While it’s still largely overlooked by most geopolitical analysts, the Indo-Pacific is probably the clearest indicator of the emerging multipolar world order. Resource competition over is rife in this region, not just over oil, gas, and rare earths but, more crucially, over fish stocks and fishing rights. Territorial claims also abound, not just around Taiwan,…
REALLY Deep Dive… Not for the fainthearted. XRP is commonly presented and perceived as a utility token purpose-built to improve cross-border payments for banks. But what if there’s more to this cryptoken and its history than the official narrative discloses? There’s actually plenty of evidence to suggest that XRP and XRP-Ledger (XRPL) were developed as…
Right now multiple economic pressures are converging, creating a more difficult environment for ordinary households than official narratives are willing to even hint at. Among these, three developments stand out in particular: And while these trends are interconnected, each carries a separate, direct set of consequences for people trying to maintain financial stability and plan…
I’ve been a techie and analyst for a good piece north of three decades. I was there for the DotCom boom/bust, the 2008 crisis, and I’ve seen and participated in multiple waves of technological and financial innovation. One thing I know for certain is that truly world-changing shifts ALWAYS happen in the plumbing of finance…
As a disaster prevention and recovery specialist I’ve built my career dissecting complex corporate systems, frequently under extreme pressure. Whether tracking corporate sabotage, IP breaches, system breakdowns, or supply chain failures, there’s one underlying factor running through many of the projects I’ve taken on in the past decade and a half: Brittle systems fracture and…
By the shade of George Orwell Looking back at writing 1984, I now realize I was just a starry-eyed optimist back in those days. Indeed, in 1948 I could not have possibly foreseen any of the ways in which Big Brother is now controlling us, our thoughs, our opinions, and our behavior. I predicted that…
As the descendant of Soviet dissidents I have spent almost three decades analyzing governance trends slowly getting out of hand on both sides of the Atlantic. But between the creeping technocracy and population oppression of the European Union since the 1990s and Canada in more recent years to the rapid takeover of Washington by corporate…
As some of you know, I carry out an almost unhealthy level of geopolitical research and analysis each week. That gives me a level of insight which few people possess. With that said, this report is drawn from recent high-level discussions among military experts, former intelligence officers, and diplomats, as well as BTF’s own analyses.…
I’ve been tracking the intersection of regulation, capital flows, and technological disruption for a long time now. And as a compulsive reader of terms & conditions, disclaimers, contracts, and more than a little legislative documentation I have learned that the truly earthshaking progess in finance tends to be buried in dense bureaucratic language, not in…
The astute among us who’ve been around long enough have noticed the great-power competition, pressurized energy markets, and the slow erosion of American primacy over the past couple of decades. And yet, we have rarely seen a policy pivot as revealing as the Trump administration’s shift from kinetic strikes to a purported “worldwide naval blockade”…
