China lifted a month-long ban on Boeing jet deliveries for all domestic carriers just one day after a breakthrough in U.S.-China trade talks, Bloomberg reports, citing people familiar with the matter.

Chinese officials instructed domestic carriers and government agencies at the start of the week that deliveries of US-made jets were allowed to resume. This decision coincides with a 90-day tariff truce, during which the U.S. slashed tariffs on Chinese imports from 145% to 30%, and China cut import duties on US goods from 125% to 10%. 

In April, the tit-for-tat trade war between the Trump administration and China led to Beijing's non-tariff countermeasures, including Juneyao Airlines that delayed the delivery of a 787-9 Dreamliner.  

Last week, ahead of U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's weekend meeting with Chinese counterparts for the first round of trade talks in Switzerland, a Bloomberg report specified that China Airlines placed an order for more than a dozen 777 planes. At the time, we asked if this was a  "goodwill gesture" by Beijing ahead of the trade talks. 

Trade talks have since de-escalated the tariff war. 

Still, Goldman expects the overall effective tariff rate in the U.S. to be around 15% - a generational high dating back to the 1930s. 

China's move to resume Boeing deliveries may provide a short-term boost for the sideways pattern shares have traded in for five years. Premarket activity in New York shows shares are up nearly 1%, trading around the $200 handle. Year-to-date, shares are up 12% as of Monday's close. 

Great news for Boeing.

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The FBI is prioritizing removing illegal immigrants with criminal records and arresting child predators, the deputy director said on May 10.

An FBI agent walks toward a crime scene, in this file photo. Mario Tama/Getty Images

“[The FBI] workforce has been working overtime on task force operations to remove dangerous illegal aliens from the country. The work continues,” FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino, a former radio host, wrote in a lengthy post on social media platform X.

“If you came here illegally to prey on our citizens, your days here are numbered.”

Such efforts are likely to ramp up in the coming weeks, Bongino said in the post, which he described as an operational update. He also said the agency is increasing enforcement against individuals who prey on children.

“Crimes against children are a priority for the workforce. Operation ‘Restoring Justice,’ where we locked up child predators and 764 subjects, in every part of the country, is just the beginning,” he said, referring to a recent operation announced by the FBI.

“We are going to take your freedom if you take away a child’s innocence.”

Hundreds of suspected child predators were arrested over a five-day period, and 115 children were rescued, the FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ) announced on May 7.

Elsewhere in his post, Bongino said that the bureau would provide regular updates to Congress and is responding to high-profile cases that arose in recent years. These include the shooting at a congressional baseball game in 2017 that left Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) gravely injured, the 2023 Christian school shooting in Nashville, Crossfire Hurricane, the origins of COVID-19, and the release of files related to sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

“There are voluminous amounts of downloaded child sexual abuse material that we are dealing with,” Bongino wrote in addressing the Epstein case. “There are also victims’ statements that are entitled to specific protections. We need to do this correctly, but I do understand the public’s desire to get the information out there.”

He also said that the FBI is doing its “best in the current budgetary environment to prioritize the mission, act as good fiscal stewards, find waste and inefficiencies, and to enact reforms while moving the FBI forward.”

FBI Director Kash Patel told Congress on May 8 that he would make the bureau’s mission “work on whatever budget we’re given,” a day after he said that he was seeking more funds than what the Trump administration had proposed.

The 2026 budget proposal released in early May calls for a funding cut of about $545 million for the FBI as part of what the White House said was a desire to “reform and streamline” the bureau and reduce “non-law enforcement missions that do not align” with President Donald Trump’s priorities.

“My view is that we agree with this budget as it stands and [will] make it work for the operational necessity of the FBI, and as the head of the FBI, I was simply asking for more funds because I can do more with more money,” Patel said in a Senate hearing.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Authored by Jonathan Miltimore via the Washington Examiner,

A massive blackout crippled Spain and Portugal on Monday, April 28, grounding flights, halting transport, and leaving millions without power.

The cause was “unclear,” the New York Times reported, with “no evidence of a cyberattack.” 

As Spanish officials urged citizens to stay off the roads, European leaders said they were attempting to ascertain the cause of the mysterious outage.

“We do not yet have conclusive information on the reasons for this [power] cut,” Spain’s Prime Minister, Pedro Sanchez, said in a national address.

On Tuesday, April 29, power was largely restored, but the Associated Press reported that the blackouts “remain a mystery.” 

Some pundits, however, observed a remarkable coincidence in the timing of the blackouts.

“Six days ago, the media celebrated a significant milestone,” Michael Shellenberger observed on Substack.

“Spain’s national grid operated entirely on renewable energy for the first time during a weekday.”

Shellenberger was not the only person to claim that Europe’s overreliance on intermittent sources such as wind and solar had left its energy grid vulnerable.

“I would say there’s a strong chance that the large amount of solar on the system created the conditions for this to be a widespread blackout and made it much worse,” said Kathryn Porter, an independent energy consultant.

Many saw this tragedy coming.

European lawmakers’ infatuation with “green” energy, which is not as green as its supporters would have you believe, has been causing problems on the continent. Energy prices have soared in recent years. As the average household electricity bill skyrocketed, many nations scrapped energy taxes to help struggling (and angry) consumers.

In their rush to go green, many countries (including Spain) over the last decade began to phase out not only fossil fuels but nuclear power.

A tightening energy supply was exacerbated by the outbreak of the Ukraine War. Facing a full-blown energy crisis, governments began imposing regulations that forced Europeans into more Spartan lifestyles.

Energy rationing, including limits on hot showers and swimming pools, fueled public anger and helped trigger the 2024 “greenlash,” as Green parties were routed across Europe.

Spain and Portugal were among the nations that resorted to energy rationing. A European Union agreement tailored specifically for these nations was approved by lawmakers despite opposition from some regional authorities.

The law, among other things, set temperature limits for public and commercial buildings (no lower than 80°F for cooling, no higher than 66°F for heating), required “energy-efficient” appliances, and accelerated renewable energy projects. Meanwhile, the law was accompanied by a plan to cut 13.5 percent of domestic gas for power generation.

These actions didn’t happen in a vacuum. It was all part of Spain’s plan to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.

Net zero was always a pipe dream, but it was a lucrative one for politicians and their allies. Under the banner of fighting climate change, lawmakers funneled billions of dollars into subsidies, grants, and contracts that enriched a network of special interests, including renewable energy companies, consulting firms, and financial institutions.

The climate ring is now collapsing, but the costs of the experiment are visible. Europe’s energy infrastructure has languished and is in dire need of investment. Meanwhile, historically low fossil fuel prices have concealed the energy crisis Europe still faces.

European leaders promise a full investigation into the outage, but they’ll be reluctant to admit their own policies are to blame for the energy disaster.

While pundits were already quipping about net zero—“No iPhone charge, no Netflix, no Uber Eats, No Nothin’!”—energy policy is no laughing matter. Blackouts kill people.

Those on life support are sustained by equipment that runs on electricity. In the absence of generators, dialysis patients go without treatment when machines lose power. Home oxygen concentrators shut off, leaving respiratory sufferers gasping for oxygen. Traffic signals fail, causing fatal collisions. Water pumps stop. Refrigerators go dark, spoiling food supplies and triggering foodborne illnesses.

Americans should be paying close attention to developments in Europe.

The government-manufactured incentive structure that encouraged European lawmakers to abandon more reliable forms of energy and replace them with expensive intermittent energy sources also exists in the United States, where lawmakers dream of a “Green New Deal” and a world without fossil fuels.

None of this is to say there’s no room for renewable energies in the global future. There is. Battery technology is rapidly improving. And solar energy at utility scale has shown great potential.

But the effort to purge fossil fuels from economies and reshape the global economy through heavy-handed regulations, wealth transfers, and centralized planning was always tinged with economic hubris, if not madness.

“The curious task of economics,” the Nobel Prize-winning economist F.A. Hayek observed, “is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”

Europeans receiving such a lesson now find themselves powerless.

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and National Institutes of Health (NIH) on May 9 said that they’re launching a new nutrition program that will help further the agenda of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration in White Oak, Md., on June 5, 2023. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

The research initiative “will serve as a key element in fulfilling [Kennedy’s] commitment to Make America Healthy Again,” the agencies said in a statement.

Under the initiative, dubbed the nutrition regulatory science program, the agencies are going to carry out research that will answer questions such as how and why ultra-processed foods harm people’s health.

Officials also say they will look at how food additives affect human metabolism and the role of diet on health issues, such as autoimmune diseases, over one’s lifespan.

The answers “will enable effective policy development and help promote the radical transparency Americans deserve about the foods they are eating and how those foods can impact their health,” the agencies said.

Kennedy has said that one of his top priorities is removing “bad ingredients” from food and has repeatedly expressed concern about chronic diseases such as diabetes, particularly among children. More than four in 10 children have at least one chronic health condition, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The FDA previously banned several artificial dyes and says it is working with companies to remove others that the agency still allows to be added to foods and drinks. More recently, regulators approved new additives derived from natural sources.

Dr. Marty Makary, the FDA’s commissioner, said in a statement that “the FDA is focusing resources on the greatest contributors to the staggering health care crisis: chronic diseases.”

The nutrition program mirrors a joint FDA–NIH program that has conducted research on tobacco, officials said.

FDA staffers will offer expertise on regulation while the NIH will “provide the infrastructure for the solicitation, review and management of scientific research,” according to the agencies.

The researchers who will be involved have not been identified, but officials said the program will feature research that is free from conflicts of interest.

“Nutrition has always been a priority at NIH,“ Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, director of the NIH, said in a statement. ”By teaming up with the FDA, we’re taking a major step toward answering big questions about how food affects health—and turning that science into smarter, more effective policy. It’s time to tackle the chronic disease crisis head-on. That’s why NIH is making this investment alongside the FDA.”

Authored by Thomas Brooke via Remix news,

Marine Le Pen used a visit to Rome on Saturday to denounce what she called a growing “democratic scandal” within the European Union, following her recent conviction that has barred her from running in France’s next presidential election.

Speaking alongside Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, the French nationalist leader warned that her case was part of a wider pattern of political suppression aimed at silencing sovereignist movements across Europe.

“I have an African friend who told me that there are countries where there are no elections, and countries where candidates are prevented from running,” Le Pen said in an interview with Corriere Della Sera during the visit.

“I believe that my conviction is really a democratic scandal: I was prevented from running for election, despite having appealed and am therefore still presumed innocent.”

Le Pen drew a direct comparison between her own legal troubles and what she described as systematic efforts by the European establishment to neutralize opposition voices. 

“I can’t help but think of what happened to Salvini, what happened in Romania with Călin Georgescu, and what the European Union wants to do with Orbán,” she said.

“The EU does not like defeats, but it is ready to go against the people to crush those who bother it.”

Her remarks came during a joint appearance with Salvini at the League’s School of Political Formation following a religious observance in honor of Pope Leo XIV. The two leaders, longtime allies in the European nationalist movement, presented a united front against what they view as Brussels’ overreach and ideological rigidity. 

“His political ideas are practically the same as mine,” Le Pen said of Salvini.

“And I want to add that he is a brave, faithful man with great willpower. He really is a friend.”

Le Pen also used her Rome trip to criticize ongoing EU defense integration efforts, particularly the Readiness 2030 initiative, which she claimed is another vehicle for centralizing power in Brussels. “Whenever there is a crisis, the EU takes advantage to push integrated policies that override national sovereignty,” she said. “Today, it does so with Ukraine and tries to build a European army. It does so in an absolutely cynical way, to impose its ideological agenda on the European people.”

With French President Emmanuel Macron and other EU leaders visiting Kyiv for meetings with his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, and the so-called “Coalition of the Willing,” Le Pen questioned the coalition’s true aim. “Does it want to reach an agreement for peace, or will it end up fomenting war?” she asked. “Macron has put himself in the shoes of the warrior. France should do the opposite: devote all its efforts to acting as a mediator in the direction of peace.”

Though Patriots for Europe, the nationalist parliamentary group Le Pen co-founded, is now the third-largest bloc in the European Parliament, she acknowledged that uniting with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) could elevate their influence further. “I do not lose hope that the sovereigntists can evolve into a single formation,” she said. “After all, we already vote together on many amendments. Certainly, there is more that unites us than separates us.”

On Meloni herself, Le Pen insisted she has “an important diplomatic role, and that’s no surprise. We have differences — especially her support for the election of Ursula von der Leyen — but she’s achieved results, both externally and for Italy’s economy.”

Despite tensions between the French and Italian governments, Le Pen advocated for a revival of the bilateral relationship. “France and Italy are the two most similar countries in Europe,” she said. “I support a true Renaissance in relations between them.”

In contrast, she dismissed the longstanding Franco-German axis. 

“That axis is a choice of the current French government,” she said. 

“Germany has always pursued its own policies. I believe Europe needs rules that apply equally to all.”

Read more here...

Authored by Jeffrey A. Tucker via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Commentary

In high school in West Texas in the late 1970s, psych meds were Veblen goods; that is, products desired as markers of status. They were conspicuously consumed by the children of the well-to-do with profound awareness that their schoolmates could afford neither the treatment nor the supposed cure.

Ollyy/Shutterstock

So the kids—I knew many of them and they would tolerate me in their circles from time to time—would brag about their diagnosis, their prescriptions, the mix, and how it made them feel.

They would carry their pills and show them off, rattling off names of this or that drug and laughing mischievously about it all. There was nothing particularly maudlin about them except as performance. They were genuinely proud, the way one might be when wearing an overpriced luxury coat or shoes. The pills were just part of the mix. So too, they paraded their supposed maladies as badges of honor.

There was always a sniffy air of detachment culture of these kids, a nonchalant disregard for all systems, whether school or family or church, even society at large. They were above it all, and the meds and the condition they were addressing were part of that. It was a class marker. There was even a hint of politics about it, an underscoring and display of alienation. They were at once the top of the social heap but disdainful of it.

Most of these kids excelled in their grades and set their sights high in college applications, with no doubt that they would succeed. They would do so despite their profound mental condition, which they blamed on parents, social structures, teachers, protocols, and the machine generally. Society had made them sick, but the meds gave them freedom to float above it all.

Fancy some lithium?

I’ve not followed their lives since then. Maybe they dropped them after college and lived normally. Maybe not. None will likely write memoirs, so we’ll never know. Regardless, in the decades since, this Veblen good went the way of all luxury purchases over time. It became mainstream. Psych meds are now common among adults and children. It’s a massive industry: like cell phones and TVs generations ago, they migrated through the class structure year by year.

Now comes “Unshrunk” by Laura Delano, a book that could change everything. If it were not an autobiography, it would make great fiction of the gothic sort popular in the Victorian period. If it stripped out all commentary on the dubious merit of all these supposed sicknesses and cures, it would still be fantastic drama from first to last.

Nothing I say can possibly prepare you for the adventure this book brings. It is perfectly crafted almost in a poetic way to bring to the reader the actual feeling of going through each stage over a decade and a half of drug cocktails, mental institutions, hospitals, and much more, and finally to her self-motivated emancipation from the whole industry.

I worry that the topic alone will deter readers. It should not. Read it the way you might a great work of fiction. It makes it all the more riveting to realize it is the real thing—an actual person—with all the attendant pain required for any author to pour out his or her soul this way. It’s a rare experience, one of a kind in our time.

In addition, even if you extracted all the detailed medical critiques about drug trials, side effects, market flimflam from these drugs, and turned that into a monograph on its own, it would be of enormous value.

So we really have here three books in one: a brilliant drama with a fantastic story arc, an autobiography of a young woman in a world set apart that most of us will never know, and a technical medical treatise on an entire industry.

Looming rather large in the narrative is the issue of social class. The author was born into a world unknown to most, the social-register set in Greenwich, Connecticut, descendent of a three-term president, a prep-school educated and Harvard-bound beneficiary of every financial and social privilege, one afforded the best psychiatric care available anywhere.

She was not mistreated. She was treated. She says this herself:

“I was once mentally ill, and now I’m not, and it wasn’t because I was misdiagnosed. I wasn’t improperly medicated or overmedicated. I haven’t miraculously recovered from supposed brain diseases that some of the country’s top psychiatrists told me I’d have for the rest of my life. In fact, I was properly diagnosed and medicated according to the American Psychiatric Association’s standard of care. The reason I’m no longer mentally ill is that I made a decision to question the ideas about myself that I’d assumed were fact and discard what I learned was actually fiction.”

The best of care. The best physicians. The best institutions. The best consultations. The best meds, constantly tweaked by experts: a bit more of this, a bit less of that, and here’s a new one. When Laura’s diagnosis was switched from Bipolar to Borderline, it was under the care of the very father of the supposed disease itself: Dr. John G. Gunderson at McLean Hospital at Harvard (which had also seen Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and Susanna Kaysen).

She had every reason to trust the experts except for one telling fact: she never got better, only worse. She gradually concluded over time that her real trouble was iatrogenic; that is, induced by the very drugs that were said to be the solution.

The first hints of real recovery hit the reader once Laura starts attending Alcoholics Anonymous, where everyone cheered as people there revealed how long they had been sober. It struck me while reading, though the author doesn’t say this, that pretty much everyone gets that alcoholism is a huge issue and that the safest path for everyone is sobriety. No physician really recommends more drinking, more liquor, different kinds of liquor, more regular cocktails, as a solution to anything.

And yet a completely different standard applies to more powerful pharmaceutical cocktails. They are carefully dispensed on millions of patients, with warnings never to skip. That’s what bad patients do.

People who unwisely attempt to do without are rediagnosed with “discontinuation syndrome”—as if dropping toxins created a new disease—which of course calls forth new prescriptions.

The entire system is built to keep people on meds. And when one tries to dispense with them, the adapted body fights back with symptoms that seem to reinforce the diagnosis and the solution. We hope you see why we put you on these drugs in the first place!

Why the gigantic and upside-down judgment against one toxin (alcohol) and for all the others? Here is the core of the real scandal. It’s about the enormous power of industry, the mystique of science, the prestige of academia, and the class associations connected with high-status diagnosis and purported solutions.

This line of thinking opens up even broader critiques of the entire medical system and pharmaceuticals more generally. This book thoroughly explodes the popular understanding of mental illness and the capacity of the expert class to deal with it. The lessons are rattling to the point that no reader will look at commoditized pharmaceuticals in the same way.

In the COVID period, you recall, compliance with protocols was a class marker too. Only tacky people demanded their freedom, dared walk around stores without masks, or failed to social distance in elevators. Trashy types protested the lockdowns. Canadian truckers, indeed! What else do you need to know? The good people, the successful and high-earning professionals on laptops, stayed home, streamed movies, and stayed away from others.

I recall being shouted at while walking outdoors without a mask.

“Masks are socially recommended,” yelled a man, mangling a few phrases into a new coinage. There was fury in his voice that someone as lowlife as I would dare to be in his neighborhood, no doubt spreading COVID. I had otherized myself simply by my refusal to cover my face as if I revealed myself to be a vector of disease spread.

The moral landscape became crystal clear with the shot rollouts. Clean people get them. Dirty people refuse them. The model was primitive in the extreme but with a class bias that bled over to a kind of regional bigotry: the unvaccinated states went for Trump. Whole cities became segregated, as the culmination of an entire class-based outlook that split us from them. (See my big theory of clean vs dirty as a lens through which to understand the whole period.)

I never had much of an awareness of social class and its meaning in politics before this period. Suddenly, it was all that mattered, with government agencies delineating who was essential and who was not. Nor had I considered that medical protocols and products had emerged as a Veblen good, something to consume with pride in one’s high place in the social strata, like modern art and postmodern philosophy.

How brilliant of the psych med industry to market itself—beginning long ago—as a luxury good, a class marker, a product to be consumed by the privileged. There is something wrong in every life. Successful people fix it with pills. Take your meds: you are not a substance abuser but a highly responsible patient who can afford the best care. As the song says, the devil wore a lab coat.

Laura Delano’s book weaves together these pieces into an alarming tale of tragedy followed by final hope. From the first chapter in which the supposed problems begin, through the wild ups and downs and tales of 21 different meds (my count), I could not wait to see how the author would handle the ending.

The last chapters are perfect in ways I won’t reveal for fear of spoilers. My further hope is that this brief review will inspire many more people to travel this journey with the author and draw deep and broad lessons from it.

From the Brownstone Institute

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

Authored by Isaiah Austin via BitcoinMagazine.com,

Humans like to make analogies to understand new things better. It makes complete sense why we would look for one in the case of Bitcoin. 

Bitcoin is a novel concept to most people hearing about it for the first time, and can require great effort to grasp fully. Using the phrase “digital gold” to describe Bitcoin is incredibly palatable, and even if you don’t understand the functionality of the network, you can know certain things to be true: Bitcoin is scarce, global, and a store of value.

This narrative has worked well, ushering in institutional and nation-state adoption. The first section of President Donald Trump’s executive order establishing the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve states, “As a result of its scarcity and security, Bitcoin is often referred to as ‘digital gold’.”

On one end, we should be celebrating these incredible achievements for Bitcoin. We have made massive strides in adoption by propelling the “digital gold” narrative that should not be understated. However, for Bitcoin to reach its true potential, the narrative needs to shift.

Bitcoin is NOT “digital gold”.

Labeling Bitcoin as “digital gold” is a misrepresentation that reduces the world’s most revolutionary form of money to a mere store of value. Bitcoin’s fundamentals make even the most desirable attributes of gold completely obsolete while simultaneously being a faster, safer, more decentralized alternative to fiat currencies.

Let’s dive into what separates Bitcoin from gold.

Scarcity vs Finicity

Likely the largest selling point for gold, and why it’s survived as a store of value for thousands of years, is its scarcity. 

It’s estimated that over the past 100 years, gold’s supply has only increased by around 1-2% each year. This is because there is no real economic incentive to increase the supply of gold through mining. In addition to how difficult new gold is to find, labor, equipment, and environmental compliance costs make the process extremely difficult to justify financing.

For this reason, gold has held its value well throughout history, with its monetary status dating back to 3000 BC. In the 1st century AD in Ancient Rome, you could buy a high-quality toga for the same price in gold as a luxury tailored suit today!

Gold’s scarcity and the impact that it has had on society for thousands of years cannot be understated. However, in the age of Bitcoin, continuing to measure economic value in terms of an asset with a fluctuating supply seems arbitrary.

Bitcoin is not scarce, but finite, with a set supply of 21 million coins entering circulation. There is no “gold rush” for Bitcoin, and, as technology advances, we won’t find Bitcoin on an asteroid.

Through technological and mathematical advancements, we now have the capabilities to buy and exchange cash with a fixed supply. The significance of this development cannot be understated as “digital gold”.

Microdivisability

I will concur that gold is technically “divisible” – that is, if you have a handsaw or laser handy along with a scale. However, “microdivisible” is not a word that describes gold.

Gold thrives in large transactions where expensive goods and services are being transferred. But when you start moving to smaller transactions, problems start to arise.

Below is an image of 1 gram of gold, which, at the time of my writing this, is worth ~ $108. Imagine a world where you get a sandwich from Subway, and, in exchange, you shave off the corner on a gram of gold…

That’s not happening.

Older societies throughout history understood this limitation of gold and acted swiftly to combat this by issuing coins that represented a specific concentration of the precious metal.

Although it can be difficult to pin down, it is possible that the first gold-backed currency was the Lydian stater in 600 BC. Issued in Lydia (modern-day Turkey), the coin was initially minted with electrum (an alloy of gold and silver), with a gold composition of around 55%.

In 546 BC, the Persian Empire conquered Lydia and inherited the Lydian stater. Although the Persian Croeseids initially retained a high percentage of gold in the coins, they eventually debased the currency by adding base metals like copper. By the end of the 5th century BC, the Lydian stater only contained 30-40% gold.

Gold’s inability to be a microdivisible asset is a devastating flaw, and the reason societies have never been able to truly utilize it for a significant period of time. To make small transactions, citizens choose to hand their gold to the government in exchange for 1:1 coins, which, over time, are inevitably diluted and debased by the elite class, causing the society to collapse.

There is not a single example in history where a country operating on a gold standard hasn’t eventually debased its currency in exchange for microdivisibility through coins and paper notes. This, again, is largely due to people’s ultimate need for small units of account to purchase inexpensive goods.

This fatal blow to gold is ultimately solved by Bitcoin. Bitcoin’s smallest unit of account is called a “satoshi” and represents 1/100,000,000th of a bitcoin. Today, one satoshi is equal to roughly $0.001, which makes it more microdivisible than the US dollar!

There is never a reason to involve governments in Bitcoin transactions because there is no need for a smaller unit of account. For that reason (among many others), Bitcoin works perfectly as money without the involvement of any intermediaries.

When considering bitcoin’s divisibility and units-of-account, it is comical to even compare it to gold in any form or fashion.

Auditability

I believe it’s a fair assumption that at the time of this article’s release, the “Fort Knox Audit” still hasn’t happened. As quickly as it became the top headline, the idea disappeared into irrelevance.

The United States’ gold holdings were last audited in 1974. After multiple decades of conspiracy theories and public speculation, President Gerald Ford decided to allow journalists inside Fort Knox. Their findings were unremarkable, with no noticeable missing gold on the premises.

However, that was 51 years ago. Today, we are in a similar position, with public curiosity piqued regarding the gold in Fort Knox.

Just a couple of months ago, the “Fort Knox Audit” seemed like it would happen any day. In fact, Elon Musk was going to livestream it! Though now, it’s beginning to seem like the elephant in the room that we’re not supposed to talk about.

Unlike gold audits, which are infrequent and manual, Bitcoin’s validation happens automatically through its proof-of-work consensus mechanism.

Approximately every 10 minutes, miners add a new block to the blockchain, verifying the legitimacy of transactions, the total Bitcoin supply, and adherence to consensus rules.

In contrast to traditional audits, which rely on trusted third-party intermediaries, Bitcoin’s decentralized process is trustless and transparent, allowing anyone to independently verify the blockchain’s integrity in real-time.

Don’t trust, verify.

Portability

It requires little persuasion to make the case that bitcoin is more “movable” than gold. Kept simply, gold in large quantities can be extremely heavy and require specialized ships and planes for cross-border transportation. Conversely, Bitcoin is held in a wallet that keeps the same physical weight regardless of the amount.

However, there is a greater distinction here that cannot go unaddressed; Bitcoin doesn’t need to physically “move” anywhere.

The most common critique of Bitcoin is that it is “not real” and “can’t be held”. However, I argue that it is one of the greatest flaws of gold. To receive a large payment in gold, you must put up the costs necessary to transport the heavy and highly valuable materials across fields, oceans, or jungles.

In addition, you must also have a high level of trust for the third parties involved. During cross-border gold transactions, you are trusting your gold with:

1. The third party that brokered the transaction

2. The delivery crew that took your gold to the export station

3. The crew on the plane or ship that is transporting the gold

4. The delivery crew that took your gold to you

5. Whoever you put in charge of guarding and maintaining the gold

On the other hand, Bitcoin allows you to make transactions without needing to travel or involve intermediaries. As discussed before, the Bitcoin blockchain’s consensus protocol allows users to send money across borders without needing a third party.

This not only removes the costs associated with cross-border travel and the various individuals who may be involved, but also eliminates the possibility of fraud, as all transactions are public and on-chain for users to see and verify.

For the first time in human history, we have “electronic cash”. Bitcoin Magazine’s Conor Mulcahy defines “electronic cash” as “a broad category of money that exists solely in digital form and can be used to facilitate peer-to-peer transactions electronically. Unlike e-money, which typically involves intermediaries like banks and payment processors, electronic cash is designed to mimic the characteristics of physical cash, such as anonymity and direct exchange between users.”

The idea that a peer-to-peer transaction without an intermediary could occur without being together in person was only a theory before the creation of Bitcoin. Detractors who dismiss this advancement in our species’ capabilities as “not real because I can’t touch it” will soon realize that they are fighting a losing battle in a world that becomes more digital by the second.

Not All Bitcoin “Adoption” is Equal

If our sole aim is to drive Bitcoin’s price to the moon, the “digital gold” label will suffice. Certainly, governments, sovereigns, corporations, and individuals will continue to pour in rapidly, and the number will keep going up.

But…

If Bitcoin is the transformative freedom technology we believe it to be, we must fundamentally rethink how we educate and share it with the world. To seize this opportunity, we must prioritize educating pre-coiners on the novelty of Bitcoin and avoid oversimplified analogies. This approach will ultimately cement Bitcoin’s role as the cornerstone of global financial freedom.

The U.S. Department of Defense on May 8 confirmed that approximately 1,000 service members who have identified as having gender dysphoria will begin the voluntary separation process under new guidance that reinstates a ban on military service for those diagnosed with or exhibiting symptoms of gender dysphoria.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in Michigan on April 29, 2025. Scott Olson/Getty Images

“Today, the Department will issue guidance to the Military Departments and Services ending the accession of individuals with a current diagnosis or history of, or symptoms consistent with, gender dysphoria and all non-medically necessary treatment,” said Defense Department spokesman Sean Parnell. The new policy marks a significant shift in military personnel standards and reflects President Donald J. Trump’s directive issued earlier this year. "Approximately 1,000 Service members who have self-identified as being diagnosed with gender dysphoria will begin the voluntary separation process."

The decision comes days after the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 6–3 vote, granted a stay of a lower court ruling that had blocked the policy. The majority did not issue an opinion, nor did the three dissenting justices. The stay allows the Department of Defense to enforce the new policy as litigation continues in a case brought by a group of transgender service members.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth defended the move as necessary for maintaining military readiness and cohesion. “This is the president’s agenda, this is what the American people voted for, and we’re going to continue to relentlessly pursue it,” Hegseth said in a video statement. In a memorandum dated May 8, he wrote that “service by individuals with a current diagnosis or history of, or exhibiting symptoms consistent with, gender dysphoria is not in the best interest of the Military Services and is not clearly consistent with the interests of national security.”

Under the new guidance, troops who self-identify by June 6 (active duty) or July 7 (reserves) will be eligible for voluntary separation and may receive separation pay. The deadline was extended from previous guidance by 30 and 60 days, respectively. Those seeking to remain in the military must obtain a waiver demonstrating that their continued service supports a compelling government interest and enhances warfighting capabilities. Among other requirements, waiver applicants must show they have not pursued gender transition and have demonstrated 36 consecutive months of psychological stability without significant distress.

Hegseth, speaking at a recent conservative conference in Florida, signaled a broader cultural shift within the military: “No more pronouns, no more climate change obsessions, no more emergency vaccine mandates, no more dudes in dresses,” he said.

. @SecDef We are leaving WOKENESS and WEAKNESS behind.

No more pronouns, no more climate change obsessions, no more emergency vaccine mandates, no more DUDES IN DRESSES.

We are done with that sh*t.” pic.twitter.com/MSunWnRYXU

Advocacy groups condemned the policy. “By allowing this discriminatory ban to take effect while our challenge continues, the Court has temporarily sanctioned a policy that has nothing to do with military readiness and everything to do with prejudice,” said Lambda Legal and the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, which are representing the transgender service members in court.

The military, which comprises roughly 2.1 million active and reserve personnel, had previously reversed a ban on transgender troops under President Joe Biden. The latest move effectively reimposes the Trump-era restrictions, with narrow pathways for exceptions.