging the real assault…..
Anyone else think it’s odd that the coup lasted 48 hours, the PMC group downed 13 Russian aircraft, threatened to dethrone Putin, and march on Moscow and now they’re simply pardoned and excused free to go their own way?
Bizzare is an understatement.
We’d like to formally congratulate Wagner on their successful Series A funding round.
We joke we joke.
As of now the immediate future of the revolters is still unclear though reports indicate that Prigozhin is going to Belarus.
Deputy Gurulyov stated that the Wagner mercenaries will bear responsibility for the downed aircraft and the dead soldiers of the Ministry of Defense.
"There is a law of the Russian Federation. Our military personnel died, they died from the blows of specific individuals. Who gave the command, who launched the rocket? Therefore, be that as it may, no matter who runs away and no matter where they are, I believe that the Investigative Committee will thoroughly deal with this issue and make a decision," said Gurulev, a member of the State Duma Defense Committee.
Former SEC Chair Jay Clayton had the following to say on CNBC recently about the lack of effectiveness of sanctions against Russia.
"What's interesting to me is 50,000 [Wagner Group] troops...where is that cash coming from?...The world has found a way to get the resources that Russia is producing and pay for them. Where else would this money be coming from?...You have to have partnerships around the world for sanctions to be effective in global markets. And this is a lesson that we're learning here. And it is a key takeaway for the future."
(Chief Nerd Twitter/CNBC Interview).
This suggests Clayton amongst others believes that the funding of the Wagner group may lie with less than stand up organizations and individuals.
For now the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sergey Lavrov announced that the Wagner PMC Group will continue to conduct Training and Combat Operations in Mali and the Central African Republic under the “Blessing” of the Russian Ministry of Defense according to OSINT Defender on Twitter.
So the future of Wagner remains unclear in the aftermath of the failed “coup” but one thing’s for sure, Russia does not intend to completely sever ties to the infamous PMC group.
Tomorrow we will drop our deep dive on the major social and political trends that will influence the 2024 election in the US as well as several situations to monitor that could lead to market and societal turmoil in the next year and a half.
2024 is going to be absolutely bonkers are several fronts and we will do our best to get everyone prepped for it ahead of time.
Have a good Monday kings and lords.
*Disclaimer — I am a former commodities trader and current enterprise salesman/e commerce guy with a monkey brain — this is not formal investment, political, or life advice. Please research all of your investments before throwing money at them and ensure you are not investing irresponsibly or making poor strategic life decisions.
Background on Wagner helps thanks man