What bothered me most about the theatre yesterday was the demand for fealty 

America isn’t a feudal kingdom, it’s a republic — no man is a king and while we celebrate great statesmen, we serve no masters 

If you’re in crypto, it’s ever more important to build or align with protocols that can’t be co-opted

Worse than fealty, they wanted him to offer up his country's resources, which he might not even have the unilateral power to do, in exchange for nothing. So Zelensky just trying to navigate this attempted extortion rather than lay down was what led to Vance ambushing him.

Coinbase employee (Investigatooor), personal account. Onchain is the future.

They're connected. This wasn't about showing 'gratitude', the entire meeting and purpose for the visit was about signing over the rare earth minerals. But those resources are in contested and occupied regions and all the while the admin is also trying to get a ceasefire. 

So when Trump gets asked by a reporter how the US will ensure Ukraine maintains access to those, he blows it off and gets upset. Then when Vance talks about diplomacy (which ties into the ceasefire), Z brings up how Putin consistently breaks diplomacy, so for him to sign this agreement, and then get forced into a ceasefire, with no guarantees, the stage is being set for Russia to continue to encroach and take more land and Ukraine be unable to satisfy this deal. 

The deal makes no sense, and Z's simple questioning of their rationale causes the blow up, his disruption of their disinfo spreading and refusal to roll over are what piss off Trump and Vance the most.

Aligning economic incentives makes sense -- especially when the nation no longer has the appetite for spending on foreign wars

We can debate whether treating geopolitics as business negotiations is wise over longer time horizons, but this is a different matter altogether from asking someone to kiss the ring