Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TobagoJack who wrote (192007)	9/20/2022 8:23:30 PM
From: TobagoJack	Respond to of 217652

Believe the article is wrong re the reasons china-lift-aug-fuel-exports-2022-shipments-drop-7-year-lows-2022-08-15 China to lift August fuel exports but 2022 shipments to drop to 7-year lows Muyu Xu August 15, 20223:00 PM GMT+8 Last Updated a month ago SINGAPORE, Aug 15 (Reuters) - China's fuel product exports will rebound in August to near the highest for the year so far after Beijing issued more quotas in June and July, although broader curbs are set to cap shipments at seven-year lows for 2022, analysts and traders said. The rebound in fuel exports from China, the world's second-biggest producer of refined fuels, has helped cool global prices that hit record highs in May and June as western sanctions on Russia following the Ukraine war tightened global markets. Shipments are expected to level off over the rest of the year, however, as Beijing prioritises the local market to curb domestic fuel inflation. Diesel, gasoline and jet fuel exports for the year are expected to be as much as 40% lower from 2021. With the drop-off in China - once Asia's top gasoline exporter and a key diesel supplier - fuel importers will have to rely on South Korea, India and the Middle East, analysts said. "With China staying in a scale-back mode so far, it is certainly an opportunity for export-oriented refiners in the rest of Asia and Middle East to supply the shorts in Europe and U.S.," said Mukesh Sadhav, head of downstream and oil trading at consultancy Rystad Energy. China fuel exports Asian refiners outside China are expected to raise their crude throughput 10%-15% this year from 2021, while China's output may be flat as a rebound in the second half offsets a rare decline in the first six months of the year, Sadhav said. China's July refinery runs fell to their lowest in more than two years, data showed on Monday, with year-to-date volumes down 6.3% from a year earlier. read more AUGUST REBOUND China's diesel exports are expected to show the most dramatic rise for August, topping one million tonnes for the first time since July 2021 as state refiners clear overflowing inventories that have swelled since COVID-19 lockdowns stifled consumption, estimates from Refinitiv and Chinese commodities consultancy JLC showed. "The higher (diesel) sales come at an inopportune time ... with India poised to raise exports as it seeks to reverse its current account deficit, while South Korea has been plagued with surplus diesel," said Refinitiv analyst Zameer Yusof. Exports of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel combined are pegged at 2.4 million to 2.6 million tonnes for August, near China's highest so far this year, according to JLC and a trading source. read more These higher exports have worked to cool Asia's refining profits from the records of June. read more DOMESTICALLY FOCUSED Still, China's annual exports of diesel, gasoline and aviation fuel are forecast to drop 30%-40% from 2021 to between 23 million and 27 million tonnes, according to consultancies Energy Aspects and JLC. That would be the lowest since 2015. This suggests monthly exports will hold near the recent pace over the rest of 2022 as China has already exported nearly 12 million tonnes of products in the first half. "Capturing short-term export profits is not the government's priority, maintaining ample supplies at home and containing domestic inflation is," said a Beijing-based trading executive. Beijing has issued fuel export quotas of 22.5 million tonnes so far in 2022 and may not issue more amid a tax probe into independent refiners and ahead of a seasonal demand peak in September and October that will tighten domestic supplies, JLC said in a note. JLC expects 2022 diesel exports to shrink by 74% from 2021 to 4.5 million tonnes and gasoline to fall nearly 40% to 9 million tonnes. Only aviation fuel exports will rise, up 11% to 9.5 million tonnes, JLC said, as COVID-19 lockdowns and border controls cut domestic and international Chinese flights. Data from VariFlight, a China-based flight data service, showed China's domestic passenger and cargo air traffic in July was 20% lower versus July 2019, while traffic to and from international destinations was only 3% of July 2019. China in double oil slowdown

To: TobagoJack who wrote (192007)	9/20/2022 8:56:28 PM
From: Pogeu Mahone	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 217652

Putin 'Going All In' to Turn Ukraine War Into Conflict With NATO, Ally Says BY ISABEL VAN BRUGEN ON 9/20/22 AT 12:07 PM EDT WORLD RUSSIA RUSSIA-UKRAINE WAR UKRAINE VLADIMIR PUTIN Vladimir Putin is going "all in" to turn the Ukraine war into a conflict with NATO, an ally of the Russian president said ahead of referendums later this month on joining Russia in four occupied regions. Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of RT, the state-controlled Russian media organization, made the remarks on her Facebook page. Meanwhile, two breakaway regions of Ukraine's eastern Donbas region—the Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics (DPR and LPR)—have announced plans to hold referendums on joining Russia. The Russian government's Tass news agency reported on Tuesday that the LPR has set a "referendum on joining Russia" for September 23 to 27. Denis Pushilin, head of the DPR, has said a referendum will be scheduled on the same dates. The two pro-Russia separatist republics broke away from Kyiv in 2014 following Putin's annexation of Crimea and were partially occupied by Russia that year. In her Facebook post, Simonyan suggested that recognizing the eastern regions as belonging to Russia would allow Moscow to more easily threaten NATO with retaliatory strikes for any Ukrainian counterattacks. "An immediate referendum—it is a Crimean scenario, and it's all-in," wrote Simonyan, referring to the annexation of Crimea following a referendum that had been criticized by U.S. and EU officials as illegitimate. "Today a referendum, tomorrow—recognition as part of the Russian Federation, the day after tomorrow—strikes on the territory of Russia will become a full-fledged war between Ukraine and NATO with Russia, untying Russia's hands in all respects," she wrote. Simonyan added: "If I understand correctly, now referendums will be demanded not only in the LPR." NEWSWEEK SUBSCRIPTION OFFERS > A Ukrainian soldier waves the Ukrainian national flag while standing on top of an armored personnel carrier on April 8 in Hostomel, Ukraine. An ally of Vladimir Putin said the Russian president is going "all in" to turn the Ukraine war into a conflict with NATO.ALEXEY FURMAN/GETTY IMAGESDmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia's Security Council, said Tuesday on his Telegram channel that the results of the referendums will be irreversible. "It is important that after amendments to the Constitution of our state, not a single future leader of Russia, not a single official will be able to reverse these decisions," Medvedev said. Meanwhile, Russian-language independent news outlet Meduza cited two sources close to the Kremlin that said referendums will also be held in the Russian-occupied territories of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, from September 23 to 27. The Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a U.S. think tank, said Tuesday that efforts to annex Luhansk and Donetsk show how much Kyiv's successful military counteroffensive is worrying Putin. Ukrainian forces reclaimed more than 3,000 square miles of territory in the northeastern Kharkiv region during a counteroffensive that began in early September. Russia "may be running out of ways to try to stop Ukrainian forces as they advance across the Oskil River and closer to Luhansk Oblast," the ISW said.

To: TobagoJack who wrote (192007)	9/20/2022 9:12:39 PM
From: Pogeu Mahone	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 217652

SEC Claims All of Ethereum Falls Under US Jurisdiction In a civil complaint against a crypto influencer, the SEC suggested that it believes the U.S. government has jurisdiction over all Ethereum transactions. By Sander Lutz Sep 19, 2022 4 min read SEC Chair Gary Gensler. Image: SEC. When the SEC filed a federal lawsuit Monday against crypto influencer Ian Balina for his failure to register a cryptocurrency as a security before launching a 2018 initial coin offering (ICO), everything at first appeared run-of-the-mill: the SEC has, for years, filed civil suits against individuals and organizations for rolling out unregistered ICOs. Eagle-eyed observers then read a little further into the fine print. In a bold and potentially unprecedented move buried in the lawsuit’s 69th paragraph, the SEC today claimed it had the right to sue Balina not only because his case concerns transactions made in the United States, but also because, essentially, the entire Ethereum network falls under the US government’s purview. In its complaint, the regulator noted that the ETH sent to Balina was “validated by a network of nodes on the Ethereum blockchain, which are clustered more densely in the United States than in any other country.” The SEC then concludes: “As a result, those transactions took place in the United States.” The SEC appears to be suggesting that, because more of Ethereum’s validating nodes currently operate in the United States than in any other country, all Ethereum transactions globally should be considered of American origin. Currently, 45.85% of all Ethereum nodes operate from the United States, according to Etherscan. The second-greatest density of nodes is in Germany, with only 19%, by comparison. Want to be a crypto expert? Get the best of Decrypt straight to your inbox.Your EmailGet it! “Saying that enables [the SEC] to characterize doing business on the Ethereum blockchain, as doing business on a US securities exchange,” University of Kentucky law professor Brian Fyre told Decrypt. “Which, from their regulatory perspective, is convenient. It makes things so much simpler.” If the SEC were to successfully classify activity on Ethereum as akin to that on an American securities exchange, it would amount to the regulatory body laying claim to jurisdiction over all activity on the ostensibly decentralized Ethereum network. Such a development would constitute a major escalation in the SEC’s role in overseeing both Ethereum, specifically—where the vast majority of NFT and DeFi activity takes place—and crypto as a whole. Fyre noted that the language of today’s complaint bears no legal weight, and due to the nature of the SEC’s suit against Balina, the court in this case is unlikely to weigh in on this specific issue. But that doesn’t mean the statement holds no significance. “I think they may be trying to get their vision of what Ethereum is, and how it works, out into the judicial ecosystem,” Fyre told Decrypt. “It’s the SEC saying, ‘This entire body of financial activity is within the scope of the stuff that we regulate, and therefore we’re going to regulate all of it.’” Fyre considers such a full-throated claim to jurisdiction over the entire Ethereum ecosystem to be unprecedented. “It's the first time I've seen the SEC really lay out how it understands the Ethereum ecosystem to work, and why it thinks it falls within the scope of what the SEC regulates,” he said. Last week, in the hours following Ethereum’s successful merge to a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism, SEC Chair Gary Gensler implied that the transition could bring the network closer to the definition of a security in the government’s eyes. Following testimony before the Senate Banking Committee, Gensler gave his view on how “staking” (i.e. pledging assets to a crypto network in exchange for passive rewards) could be interpreted as an indication that an asset qualifies as a security under the so-called Howey Test, though he did not address any specific cryptocurrency or network by name. Fyre thinks the proximity of that statement to today’s is no accident. “[Today’s language] seems perfectly consistent with what Gensler was getting at in his statement [...] that the SEC sees all of this as securities and therefore is going to make regulatory decisions in relation to the entire ecosystem,” said Fyre. Under Gensler, the SEC has yet to take an official stance on Ethereum, despite leadership within the Commission under the previous administration suggesting that Ethereum was “ sufficiently decentralized” and therefore not a security. But if the SEC were to ever claim that Ethereum was an unregistered security, Fyre doubts the courts would stand in its way. “I can see judges absolutely accepting that, sure: Ethereum is substantially located in the United States, insofar as it's run on a bunch of computers, and a bunch of those computers are in the United States,” said Fyre. “That's events occurring in the United States. No problem.”