With the global economy grappling with a severe debt crisis and currency devaluation, Von Greyerz partner Matthew Piepenburg has offered striking analyses of the future of the financial system.
Speaking on the New Era Finance Podcast, Piepenburg discussed ways for investors to escape the current system, the differences between gold and Bitcoin, and the impending threat of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs).
While Piepenburg is a traditional advocate of gold, he acknowledges that using gold as a means of payment in daily transactions is impractical. “You can’t go and buy a house with a gold bar,” he says, summarizing his strategy as follows: “Save with gold, spend with fiat currency.” However, according to Piepenburg, at the point where technology merges with the currency crisis, the “tokenization” of everything, even gold, has become an inevitable process.
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Piepenburg stated that people have lost faith in the traditional financial system and are looking for an alternative. Arguing that Bitcoin and gold stand out as the two strongest alternatives, the expert said, “People are choosing either gold, Bitcoin, or both. The fundamental motivation is to escape the controllable and constantly depreciating fiat currency system.”
Bitcoin is described by Piepenburg as a pioneer of an era where “everything is going digital.” While maintaining its reliance on physical gold, the expert states that the marriage of technology with currency crises has triggered the “tokenization” process. According to Piepenburg, the digitalization and tokenization of all assets, including gold, is now an unstoppable process. In this respect, Bitcoin, with its decentralized structure, takes a stand against the “control and surveillance” mechanisms offered by the traditional system.
Just over a decade ago, Fijian director Tulia Nacola was eking out a living as a carpenter. She specialized in intricate driftwood chandeliers, which hung in resorts along Fiji’s Coral Coast, an 80-mile stretch of white sand beaches and verdant palm forests that fringe the main island of the South Pacific Ocean archipelago. Nacola’s work caught the eye of a visiting art director for a reality TV show, Beauty and the Geek Australia. He asked for some of her pieces, and she helped him build his set.
An English-lit major, Nacola, 41, was quietly writing her own stories, gaining a following in Fiji for her novels highlighting the experiences of indigenous Fijians, or iTaukei. In 2024, she shot her first short film on a secondhand smartphone; its reception showed a thirst for local stories, and soon Nacola gained financial backing for a feature film. However, there was a hurdle: Fiji, a developing country with a population of about 930,000 spread across 300 islands, has a fledgling film industry, and Nacola wanted to direct it herself. She had to learn, and fast.
Enter Love Island USA. Nacola contacted her friend, the art director, who was now Love Island’sproduction manager. She got a job dressing sets. Then, for six months last year, between running errands, she observed it all: the hierarchy, the urgency of shooting, the dealing with stars and their emotional upsets. “I went on set knowing that I needed education in this filmmaking world, I needed a crash course,” Nacola says. “I had an ulterior motive — I wasn’t just there to put up flowers and earn money.”
Season 7 of Peacock’s hit series ‘Love Island USA.’
Kim Nunneley/Peacock
Her film, Adi, released in February, is the first feature film shot entirely in iTaukei. It premiered in a sold-out cinema in the Fijian capital, Suva, and is out for submission at global film festivals. “Everything became clear to me on that set,” she says of working on Love Island USA, “and I would not have been able to make my film if I had not had that experience.”
Fijian director Tulia Nacola (standing, second from left) on the set of ‘Love Island Games‘ in Fiji with international and local crew. She says her time on ‘Love Island’ sets gave her the knowledge to complete her own film.
Courtesy of Tulia Nacola
With its crystal-clear waters, offshore reefs and waterfalls plunging into mist-filled valleys, Fiji has a storied history of hosting film productions. Most famously, Brooke Shields and Tom Hanks washed up on its picture-perfect shores in The Blue Lagoon (1980) and Castaway (2000), respectively. In more recent years, it has become increasingly popular with reality television shows, who see the relative ease of access (there are direct, 11-hour flights from L.A.), the Fijian government’s film rebate scheme, and competitive Fijian dollar as drawing cards, according to Film Fiji chief executive Jone Robertson. “The scheme works, the dollar goes a fair way, and it’s like filming in paradise,” he says.
However, along with benefits to the economy and the local film industry come questions about the impact of film crews and tourists on an increasingly fragile environment — especially at a time when the Pacific Islands are some of the most vulnerable in the world to climate change.
“This old model of constant [tourism] promotion without thinking about how to manage the negative, carbon footprint, that’s a model that needs to change — and these production companies coming into developing countries need to leave something positive behind,” says Susanne Becken, a professor of sustainable tourism at Griffith University in Australia. “Is there proper waste management, sewage treatment, do they use plastic bottles? What do they deliver for these islands?”
Since the first tribal council lit their torches in Borneo in 2000, Survivor has been a reality series staple watched in hundreds of countries. For the past decade, it has set up shop in Fiji’s Mamanuca Islands, where it films two seasons a year back-to-back from January to July. Over that period, it employs hundreds of Fijians across all aspects of production — from set design and camera operation and security — and is estimated to inject $25 million Fijian dollars (a bit more than $11 million USD) into the economy each year. Love Island USA first began filming in the country in 2019, with its last three seasons filming in the Mamanuca Islands in a custom-built villa and at a local resort.
Productions are eligible for a 20 percent cash rebate for all spending in Fiji, capped at $4 million Fijian dollars, and have to meet certain criteria including employing a certain number of locals, engaging film students from Fiji’s National University as interns, and having elements of scripts vetted by Film Fiji. Robertson says the agreements are mutually beneficial, with the film commission helping to scout locations, smooth the visa process and provide local crew, while locals get the benefits of working on international productions. “Our biggest competitor in terms of location is Thailand, who offer a 35 percent rebate, so our focus is on creating great relationships with the productions we do have to get them to keep coming back.”
‘Love Island USA’
Ben Symons/Peacock
Fijians who have worked on reality shows who spoke to The Hollywood Reporter for this story say that their earnings have averaged around $200 Fijian dollars ($90 USD) a day, a comparatively high rate in a country where many still live in rural poverty on $1.25 Fijian dollars (60 cents) a day. Workers use income to build houses, send children to school or buy land. “Especially younger boys, working on these shows gives them purpose and direction,” Nacola says. “They can help their families.”
Almost all of Nacola’s crew on her feature film had previously worked on reality TV shows shot in Fiji, including Love Island USA, Love Island Games and Survivor, and they used equipment they’d bought off those sets. Her director of photography, Lanza Coffin, has worked on Survivor for 10 years. “I was a wedding photographer, and now I have my own production company,” Coffin, 42, who is about to fly out for a four-day documentary shoot, tells me when I call. “I found a career path, working up from being a personal assistant to a camera assistant and now a camera operator.”
Crew on ‘Survivor,’ shot in Fiji’s Mamanuca Islands, in 2023. Lanza Coffin (third from right) has worked on ‘Survivor’ for a decade and now has his own film production company, Video Factory.
Courtesy Lanza Coffin
Fijian camera operator Coffin on the set of ‘Fight to Survive,’ a reality television series shot in Fiji.
Courtesy Lanza Coffin
He estimates about 60 percent of the crew are from Fiji, and over time key roles that used to be filled by international crew are now being done by Fijians, due to the generosity of knowledge-sharing among the Emmy-winning crew. “That’s the advantage of coming back again and again,” he says. In addition to running his production company, Coffin is part of the Fiji Film Collective, which will start workshops for locals in the coming months. “Now we have the technical know-how, but we’re missing the writing and producing and the funding. So that’s next.”
Tourism Fiji chief executive Dr. Paresh Pant says that the organization is happy with the global promotion of Fiji that has come from film and television productions, paired with their contribution to the local economy. The most recent statistics put this economic injection at $76 million Fijian dollars ($34 million USD) for 2023.
Tourism Fiji leverages these shows, with a recent marketing campaign celebrating the 25th anniversary of Castaway and a pop-up event in New York to mark 50 seasons of Survivor. “These initiatives help convert entertainment exposure into real travel interest,” says Pant. “These productions are part of a broader ecosystem that helps keep Fiji one of the most recognizable island destinations in the world.” To promote responsible travel, tourists are asked to take part in a “Loloma hour,” giving an hour of their trip back to the environment by beach cleaning, coral planting or learning about Fijian culture.
The seascape near Tokoriki Island Resort, a beachfront property located on an island within Fiji’s Mamanuca Islands.
In 2024, just over a million international travelers visited the country, a record number. And online ticket agency Ticket Source, analyzing Google Search results, found that searches for flights to Fiji more than doubled compared to previous weeks during Love Island USA’s popular season 7 run in 2025.
But Griffiths says tourism in general puts islands like Fiji in a paradoxical position. Tourism makes up 40 percent of its GDP, earning the country $2.5 billion in Fijian dollars ($1 billion USD) last year. However, growth at all costs can’t be the default position when the Fiji government is also asking for global funding to address the impacts of climate change, according to Griffiths. “When countries like Fiji market to Europe and America you have long-haul travel, and that really exacerbates the problem,” she says. A recent study in Nature showed carbon global emissions due to tourism grew 3.5 percent from 2009 to 2019, double that of the worldwide economy.
Research has consistently shown the Pacific Islands are among the most vulnerable to climate change, with warming sea temperatures causing large-scale coral die-offs and rising tides threatening homes and livelihoods. Some resorts in the Mamanuca Islands are set to lose entire wings to the sea in the coming years, and drinking water in villages is already being infiltrated by salt from seawater seeping into ground bores.
Beach area on Monuriki Island, part of Fiji’s Mamanucan Islands.
Getty Images
The country is also home to endemic species, many of whom are under threat, including the critically endangered Fijian crested iguana. Irreversible damage can be done to wildlife and habitats by tourists and production companies who aren’t careful. “If they’re coming in and they’re not sustainable, they’re not doing things that are helping, it’s a lot for us to fix,” says Mamanuca Environmental Society project manager Marica Vakacola. “Most of these foreshores are being inundated with tides, and not even high tides, and many communities are seeing the drastic impacts of climate change.”
University of Auckland Indo-Fijian researcher Danian Singh has been documenting the relocation of Fijian villages due to climate-change-related coastal erosion and inundation. He has visited Vunidogoloa multiple times, which was the first iTaukei community to be relocated 14 years ago on Vanua Levu, Fijian’s second largest island, one of more than 40 that are due to be shifted in coming years.
“It’s a massive challenge relocating all these people. There is very little budget for this — even the village of Vunidogoloa has no electricity, one kerosene-run fridge, and there are no resources in terms of the basic necessities. They don’t have money to repair their houses, over time leaks have developed, rivers are running through them.”
It was a difficult experience for villagers who were emotionally and culturally attached to the land, which their families had inhabited for centuries, and who continued to visit even as the graves of their ancestors drowned and crumbled away. Some residents, like those in the village of Vunisavisavi, told Singh they would never leave even when their houses were under the sea.
The Mamanuca Islands: An aerial view of Tavarua Island, a popular resort for surfing and ocean sports.
Getty Images
Environmental and cultural programs that educate tourists on conservation are beneficial but need to be amplified, according to Singh. “One resort put a turtle in a bathtub for tourists to see, for example, and that turtle got really stressed. Local conservationists protested and it was returned to sea, but tourists can be aware of that kind of thing too,” he says.
The planting of mangroves, which have solid roots that help to mitigate the impact of heavy waves and prevent the flow of trash from inland to the sea, is a priority for the Fiji government, along with coral replanting. Local villages are actively monitoring the oceans and reefs in their environment, and backlash to a recent plan from a billionaire Australian to build a giant plant to incinerate rubbish in Fiji was loud and well organized, says Singh. “In the past, the national economic outcomes have usually outweighed the community needs, but now it seems to be changing.”
The Mamanuca Environmental Society’s team, which includes tourist operators and villagers, has its own initiatives to plant mangroves. They also check coral reefs, plant heat-resistant coral species, aid resorts in reforestation and waste management projects, and teach ecology programs in schools.
When it comes to productions, the environment society holds meetings with teams ahead of shooting so they understand the impact, says Vakacola. Survivor, which is shot mainly on Mana Island with the cast staying on satellite islands, has been respectful and donated to the organization. “Before they came there was consultation done, they informed us what island they’d be working on, they work directly with the local communities and the villages.” Traditional landowners are paid for the use of their land. If forest is cleared for a scene, trees are selected that can grow back, and the production employs its own biosecurity personnel on site, she says.
CBS, who produces Survivor, declined to take part in this story. A representative for Love Island production company ITV America says it has partnered with BAFTA Albert, a screen industry organization for environmental sustainability, to track its carbon footprint. This helped the show reduce its CO2 emissions by 65 percent over the last season by using grid power as well as battery generators (instead of diesel). The production composted food waste, did not use plastic water bottles and other single-use items, recycled pieces of set for local schools or families instead of sending them to landfill, and ran a can-recycling program.
This June, the eighth season of Love Island USA premieres, with a group of “Islanders” once again thrown together to see what steaminess and drama might ensue. In 2025, it was the most-streamed TV show in America; Fiji’s dramatic coastlines will once again form the backdrop for romance. Interest in tourism to Fiji may likely spike again.
The poster for director Nacola’s feature film, ‘Adi.’
Courtesy of Tulia Nacola
And while it might be set in the same country, for many Fijians, it’s a world away. Before she finishes speaking with THR, Nacola talks about the personal importance to her of making her film, which tells an indigenous story of a chiefly family where the woman has to step up to the lead role. “Knowing I can tell my own stories grounds me in my culture,” she says.
While she will always be grateful for her time on reality TV sets, she’s not interested in the shows themselves. “Fijian culture is not usually portrayed at all, or they have artifacts that aren’t Fijian. There are things that aren’t culturally appropriate — it’s foreign ideas that they’re piecing together for television, like a fake place and a fake world but being very generally tribal, like any indigenous place.”
“What about the entertainment value of Love Island, for example?” I ask Nacola. Do you like it? “I don’t know, to be honest,” she says. “I’ve never watched an episode.”
In a year where airports have become vortexes of time-consuming frustration and the number of canceled flights is on the rise, it might be understandable to choose to staycation this summer.
That said, the luxury side of air travel is becoming more enticing than ever, with companies increasingly catering to the highest net-worth travelers. At top airlines and major airports, there are new and updated lounges, onboard suites, spa showers, large entertainment screens, video calls and fine-dining options that allow you to take a big exhale — even if you are simply headed to a business conference. And, if you want to skip the hassle altogether, there are semi-private options — allowing you to skip security lines — that are becoming more luxe by the day.
Elegant Upgrades at Major Airlines
Air France made a splash last year when it introduced La Premiere, with high-curtained walls giving a new level of privacy to mini apartments that contain a flatbed and separate armchair and can be combined for couples or families to double their space. As of March, all flights in this category, as well as business class (for flights departing the U.S.), will have meals curated by famed chef Daniel Boulud. The ticket also includes lounge access and — for flights originating in Paris and six other cities in France — transportation to the airport in a premium vehicle.
A La Premiere suite aboard Air France.
Courtesy Air France
“With its new La Première offering, Air France now presents the highest expression of travel, delivering a private jet-like experience,” says Fabien Pelous, Air France’s executive vice president, customer. “On board, in the new fully redesigned and modular suite, which stretches across five windows, every detail has been carefully considered: three-Michelin-star fine dining, designer pajamas, signature French pastries, iconic cosmetics, and more.”
Boulud, who is creating the food for the airlines flights from the U.S. to Paris, has come up with 75 recipes. “Everything is fresh,” the chef tells THR. “JP Park, the chef at Atomix, just sent me a picture of the dinner on his flight, and wrote ‘I had the beef. It was tender and the sauce was great!”
On Turkish Airlines, “Flying Chefs” actually comes out to greet you these days, personally delivering gourmet fare, including bread freshly made using ancient grains, and offering amenities from Lanvin. Meanwhile, Emirates and British Airways now provide 32-inch screens for movies and allow you to control the temperature in your suite, so no more begging the flight attendant to turn down the air conditioning. Lufthansa has introduced a suite with double beds, so you can cozy up with your travel buddy, while Emirates and Etihad Airways offer shower spas, which allow you to arrive in a much fresher state after a lengthy trip.
Chef service aboard Turkish Airlines.
COURTESY TURKISH AIRLINES
The experience is chic at Delta, where the bedding in Delta One onboard suites is by Missoni and cushions are memory foam. “Customers are clear that comfort is their number one priority when flying Delta One — 97 percent say Delta’s flat-bed is the reason for choosing the cabin,” said Mauricio Parise, Delta’s vp brand experience. “This led us to a new design that, when combined with our current mattress pad and luxury bedding from Missoni, makes for an incomparable sleep at 30,000 feet.” The elevated offerings build on the rollout of the upscale Delta One lounges at LAX and JFK in 2024.
Missoni amenity kits and bedding sets on Delta One.
Courtesy Delta One
Beyond the curtain of the first-class cabin, several carriers are reimagining the economy experience as well. Lufthansa and ANA offer economy seats that convert to coach-style sleepers, and starting next year, United Airlines will be offering “Relax Rows,’’ where for an extra fee, seats in economy will allow passengers to lie flat on long-haul trips. These United seats will come complete with custom-fitted mattress pads, extra pillows and blankets. And on BermudAir, the company is so opposed to single use plastics, all classes on board get served with glassware —and a Dark & Stormy, Bermuda’s national drink, is complimentary, including in economy.
The Private Terminal Route
A private suite at the recently opened PS ATL in Atlanta.
Courtesy PS
Voyagers can avoid entering the main public terminals at some airports and instead head to beautifully designed private terminals like PS. Open since 2017 at LAX, PS debuted last year in Atlanta, will open this summer in Miami, and will expand after that to Dallas and Paris. In each city, the concierge-style service has its own private check-in and TSA process’,’ provides food, drinks and spa services’,’ and chauffeurs you directly to your plane.
Similarly, at The Windsor by Heathrow in London, a private butler tends to your whims, and you are fast-tracked through immigration, customs and baggage handling. A BMW collects you at your hotel and delivers you directly to your plane — which is particularly valuable at Heathrow, where your flight can be miles away. The lounge itself is a treat, with food curated by British star chef Jason Atherton.
Semi-Private Carriers
Of course, travelers can avoid going anywhere near large airports by flying semi-private. Passengers simply book an individual seat on a scheduled flight, drive up to the lounge at a private airport and hop on, with a brief luggage screening as one boards.
Slate offers routes from New York to Florida.
Slate, an upscale semi-private carrier, launched last year and now has busy routes from New York to the Florida cities of Palm Beach, Miami and Fort Lauderdale. This season, it is introducing direct flights from NYC to the Hamptons, landing in Westhampton.
With just 30 seats on each plane, air carrier JSX not only offers free Starlink service, but in June it will introduce new routes between Monterey and Orange County and Burbank and between Reno/Tahoe and Carlsbad. It has also partnered with Petco to give four-legged passengers swag including branded bandanas and frosted cookies. For domestic flights, passengers can check in just 20 minutes before a flight.
JSX luxury jet service.
Courtesy JSX
One of the joys of these carriers is that travelers strut on with their dogs, no matter the size of the pooch. And two newer services are actually canine-centric: RetrievAir, which launched last year, and Bark Air. The latter just added four new European routes (Berlin, Dublin, Athens and Stockholm) complete with doggie wellness kits and a lounge serving bowls of warm broth. Bark’s new Companion Concierge will help arrange international paperwork and required vaccinations.
Aero’s luxury private jet service.
Philip Cheung/Courtesy Aero
In contrast to typical airline food drowning in salt and sauces, the culinary offerings aboard Aero are a delight, with meals created in partnership with Erewhon, Spago, Parm, Sadelle’s and Flora Farms along with an open bar of top-shelf spirits and Veuve Clicquot champagne. The wifi is Starlink here too, and there are dedicated customs agents to help passengers speed through passport control. Last year, the luxury carrier — which has the feel of a private-jet experience, with a limited amount of seats and high-end service — launched flights between L.A. and Maui in partnership with Four Seasons Resort Maui at Wailea. And it’s just announced service between L.A. and Miami (starting in November) and between Aspen and Miami (starting in December), along with expanded service between New York and L.A., including special flights to get industry travelers to and from the upfronts.
Private Member Club in the Air
The Revaire luxury jet service app.
Courtesy Revaire
As private membership clubs continue to proliferate on the ground — from the new Zero Bond in Las Vegas to the relatively under-the-radar Living Room in L.A. — the membership model is increasing in the skies too, from Wheels Up’s recently launched Signature Membership offering to XO’s Insider program, which offers special access to such events as Miami race weekend.
One of the newest entrants in the space is invite-only members club Revaire, which launched last year with a membership fee of $1,500. A digital platform with patent-pending technology, Revaire allows vetted members to share the cost of private charter flights. It tracks the activity of its group and lets people know if there are fellow members headed in the same direction, giving them the opportunity to upgrade to charters from the commercial travel they’ve booked. Most activity at the moment involves flights that either initiate or land in L.A., New York and Miami. “As we grow, we see the community side of this being as important as private travel,” explains Revaire co-founder Luke McNees, who used to be Diplo’s tour manager. “People are more than happy when we put them into a room with other vetted individuals. This is tapping into a membership club trend we have seen expand.” Revaire also puts together curated experiences, including trips to major music festivals.
United States President Donald Trump has cancelled a planned visit to Pakistan by his envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who had been expected to explore indirect talks, which remain deadlocked over issues that include the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.
“If they want to talk, all they have to do is call!!!” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social on Saturday, signalling that Washington for now would not send negotiators to Pakistan, the country that is mediating between the longtime adversaries.
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With neither Washington nor Tehran showing much willingness to soften their positions, prospects for a diplomatic breakthrough in the US-Israeli war on Iran and securing a lasting ceasefire remain stalled.
The conflict spilled into the larger Middle East region, including Lebanon, causing the worst global energy crisis since the 1970s and risking a global recession.
So what do we know about the talks and where they stand as of now?
What has the US said?
The US president on Saturday told reporters in Florida that he scrapped his envoys’ visit because the talks involved too much travel and expense to consider an inadequate offer from the Iranians.
After the diplomatic trip was called off, Iran “offered a lot, but not enough”, Trump said.
On Truth Social, he wrote that there was “tremendous infighting and confusion” within Iran’s leadership.
“Nobody knows who is in charge, including them,” he posted. “Also, we have all the cards, they have none! If they want to talk, all they have to do is call!”
What has Iran said?
In Tehran, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian reiterated that his government will not enter negotiations while the US maintains a blockade on Iranian ports.
In a phone call with Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Saturday night, Pezeshkian said Washington “should first remove operational obstacles, including the blockade,” before any new talks can begin, according to the ISNA and Tasnim news agencies.
Meanwhile, during his visit to Islamabad on Friday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi held separate meetings with Pakistan’s army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, and Sharif.
In a post on Telegram, Araghchi said their discussions covered regional dynamics and Iran’s non-negotiable positions without disclosing specifics. He added that Tehran intends to engage with Pakistan’s mediation efforts “until a result is achieved”.
After departing Islamabad on Saturday, Araghchi travelled to Oman, where he discussed ways to end the conflict with Sultan Haitham bin Tariq al-Said, according to state media.
He was then scheduled to continue on to Russia. Iran’s IRNA news agency said Araghchi is expected to return to Islamabad on Sunday for additional talks.
What has Pakistan said?
Despite hardening public positions from Washington and Tehran, Pakistan’s political and military leadership is continuing to mediate, two Pakistani officials said on Sunday, according to The Associated Press news agency. They were quoted as describing the indirect ceasefire contacts as still alive but fragile.
There were no immediate plans for US envoys to return for talks, according to the Pakistani officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak to the media, AP added.
Al Jazeera’s Kimberly Halkett, reporting from Islamabad, said Pakistani officials are underscoring that the expected return of Araghchi to Islamabad is seen as a “hopeful sign”.
“What they hope is that this will in fact be something that can be incremental in the process and will advance forward,” she reported.
What is happening with the ceasefire?
The US-Iran ceasefire began on April 8 after nearly six weeks of US and Israeli strikes on Iran and retaliatory Iranian attacks against Israel and across the Gulf region.
The two sides held talks in Islamabad on April 11 aimed at securing a permanent deal, but they ended after 21 hours with no breakthrough.
After repeated threats of restarting the war if Iran did not heed Washington’s demands, Trump extended the ceasefire on Tuesday without a set deadline, saying he was in no rush to conclude a peace deal with Iran.
While the truce has held for the most part, the two sides continue to accuse each other of violations.
Iranian forces, which have essentially blocked the Strait of Hormuz, have captured commercial vessels, and the US has intercepted or detained ships suspected of violating its naval blockade of Iranian ports just one week after the ceasefire went into effect.
The naval blockade is seen by Iran as a breach of the ceasefire. Tehran has warned that reopening the Strait of Hormuz is impossible as long as the blockade remains in place.
The critical waterway has become a central dispute in the conflict. One-fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas supplies were shipped through the strait, which links the Gulf to the Arabian Sea, before the war began.
Iran insists on sovereignty over the waterway, which lies within the territorial waters of Iran and Oman. It has also floated the idea of levying tolls while Washington demands full freedom of navigation. The Gulf nations, which export most of their petroleum through the strait, have opposed the Iranian plan to impose tolls.
Another key issue is the debate over Iran’s stock of enriched uranium.
The US and Israel are pushing for zero uranium enrichment and have accused Iran of working towards building a nuclear weapon while providing no evidence for their claims.
Iran has insisted its enrichment effort is for civilian purposes only. It is a signatory to the 1970 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, and Tehran says it has the right to pursue a civilian nuclear programme. But according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the global nuclear watchdog, Iran has enriched uranium to 60 percent, a level that is far higher than what is needed for civilian use.
The biggest traders on Hyperliquid have been building a long bitcoin position for two months, and the price chart is starting to break their way.
Glassnode data shows whale positioning on Hyperliquid, the onchain perpetual futures exchange, flipped from net short to net long in early March and has stayed long ever since, with the size of the long bias increasing through April.
The shift coincides with bitcoin grinding higher from the mid-$60,000s in February to a brush near $80,000 earlier this week.
Hyperliquid has, in the past year, become the onchain venue of choice for traders running large positions, and a sustained long bias from that cohort tends to lead spot bitcoin price action by days to weeks rather than follow it.
The flip to net long in early March preceded the recovery from the mid-$60,000s. The positioning is now the most aggressively long it has been across the dataset.
Bitcoin perpetual swap funding across major exchanges sits at -0.13% on a seven-day basis according to Coinglass, meaning shorts are paying longs to keep their positions open.
That negative funding has held for roughly 47 consecutive days, one of the longest stretches of bearish derivatives positioning on record. Sustained negative funding matched with aggressive long positioning from Hyperliquid whales is the technical setup that produces short squeezes when spot prices break higher.
In traditional finance, the S&P 500 closed at a record high on Friday, capping its longest weekly advance since 2024.
In Pakistan, meantime, the weekend’s talks between Iran and the U.S. didn’t take place. President Donald Trump canceled his delegation’s trip to Islamabad after the Iranian foreign minister left the country before the U.S. group even set off.
Treasury yields dropped as the Justice Department closed its probe into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, potentially clearing the path for Kevin Warsh’s confirmation as the next Fed leader.
Quite where those developments leave the Hyperliquid long positions will become apparent over the coming hours and days.
The Green Beret arrested for betting on a classified U.S. raid looked like a one-off scandal for prediction markets. A new study suggests he may be a more troubling data point: an extreme example of the small group of informed traders who, as the soldier is accused of doing, actually move prices on Polymarket, while the crowd loses money around them.
The study, part of a working paper released this week by Roberto Gómez-Cram, Yunhan Guo, Theis Ingerslev Jensen and Howard Kung of London Business School and Yale, directly tests the industry’s core claim that the markets work owing to the massed knowledge of their participants.
Using every Polymarket trade from 2023 to 2025, the authors conclude that it’s actually a small group of informed traders that moves prices. The researchers analyzed 1.72 million accounts and $13.76 billion in trading volume, and found that just 3% of traders account for most price discovery, meaning they are the ones moving prices toward the correct outcome.
These traders consistently predict outcomes and move prices in the right direction. The remaining 97% mostly do not. They provide liquidity and generate volume, but in aggregate, they are on the losing side of trades against the informed minority, whose profits come directly from those positions.
The hard part is telling skill apart from luck. With more than a million traders on Polymarket, plenty will rack up big winnings by chance alone.
To filter that out, the authors reran each trader’s bets 10,000 times, keeping everything the same except the direction.
Same markets, same moments, same dollar amounts — but a coin flip decided whether to buy or sell. That gave them a benchmark for what each trader’s profits would look like with no real edge. If the actual results consistently beat the coin flip, that’s skill. If not, it’s luck.
The findings show among the biggest winners by raw profit, only 12% beat the benchmark, and many apparent winners didn’t stay that way: Roughly 60% of “lucky winners” become losers when their performance is checked against a separate sample of events.
Their activity improves market accuracy. When skilled participants account for a larger share of trading, prices move closer to the correct outcome, especially in the final stretch before resolution. They are also the first to react when new information hits, shifting positions in response to events like Federal Reserve announcements or corporate earnings, while other traders show little consistent reaction.
The same edge that makes skilled traders valuable to price discovery raises a harder question when that information isn’t public, or isn’t supposed to be.
Both Polymarket and Kalshi have said that trading on non-public information is strictly against their rules.
The paper grounds that risk in a concrete case: The U.S. removal of Nicolás Maduro from power in Venezuela in January. In the days and hours before the operation, three newly created Polymarket accounts piled into a contract asking whether Maduro would be removed. At the time, the market priced the odds at roughly 10%.
The new accounts placed unusually large bets, including orders of tens of thousands of shares, before the price moved. When the raid happened, the accounts collectively made more than $630,000. Two stopped trading entirely soon after, and the third went mostly dormant. There is no evidence of any wrongdoing on these accounts.
Insider trades, when they occur, move prices even more aggressively per dollar, about seven-to-12 times more than typical skilled trades. But they are rare and concentrated in a handful of events, not the day-to-day engine of price discovery. Most of the time, the market’s accuracy still depends on repeat traders who consistently outperform rather than on one-off bets.
The findings challenge the idea that prediction markets work because of crowds. They appear to work because of who is informed.
Freezing dormant bitcoin would trigger an immediate repricing and mark one of the world’s oldest cryptocurrency’s worst trading days since its 2009 launch, advocates told CoinDesk.
Bitcoin developers and crypto industry participants have debated for weeks whether they should freeze dormant tokens to protect them against the risk of theft through quantum computing, whenever those machines begin going online.
“Freezing any coins, even ‘lost’ ones, tells the market that all (roughly) 19.8 million $BTC currently in circulation are conditionally owned,” said Samuel “Chad” Patt, who is also the founder of Op Net. “Institutional risk desks do not care about the reason, they care about the precedent.”
Read more: A simple explainer on what quantum computing actually is, and why it is terrifying for bitcoin
Although Jason Fernandes, a market analyst who describes himself as a pragmatic maximalist, said he agrees with Patt’s repricing thesis, he said he believes that a successful quantum attack would trigger a far more severe repricing.
“Institutions won’t just price precedent, they’ll price whether the system can survive a break in its core assumptions,” added Fernandes, also the co-founder at AdLunam.
Mati Greenspan, also a self-described maximalist and a market analyst, said that if “quantum computers ever crack early Bitcoin wallets, it won’t trigger a rollback or a freeze; it will trigger the largest bug bounty in human history.”
The debate follows weeks of discussion over how to respond to the potential threat quantum computing poses to the bitcoin network, particularly the estimated 5.6 million $BTC. These tokens are held in wallets that have been dormant for more than a decade, in addresses that have not been upgraded and, therefore, are the most vulnerable in the event that quantum computing attacks become a reality.
A week ago, Jameson Lopp, a core Bitcoin developer and research analyst, told CoinDesk he would prefer to see the dormant bitcoin, worth roughly $440 billion, frozen by the network than left at risk of being stolen by future quantum hackers. He said he already sees those bitcoin as being lost.
Lopp and a team of other core bitcoin developers released Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 361 (BIP-361) earlier this month. The proposal contemplates phasing out bitcoin’s current cryptographic signatures, potentially freezing assets that fail to migrate.
‘Instant’ repricing
If that were to proceed, Patt said, “bitcoin’s repricing would be instant, not gradual and would be the worst single day in bitcoin’s history, but not because of a hack, but because the network will have proven its core value proposition is negotiable.”
The bitcoin maximalist said all fund managers, “who allocated on the censorship-resistance thesis, would be forced to unwind. Not by choice, but by mandate, because the asset no longer fits the risk profile it was purchased under.”
Read more: To freeze or not to freeze: Satoshi and the $440 billion in bitcoin threatened by quantum computing
Another bitcoin maximalist, Kent Halliburton, CEO and co-founder at SazMining, said he believes the intentions behind BIP-361 are good.
“However, you don’t defend Bitcoin by breaking its core promise of inviolable property rights,” he said. “We operate data centers on four continents, and our clients own every machine. That model only works because Bitcoin guarantees unconditional ownership.”
Halliburton said he believes, as many others do, that the quantum computing threat is real, but that there are better ways to deal with the risks it poses, such as better tooling and voluntary migration, “but not a protocol-level confiscation dressed up as a contingency plan.”
Deeply flawed
Khushboo Khullar, venture partner at Lightning Ventures and a bitcoin maximalist as well, said freezing dormant coins is a deeply flawed approach, despite appearing to be a pragmatic approach against quantum threats.
“It directly undermines Bitcoin’s core principles of immutability, permissionlessness, and no central enforcement. Such a move would require a contentious hard fork, violating the network’s decentralized ethos where no one can unilaterally seize or freeze anyone’s coins,” she said.
However, not all maximalists agree with Patt, Halliburton or Khullar, and instead believe Lopp’s proposal is sensible.
“It’s extremely challenging to build systems that are truly future-proof, and while Bitcoin has come quite close, quantum may pose a threat that requires tradeoffs participants won’t be happy with.” said Ken Kruger, founder and CEO of Moon Technologies.
“So far there’s no solution that doesn’t include compromise: freeze funds or let them be stolen? If solved elegantly, this could be a critical moment Bitcoin proves its resilience as a global monetary system,” he said.
Bitcoin could still evolve
Fernandes said he understands Patt’s and other maximalists’ points on precedent, adding that it is a real concern among the bitcoin community when discussing the network’s censorship-resistance ethos. In fact, he added, “I don’t think there is time; I think quantum will be upon us way faster than anybody thinks.”
“However, framing this as a question of purity misses the bigger issue: quantum risk is an existential threat to the system, not a philosophical debate,” Fernandes said. He believes bitcoin could evolve as it has in the past with SegWit and Taproot, upgrades designed to improve the network’s efficiency, privacy and scalability.
“The protocol isn’t ‘finished,’ it’s just conservative in how it changes,” he said. “But the risk of inaction far outweighs any concern about precedent or philosophical purity.”
Ultimately, Fernandes believes very few people within the community care in the long run, and that the majority of bitcoin holders, whether maximalists or not, are “more interested in preserving capital rather than preserving some vague notion about what bitcoin is ‘supposed to be.’”
Greenspan echoes what many of the maximalists ultimately prefer. “As with many cases in life, and especially with bitcoin, doing nothing is better than doing something.”
He concluded: “The Bitcoin community seems to feel strongly that freezing coins would be antithetical to bitcoin’s quintessential value proposition.”
Read more: How a quantum computer can be used to actually steal your bitcoin in ‘9 minutes’
The Oklahoma City Thunder are one one of the most dominant, two-year runs in NBA history, and the dominance continued with a 121-109 victory in Game 3 of their first round series with the Phoenix Suns on Saturday afternoon.
The Thunder were without Jalen Williams, who suffered a hamstring strain three days earlier. But Shai Gilgeous-Alexander didn’t need much help.
The reigning MVP scored a career-playoff-high 42 points, shooting an amazing 15-for-18 from the field and 11-for-12 from the free throw line, adding eight assists. The Thunder continue to score efficiently against what was a top-10 defense in the regular season, and Gilgeous-Alexander’s performance was just the seventh 40-point playoff game in NBA history where the player had a true shooting percentage over 90%.
Playing at home for the first time, the Suns led by nine points late in the first quarter. But the Thunder closed the period on an 18-4 run and were in control most of the way after that.
Here are some notes, numbers and film as the champs improved to 11-0 in first-round games over the last three years:
1. Gilgeous-Alexander is too much from mid-range
Even when he won the Kia MVP award last season, Gilgeous-Alexander wasn’t as good of a mid-range shooter as he was this year, when he shot an incredible 197-for-359 (54.9%) between the paint and the 3-point line. That was the fourth-best mark for a player with at least 300 mid-range attempts in the 29 seasons for which we have shot-location data; the only three better ones are held by Kevin Durant.
On Saturday, Gilgeous-Alexander was 6-for-7 from mid-range, and his best work was done over the last six minutes of the second quarter, when the Thunder took full control of Game 3.
Collin Gillespie has been Gilgeous-Alexander’s primary defender for most of this series, but he was getting the business. So the Suns actually assigned starting center Oso Ighodaro to the MVP for a stretch late in the second.
Gilgeous-Alexander proceeded to target Devin Booker in the pick-and-roll, getting to his mid-range pull-up:
On the next possession, he rejected a screen, beat Ighodaro off the dribble, and drew a foul on Booker. Then, attacking Booker again, he got an open 3 for Jaylin Williams.
Grayson Allen made his series debut on Saturday and was not spared. Gilgeous-Alexander attacked him to generate a layup for Alex Caruso and to get to another mid-range pull-up:
Finally, the Suns sent a double-team at Gilgeous-Alexander in the middle of the floor. The result was an open corner 3 for Caruso.
Again, the Suns ranked ninth defensively, and the Thunder have scored at least 120 points per 100 possessions in all three games of this series. Overall, they’ve scored 10.9 per 100 more than Phoenix allowed in the regular season.
2. Thunder handle the pressure
The biggest strength of the Suns’ defense was forcing turnovers. They ranked third in opponent turnover rate, forcing 16.5 per 100 possessions, having seen the biggest jump (by a wide margin) from last season.
But now they’re facing the team that has committed the fewest turnovers per 100 possessions in each of the last two seasons. And the Thunder have been even better at taking care of the ball in this series.
Over the three games, the champs have committed just 8.9 turnovers per 100 possessions, what would be tied for the third-lowest rate for any team in any playoff series in the 30 years for which we have play-by-play data. They’ve taken their opponents’ biggest strength and turned it into a major weakness.
According to tracking data, the Suns rank fourth in these playoffs in average pick-up distance, so they’re applying pressure. But it’s not working on the Thunder, who had just two live-ball turnovers in Game 3 on Saturday.
Shooting is the most important thing in this game, but you there are other ways to boost your efficiency and the Thunder have done it by taking care of the ball.
3. Best bench in basketball
It was a little bit of a surprise that Ajay Mitchell started in place of Jalen Williams on Saturday, given that Cason Wallace started 42 more games than Mitchell (58-16) in the regular season. Mitchell was the Thunder’s second leading scorer (15 points) in Game 3, but shot just 5-for-20, forcing some tough shots along the way.
The Thunder’s new starting lineup had played just 37 total minutes (over seven games) together in the regular season and was outscored by four points on Saturday. But the champs outscored the Suns by 16 points with at least one reserve on the floor.
Even without Williams to run the second-unit offense, the Thunder outscored the Suns by two points (20-18) in Gilgeous-Alexander’s 10 minutes on the bench. The shooting wasn’t great (8-for-22, including 1-for-7 from 3-point range), but they didn’t commit any turnovers when the MVP sat.
They used the same five-man unit (Mitchell, Wallace, Jared McCain, Chet Holmgren and Isaiah Hartenstein) for those entire 10 minutes. Mitchell scored seven of his 15 points and McCain scored all of his seven in those no-SGA minutes, with a couple of SGA-esque buckets included.
The Thunder have had the league’s No. 1 bench in each of the last two seasons, and though their versatility is a little compromised with the absence of Williams, they’re never dependent on the success of any particular lineup. Still, it will be interesting to see if Mitchell remains the starter going forward.
4. Booker still can’t get going
Dillon Brooks (33 points) and Jalen Green (26) were again the Suns’ leading scorers on Saturday, and that’s by the Thunder’s design. The league’s No. 1 defense has made Devin Booker its No. 1 priority, making sure he plays in a crowd and has a hard time finding open shots.
When he’s used a ball-screen, he hasn’t seen any kind of advantage for himself:
The Suns have bee able to leverage the attention on Booker to get good shots for his teammates. Early in the third quarter on Saturday, there was no weak-side help on an Ighodaro roll to the rim, because Dort stayed attached to Booker in the corner:
But the Suns haven’t been able to find enough of those kinds of openings to keep up with the Thunder. And at 20.3 points per game, this is the lowest-scoring playoff series of Booker’s career. His true shooting percentage of 55.1% would be his third worst mark of the 10 series that he’s played in.
The Suns first chance to avoid a sweep is Game 4 on Monday (9:30 ET, Peacock).
Taiwanese filmmaker Giddens Ko, presenting “Kung Fu” at the Far East Film Festival on Saturday, revealed that Stephen Chow contributed to the film’s development and reflected on the more than decade-long journey required to bring his most technically ambitious project to screen.
Speaking on a panel moderated by Kevin Ma, Ko and his longtime collaborator Kai Ko – who stars in “Kung Fu” and wrote, produced and acts in “I Blew Out the Candles Before Making a Wish,” which has its world premiere at the festival Sunday – discussed the pair’s 15-year working relationship, the demands of wuxia filmmaking and their respective next projects.
Ko adapted “Kung Fu” from his own novel, written some 25 years ago, and first attempted to shoot it as his second feature around 2013. Fresh off the commercial success of his debut, “You’re the Apple of My Eye,” he pulled back from the project, attributing the retreat to an excess of confidence.
“I was so happy with the success of that story,” Ko said. “Right away when I got into this novel, I said, wow, this is a martial art, it’s kung fu. Everybody would love it.”
The abandoned project stayed with him. Ko described it as a creative wound he eventually resolved by returning to it alongside collaborators who shared the same history with the material. The finished film – which he described as Taiwan’s largest-budgeted production – incorporates footage from classic wuxia works. These clips, Ko noted, are not simple homages but narrative threads planted early in the story.
“Those classic clips at the beginning, they are not just being there because they were classic clips,” Ko said. “They were actually clues laying down the foundation for you to see the future character.”
Ko’s conception of the wuxia genre centers on imagination as a martial force. “Wuxia is not just action choreography,” he said. “Wuxia is really talking about stretching the audience imagination when you watch it.” To illustrate the spectrum, Ko contrasted Jackie Chan’s grounded physicality with the more heightened combat of Jet Li’s Wong Fei-hung films, where movement begins to exceed what the body could plausibly achieve – placing “Kung Fu” firmly in the latter tradition. He cited “The Matrix” as a structural touchstone, specifically the idea that a protagonist empowered by belief can transcend the rules of a constructed world. Ko also confirmed he showed the script directly to Stephen Chow – whose “Kung Fu Hustle” loomed large in the discussion – to talk through choreography and story.
Kai Ko, making his fourth film with Giddens, said the collaboration’s dynamic remained largely unchanged despite the production’s scale. The actor has grown into a presence in Giddens’ post-production process, a development the director welcomes. “He inspired me a lot,” Giddens said. “He’s no longer just a presence. He’s there, participated in a lot of ideas we discussed.”
Having directed his own debut, “Bad Education” – written by Giddens – Kai Ko said the experience reshaped his approach to acting, though he drew a clear line. “Don’t forget the director is the real general,” Kai Ko said. “The real captain of this whole collaboration. And he has the power of cutting.”
In “I Blew Out the Candles Before Making a Wish,” Kai Ko plays a Taiwanese man who relocates to Macau, falls into financial failure and crosses paths with a young girl. The role required him to deliver much of his dialogue in Cantonese, a language he had to learn for the part. “Mastering Cantonese was the hardest part for me to play this role,” he said. “Cantonese has nine tones. If you make the tone incorrectly, it turns into a completely different meaning of the word.”
He traveled to Macau to research the character, interviewing people who had gone there during the city’s casino boom, many of whom, he noted, came back empty-handed.
Looking ahead, Giddens confirmed he is developing his next feature in Taiwan, with a role written in for Kai Ko. Kai Ko is separately working on a second directorial project with a new screenwriter and said the film would likely arrive in 2027 if the script comes together. “We are going back and forth discussing a new script,” Kai Ko said. “I hope in the end it would be something interesting and better.”
“Oh Yes. I’m an executive producer on the show, so I’m involved in all of it. We talk with the writers, and Dan [Erickson], all the time. I know everything about what’s going on. [As an actor] I like having as much information as possible.”
Just like the whole world, he’s more than ready for Season 3.
“It’s going to be great. There’re so many surprises. I can’t wait to shoot it,” he said. As previously announced, Ben Stiller won’t be directing this time.
“Ben is still very involved in the show. It’s going to be great. You know, it’s been over two years since we finished shooting Season 2. We’re all anxious to get back. We miss each other.”
Scott, who will be receiving the Canal+ Icon Award at Canneseries this week, admitted he really, really wanted the role.
“I don’t know if I would categorize it as a battle, but I certainly had to prove I could do it. Which makes sense: It was a big show, a big investment for Apple, so they needed to see that,” he recalled.
“It’s an incredible role in an incredible world. It’s everything I’d always wanted to do. When I read the script, first of all, I thought: ‘I probably won’t get this job. But if I do, if I’m able to land this, it will be because I’ve been earning this over the last 30 years. The opportunity to be considered for something like this and a role where you get to explore different sides of this person.”
He added: “Happily, I auditioned only once. The more you do it, the more you can screw it up.”
When “Parks and Recreation” ended, he wanted to find something “a little more dramatic.” “I just wanted to change it up, and I had trouble being considered for anything that wasn’t comedic. I really sought out ‘Big Little Lies,’ for example – that was something I really wanted to do. I wanted to work with Reese Witherspoon and all those actors, and Jean-Marc Vallée. But I really had to campaign for that and audition a few times, and prove to them I could do something that wasn’t comedic.”
“Severance” “felt like a full meal,” he said.
“It felt like a complicated character and a complicated world – and an adventure. Everything I’d done up to that point, those were all things that fulfilled me. But this felt like more of a culmination.”
It took him a while to figure out how to portray the infamous scenes of transition. “Switching from one thing to another, in an elevator, could be really corny. Ben had this ‘elevator set’ he would keep off to the side, so whenever we had a few minutes, we could go over and practice, and try to see how that transformation would occur.”
“We must have done it hundreds of times before we landed on something that worked. I think it was Ben who came up with our eyes fluttering a bit. Oh man, I’m sure I did a bunch of stuff that was ridiculous.”
With many questions unanswered, “Severance” has quickly developed a “Twin Peaks”-like cult following.
“I love ‘Twin Peaks’ so much and I love that people keep discovering it over and over again. I don’t know if [‘Severance’] will live in culture and be remembered like that, but I agree – there’s a lot of power in not knowing.”
“Something we’re always trying to do on the show is retain an element of mystery. I loved the way ‘The Sopranos’ ended. I was frustrated by it, but it was brilliant and I still haven’t figured it out. I love it not only in TV shows or movies, but I like it in music. I’ve always loved bands that wouldn’t tell you everything about how music was made and who made it. I like when there’s a place for my imagination to reach out and meet the work.”
Scott doesn’t worry about being typecast again post-“Severance.”
“Something that’s good with a role like Mark is that I’m not sure what aspect of it would pin me down into being typecast. And even if I’m, it would be completely worth it, because I love the show so much.”
He recently made horror film “Hokum.”
“It’s really scary. I think with horror movies, just as a fan and as someone who participates in them sometimes, I feel like the criteria is it should be a good movie first and a good horror movie second. It should be able to stand on its own as a character, as an interesting character, an interesting story. And then the horror elements are almost a bonus, you know,” he said.
“It’s been a while since I’ve been a lead in something that’s come out in movie theaters. And I love it. It’s what made me want to do this in the first place: sitting in a dark room with a bunch of strangers and watching something that really moves you or gets you excited.”
“Severance” moves people as well.
‘When the show first came out, we were still emerging from the pandemic. People were slowly returning to the office or working from home, and this new work-life balance felt strange for everyone. I think the show evoked those feelings,” he said.
“With something that’s as high-concept as ‘Severance,’ there has to be an emotional element to connect to, and there have to be characters to connect to. Otherwise, it just becomes something that’s interesting, but isn’t emotionally engaging.”
He added: “If you were presented with this technology, would you do this? Once you really consider that question, you start thinking about your life in a certain way, and it sets you on an interesting journey.”
