Good afternoon,

I'm William D. Cohan, the author of six books and a former M&A banker. Welcome back to Dry Powder, my private email about what's really happening on Wall Street.

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In the meantime, please enjoy this free preview of Dry Powder, regarding what I’m hearing about Microsoft's retreat in China, Bitcoin bear signals, James Gorman's bubble fantasy, and the lessons of Eddie Lampert, among other observations.

Jamie’s Bitcoin Call, the Fed’s Dilemma, and the New Barbarians at the Gate

Regarding the most pressing questions on Wall Street and in my inbox.

LinkedIn ceased operation in China this week. You’ve recently written at length about the anxiety over China’s business crackdown. Is LinkedIn’s decision cause for more alarm, or more of the same? 

LinkedIn, owned by Microsoft, was among the last social media companies operating in China following President Xi Jinping’s so-called “regulatory crackdown.” But China apparently objected to the actual social-networking aspect of the social network, meaning, I suppose, the ability of one person to send messages and share opinions on the platform. To evade the “crackdown,” Microsoft has decided to keep the resumes and job bulletins, but shutter just about everything else. It seems to me that Microsoft got off kind of easy, anyway, given how annoying LinkedIn’s “social” features can be at times.

It’s another blow for American businesses in China, and American internet companies in particular, as Xi continues the process of closing the Middle Kingdom to the West. When I visited China five years ago, I was struck by how swiftly I lost access to the outside world—as soon as the door closed on the long China Airlines flight to Beijing, all internet access was cut off. Once in Beijing, there was no Twitter or Google, among an array of other websites that we take for granted. You can get by, of course, and many people use VPNs to do just that. It’s just different and not what Americans are used to, and there are no signs this policy will abate.

Jamie Dimon had some illuminating comments about crypto this week, essentially noting that he’s not buying the Bitcoin hype. Agree? Disagree? Is he talking his book?

Well, I think he may be talking his book in the sense that if things go the way the crypto zealots believe they will, a variety of financial transactions that used to go through his bank and the other big banks—sending money, paying bills, collecting yield—will no longer need Wall Street as an intermediary. At that point, crypto would be moving into the “currency” phase, from what now is described, charitably, as the “commodity” phase, and less charitably as the speculation phase. 

More likely, Jamie doesn’t yet see the “use case” for crypto beyond speculation. I say this because...

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