I’m shocked, shocked…

“So. Farewell then”

Michael Lewis on the, rather important but neglected, US Dept of Energy; quotes from Mike Ashley on drinking, gambling, napping and making a fortune; the Shkreli trial is wrapping up; innovation thy name is cryptocurrency; “The AP has deleted a tweet about a giraffe being born because it included a photo of the wrong giraffe”; other stuff.

Amidst all sorts of other crytpo turmoil…

Malthus was right in his time, wrong for all the time since — but it took a while to know for sure.

JP Koning with a gold hack to fix the debt ceiling; inside Hampton Creek’s empty boardroom; the Chipotle corporate sabotage theory returns; it’s Kid Rock’s party now; other stuff.

…because its returns are uncorrelated to any other asset class.

When an industry’s power gets more concentrated in the hands of a few companies, profit margins tend to rise. Who would’ve guessed?

The insidious creep of pseudo-public space in London; China’s underwhelming SOE reform; the lonely life of a short seller; Lexit; Roomba wants to sell the map of your house; Japanese whiskey arbitrage; other stuff.

Buchheit and Gulati paper on how to restructure Venezuelan debt; Koning on dictionary money; Trump’s missing infra plan; the Mooch steps up; brosectomies; “I’m glad that girl’s lemonade stall got shut down”; other stuff.

“Like, not ‘hello’.”

In this guest post, regulator and academic Marcello Minenna warns about the potential impact of new MREL rules on the Italian banking system.

New documents show the former tech unicorn was owed millions by related parties when it went into administration.

New research shows how “technocratic” forecasters are terrible at a key part of their job.

Notes from the alternate universe where Hillary Clinton won; meanwhile in this universe the Mooch may be the new WH Comms director; more Shkreli; interest rate humility; vol sellers branch out; lemonade stand shut down; other stuff.

Legal enforcement authorities have shut down two of the biggest criminal marketplaces on the dark web, Alphabay and Hansa, in an operation of unprecedented international scale. But will the Feds be able to keep up once the market evolves, as it surely will, into entirely decentralised form?

Unilever serves up growth (of the non orange variety). FT Opening Quote, with commentary by Matthew Vincent, is your early Square Mile briefing. You can sign up for the full newsletter here.

Shkreli update involving ploughing all of a fund’s cash in a strip-club stock; the T2 risk in a rapid unwinding of the ECB’s APP; disappearing Wall St brokers; investor accused of punching out teen at ritzy Hamptons bash; snail slime hits mainstream; other stuff.