Neurocensorship from Roskomandzor, as well as the long-awaited crypto-laws in the Russian Federation
Tinkoff released pipeline skibidi application
Russian banks have a new tradition: every few months they release a new application in the App Store, which cynically tries not to seem like an application from a sanctioned bank. Here comes Tinkoff rolled out last week I applied T-Help from a certain Mobile Pipeline Systems LLC (apparently, it helps novice plumbers choose the right collet fittings).
It’s also funny that Russian clients have already become so accustomed to constantly reinstalling all sorts of strange-looking crap on their phones, as if “from real banks,” that scammers could not help but take advantage of this. In short, the official “Bulletin of the Cyber Police of Russia” (yes, this happens, kids) reportsthat fake Tinkoff and VTB applications have appeared in the App Store.
The main thing is not to make a mistake: the first layer of fake applications is “good” (banks use it to bypass Apple’s sanctions rules), but fake fake applications are already an alarm, through them your money will simply be stolen. We live in such a cyberpunk era of victorious post-modernity.
Norilsk Nickel shares literally made x100
The shares of this company a week earlier were trading at ~15 thousand rubles per share – which is no good in the era of the victorious retail investor (expensive!). So last week guys extra crushed shares for 100 pieces, and each of them now costs only ~150–160 rubles.
But here I wanted to say something else: in Russia, one of the most important tax benefits for investors is the so-called LDV (long-term ownership benefit). If you have owned a security traded in the Russian Federation for more than three years, then you can not pay any taxes on profits when selling it, convenient! So, historically, it has happened that some brokers are constantly trying to treat all sorts of different corporate actions (like the same splits that happened at Norilsk Nickel) as if they were resetting the countdown period of the three-year period for applying this benefit.
In short, the Association of Retail Investors appealed to the Ministry of Finance about this and received official clarification: Of course, a split does not reset the LDV period. Bury this link and shove it in the faces of particularly dull brokers!
Crypto laws for the Pan-Cyber Russia of the Future
News report: after so many years of push-pull between the Central Bank and the Ministry of Finance, this year we (again!) are promised to finally pass a law on regulating cryptocurrency in Russia. Now the crypt is in some kind of half-gray state in the Russian Federation: you can buy/sell it as property (but only for rubles, if for foreign currency, then this will be a violation of currency legislation); But it is strictly forbidden to pay with crypto for any goods and services. It turns out that formally all sorts of crypto exchangers do not seem to directly violate anything; but there is still a distinct sense that they are in a grayish area.
They write that the new law should first of all clarify the situation with the legalization of crypto mining, as well as pave the way for the use of cryptocurrencies for cross-border payments. That is, the law will not clearly define regulation in general in all facets of the cryptosphere – apparently, they decided to regulate the elephant in parts (starting with those limbs on which the Ministry of Finance and the Central Bank have the least disagreements).
The main thing is that in the process of these legal exercises something is not accidentally banned on the stick (like our Central Bank happens periodically)…
Further – even cooler: Ministry of Finance saidthat they are already cutting a special law about decentralized autonomous societies (DAS). This is curious, because Western cryptans have long been promoting this thing as “a convenient analogue of legal entities on the network, which allows you to clearly manage crypto projects with lower risks.” True, in reality it turned out that in the eyes of the American court these same DAOs have directly opposite properties: for example, anyone who touched the control tokens of such an organization potentially receives as a reward unlimited liability for any of its mistakes… But in Russia they want to equate DAOs to LLCs, so at least such an incident may be avoided.
The Ministry of Truth opens vacancies for robots
Roskomnadzor going Already in 2024, automate the maintenance of a register of information banned on the Runet using neural networks. By 2026, the gap between the appearance of seditious information and its elimination in the Russian segment of the Internet should not exceed one hour.
As an expert, I expect that by 2027 all Internet users will be required to wear fMRI helmets with a neural network connected to them – so that illegal behavior can be detected already at the stage of thought crime!
And in other censorship news:
OnlyFans again done available in Russia (read: “You can telephony…”)
Roskomnadzor warned Duolingo that it is impossible to promote LGBT people in Russia (read: “…but not against a queer owl!”)
Roskomnadzor also blocked a widely known in narrow circles Vastrik-club. The working hypothesis so far is this: in a thread about Nyusha from Smeshariki, someone wrote that she is “a stupid pig, a stupid piece of meat that is not the first freshness,” well, the result is obvious.
American inflation shows no signs of abating
IN THE USA came out latest data on inflation: analysts’ expectations were again exceeded, it turned out to be 3.5% over the last year. The markets are already tired of waiting for the rise in prices to finally stop and the Federal Reserve to begin reducing the key rate: the yield on 10-year US Treasuries has risen back to 4.5% per annum, and at the beginning of the year it was only 3.9%. (About interest rates on bonds and how they affect the surrounding financial reality – wrote here Half a year ago.)
In the press, meanwhile, appears shock content: insidious American economists from the White House in 1983 feebly changed the way they calculate inflation: they removed interest costs on mortgages and, in general, the cost of purchasing housing (instead they began to calculate it using a hypothetical rental rate). And if we count in the old way, then in 2022 inflation should have reached 18% (not to mention the current ~8%).
Agree, it’s good that they began to calculate the consumer price index in a new way. Otherwise, how would we live now with such high inflation in the dollar – it would be very unpleasant!
Destiny Tech100: Your Unique Opportunity to Buy 5 Cents on the Dollar
The dude organized this fund, Destiny Tech100, in the USA: in 2021, he bought shares in popular non-public companies like SpaceX and OpenAI. And in March 2023, the fund was released for trading on the stock exchange, and the internal contents of this fund cost approximately $4.8 per share, and the initial price of the share was as much as $9 (almost twice as much).
But that’s half the story – in a couple of weeks, by April 8, the fund’s shares will dispersed up to quotes of ~$100. It turns out that retail investors were happy to pay a premium of +1900% to the contents of the fund (that is, overpay 20 times!) in order to hold on to at least their little finger for “hot” companies that were otherwise inaccessible to them.
Moral of the story: Don't invest in closed-end exchange-traded funds that lack mechanisms to keep their share price in line with the fair value of the contents inside. Well, or if you invest, then at least do it when they are given out at a decent discount (see GBTC a year ago), and not at a premium.
UDIO-ENERATOR ESEN
Not so long ago, the Suno song neurogenerator got infected, but now the Udio application has come out with the same idea (if I understand correctly, so far only in the form of a closed beta). They writethat UDIO is simply bursting with its tracks – for example, you can listen to a short clip in video below. There is also a Broadway musical based on Dune (if I heard such a teaser, I would already go to the box office of the Musical Comedy Theater for tickets, to be honest):
About Turkish Sam Bankman-Faruk
Published in The Wired detailed profile (there is also a version in the archive not under paywall here) about three Turkish crypto-prodigy siblings, who six months ago were given 11 thousand years in prison each (!). Well, everything is according to the classics: once upon a time there lived Faruk, he created a mega-popular crypto exchange in Turkey, a country where the native currency depreciates at a rate of ~60% per annum, and crypto seems to the population “a little more stable” in comparison. In the end, I decided to trade with clients’ money, “unlucky,” and in the end I disappeared into Albania with the remains of the crypt under my arm (also not very successful, as you understand).
Good news of the week
I couldn't find any other good news, so here it is: I got my braces off (see video cover at the beginning of the Mr. Beast style digest). Well, now we’ll live – I can finally do a full-fledged “bite”!
More financial news and original analytics in my Telegram channel RationalAnswer.
