This is the chart that explains the entire war economy right now. 14.2 million barrels of oil flow through the Strait of Hormuz every day. That's 25% of the world's maritime oil trade passing through a chokepoint 21 miles wide at its narrowest point. On the supply side, Saudi Arabia alone pushes 5.29 million barrels a day through it. Iraq sends 3.24 million. UAE 1.83 million. Iran 1.51 million. Kuwait 1.43 million. Only Saudi Arabia and the UAE have pipelines that can bypass the strait entirely, everyone else is stuck. On the demand side, 89% of the oil flowing through Hormuz goes to Asia. China takes 5.35 million barrels a day, 37.7% of total flow. India takes 2.09 million. South Korea 1.70 million. Japan 1.55 million. Europe gets just 0.53 million. The US gets 0.36 million. This is why the war in Iran is an Asian energy crisis first and an American gas price problem second. When Iran shut down tanker traffic through the strait, it didn't just disrupt supply, it severed the energy lifeline for the world's fastest-growing economies. China has ordered refiners to halt fuel exports. South Korea imposed fuel price caps for the first time in 30 years. Japan is draining its strategic reserves at record pace and watching its bond market blow up. Bangladesh shut down universities to conserve energy. The US feels it at the pump. Asia feels it everywhere.

Japan's 10-year bond yield just hit 2.38%, its highest level since 1999. That chart is 25 years of near-zero rates ending in a vertical line. This matters far beyond Japan. For decades, Japan was the anchor of global cheap money. The Bank of Japan held rates at or below zero while every other major central bank moved through normal cycles. That created the yen carry trade, borrow in yen for nearly nothing, invest the proceeds in higher-yielding assets everywhere else. US Treasuries, emerging market debt, corporate bonds, real estate. Trillions of dollars of global investment was funded by cheap Japanese money. That trade is now unwinding. The trigger is the Strait of Hormuz. Japan imports 96% of its crude from the Middle East, and virtually all of it passes through the strait. When Iran shut it down, energy costs in Japan exploded. The yen fell to 160 against the dollar, making dollar-priced oil even more expensive. Inflation expectations surged. The bond market did what bond markets do when they smell inflation, it sold off. Markets are now pricing in a 60-70% chance the Bank of Japan raises rates again at its April 27-28 meeting. Goldman Sachs sees July. Either way, the direction is clear. Here's why this matters globally: when Japanese yields rise, Japanese investors, the largest foreign holders of US Treasuries and European debt, start bringing money home. Why buy a US 10-year at 4.3% and take the currency risk when you can get 2.4% at home risk-free? The January bond selloff in Japan already forced a violent repricing in US Treasuries within days. Japan ran the longest zero-rate experiment in modern history. It's over. And every government that relied on cheap Japanese capital to finance its own deficits is about to feel it.

Elliptic curve cryptography will probably fail someday, just not from quantum. The goal is to have something ready before that happens, not rush something in out of panic. "Devs do something? The devs are doing something. Chill out." - (reardencode)

You can now run the Hermes AI agent directly from your phone.

Gas was $2.98 a gallon on February 28th. Today it's $4.08. In 35 days, the Iran war has added more than a dollar to every gallon of gas in the country, a 37% increase and the steepest monthly spike in GasBuddy's history. It's the highest national average since August 2022, when Russia's invasion of Ukraine shook energy markets. Crude oil has gone from $73 a barrel to $112. Diesel, which moves every product on every shelf in every store, was $3.76 before the war. It's now $5.45. That cost doesn't just stay at the pump. It gets baked into food prices, shipping costs, airfares, and everything else that moves by truck, train, or plane. The New York Fed president warned this week that the pass-through into broader consumer prices typically takes months to fully hit. The government's response: the largest emergency oil reserve release in history. 32 countries coordinating a 400 million barrel drawdown. The US alone is pulling 172 million barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the same reserve Biden drained to historic lows in 2022 and that was never fully replenished. Goldman Sachs says it may not be enough. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has created a potential shortfall of over 10 million barrels per day. That's a gap no reserve release can cover indefinitely. Trump said Wednesday that military operations in Iran will continue for weeks. Every week the war continues, the price at the pump keeps climbing.

Trump announces major strike on Tehran, claiming key Iranian military leadership eliminated in the attack.

None of the three evidentiary standards for a real quantum threat have been met. "Anybody can FUD anything about Bitcoin. If we make changes based on claims and not evidence, Bitcoin is vulnerable to the most obvious of attacks." - (reardencode)

The Google quantum paper is a mathematical improvement, not a physical one. No new quantum device was built. "The papers behind the 'sky is falling' posts are far more conservative than the headlines. Read them." - (reardencode)

Here's how you'll know quantum is a real threat to Bitcoin: One architecture doubling its logical qubits in coherence, repeatedly, on a predictable timeline. "Until we see that, there's no evidence it's coming in the next decade, or the next 20 years." - (reardencode)

Joe Kent: “Launching a war against Iran is foolish due to Iran’s ability to shut down the SOH [Strait of Hormuz], the effect that has on the economy, our alliances in the Gulf & the strength of the petrodollar etc.”

TFTC 733 w/ (reardencode):"Five new post-quantum algorithms published. Zero numbers factored by a quantum computer. That's the evidence." ⚡ Quantum research ⚡ The social attack on Bitcoin ⚡ What Bitcoin devs are actually building

A pound of ground beef now costs more than the federal minimum wage. The minimum wage has been $7.25 since 2009. It hasn't moved in 17 years. Ground beef just crossed that line. An hour of work at the federal minimum no longer buys a single pound of meat.

Jeff Park has resigned as Chief Investment Officer of ProCap Financial, effective April 3, 2026.

Third-party tools using Claude now need extra usage billing. Anthropic offers one-time credit matching your Max/Pro payment.

Peter Steinberger says he and Dave Morin lobbied Anthropic on the third-party harness restrictions and only managed to push the change back by one week.

Anthropic just killed cheap Claude access for OpenClaw and other third-party harnesses. Starting April 4, subscriptions no longer work outside their walled garden.

An American pilot is missing in Iran. If captured, it would be the first US POW taken by a foreign adversary since 2003. An F-15E Strike Eagle was shot down over Iran today, first US warplane downed by enemy fire in 23 years. One crew member has been rescued. The other hasn't been found. Iranian state TV is offering rewards for his capture. Armed tribesmen have joined the search. Iran has held Americans before. Every time, they've used them as leverage. 1979: 52 embassy hostages held for 444 days. Released the minute Reagan was inaugurated. Iran got $8 billion in unfrozen assets. 2009: Three hikers detained by the IRGC for over two years. Released after Oman quietly paid $1.5 million. 2016: Ten US sailors seized in the Persian Gulf. Filmed on their knees, broadcast on state TV. Released the next day, after Iran extracted a public apology. 2023: Five detained Americans exchanged for $6 billion in frozen assets. Took years. The pattern is always the same: detain, leverage, extract concessions, declare victory domestically. But a combat pilot shot down during an active war is a different category entirely. A POW gives Iran something none of those previous situations did, a card that gets more valuable the longer the war continues. Trump was asked what the US would do if the pilot is harmed. "We hope that's not going to happen."

92% of hospices in Los Angeles County have fraud flags. That's 1,570 out of 1,700. The DOJ just arrested eight people in "Operation Never Say Die," doctors, nurses, and a psychologist running phantom hospice facilities that billed Medicare for patients who weren't dying. One hospice had a 97% survival rate over five years. Another operator was running three fraudulent hospices while sitting in federal prison. The scheme is simple, pay vulnerable people $300 a month to sign up for hospice care they don't need, bill Medicare millions, repeat. One four-block stretch in Van Nuys had 42 hospice licenses registered. A single office plaza had 89. 221 providers in LA have been suspended so far. The estimated fraud total from HHS: $198 million. The real number is almost certainly much higher. This is what happens when a system runs on trust and no one checks.

Trump won’t say what the U.S. will do if the missing F-15E pilot in Iran is harmed. “We hope that’s not going to happen,” he tells The Independent. First American aviator shot down over enemy territory since 2003.

Hermes Agent v0.7.0 just dropped. Memory is now fully pluggable. Swap backends, build your own, or pick from 6 third-party options with one command. Plus credential rotation, stealth browsing, and inline diffs.