Watch Crypto For The Next Black Swan

We all just saw what happened with Nvidia and Jensen Huang. Completely unexpected. Almost nobody saw it coming. And the ultimate fallout is still very much an open question.

Plenty of questions remain unanswered, including some raised by a short seller back in May about Alice Huang’s connection to Jensen…and more importantly, additional allegations about Nvidia’s business operations. Those questions are still hanging in the air, and it’s far from clear whether the worst of the revelations are behind us.

Just hours before Jensen admitted to the affair, I had posed a hypothetical question: Is it possible he could be forced to resign? What seemed like a longshot Sunday morning now seems like a question worth asking.

My game theory map was that when a powerful, seemingly untouchable CEO is forced out, sometimes that’s when the real dirt starts to come out. The departure of a key man can create the conditions for things that were previously hidden, ignored or simply unquestioned to suddenly see the light of day.

That hasn’t happened at Nvidia. At least not yet. And there’s no guarantee it will. But the broader point is worth considering.

And if I follow that same spider sense, the one that asks where something completely unexpected could suddenly go very wrong, it leads me to one place: crypto.

Democrats increasingly see crypto as a Republican issue. It’s closely associated with Trump, his family and the broader GOP ecosystem. In some respects, it’s become something of a political piggy bank. And if Democrats regain power, it’s not difficult to imagine them suddenly rediscovering their deep and abiding concern for investor protection and financial stability.

Funny how that works, right? But then there’s also something else that’s caught my attention. The CFOs of both Strategy and Binance announced their departures just nine days apart from each other.

On October 29, Strategy disclosed that its CFO, Andrew Kang, was resigning effective November 5. Kang had informed the company of his decision just three days earlier, citing personal reasons. The company said there were no disagreements over its operations, policies or practices, and Kang will remain in an advisory role through the end of December. His former page on Strategy’s website is already down.

Nothing necessarily sinister there. But an unexpected departure of the finance chief at the world’s largest corporate holder of Bitcoin, a company whose entire strategy revolves around accumulating an extraordinary amount of a highly volatile asset through increasingly elaborate financial engineering, is at least worth noting.

Then, on November 7, Binance announced that its CFO, Kaiser Ng, was stepping down after more than five years with the exchange. Just nine days earlier, Binance had reportedly suffered a staggering $6.3 billion hack, described as the largest crypto theft in history. The company pledged to make customers whole, while the attack was attributed to North Korean hackers.

Binance says Ng’s departure had been planned for six months and that he’s leaving to pursue a new venture. His replacement, Justin Yek, comes from payments company Airwallex.

Fair enough. But a CFO leaving days after a multibillion dollar hack is the kind of coincidence that tends to get my attention. Particularly in an industry where the words “everything is fine” haven’t always aged especially well.

I’m not alleging any wrongdoing by Ng or Kang, but I am haunted by the echoes of...(READ THIS FULL ARTICLE 100% FREE HERE).

QTR’s Disclaimer: Please read my full legal disclaimer on my About page here.

Contributor posts published on Zero Hedge do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of Zero Hedge, and are not selected, edited or screened by Zero Hedge editors.

Today's Top Stories