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Charts don’t lie. Narratives do.

With Venezuela’s Bolivarian strongman now cooling his heels in NYC’s finest concrete resort, the obvious question is: where did all the money go? Billions in oil, gold, and state assets apparently didn’t vanish—they allegedly shape-shifted into Bitcoin, with estimates floating as high as $60 billion, enough to rival MicroStrategy and make El Salvador look like it forgot its wallet. If true, it seems Venezuelan gold didn’t just leave the country—it went straight to the blockchain.

https://www.thelibertybeacon.com/the-60-billion-question-is-venezuela-secretly-a-bitcoin-superpower/

In short: Venezuelan gold was allegedly turned into crypto via Turkey and the UAE, laundered through mixers, and locked away in cold wallets—because nothing says “national development” like blockchain hide-and-seek.

The gold flowed from the Orinoco Mining Arc through state miners, onto planes, into refineries, and finally into crypto wallets. High-tech laundering, old-school couriers. Same story as always—just with better software and worse punchlines.

And the crypto circus didn’t stop at gold.

Enter PDVSA-Cripto: the sequel nobody asked for. Saab’s partners allegedly helped reroute billions in oil revenues using Tether, turning Venezuela’s oil trade into a stablecoin-only side hustle. Between 2020 and 2022, oil cargos increasingly settled in USDT via OTC brokers and private wallets—because why use a national oil company when you can use a crypto wallet?
The result: ships sailed away with $20+ billion worth of oil, while PDVSA got the privilege of waiting by the phone. By December 2025, roughly 80% of Venezuela’s oil revenue was reportedly collected in USDT. Tether froze 41 wallets with $119 million—which sounds impressive until you realize it’s likely just the loose change that was easy enough to spot.

Same story, new tech: oil out, money gone, blockchain blamed for being “too transparent.”

https://www.ainvest.com/news/blockade-spur-venezuela-shift-80-oil-revenue-usdt-2512/?ref=whalehunting.projectbrazen.com

And so we arrive at the predictable finale.

With Maduro cooling his heels in Manhattan, the real mystery isn’t whether the regime survives—it’s whether its fortune ever re-enters the daylight, or simply dissolves into the blockchain, accessible only to those who still remember the passwords. The old tricks—shell companies, tankers, friendly banks—haven’t disappeared. They’ve just been upgraded with stablecoins, OTC brokers, private wallets, and partners who suddenly can’t be found.

Once again, Bitcoin and its crypto cousins prove their timeless utility: not for wealth preservation; payments, productivity, or freedom speeches—but as the most efficient escape hatch ever invented for money trying to slip quietly out of the official grid.
Same laundering, new technology. Different decade, identical outcome.

Beyond supplying oil to China, Chávez’s and Maduro’s Venezuela also flirted heavily with Moscow—where China brought checkbooks, Russia brought missiles. By late 2025, Russian lawmakers were openly musing about sending Kalibr and Oreshnik missiles to Caracas, a not-so-subtle reply to U.S. naval muscle in the Caribbean and a reminder that geography cuts both ways. The partnership was bluntly geopolitical: Venezuela bought over $4 billion in Russian weapons, hosted exercises and bomber flyovers, and became Moscow’s symbolic outpost in Washington’s backyard. On energy, Russia didn’t need the oil but still helped—via Rosneft loans, equity stakes, and creative sanction-dodging shipping schemes—proving that when ideology meets opportunity, pragmatism always gets the last word.

https://www.kyivpost.com/post/63593

The Moscow–Caracas trade balance jumped 64% in 2024, underscoring sustained engagement despite Venezuela’s economic decay, as Russia continued to treat the country both as a commercial opportunity and a strategic geopolitical outpost.

The reality of Venezuela is neither a simple oil grab nor just a drugs story. Cutting China’s energy access may come later, but the primary move looks strategic: blocking Russia from turning Venezuela into a 1962-style Cuba redux. Unsurprisingly, the Manipulator-in-Chief has installed a hardline Russia hawk—widely seen as a ‘Government Sachs alumnus’—as the new self-styled “Viceroy of Venezuela,” reminding us this chessboard runs far deeper than the headlines suggest.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMVxYx80v1k

While most people were debating afternoon tea on the first Sunday of the year, The Macro Butler was on Asharq Bloomberg TV, unpacking the latest twists in global oil markets—and revealing what Operation Absolute Resolve really means for oil and gold investors

https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/interview-with-asharq-bloomberg-tv-a0d

🎬 Markets, oil, gold… and the stories Wall Street won’t tell you.

While most people are still stuck on headlines, this video breaks down what’s really behind Venezuela—and why macro matters more than ever. No noise, no fairy tales, just cycles, capital flows, and consequences.

https://youtu.be/Yw-KoGn2Yx0

👉 Watch closely.
👉 Think independently.
👉 Then visit themacrobutler.com to go deeper.

As the Don-Roe doctrine continues its global tour of “creative disruption,” U.S. manufacturing delivered a reminder that reality rarely follows headlines. The ISM Manufacturing slipped to 47.9 in December—still in contraction, but hardly the collapse the narrative merchants were selling. Beneath the surface, orders improved, employment ticked up, backlogs shrank more slowly, and customer inventories fell fast enough to quietly whisper “restocking ahead.” Supplier delays nudged the index higher, though this likely says more about trade policy friction than surging demand, while prices stayed flat—suggesting tariff panic may be past its peak.

Bottom line: manufacturing isn’t booming, but it’s also refusing to roll over on cue, stubbornly grinding forward while policymakers argue and pundits rehearse the same old recession monologues.

Stablecoins aren’t “stable,” they’re strategic weapons in the global money game. 💣💸

The Macro Butler just dropped a new Academy lesson digging into the real world of Stablecoins—who controls them, how they’re used, and why they matter far more than crypto hype would have you believe.

https://www.tiktok.com/@the.macro.butler/video/7592074050655112469

If you want to understand where money is really moving (and who’s pulling the strings), this one’s for you.
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In what can only be described as Venezuela’s opening ceremony into colonial adulthood, Donald Copperfield—apparently unconvinced that Viceroy Rubio can be trusted with the keys—announced that the United States, with Chevron as its trusted chaperone, will graciously sell 30 to 50 million barrels of Venezuela’s precious black gold on the open market. The proceeds, we are told, will help finance the reconstruction of America’s newest geopolitical accessory: the soon-to-be 52nd state.

At a generous market price of roughly $55 per barrel, the sale would raise between $1.65 and $2.75 billion—a sum impressive enough for a press release, yet laughably insufficient to rebuild an economy with an estimated GDP of $82.77 billion, let alone recover the roughly $60 billion the Bolivarian regime reportedly smuggled out over the years via gold sales. But fear not: the money did not disappear. It merely evolved. According to circulating estimates, those billions in oil, gold, and state assets may have shape-shifted into Bitcoin—up to $60 billion worth—enough to rival MicroStrategy’s balance sheet and make El Salvador look like it left its wallet at home. If true, Venezuelan gold didn’t flee the country; it simply upgraded to the blockchain.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yw-KoGn2Yx0

U.S. services decided to end the year on a caffeine binge, expanding in December at the fastest pace in over a year as demand, hiring, and new orders all picked up at once. The ISM services index jumped to 54.4—comfortably in expansion territory and well above economists’ forecasts—while business activity, exports, and employment all hit one-year highs.

In short, retail, finance, hotels, and restaurants are partying, even as manufacturing sulks in the corner and prices rise a little less enthusiastically than before.

Under the latest “Don-Roe” gunboat remix, Washington decided that stirring chaos is a feature, not a bug: Venezuela here, Greenland there, and now a Russian-flagged tanker seized after a two-week chase—because nothing says “de-escalation” like poking a nuclear power. Moscow re-flagged, renamed, and officially blessed the ship as a giant “hands off” sign; the neocons read it as a dare. Sanctions were cited, law was waved, allies nodded—and once again, other people’s children get to audition for history while the architects cheer from a safe distance.

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-seizing-venezuela-linked-oil-tanker-after-weeks-long-pursuit-2026-01-07/

Confucius warned that the loudest barking often hides the weakest bite—and today’s geopolitics seems determined to prove him right. Putin has spent years growling about nuclear lines in the sand, assuming Europe would flinch, only to discover that the West mistakes noise for restraint. Now his silence over Venezuela and the seized tanker speaks louder than any missile speech: when the dog stops barking, the village wonders whether it’s asleep—or already surrounded. British officials call tanker seizures “self-defense,” Neocons call it strategy, and Confucius would likely sigh and note that when everyone shouts about virtue and security, wisdom has already left the room.

Viceroy Rubio now rattles sabers at Cuba and flirts with buying Greenland at gunpoint, while Stephen Miller sketches a tidy imperial map where everyone gets a “sphere” and America keeps the hemisphere. Miller wants managed empires; Rubio wants confrontation—he’s been reliably hawkish on Russia, China, Iran, and anyone else within rhetorical range. Appointing Rubio as Secretary of State was less strategy than an olive branch to the Neocons, who promptly took the whole tree and now steer NATO. The result? A shiny new precedent: if Washington can muscle its way around Venezuela, Moscow can claim the same logic elsewhere. Pandora’s box is open—turns out chaos, once unleashed, doesn’t care who thought they were the magician.