I Did Sort of Expect It ...

... but, naively, I didn't expect it to be unanimous.

The Supreme Court has just ruled (not for the first time) that any time a bunch of parasitic nobs jump up and down screeching "national security," the First Amendment goes away.

As for whether TikTok really can be effectually banned, I guess we'll see about that.

Things That Make You Go Hmmm ...

I've mentioned the FIO protocol, and its associated token, before. While it hasn't been as widely adopted as I'd hoped just yet, it's a cool way of making cryptocurrency manageable. You get an FIO "name," and people can just send (via a number of wallets) any of several cryptocurrencies to that "name" instead of to a long crypto address (my FIO name is knappster@edge).

As for the token, it's not any kind of major investment/speculation vehicle so far as I can tell, but I do keep some on hand, and keep it "staked" to help with network liquidity, for which I earn "rewards" (about 10% APY).

The other day, I got a wallet alert on my phone that the token's value had gone up.

WAY up.

So far up that my $150 or so worth of staked FIO was now priced at more liked $9,000.

I didn't expect that to last, and my FIO balance, being staked, was not liquid (after unstaking, it can't be transferred for seven days).

Nonetheless, I did unstake that balance, thinking that perhaps seven days from now my $150 worth of FIO might still be worth, say, $1,000. Maybe there was some kind of big deal I hadn't heard about (e.g. one of the major exchanges adopting the protocol, or some big investor throwing in to improve, promote, etc.), meaning the surge was genuine, if way over-optimistic going forward.

In the minute or so it took me to do that, the price fell back down to where it usually is, and my $150 or so worth of FIO was worth $150 or so again.

The whole thing happened too quickly to feel like any kind of "pump and dump" operation or other scam.

Kind of weird.

Even weirder when you look at the token's price chart, which doesn't reflect the massive increase my wallet alerted me to.

So now I'm wondering what happened. Was there some kind of error in the price reporting mechanism? If so, where and why -- at the wallet level, on whatever trading platforms inform the wallet, etc.? Microsoft Copilot tried to educate me on "flash crashes," but just in general.

Wordle 1308 Hint

 Hint: Possibly purple, but not poetry.

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First Letter: P