Elon Musk does not want a cybernetic apocalypse, and Muslims are banned from trading with leverage
Tinkoff decided that he no longer wants to cosplay an online bank without branches
Tinkoff has always been proud that it is the most technologically advanced bank – after all, you can order a new card or open a brokerage account with it with just one poke of your finger on your phone!
But last week all of a sudden It revealedthat now, in order to close an IIS (individual investment account), for some reason you have to go personally to the Tinkoff office and write an old-school statement with a blue ballpoint pen.
So here it is: it’s nice to be a stylish, fashionable and youth techno-bank at a time when customers massively carry money inside the bank; but when they, on the contrary, massively decide to withdraw them from there, it is already much more profitable to reincarnate as a condo rural branch of Sberbank from the 90s …
Russian Muslims are now cut off access to trading with leverage
Ulema Council of the Spiritual Administration of Muslims of the Russian Federation decided: Trading with leverage and shorting stocks is haram! But the usual purchase of shares and long-term investment were recognized as quite halal activities.
I look forward to the “how to become a competent Muslim trader in 6 weeks” courses.
Financial Darwin Award Nominee Discovered
The head of the National Bank of Saudi Arabia, Ammar al-Khudairi, claims for the title of financial loser of the year. In 2022, he came up with the “profitable” idea to buy 10% of Credit Suisse for one and a half billion dollars. Then, when the Swiss giant staggered in March 2023, the same Ammar foolishly blurted out in an interview something like “ha ha, of course we will not further capitalize this dumb bank, are we fools ??” It is clear that after this, Credit Suisse immediately became even more ill – we can say that this was the final straw on the camel’s hump.
Well, the culmination of this story was ransom Credit Suisse from UBS at a ridiculous price – which led to the loss of about 80% of the money invested by the Saudi National Bank.
And last week, our handsome Ammar finally decided that he had already achieved all the impressive successes in his post, there were no more new fiery ideas – so his position it’s time to leave. He left, so to speak, undefeated!
Interactive Brokers once again scares the Russians
The most popular foreign broker Interactive Brokers sent a new letter of happiness to the Russians: this time about the fact that the Russians were forbidden to trade with leverage (take margin loans). And it’s not just for Muslims, it’s for everyone!
True, if you prove to the broker that you physically no longer live in Russia or Belarus at all, then so be it, they will allow you to trade back.
It should be noted that this is another wake-up call for everyone who is trying to invest abroad while in Russia.
Banking crisis in the US
Loud bankrupt bank for startups Silicon Valley Bank finally sold out another bank, Fist Citizens Bank & Trust. But not entirely: the buyer decided not to take long-term bonds that had sagged in price, but he grabbed a portfolio of all loans issued and other assets worth $72 billion at a discount of as much as $16 billion.
By the way, another affected bank called Signature, which served crypto projects, also sell in parts And also at a discount. At the same time, for some reason, no one can take deposits from crypto companies does not burn with desire – all kryptans are politely asked to proceed to the exit until April 5th.
It turns out that everywhere we see a similar picture: other banks are happy to take tasty parts of the pie on their balance sheet, but they prefer to leave the tasteless kaku on the plate of the FDIC (deposit insurance agencies) – let them deal with these problems themselves!
By the way, these guys from the FDIC are already officially announced: “Sorry, guys, we’ve lost $ 23 billion here with all these deposit refunds – you don’t think that we ourselves will pay in full? Big banks, we are talking to you – prepare your pocket for additional contributions! Well, you understand what I will explain to you: now we will talk about “voluntary one-time donations from businesses”… =)
Pupa and Lupa decided to create two banks…
And about the banking crisis in the US: One of the candidates for the next bankruptcy has long been called First Republic Bank, which also has a full balance of long-term bonds sagging due to the rise in interest rates. And you know who suffers the most from this? Another bank called Republic First Bancorp!
No, seriously, investors there in the States don’t really understand the order in which the words go in the names of banks, so in March the shares of the second, innocent bank were rolled down almost in half.
The poor bank even had to publish there is an official press release on their website that literally says “Guys, to be honest, we are NOT First Republic Bank, we do not have problems!”
From artificial intelligence everyone is bombed
Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak, Yuval Noah Harari and more signed a petition that experiments with artificial intelligence (AI) should be suspended for six months – well, to try to understand if we are now preparing our own child prodigy that will destroy us all.
Meanwhile, Eliezer Yudkowsky (a well-known rationalist in narrow circles who has been trumpeting about the existential risks of AI for 20 years) finally uncovered: he gave great interview with Lex Friedman and wrote column in Time magazine with a proposal to do something a little more radical – to start bombing any unregistered clusters of video cards anywhere in the world, which, in theory, can be used to train AI.
Yudkovsky’s article notably set fire to many; however, most of the critics limited themselves to the argument “lol, this dude’s cuckoo is leaking notably!”, But for some reason few got to trying to understand in detail his train of thought and find counterarguments why this is nonsense. (If you’ve seen this, feel free to post the link in the comments.)
By the way, the White House press secretary was asked a question with a quote from Yudkovsky about “if we make super-intelligent AI, then literally all people on Earth will die” – the official answer of the White House so far looks like “ahahahaha, wait, are you guys for real ?! ))”
On Thursday, we plan to release a long-awaited longread about the safety of artificial intelligence – there we will reveal the topic in much more detail, wait!
The United States filed a package with charges against the largest crypto exchange Binance
… but I wrote about it separate articlebetter read it!
Sam Bankman-Fried Hasn’t Started His Term Yet, And New Ideas To Extend His Term Continue To Arise
Curly-haired crypto-mavrodi Sam Bankman-Freed is already sitting under a canopy of criminal charges, which are enough to spend more than 100 years behind bars. But he is periodically thrown all sorts of new ones – so that, apparently, he does not relax. Last week, for example, he added accusation in a $40 million bribe to a Chinese official.
Also journalists uncovered, so to speak, an open secret: that the SBF most likely pays its (wildest expensive in the US) lawyers from funds stolen from FTX clients. Well, that is, once he pumped them out of FTX to his Alameda fund, and from there he gave at least ten million bucks to his baht – for a rainy day. And that day has come!
Cryptons have learned the DAO of the American legal system
There was a bZx crypto-protocol that was hacked for $55 million (because its hand-assed developer liked to click on all kinds of left links and picked up a virus).
To be honest, you will not surprise the cryptans with this case. Another thing is more interesting: users of the protocol who lost money sued everyone who had BZRX tokens in their wallets, which give the right to manage a decentralized organization bZx DAO – this, relatively speaking, can be considered an analogue of a legal entity on the blockchain.
At this moment, the cryptans with BZRX in their wallet tensed up and said to the judge: “Brothers, what do we have to do with it, we stupidly bought these tokens and didn’t do anything terrible?” And their judge answered: “Soryan, we will now judge you intensely, and already in the course of the process we will decide whether you are guilty or not. Think next time what you buy!
In general, the moral is this: it seems that all cryptans who participate in any of any of the DAOs are potentially going either under the bag or under the prison. Sorry for the bad news!
Good news of the week
Russians since 2026 will be able to use the Internet at the North Pole: it will be provided by Skif satellites from Glonass. How do you like that, Elon Musk?!
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