Watching Bloomberg TV yesterday I saw a news blurb on InterActive Brokers CEO Thomas Peterffy. The blurb mentioned IAB's use of Paxos for crypto trading. Minutes later a promo graphic for The David Rubenstein Show appeared. I wondered how many viewers knew of David's significant investment in Paxos through his family office, Declaration Partners?
Later that evening I flipped through several channels, briefly landing on PBS Nightly News Hour live from the David M. Rubenstein studio in Washington, D.C.
The same David Rubenstein agreed to stay on as Chairman of the Kennedy Center in D.C. until December 2026. He'd been slated to retire with a blue ribbon committee appointed to find his replacement. Even his Kennedy Center bio failed to mention his ties to Declaration Partners.
Back to the interview with Peterffy who said:
.frankly, I am sort of scared of cryptos, because they can go to any price because it's basically just a figment of imagination. It does not have any underlying value. The only value it has is the paper dollar, which is nothing.
Peterffy is scared of crypto but lauds prediction markets. Prediction requires knowledge. To understand people's motives one must understand their conflicts of interest. That includes holdings and connections. Nobody declares those anymore. Conflicts are to be used to garner more and more and more.
And America's hawker in chief was named TIME magazine's Man of the Year and rang the opening bell at the NYSE. I'll leave you with this image of World Liberty Financial's Chief Crypto Advocate:
Shape of a new era - the fat get fatter, way fatter
