The Wire - February 18, 2025

//The Wire//2300Z February 18, 2025// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: CRYPTOCURRENCY MARKETS TREND TOWARDS NATIONSTATES ENGAGING IN QUESTIONABLE COIN LAUNCHES. POPE FRANCIS ILL WITH PNEUMONIA. FIRE BREAKS OUT AT DEFENSE CONTRACTOR FACILITY NEAR PHILLY.//  -----BEGIN TEARLINE----- -International Events- Vatican City: Following recent health concerns, the Vatican confirmed this morning that Pope Francis is suffering from bilateral pneumonia and will be undergoing medical treatment over the next few days/weeks. Economics: Various developments within the world of cryptocurrencies have come to light over the past few weeks. The markets have largely remained unimpressive as the pro-crypto sentiments expressed during Trump's campaign have not materialized in the form of policy. Both the ($ TRUMP) and ($ MELANIA) coins have turned out to largely be very questionable operations, despite Trump's coin having a market cap of over $3 billion. -HomeFront- Pennsylvania: A major fire broke out overnight at SPS Technologies north of Philadelphia. So far the cause of the fire has not been publicly disclosed, and a one-mile shelter-in-place zone remains in effect for the surrounding area. AC: SPS Technologies (who's parent company is Berkshire Hathaway) is a major defense contractor, providing fasteners and various industrial materials/chemicals to the military. Southeastern U.S. - Snowfall estimates remain variable throughout the disaster zones recently subjected to severe flooding. National Weather Service forecasts indicate that the additional rain expected this week won't significantly impact flooding throughout the region. Nevertheless, severe winter weather is expected from the Ozarks to central Appalachia over the next few days. -----END TEARLINE----- Analyst Comments: In the world of finance, perhaps most interesting are the sheer number of meme-coin rug-pulls that have been conducted at the nationstate level over the past week. In the past, podcasters and influencers would create a meme coin (keeping most of the supply for themselves), then promote that coin heavily to drive the price up, before selling off their entire supply for a large profit. In the world of traditional stock trading something similar is generally known as a Pump-and-Dump scheme. However in the world of crypto a slightly more simple version of this scheme is known as pulling the rug out from underneath investors, i.e. a "rug pull". When it's a meme coin that is started purely for the joke itself and not taken seriously, it's bad enough since this is essentially just fraudulent creators scamming their fans. However, world leaders and nationstates are now apparently engaging in this practice. The President of the Central African Republic launched his own meme coin ($ CAR) on behalf of the nation last week. The coin spiked in value before immediately bottoming out, with most investors suspecting that the President divested at the peak of the coin's value, meaning that a President rug-pulled his own nation's cryptocurrency. A similar situation was reported last week in India, as a government official (with almost 400k followers on X) launched a token that he deliberately claimed (in a since-deleted tweet) as being India's official government token. The issue is that this was done unilaterally without approval, and complicated by the fact that India already has a national cryptocurrency. As expected, the ($ INDIA) token, spiked in value before immediately being flooded with liquidity (as the early investors dumped their holdings), signaling yet another government official with a large following that has openly scammed investors. These types of crypto-fraud have not entirely been confined to the third world, however. Argentine President Javier Milei has drawn much criticism over the past few days after he promoted a meme coin ($ LIBRA) which also turned out to be a very blatant rug-pulling scam, as the coin bottomed out in value a few hours after Milei promoted the coin on social media. Subsequent interviews and social media posts by the creators of LIBRA have very strongly indicated an FTX approach to crypto...admitting that something is a scam up front and very openly participating in insider trading. However, (and much like the FTX scandal) it turns out that publicly admitting to fraud doesn't magically make that fraud legal. Milei has distanced himself from the project, re-phrasing his initial endorsement as not an endorsement but merely sharing the coin project. Either way, Milei is now facing calls for impeachment, as this foray into the world of crypto has not gone well and given his opponents a fairly solid way to target him. He was not the originator of the LIBRA scheme, however his involvement has nonetheless been a point of scrutiny. This situation has also not been made any better by Milei's argument essentially being "investors knew what they were getting into", and largely treating this scandal as an episode of private gambling. Analyst: S2A1 Research: