“Gold is a treasure and he who possesses it does all he wishes to in this world.” 

            - Christopher Columbus

Here’s two things that happened within twenty four hours of each other last Wednesday, September 23rd / 24th, 2025:

1. American taxpayers, in keeping with the clearly expressed will of the American people, announced their plan to Make Argentina Great Again by sending some or all of a $20 billion savings account called the Exchange Stabilisation Fund to Argentina, the western hemisphere’s finest purveyor of economic panics.

2. Tether, theoretically one of the most profitable companies in the history of the world and the central bank of international criminal finance the crypto industry, unexpectedly announced it would be raising $20 billion from a “private placement”, meaning it was looking to sell a $20 billion chunk of itself to someone it didn’t want to have to name publicly.

The fact that both of these events involved the same amount of money and happened at pretty much exactly the same time struck me as kind of… “odd”. My spidey sense got to tingling. Historically I have had a pretty good spidey sense1 so I did some digging and noticed a couple of other “odd” facts.

1. A few months ago Tether bought a large Argentinian agriculture company called Adecoagro. In December of last year Tether bought a large stake in an Argentinian satellite company called Satellogic. Other than the Italian football club Juventus (which Tether bought a large stake in right before a bunch of Juventus players turned up in the oval office next to Donald Trump), the right wing YouTube competitor Rumble (whose shares are also a favourite of Howard “Nutlick” Lutnick, Tulsi Gabbard, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Kash Patel and which is apparently going to be integrated with Tether to create a new hybrid video platform / money laundering system payment processor), and a few stupid CEO pet project subsidiaries these are the only non-crypto companies I’m aware of Tether owning a large stake in.

2. A few weeks before the announcement that Tether would be doing its “private placement”, a Uruguayan utility company cut the power to Tether’s operations in that country2 because of an unpaid $5 million electricity bill.

3. Argentina’s pile of gold bars, valued at around $5.2 billion as of September 30th, 20243, vanished last summer. Or at least it vanished from Argentina. The gold was shipped [somewhere] but the Argentinian government has refused to tell anyone where [somewhere] actually is. Which is, you know, kind of weird, especially for Argentina’s current libertarian president Javier Milei who, in between running around on stage swinging chainsaws with Elon Musk and launching memecoins with crypto grifters, professes to be a big fan of “hard money”4.

4. As of September 30th, 2024 Tether claimed to have $5.0 billion worth of “precious metals” (pronounced “gold”) on their balance sheet. Or at least, that’s how much gold they claimed to hold after Argentina’s gold bars did their disappearing act. It was a substantial jump from the amount of gold claimed on Tether’s previous unaudited quarterly report - an amount which had been relatively unchanged for a few years.

Are these things connected? I have no idea (and real talk, I’d be pretty surprised if the entire $20 billion in the Exchange Stabilisation Fund ended up going directly to Tether or if all of Argentina’s gold reserves were being leased to Tether). But I do know that both Javier Milei and the Argentinian population love crypto. Milei’s more of a memecoin guy (more on that in a minute) but the Argentinian population loves a particular cryptocurrency called (wait for it…) Tether. Argentinians buy Tether’s “stablecoin” USDT, which is theoretically supposed to always be worth $1.00, for two main reasons:

1. They are trying to escape Argentina’s crushing inflation. In Argentina “low” inflation means your Argentine pesos lose around a third of their value every year, “high” inflation means your Argentine pesos lose around three quarters of their value every year, and inflation is usually “high”5. In that kind of world it makes a lot of sense to convert as many of your pesos as you possibly can to a more stable currency. For most people that means converting their pesos to U.S. dollars.

2. Argentinians haven’t historically been legally allowed to convert their pesos into regular U.S. dollars6. Trying to escape inflation by buying other currencies directly, while understandable and morally defensible, was for Argentinians technically a crime until just a few months ago. As such Argentinians looking to buy dollars presented a perfect use case for cryptocurrency, whose primary use case is, of course, crime. Tether USDT tokens are (hopefully 🤞) equivalent to “real” U.S. dollars except you can get around restrictions on buying real U.S. dollars by buying USDT tokens on sketchy unregulated Chinese crypto exchanges.

Because so many7 Argentinians treat Tether’s stablecoin as their primary bank account any kind of hint that Tether might not be able to redeem the 173 billion USDT tokens it has issued for $173 billion in “real” cash would lead to a “run on the bank”8 followed by a collapse that would probably be disastrous for Argentina’s economy in a way it would not be for other countries. It would also be an official “game over” moment for the entire cryptocurrency space, which would of course wipe out most of the Trump family’s newfound crypto fortune.

None of this should be a problem, of course, because Tether claims to have a lot of cash. A lot of cash. More than $105 billion of it9 to be exact, at least if you believe the plastic surgeons, VAT tax scammers, and child actors who founded one of the world’s largest financial firms who for some reason have never let an auditor actually check whether all of the money they “manage” actually exists. In fact Tether has so much cash readily on hand that it seems like small things like paying electricity bills10 often get lost in the shuffle.

Most of Tether’s cash is, of course, lovingly watched over by the children of Trump’s Secretary of Commerce, Howard “Nutlick” Lutnick. I’ve written a lot about Lutnick, Tether, and the ways in which stablecoins like Tether’s USDT token are functionally just U.S. dollar banks for criminals here. You should read it because I’m not going to go over it again.

Now a few months ago Tether used some of that cash to become the majority shareholder in one of Argentina’s larger agricultural concerns, a company called Adecoagro. And a few months before Tether bought Adecoagro it had made a large investment in an Argentine satellite company called Satellogic. Both investments were guided by the loving hand of (wait for it…) America’s commerce secretary Howard “Nutlick” Lutnick, whose firm Cantor Fitzgerald just so happens to also own a large stake in Satellogic. Satellogic also has a strategic partnership with America’s current corporate boogeyman: Peter Thiel’s Palantir.

Why is a stablecoin company with less than 100 employees suddenly buying up Argentinian farmland and Argentinian satellites? No one knows. But it does seem kinda… odd.

Now I’m no Nostradamus11 but it does seem to me that when you put all of the above together you end up with pretty fertile ground for what is known in the scientific literature as “shenanigans”. Shenanigans involving Tether’s reserves, the Argentinian government, gold bars, and the Trump administration. Maybe someone should look into that instead of endlessly pontificating about how Trump is supporting Milei for “ideological” reasons, which seems to be the only thing I’m reading in any kind of “mainstream” publication. Do these people, who include

In case you’ve ever wondered why you’re reading a lot about things like Curtis Yarvin’s “ideology” in The New Yorker and hearing about Trump’s commitment to Milei as an “ideological ally” on CNN, Network State expert

Because in the land of the blind the access journalist with a PhD in early romantic period English literature and an ex-boyfriend in Palo Alto is king.

TAP THAT CASH

Tether is one of the most profitable companies in the history of the world, at least according to their own unverified financials. There should be no reason for Tether to be out here raising money and no desire on Tether’s part to sell off part of a machine that purports to make more money than Blackrock and Goldman Sachs while employing less than 100 people and having less than 500 customers12. (There should also be no one in the world willing to invest $20 billion in a company that is connected to every kind of financial crime up to and including facilitating Iran’s nuclear weapons program that also refuses to let auditors or accountants look at its books, but that’s why our species invented Softbank and Cathie Wood.)

Putting aside for a moment the absurdity of the idea that the central bank of international criminal finance considers itself to be worth half a trillion dollars, placing the company roughly in the same league as companies like OpenAI13, Goldman Sachs, and JP Morgan, I can think of three possible explanations why Tether might need to raise money:

1. Now that America’s Federal Reserve has pivoted and started to cut interest rates Tether is about to become less profitable14 - possibly significantly less profitable, depending on how low interest rates end up going - and so Tether’s founders are just cashing out at the top. This is the most charitable interpretation and it’s certainly very plausible.

2. Tether is (somehow) out of cash. This possibility is lent some credence by the fact that they failed to pay their electric bill and had their power turned off in in Uruguay. And there was also the Twitter hashflag thing (see footnote 10, which Substack won’t allow me to link properly).

3. Tether wants to get some shares into the hands of corrupt government officials (other than Howard “Nutlick” Lutnick, who already has plenty) for protection when SHTF15.

It could also be some combination of these three possibilities; they’re not mutually exclusive. And of course I am not the only one to notice the peculiarities of Tether’s incipient “private placement”.

I am, however, as of right now so far the only person to be pointing out that Tether claims to be raising exactly the same amount of cash that Trump just announced he’ll be using to conduct the 1,654th16 bailout of the Argentinian economy and the fact that as of September 30th, 2024 Tether and Argentina claimed to have held pretty much the same amount of gold on their respective balance sheets.

OH CHAINSAW! MY CHAINSAW!

Close followers of the rolling tsunami of fraud and cringe called “the crypto industry” will recall that a few weeks after the TRUMP memecoin was summoned into existence from the depths of hell, Argentinian president Javier Milei launched his own memecoin. It was called LIBRA.

Personally I will admit that I initially had some hope Milei might be able to do some good for the loony bin long suffering Argentines call an economy. That optimism lasted right up until the moment the man launched a memecoin, at which point I realized Argentina was headed for (yet another) catastrophe.

The details of the LIBRA debacle are, to put it mildly, hilarious. A rough timeline:

1. Crypto grifters, high on the success of their MELANIA token launch a few weeks prior17, create a crypto token called LIBRA.

2. Milei tweets about LIBRA and (in my opinion) strongly implies buying LIBRA is a way to invest in the future of Argentina.

3. Idiots and market manipulators rush to go “long af”18 LIBRA, driving the price up 520,000,000% in roughly 40 minutes.

4. Market manipulators, along with the grifters who created LIBRA, do what is called a “rugpull” and dump tens of millions of dollars worth of magic beans LIBRA tokens on the idiots, crashing the price almost 90% more or less instantly.

5. Idiots, upon discovering that buying LIBRA was actually not a way to invest in the future of Argentina, get big mad (this happens a lot).

6. Milei retracts his endorsement of LIBRA. When questioned about whether he was to blame for the tens of millions of dollars people lost to crypto grifters Milei responds with the immortal line: “There is no crying in the casino”.

7. LIBRA crashes another 90%. Idiots get bigger mad.

8. Unflattering communications amongst the aforementioned crypto grifters begin to leak publicly. These communications seem to imply that the crypto grifters had bribed president Milei’s sister to get an official endorsement from the president of Argentina.

“Cryptogate” immediately blew up into a massive political scandal in Argentina. Thankfully unlike some of its hemispheric neighbors to the north Argentina still has a functional democracy and so the LIBRA debacle will probably lead to the collapse of the Milei government and the imprisonment of various members of his friends and family circle… but even if it doesn’t it was very, very funny. Especially the interview one of the LIBRA “market makers” did with professional scambuster Coffeezilla.

“AGRICULTURE”

This post contains what one of my readers accurately described as “suspicion and speculation, but well researched and informed speculation”. I have no idea if any of the facts laid out above relate to each other. But you have to admit it would be a hell of a coincidence if the world’s largest stablecoin company that just so happens to have recently made large investments in Argentinian companies and which just so happens to have held exactly the same amount of gold that recently disappeared from Argentina and whose product (USDT tokens) just so happens to be popular with Argentines and whose cash reserves just so happen to be managed by a major shareholder in that same stablecoin company who just so happens to be Trump’s Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick19 wasn’t somehow related to the fact that US government is offering the crypto grifting, chainsaw wielding, Elon loving Argentinian president a bailout that just so happens to be exactly the same size as the amount of money that same stablecoin company announced it wants to raise via a “private placement”.

It also just so happens to be the case that I have been told that gold reserves have a role to play in various interest rate related trades. As I have explained before, it also just so happens to be the case that Tether’s record breaking income derives almost entirely from interest rate payments paid to it by the American taxpayer. In other words, Tether could easily be a major player in the byzantine world of interest rate swaps and hedge trades if it wanted to be.

As I mentioned in the intro I would be pretty surprised if somehow the entire $20 billion Exchange Stabilisation Fund that’s being made available for the Argentina bailout went to Tether directly. I would not, however, be surprised at all if a decent chunk of it ends up in Tether’s hands some way or another. We don’t really have to speculate about this - any bailout of Argentina’s economy is going to benefit shareholders in Argentinian companies and Tether recently became a major shareholder in several Argentinian companies. I also would not be surprised if Tether is leasing some or all of Argentina’s pile of gold bars to buff up their balance sheet for the one minute per quarter something resembling an accountant gets the privilege of gazing upon Tether’s financials, though that’s more of a wild guess than a data driven hypothesis.

Hey, maybe it’s all just one big coincidence. Mercury in retrograde type shit. But if you think it might not be, consider slamming those “like” and “restack” buttons. It really helps.

[UPDATE] If you’re still here,

Seeing as how the current wave of “borrow money to buy crypto” companies are the scammiest and most obviously maleficent corner of the scammy and maleficent cryptoverse it’s pretty safe to say that Citrone is either a moron who has drunk deeply of the Krypto Kool-Aid or a highly intelligent psychopath with advanced grifting skills. Either way the important thing to note here is that any bailout of Argentina is a more or less direct bailout of Rob Citrone which in turn could serve as an indirect bailout of OpenAI, because getting a bailout from American taxpayers would free up more of Citrone’s capital to buy more WorldCoin tokens which would put more money in Sam Altman’s pocket.

I think the big picture here is that even if Trump’s bailout isn’t specifically being launched to save Tether (and despite all my dot connecting, I’m far from certain that it is), it’s almost certainly being launched to save the bank accounts of people in Trump’s inner circle who have invested money in Milei’s vision for Argentina, many of whom are also heavily invested in crypto. The bailout isn’t intended to help the Argentinian population nor is it intended to help the American population. Quite the contrary - a few hours ago it was reported that America’s Agriculture Secretary is hopping mad because immediately after the bailout was announced Argentina turned around and fucked over America’s beleaguered soybean farmers.

But the bailout will do what it is intended to do, which is move any financial losses Trump’s inner circle were about to suffer for their bad investments in Argentina’s failed libertarian experiments onto the backs of the American taxpayer.

Good luck America.

[UPDATE 2025-08-03]

Couple other interesting facts I dug up after this article was published:

1. The number of Tether’s gold back stablecoin (XAUT, which I don’t really have time to explain here) in existence jumped very substantially a few weeks ago on August 8th (a very lucky date in certain cultures21) after years of being completely flat.

   

2. No one actually uses or trades XAUT - there’s usually just a couple hundred “on chain” wallets that hold any of it at any given time - but starting right around the time Argentina’s gold went missing the number of wallets that had ever held any XAUT tokens started to take off like a rocket.

   

3. Bloomberg just reported a few hours ago that Tether is seeking to raise $200 million specifically to buy Tether Gold™️ tokens (XAUT). Instead of a “borrow money to buy bitcoin” play it’s a “borrow money to buy Tether’s tokenized gold” play. If that makes no sense to you you probably understood it perfectly.

   

THE ECSTASY OF NOTES

Unrelated to anything about Argentina here’s a few fun things I’ve been posting to Substack Notes lately, in case you’re one of those people who never looks at Substack Notes (which I suspect is most people).

On schadenfreude:

On Democrats:

On anonymous racist trolls:

On the state of financial regulation in America:

On what the crypto industry is really all about:

On truth:

On Steve Bannon LARPing about some kind of great powers showdown between China and the U.S. at exactly the same moment as the Trump children are literally in China planning memecoin grifts with that country’s sketchiest crypto billionaire:

On North Korea hacking thousands of “vibe coders” in one go and stealing all their crypto: