Much like how every cliché was once a beautiful, original thought, every conspiracy theory can’t be a load of malarkey.

It’s not just paranoia when everyone’s really out to get you.

Maybe Julius Caesar should have listened to what those senators were whispering about, particularly once they started giving each other gift cards to that dagger store.

For every moon landing and second shooter on the grassy knoll, there’s the rare conspiracy with some actual truth to it.

And today, we’ve got one of those for you. Buckle in, it’s going to be a strange and wild ride.

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☕️ Russia’s Digital Rouble 🇷🇺 🪙

Russian parliament has passed its Digital Ruble bill and will begin testing out its new CBDC with consumers in August.

The Russian branch of McKinley estimates the digital ruble will seriously shake up Russia’s economy, with severe consequences for banks. They predict Russian banks will lose the equivalent of $3.5 billion in five years, but estimate that retailers will be bringing in $1.1 billion annually.

Though Olga Skorobogatova, the deputy chairman of Russia’s central bank, released a statement indicating that Russians shouldn’t expect a full rollout of the digital currency until 2027.

Though a CBDC by its nature, isn’t pegged to a physical commodity, as they say in Soviet Russia, the physical commodity pegs you.

☕️ Arkham Intelligence Fires Back 🤖 🔥

Arkham Intelligence has undergone a lot of admittedly righteous criticism for its new “snitch to earn” model, incentivizing users to remove the anonymity from crypto.

But Arkham Intelligence feels that they’re on a just and righteous mission to cleanse crypto of bad actors.

Miguel Morel, the CEO of Arkham Intelligence, conducted a town hall on Twitter Spaces to address the public’s concerns.

“This is exactly the kind of thing that would have been extremely valuable during every single crisis or scam,” said Morel, adding that his new system would root out “every piece of negative information that has destroyed the reputation of the crypto industry over the past years.”

But if Arkham Intelligence was really dedicated to removing bad actors, they’d be focusing on the prevention of new “Dune” movies.

☕️ DOJ Charges OpenSea Scammer 🏛 🌊

The DOJ has charged Soufiane Oulahyane, a Moroccan national, with the theft of roughly $450,000 worth of crypto and NFTs.

Oulahyane was running a website intended to look identical to OpenSea, but when he received users’ seed phrases, would promptly sell their assets and pocket the money.

Oulahyane is currently in custody and being charged with wire fraud, with a potential sentence of up to 47 years.

The DOJ intends to retake the stolen digital assets in what lawmakers are calling “the first OpenSeizure.”

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Spilling the Beans

This Crypto Conspiracy Is Actually Real 🚨 🇺🇸

Prometheum.

It’s a small crypto company. Not really noteworthy.

Which makes it strange that the SEC is holding Prometheum up as the gold standard of American crypto exchanges.

Amid a wave of lawsuits and unregistered securities cases. The SEC granted Prometheum a special purpose broker-dealer (SPBD) license in May of 2023.

This regulatory favoritism may have drawn some criticism and eye-rolls, particularly when larger and more prominent exchanges such as Coinbase and Kraken were still in the hot seat.

But the case with Prometheum became even fishier when Aaron Kaplan, the founder and CEO of Prometheum, went before the SEC… just to say what a great job they’re doing.

In Kaplan’s prepared statement, Kaplan went on record to say that the current framework provided by the SEC is the most “compliant path forward for crypto in the United States.”

He continued to heap on sycophantic praise for the SEC, calling it “the most capable financial markets regulatory agency in the world.”

And those eyes that were rolling before must have been stuck in the back of their sockets.

Something smelled fishy, and we have to hand it to Matt Walsh, a partner at Castle Island Ventures and apparently an amateur crypto sleuth.

Walsh started plucking at the threads and posted his findings to Twitter.

Prometheum got its start using the Shanghai Wanxiang Blockchain, a Chinese-based firm with potential ties to the communist party.

But more on that later.

In addition to the ties to China, which is usually enough to raise big, red flags with American regulators, Prometheum has paid $1.5 million in sales commissions to Network 1 Financial Securities, a New Jersey-based broker-dealer.

And Network 1 Financial Securities has an insanely spotty regulatory record.

And then when Walsh looked into Prometheum’s management…

Kaplan runs Prometheum with the help of his two sons, Aaron (Jr.) and Benjamin Kaplan.

They’re touted as legal experts because they’re all also members of the law firm, Gusrae Kaplan.

But the Kaplan sons both went to the Thomas Jefferson School of Law, which is not an accredited institution.

So why exactly, is Prometheum being held up as the gold standard of exchanges?

Walsh posits that this could even be a Democratic “PSYOP”, manipulating the market from within.

But Walsh isn’t just an amateur Sherlock Holmes throwing his deerstalker cap in the race.

U.S. Senator Thomas Tuberville penned an open letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland and the SEC, suggesting that Prometheum may have “provided false testimony to Congress or violated U.S. securities laws.”

Tuberville is calling for a full congressional investigation and DOJ involvement.

Tuberville is particularly focused on the connection between Prometheum and ties to the Chinese communist party.

While Prometheum claims to have officially cut ties with the Shanghai Wanxiang blockchain in 2021, looking at Walsh’s Twitter thread, the entire story merits an investigation.

Walsh’s investigation is more interesting, but Tuberville, a Republican from Alabama, is harkening to a proud, McCarthy-era tradition of shouting “Red, Red Communist!” at institutions that make us nervous.

So, is this the work of Chinese communists? Forcing hands in an effort to disrupt American markets? Or is this a Democratic PSYOP, after all?

This conspiracy is still unraveling, and we don’t have enough cigarettes, thread, or thumbtacks to complete our insanity board.

But going by Occam’s razor, which holds that the most likely explanation is probably true...

We’re tempted to say that the Clintons are behind this.

But for now, developments with Prometheum are ongoing, so expect things to become even stranger and more vertigo-inducing.

Meme of the Day

They really think we’re buying it don’t they? 🙄 🤦

Crypto 101

PSYOP: This is a governmental “psychological” operation intended to influence or change public behavior.

They’re hard to track, nearly impossible to prove, but we’re pretty certain they exist.

A PSYOP is when a hippy that nobody’s seen before shows up on a 1970s college campus and tells everyone why he’s actually “digging” the war in Vietnam.

The Last Sip

Yes, most conspiracies are nonsense. But we’ve come up with some pretty compelling answers to the biggest conspiracy theories.

3. The Moon Landing was faked. No, this wasn’t a movie set, but NASA has been hiding the fact that the moon is made of cheese for years. That’s why all those astronauts are getting bone cancer in their old age, they swear off dairy for the rest of their lives after getting sick of moon cheese.

2. The Second Shooter on the Grassy Knoll. Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, but he didn’t successfully kill JFK. Through a series of reconstructive surgeries and government-issued anti-aging serum, JFK still walks among us. He just goes under the alias of “Pete Davidson.”

1. Barack Obama’s Birth Certificate. It’s not that Obama wasn’t born in the United States, it’s that he wasn’t born at all. Barack Obama was the result of a science experiment combining human stem cells, menthol cigarettes, and a collection of legal essays from the University of Chicago.

Stay Caffeinated,

Coffee & Crypto Team

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DISCLAIMER: None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Please be careful and do your own research.