Trusted by over 100,000 blockchain investors.

HEALTH, WEALTH, AND HAPPINESS

April 20, 2021

Hi Everyone,

Happy 420, everyone!!

As most of you are probably aware, the number 420 is synonymous with recreational use of marijuana. So in many circles, April 20 is celebrated with blazing reefers.

With the rising tide of state-by-state legalization, the U.S. federal government still sees many marijuana-related activities, including possession, as a crime.

So even though you can legally buy and smoke weed in many states, the federal authorities can and sometimes do crack down on small business owners in the space.

2021 may just be the year to change that though. Now that the progressives control the White House and the House of Representatives, it seems like a good opportunity to turn the rest of those states light green.

Not only will this help the budding hemp industry get a much needed foothold in financial services and allow industry participants to expand their operations, but it will reduce the obscene overpopulation of U.S. prisons as well. It's a win-win situation.

Narrative transit

Oddly enough, despite this new rhetoric out of Washington, marijuana stocks are down today. They started the day higher, but they have been falling along with the rest of the stocks today.

This graph shows the HMMJ index, which includes most of the top publicly traded marijuana stocks.

As we can see, they did get swept up in the recent WSB frenzy that saw GameStop's conspicuous rise above $450.

However, the hype has been slowly losing strength ever since.

One stock did manage to retain the hype. Actually, it's not a stock so much as it is dogecoin.

Today's auspicious date has apparently been hijacked by the memers, and #DogeDay420 is now trending on Twitter.

It seems Friday's dynamic where doge rose against the rest of the crypto market has been completely reversed, and now we can see that doge is down today while other cryptos rise.

Crypto comptroller executive officer

This development may be unrelated to what we covered above, but we want to wish a warm congratulations to the former acting head of The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Brian Brooks, for finding a sweet job at Binance.US.

You see, it often happens that former regulators end up working for the largest financial firms, as their specific talents and experience can best be monetized with positions like these.

Brooks has made remarkable and irreversible progress for stablecoins in the United States. During his short yet pithy time in office, he managed to pave the way for the eventual digitization of the U.S. dollar.

He didn't do this in a centralized manner like the Chinese are, but by allowing banks to create and custody stablecoins.

We're very likely to soon see a system in which each dollar is directly traceable back to the issuing bank.

What will he be doing at Binance? Probably making a ton of money.

But also, as chief executive of the U.S. version of the platform, he will be in a unique situation to lobby government officials so that hopefully some day soon, we will have a regulatory framework that provides greater clarity for market participants.

Have a happy evening.

Mati Greenspan

Analysis, Advisory, Money Management