Category: zerohedge

In 2015, Chinese military scientists discussed how to weaponze SARS coronaviruses, five years before the COVID-19 pandemic emerged in Wuhan, China – where CCP scientists were collaborating with a US-funded NGO on so-called ‘gain of function’ research to make bat coronaviruses infect humans more easily.

In a 263-page document, written by People’s Liberation Army scientists and senior Chinese public health officials and obtained by the US State Department during its investigation into the origins of COVID-19, PLA scientists note how a sudden surge of patients requiring hospitalization during a bioweapon attack “could cause the enemy’s medical system to collapse,” according to The Weekend Australian (a subsidiary of News Corp).

It suggests that SARS coronaviruses could herald a “new era of genetic weapons,” and noted that they can be “artificially manipulated into an emerging human ­disease virus, then weaponized and unleashed in a way never seen before.”

The chairmen of the British and Australian foreign affairs and intelligence committees, Tom ­Tugendhat and James Paterson, say the document raises major concerns about China’s lack of transparency over the origins of COVID-19.

The Chinese-language paper, titled The Unnatural Origin of SARS and New Species of Man-Made Viruses as Genetic Bioweapons, outlines China’s progress in the research field of biowarfare.

“Following developments in other scientific fields, there have been major advances in the delivery of biological agents,” it states.

“For example, the new-found ability to freeze-dry micro-organisms has made it possible to store biological agents and aerosolise them during attacks.”

Ten of the authors are scientists and weapons experts affiliated with the Air Force Medical ­University in Xi’an, ranked “very high-risk” for its level of defence research, including its work on medical and psychological sciences, according to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s ­Defence Universities Tracker.

The Air Force Medical University, also known as the Fourth Medical University, was placed under the command of the PLA under President Xi Jinping’s military reforms in 2017. The editor-in-chief of the paper, Xu Dezhong, reported to the top leadership of the Chinese Military Commission and Ministry of Health during the SARS epidemic of 2003, briefing them 24 times and preparing three reports, according to his online ­biography. -The Australian

“We were able to verify its ­authenticity as a document authored by the particular PLA ­researchers and scientists,” according to Robert Potter, a digital forensics specialist who has worked for the US, Australian and Canadian governments – and has previously analyzed leaked Chinese government documents, according to the report. “We were able to locate its genesis on the Chinese internet.”

Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his chief China adviser, Miles Yu, referenced the document in a February op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, writing that “A 2015 PLA study treated the 2003 SARS coronavirus outbreak as a ‘contemporary genetic weapon’ launched by foreign forces.”

And according to Peter Jennings, executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, “There is no clear distinction for research capability because whether it’s used offensively or defensively is not a decision these scientists would take,” adding “If you are building skills ostensibly to protect your military from a biological attack, you’re at the same time giving your military a capacity to use these weapons ­offensively. You can’t separate the two.”

The study also examines the optimum conditions under which to release a bioweapon. “Bioweapon attacks are best conducted during dawn, dusk, night or cloudy weather because intense sunlight can damage the pathogens,” it states. “Biological agents should be released during dry weather. Rain or snow can cause the aerosol particles to precipitate.

“A stable wind direction is ­desirable so that the aerosol can float into the target area.”

Among the most bizarre claims by the military scientists is their theory that SARS-CoV-1, the virus that caused the SARS epidemic of 2003, was a man-made bioweapon, deliberately unleashed on China by “terrorists”. -The Australian

News of the document follows a May 3 report that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was working with the Chinese government in a team which comprised five military and civil experts, “who conducted research at WIV labs, military labs, and other civil labs leading to “the discovery of animal pathogens [biological agents that causes disease] in wild animals,” according to the Epoch Times.

And as we noted in March, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) – headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci, “had funded a number of projects that involved WIV scientists, including much of the Wuhan lab’s work with bat coronaviruses.”

In 2017, Fauci’s agency resumed funding a controversial grant to genetically modify bat coronaviruses in Wuhan, China without the approval of a government oversight body, according to the Daily Caller. For context, in 2014, the Obama administration temporarily suspended federal funding for gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses. Four months prior to that decision, the NIH effectively shifted this research to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) via a grant to nonprofit group EcoHealth Alliance, headed by Peter Daszak.

The NIH’s first $666,442 installment of EcoHealth’s $3.7 million grant was paid in June 2014, with similar annual payments through May 2019 under the “Understanding The Risk Of Bat Coronavirus Emergence” project.

Notably, the WIV “had openly participated in gain-of-function research in partnership with U.S. universities and institutions” for years under the leadership of Dr. Shi ‘Batwoman’ Zhengli, according to the Washington Post‘s Josh Rogin.

So now we have a 2015 document from the Chinese military describing using COVID as a bioweapon – four years before the COVID-19 pandemic breaks out just miles away from a Chinese lab working to make bat COVID more transmissible to humans, and you’re a conspiracy theorist peddling ‘debunked lies’ if you think they might be related.

And for those who say ‘COVID-19 couldn’t be man-made because a laboratory-created virus would have tell-tale signs of manipulation’ – au contraire. As Nicholas Wade noted three days ago in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, “newer methods, called “no-see-um” or “seamless” approaches, leave no defining marks. Nor do other methods for manipulating viruses such as serial passage, the repeated transfer of viruses from one culture of cells to another. If a virus has been manipulated, whether with a seamless method or by serial passage, there is no way of knowing that this is the case. “

It’s as if the painfully obvious answer was right in front of us, only to be shrouded in propaganda by China-friendly politicians, big tech, and news outlets running cover for what should be the easiest game of connect-the-dots on the planet. Luckily, what was a tabboo topic as recently as a year ago, will soon be exposed for the world to see, thanks to The Bulletin Of Atomic Scientists which earlier this week dared to open The Wuhan Virus “Pandora’s Box“…

The wildly uneven US economic recovery since the virus pandemic began in early 2020 has given rise to dangerous levels of inequality, otherwise known as the “K-shaped” recovery. The “K” represents an immediate recovery for the rich but continued economic hardships for the working poor. Payrolls are still millions of jobs short of pre-COVID levels, and millions of others continue collecting stimulus checks. Corporate America understands this souring picture and has found a way to capitalize on an increasingly larger population of working poor Americans by opening a flurry of dollar stores across the country. 

Coresight Research, a firm that focuses on retail & technology companies, reports about 45% of the 3,597 store openings of large chains in the US this year are from Dollar General, Dollar Tree, and Family Dollar. 

The pandemic resulted in millions of Americans who instantly fell into poverty and will remain there as the economy is short 8 million jobs from pre-COVID levels. Many of these folks enjoy the high-life, collecting Biden stimulus checks with minimal incentive to find a job. 

Corporate America understands the dynamics at play as failed fiscal and monetary policies could not lift all boats. Anyone who owned stocks, bonds, real estate, classic cars, fine art, wine, and anything else of value saw incredible valuation gains over the past year as those without assets (working poor) saw very little financial improvements besides a few government stimulus checks. 

This means that millions of folks in a pre-Covid world who shopped at middle to upper-class shops can no longer afford and have migrated to low-income dollar stores for survival. Corporate America is capitalizing on this trend by expanding these stores at a very fast clip. 

“We’ve seen a bifurcation in the economy,” said Ken Fenyo, the president and head of advisory and research at Coresight. “So while the wealthy have done well and continue to do well since the Great Recession, there’s certainly a lot of the population that has not done as well. The dollar stores appeal strongly to that segment of the population. That’s probably the overriding reason we see for the growth in the format.”

The recent surge of new dollar stores across the country is indicative not of a robust recovery but one that is extremely uneven, benefiting a handful at the expense of the many, with deep residual scarring that may last a generation. 

By Zachary Stieber of The Epoch Times

People who have not received a COVID-19 vaccine will be seated separately from those who have in two major baseball stadiums in New York, officials announced this week. The segregation will be enforced at Fans at Citi Field and Yankee Stadium, home to Major League Baseball’s New York Mets and New York Yankees.

“There are going to be separate sections for those who are vaccinated,” Randy Levine, president of the Yankees, told a May 5 briefing he joined with New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

“As we sell tickets on an individual basis, they will go into one of those two areas, either unvaccinated or vaccinated because we will have some inventory in both types of location,” added Sandy Alderson, the president of the Mets.

The details of how the new policy will be enforced are still being developed.

Sections with people who are vaccinated against the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, which causes COVID-19, can be full, with no capacity restrictions. But in sections with unvaccinated people, fans will need to be spaced apart six feet. All fans, regardless of their status, must wear a mask, even though the games are played outdoors.

“For baseball reopening, May 19th. Two different categories. Not Yankees/Mets. Vaccinated/Unvaccinated,” Cuomo, a Democrat who has refused calls to resign over sexual assault allegations and his administration hiding the number of elderly New Yorkers who died from COVID-19, told the briefing.

“I want to thank the Mets and the Yankees from the bottom of my heart. It’s a pain in the neck for them to operate this vaccinated and unvaccinated. The gentlemen who run the stadiums are here. It’s not easy to do this. Nobody’s done this before. Nobody’s done any of this before, let’s be honest,” he added.

Cuomo insisted the new plan is legal.

Fans will be able to use the Excelsior Pass, an application, to show proof of vaccination when entering one of the stadiums, or proof of a negative COVID-19 test. The app was developed by IBM in partnership with the state. It was tested earlier this year at NBA and NHL games before being rolled out officially in March.

The Yankees reported 10,850 fans at their stadium on Tuesday night. That’s the most they can have under current restrictions. In a bid to get more New Yorkers vaccinated, the teams are offering people who get a shot at a stadium a free ticket.

“Basically you come to the game … you take a vaccine shot, you get a voucher, you can go to that game. If that game’s sold out, you can go tomorrow night and go to a game of your choice,” Levine said. Officials at Citi Field said approximately 2,000 people are getting vaccinated there each day.

Also at the briefing, Dr. Howard Zucker, the state’s health commissioner, refused to comment on a report that said Cuomo’s senior aides delayed the release of an audit on nursing home deaths for months.

“This is an ongoing investigation, so I won’t answer any questions at this point,” he said.

Cuomo called the pressure on state officials regarding the shielding of death numbers political. The shielding is being probed by the Department of Justice. He also denied that his administration withheld the numbers because of fear the data would be used against them. One of Cuomo’s top aides, Melissa DeRosa, said as much in a conference call with state Democratic lawmakers earlier this year.

Syrian and Russian state sources are reporting late this week that Russia’s Defense Ministry is expressing anger over what it described as noticeably increased American military activity in Syria’s northeast region, particularly an uptick in military equipment and troop deployments to the al-Jazeera area.

The Russian Coordination Center in Hmeimim cited the increased air and land transport of American military hardware as part of the continuing violation of Syria’s sovereignty intended to block the Syrian population from its own vital resources, including wheat and energy.

The Russian statement said “such military mobilization, synchronized with the economic and social situation resulting from the US blockade damages opportunities for a political solution to the crisis in Syria.”

The most recent estimates of US troop numbers in the country put the Pentagon’s presence at around 1,000 troops – with many of these being special forces. In prior years it was believed to be anywhere from 2,000 to 3,000 – but these estimates have long likely shielded the true numbers of US personnel, including US intelligence and security contractors. 

Days ago Damascus accused US troops of pillaging grain silos in an occupied area of the Hasaka countryside. 

You can see these grain silos everywhere in Northeast Syria. This one is near Hasaka (city). pic.twitter.com/ixmXfAoPnE

— Rena Netjes (@RenaNetjes) May 3, 2021

“US occupation forces brought out a new batch of Syrian wheat stolen from Tal Alou silos in Hasaka countryside to the north of Iraq,” state-run SANA reported Wednesday.

“Local sources in al-Sweidia village in al-Ya’arubia area told SANA reporter that a convoy of 35 trucks laden with wheat stolen from Tal Alou silos left under a protection of an armed group affiliated to US occupation –backed QSD militia through al-Waleed illegitimate crossing heading for north Iraq,” the report said.

Authored by Wolf Richter via WolfStreet.com,

This sort of sudden structural collapse in demand for office space raises some existential questions for landlords…

Companies are not massively defaulting on their office leases, and that’s the good thing. But they have put a historic amount of vacant office space on the sublease market, while continuing to pay rent to the landlord. They decided they no longer need that much space, now that some form of flexible work, or hybrid work-from-home, or even permanent work-from-anywhere is being integrated into office real estate plans, cost cutting efforts, and footprint-reduction strategies.

Now, 14 months into the Pandemic, office occupancy – workers actually showing up at the office – is still dreadfully low. As of the end of April, office occupancy in the 10 largest metros averaged only 26.5% of where it had been just before the Pandemic, according to Kastle Systems today, whose electronic access systems secure thousands of office buildings around the country. In other words, the number of people entering these offices was still down by 73.5% from pre-pandemic levels and has barely made headway in recent months:

The epicenters of work-from-home show the biggest drops in office occupancy rates, according to Kastle’s “Back to Work Barometer” at the end of April: in San Francisco, the occupancy rate was at 14.8% of the pre-Pandemic level, in New York City at 16.2%, and in San Jose at 18.0%.

Among tech companies, 95% expect remote work for at least a few days a week; 9% said that they will never return to the office at all; another 47% said that they will need less office space; only 13% said they would need more office space, according to a survey by Savills.

A survey of Californian residents found that 82% of the employees who now work at home want to continue working at home at least some of the time. Only 18% don’t want to work at home at all.

But even at the top end of office occupancy, working remotely is still king. In Dallas, office occupancy is at 41.2% of where it was pre-Pandemic, and in Austin at 40.2% (click on the chart to enlarge):

How exactly this will shake out for office real estate is getting complicated, as they say, with everyone involved having different ideas as to what they want.

A survey by Accenture of 400 North American financial-services companies found that 80% of the executives would like for workers to spend four or five days in the office post-Pandemic. Many of them think that working at home makes training younger employees more difficult and is hurting company culture.

But employees are looking for flexibility, now that they have proven that they can be productive at home.

“You’ve seen the senior executives sitting in their office and there’s nobody behind them,” Laurie McGraw, head of Accenture’s capital markets industry team in North America, told Bloomberg. “And then you see the entry-level folks starved for in-person interaction because they need to be coached on a more regular basis. And then there’s the vast middle that’s content to be home.”

The work-from-home year 2020 generated record profits for banks, proving that work-from-home can be managed, and many employees question the need to commute every day. According to Rob Dicks, Accenture’s talent and organization head for capital markets, employees are likely to push back against a full-time return.

Despite whatever executives would like, the reality of the cost-cutting aspects of working from home has already set in. According to Accenture’s survey, of the same executives:

• Nearly two-thirds expect to cut their office footprint by 11% to 40% over the next nine months.

• Over half are planning to relocate employees to new lower-cost locations.

• 9% said they’ll close their headquarters in a major market.

Financial firms have been all over the place with their plans.

Goldman Sachs, in an internal memo seen by Bloomberg, told its US employees that they should be prepared to report to the office by June 14, according to an internal memo seen by Bloomberg.

Vanguard Group, which employs about 17,300 people, is planning a hybrid model for most of its staff, with many employees able to work from home on Mondays and Fridays.

Bridgewater Associates is going for the hybrid model as well and will allow their employees to work from home at least part of the time.

Deutsche Bank, which employs about 8,000 people in the US, is planning to let its staff work from home for up to three days a week. Separately, the bank had said that it wanted to reduce its office foot print to cut costs.

Deutsche Bank is offering “flexibility” as an inducement for hiring and retention. A survey had found that 90% of its employees wanted the opportunity to work from home at least part of the time after the Pandemic. Office space will be reconfigured to accommodate the hybrid model.

JPMorgan Chase told its employees in a memo to report back to the office by early July on a “consistent rotational schedule” that would allow staff some flexibility.

For landlords, these are existential questions as an enormous amount of office space is now vacant and available for lease in the US, and more office towers are in the process of being built, and nothing could have prepared the commercial real estate industry for this sort of sudden structural collapse in demand.

*  *  *

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The last hugely controversial Scottish referendum on independence took place in September 2014 and showed that the Scottish population’s desire to leave its three-centuries old union with England and Wales was gaining momentum. At that time it was approaching half – with the 2014 result being 55% voting to remain with 45% in favor of independence.

It’s now widely believed that if the UK allowed another vote today, that margin would be much narrower, and it looks like that showdown will now come sooner than thought after Saturday’s decisive election victory by First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s Scottish National Party (SNP). Sturgeon’s first declaration was aimed squarely at London and Boris Johnson, as she called another independence referendum the “will of the country”.

Her SNP won an unprecedented 64 seats in the Scottish Parliament, which falls just one seat short of a majority, marking a slight increase even over 2016, which ensures a legal and constitutional battle for the future of the United Kingdom will be sparked once again.

Given that the pro-independence Scottish Greens also made huge gains in what’s widely considered their best performance ever, the result is a firm pro-independence majority.

Sturgeon quickly put London on notice…

An independence referendum was pledged in the manifesto of both the SNP and the Scottish Greens, and Ms Sturgeon declared: “It is a commitment made to the people by a majority of the MSPs have been elected to our national parliament.”

“It is the will of the country.”

“Given that outcome, there is simply no democratic justification whatsoever for Boris Johnson or anyone else seeking to block the right of the people of Scotland to choose our future.”

If the request is rejected, Ms Sturgeon said, “it will demonstrate conclusively that the UK is not a partnership of equals and that – astonishingly – Westminster no longer sees the UK as a voluntary union of nations”.

She added: “That in itself would be a very powerful argument for independence.”

Sturgeon further explained the vote result is a clear and urgent mandate for Scotland to push ahead with preparing for a second independence referendum to be held as soon as the COVID-19 pandemic is over. 

consistent with my assumption…
that he knows he can’t stand in the way of a referendum without dishonouring the UK’s democratic heritage, and taking the whole UK to a very dark place. As @GavinBarwell argues it is hard for a British PM to…

— Robert Peston (@Peston) May 8, 2021

Rabobank noted the significance of this weekend as follows:

The Scottish regional election on May 6 is potentially shaping up to have a big impact on the future of Scotland and the UK, as independence has returned to the top of the agenda. The Scottish National Party looks set to win by a considerable margin, and is then likely to claim to have gained a new mandate for a referendum. The Conservative Party, officially the Conservative and Unionist Party, will in turn continue to make the case for the union. But even when prime minister Johnson denies Scotland a second independence referendum, or employs more heavy-handed tactics to suppress ‘Scoxit’ sentiments, the rift between Scotland and England looks set to widen. The Scottish regional election should be viewed entirely through this prism.

In the meantime Sturgeon told her supporters that it’s time to “patiently persuade our fellow citizens” of the case for an independent Scotland.

Authored by Jake Johnson via CommonDreams.org,

More than 100 heavily armed Brazilian police officers stormed a sprawling Rio de Janeiro favela (a shanty town or slum) Thursday and killed at least two dozen people, a raid that human rights activists, researchers, and journalists described as the deadliest such police atrocity in the city’s history.

The hours-long operation, purportedly aimed at drug traffickers in the poverty-stricken Jacarezinho favela, ultimately left at least 25 people dead, including one police officer. Horrific video footage and images posted to social media in the wake of the raid—which was carried out despite a court order against such incursions during the Covid-19 pandemic—show favela residents surveying rooms, hallways, and alleys streaked with blood. “It’s extermination—there’s no other way to describe it,” Pedro Paulo Santos Silva, a researcher at Rio’s Center for Studies on Public Security and Citizenship, told The Guardian. “This was a massacre.”

“Really grim moment in Brazil,” Robert Muggah, co-founder of the Igarapé Institute, a Rio-based think tank, said in an interview with the Washington Post. “These shootings are obviously routine in Rio de Janeiro, but this is unprecedented, in that it’s the operation that has generated the largest number of deaths, ever.”

Brazilian lawmaker David Miranda, who grew up in Jacarezinho, called the deadly police raid “a tragedy, a slaughter authorized by Cláudio Castro,” Rio’s governor. “Jacarezinho is my origin, it is the favela that created me,” said Miranda. “No person born outside the favela can know what that is. Brazilian institutions insist on disrespecting and marginalizing the favela.”

Journalist Glenn Greenwald, Miranda’s husband, wrote on Twitter that he has “seen probably two dozen videos that are way too horrifying to publish: police enter homes with full force and violence, and then execute people as they lay on the ground, shooting them 10-15 times each in the head.”

“It’s an atrocity what happened today,” Greenwald added.

Please watch the 2-minute video here on Thursday’s police massacre in Rio de Janeiro. The death toll is now up to 29. https://t.co/hDU3f0JIYe

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) May 8, 2021

Brazil suffers one of the highest rates of police killings in the world, and the nation is currently led by a far-right president who campaigned on the promise to “give the police carte blanche to kill.” According to Human Rights Watch, Rio law enforcement officers killed 453 people during the first three months of 2021.

“They say there is no death sentence in Brazil. Except if you live in a favela,” said Marilia Corrêa, a Latin America historian and postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan’s Weiser Center for Emerging Democracies. “In this case, the police can just march in, kill dozens of people, and call it a day. This is appalling, revolting, outrageous. They have no right.”

(Warning: the following footage is disturbing)

Uma casa invadida e esse eh o resultado pic.twitter.com/gf8lVZMqCh

— Joel Luiz Costa (@joelluiz_adv) May 6, 2021

Jurema Werneck, executive director of Amnesty International Brazil, said in a statement Thursday that “the number of people killed in this police operation is reprehensible, as is the fact that, once again, this massacre took place in a favela.”

“It’s completely unacceptable that security forces keep committing grave human rights violations such as those that occurred in Jacarezinho today against residents of the favelas, who are mostly Black and live in poverty,” said Werneck. “Even if the victims were suspected of criminal association, which has not been proven, summary executions of this kind are entirely unjustifiable.”

A month ago we warned that The Fed’s incessant intervention had put distressed investors out of business as the remarkable rally in even the lowest quality junk debt (‘CCC or triple hooks’) had created party time for zombie companies everywhere as “high yield” is now officially “low yield.”

And, while the party can and will go on as long as there are greater fools, one look at the fundamentals…

… confirms that the party will only last as long as central banks keep injecting hundreds of billions into the market each and every month.

“People aren’t investing, they’re just chasing.”

That is the ominous, ponzi-like warning from Adam Cohen, Caspian Capital’s managing partner as the distressed debt investor has chosen to return some money to investors because the rewards don’t justify the high risks anymore.

He’s right. Despite soaring debt levels and forward economic uncertainty, US HY debt risk spreads are 100bps tighter than pre-COVID levels…

And all that has sparked a resurgence in hedge funds betting against this farce continuing.

In fact, as Bloomberg reports, global high-yield bonds worth as much as $55 billion are on loan to traders seeking to profit if prices drop, according to data from IHS Markit.

That is the largest balance since the fall of 2008, and compares with about $35 billion at the start of the year.

“I would expect that to get bigger as spreads tighten and/or people get worried about rates rising,” said Tim Winstone, a portfolio manager at Janus Henderson, which oversees 294 billion pounds ($409 billion).

“At these levels of valuations, I’m not surprised more people, such as hedge funds, are setting shorts.”

And we are starting to see the impact of this drop in bullish/momo-chasing malarkey in the performance of deals in the secondary market. Almost one out of four high-yield bonds sold this year is indicated below the price it was issued at, based on data compiled by Bloomberg.

With The ECB already hinting at scaling back its asset-purchases, and BoE having already done so, The Fed continues to ignore talk of its own tapering, but between HY shorts, and deleveraging, investors are starting to signal the build-up of defenses against a potential scaling back of central-bank support.

Submitted by Epoch Times

Genetically modified mosquitoes have been released for the first time in the United States as part of an experiment to combat insect-borne diseases such as Dengue fever, yellow fever, and the Zika virus.

UK-based biotechnology firm Oxitec, which is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, said it released the mosquitoes in six locations in Monroe County’s Florida Keys: two on Cudjoe Key, one on Ramrod Key, and three on Vaca Key. It’s part of an effort to help tackle a disease-transmitting invasive mosquito population—the Aedes aegypti mosquito species—that’s responsible for “virtually all mosquito-borne diseases transmitted to humans,” according to the company.

These mosquitoes make up about 4 percent of the mosquito population in the Keys, and transmit dengue, Zika, yellow fever, and other human diseases, as well as heartworm and other potentially deadly diseases to pets and other animals.

The experiment is in collaboration with the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District (FKMCD), and was approved by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (FDACS), the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and an independent advisory board.

Over the next 12 weeks, fewer than 12,000 mosquitoes are expected to emerge each week, for approximately 12 weeks. Untreated comparison sites will be monitored with mosquito traps on Key Colony Beach, Little Torch Key, and Summerland Key. If successful, some 20 million additional genetically modified mosquitoes will be released later in the year.

“We really started looking at this about a decade ago, because we were in the middle of a dengue fever outbreak here in the Florida Keys,” FKMCD Executive Director Andrea Leal said during a video news conference. “So we’re just very excited to move forward with this partnership, working both with Oxitec and members of the community.”

The insects released by the biotechnology firm are all male, so they don’t bite. They’re expected to mate with the local biting female mosquitoes, and in doing so, they will pass on a lethal gene that will ensure their female offspring die before reaching maturity.

According to Quartz, areas including Malaysia, Brazil, the Cayman Islands, and Panama, where similar experiments have been carried out, have seen mosquito populations drop by as much as 90 percent.

The project has faced backlash from residents, who say their consent was not sought for the experiment.

Back on April 25, we quoted a prominent billionaire VC who said that “Ethereum is the world’s most interesting trade right now” and we predicted that “Ethereum Is About To Make An Epic Breakout Over Bitcoin.” Two weeks later, and one report from FundStrat’s Tom Lee putting out a $10,500 price target on Ethereum (and $100,000 on bitcoin)..

… and ethereum has returned 66% to bitcoin’s paltry 16%, a 4x outperformance which even to the most jaded traders constitutes an “epic breakout.”

More importantly, as bitcoin has languished in the $50-$60K range over the past month, ethereum has nearly doubled and moments ago traded at an all time high above $3,800.

Meanwhile, the ratio of ETH/BTC finally broke out above its recent highs..

… and as we said two weeks ago “once the recent high is taken out, there is much more room to go… In fact, should ETHBTC hit its historical high, Ethereum would be above $5,000.” We are now just $1,200 away which at the current pace of ascent, may be reached some time next week.

While there are many reasons for the renewed investor fascination in Ethereum, including the launch of four ethereum ETFs, the application by VanEck for the first US Ethereum ETF, the exploding demand for NFTs, interest in DeFi and generally the realization that while Bitcoin is just a token, Ethereum is an entire digital platform (not to mention the most obvious one: relentless upside momentum which in the case of bitcoin, appears to have tapered for now).

It’s why two days after we said to brace for an “epic” ethereum breakout, JPMorgan published a note on April 27 from one of its most respected rates and fixed income (!) strategists, Joshua Young, explaining “why ETH is outperforming“…

… in which it gave yet another reason for ethereum’s stunning outperformance compared to bitcoin: ETH valuations may be less dependent on levered  demand than BTC, a technical but occasionally important tailwind going forward.

Of course, one can’t also discount the rabid frenzy to all things crypto in recent days as Elon Musk is set to appear on SNL and pitch the “joke” crypto, Dogecoin.

Guest starring … pic.twitter.com/buM3bTOWbX

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 7, 2021

So yes, there is a risk that after Saturday night, the crypto space and especially Doge, will be hit as some take profits, but as JPMorgan writes in a new note published late on Friday and authored by its versatile cross-currency quant Nick Panagirtzoglou whose job is to cover everything from retail interest in stocks to calculating the “fair value” of bitcoin and ethereum (yes, really), the move higher in ethereum has been far more striking than the one in bitcoin, and is likely to continue.

As the JPM quant writes in a section discussing “ethereum’s ascent”, the crypto market expanded sharply in recent weeks led by ethereum and other smaller cryptocurrencies, despite bitcoin still hovering below $60k, with Panigirtzoglou admitting that “the rise in ethereum in particular has been striking”, which he attributes to a combination of factors:

1. The European Investment Bank (EIB) used the ethereum blockchain to issue €100mn in two-year zero-coupon digital notes last week, its first ever digital bond. The transaction involved a series of bond tokens on the ethereum blockchain, where investors purchase and pay for the security tokens using traditional fiat. The EIB digital bond is surely very significant as it represents the endorsement of the ethereum blockchain by a major official institution.
2. The first ethereum ETF (ETHH) was launched on April 20th by Purpose Investments in Canada and three more ethereum ETFs launches followed during the same month.
3. The structural decline in ethereum supply from the pending introduction of protocol EIP1559 in the summer. EIP 1559‘s objective is to make transaction fees on the ethereum blockchain more predictable by introducing an automatically calculated base fee for all transactions depending on network activity. Once paid with ethereum, this fee would be immediately burned, implying reduced supply of ethereum in the future. Ethereum’s theoretically unlimited supply had been a concern in the past, with ethereum in circulation rising by 5% per year over the past three years. Via burning ethereum through base fees, EIP1559 could potentially reduce the annual change of ethereum in circulation to 1-2% per year.
4. The greater focus by investors on ESG has shifted attention away from the energy intensive bitcoin blockchain to the ethereum blockchain, which in anticipation of Ethereum 2.0 is expected to become a lot more energy efficient by the end of 2022. Ethereum 2.0 involves a shift from an energy intensive Proof-of-Work validation mechanism to a much less intensive Proof-of-Stake validation mechanism. As a result, less computational power and energy consumption would be needed to maintain the ethereum network.
5. The sharp growth of NFTs and stablecoins in recent months are increasing the usage of the ethereum which is already dominating the DeFi ecosystem.
6. The rise in bond yields and the eventual normalization of monetary policy is putting downward pressure on bitcoin as a form of digital gold, the same way higher real yields have been putting downward pressure on traditional gold. With ethereum deriving its value from its applications, ranging from DeFi to gaming to NFTs and stablecoins, it appears less susceptible than bitcoin to higher real yields.

Indeed, JPM concedes that both retail and institutional demand indicators accelerated in recent weeks and months, while JPM’s position proxy based on CME ethereum futures, shown in Figure 6 more than tripled during April pointing to significant, around $250mn, of institutional buying in Etherem.

The flow trajectory for ethereum funds got boosted in April from the launch of four ETFs, pointing to a mix of institutional and retail impulse (Figure 7 and Figure 8).

These flow metrics look even more impressive if one compares them to the equivalent for bitcoin as shown in Figure 9 and Figure 10.

The surge in interest is translating into rapidly accelerating activity on the ethereum network, similarly implying rising demand.

And while we were quite surprise by the JPM’s bullish take on ethereum at least as compared with its persistent bearishness on bitcoin, it is not surprising that the bank’s quant concluded his report with a warning, noting that “the past weeks have not only seen a large expansion of the market cap of ethereum but also of other coins such as Binance Coin, Dogecoin, Litecoin, Ethereum Classic, and others. This expansion has shifted the market cap of cryptocurrencies excluding Bitcoin and Ethereum and as well as stablecoins to a staggering $800bn with the share of bitcoin in the total crypto market falling steeply from around 60% to 45% over the past month.”

Of course, the JPM strategist has to admit that a big part of this decline has been helped by increased institutional interest in ethereum (the same ethereum whose “striking” move higher he believes will continue). But to the extent it is driven by a rally in other cryptocurrencies driven more by retail demand, Panigirtzoglou writes that “it carries some echoes of the froth that was evident in December 2017 when the share of bitcoin had fallen from around 55% to below 35%.”

Of course, those who actually traded through the crash of 2018 know that it had little to do with retail participation and everything to do with the Fed’s ongoing tightening, with the Fed hiking rates three times in 2017 and then another 4 in 2018. So while there may be similarities, there is one giant difference, namely that for now the Fed has little intention to taper QE let alone hike rates. In fact, if one goes according to comparisons to the Fed’s last rate hike cycle, ethereum, bitcoin, and other cryptos, will peak some time in late 2024, one year after the Fed will have started its latest (failed) tightening cycle. The only question is how many tens (or hundreds) of thousands of dollars one ethereum token will cost then.