New YouTube Studio is coming along 👀

New podcast out with @MartyBent on @TFTC talking about the slow motion train wreck that is the Japanese monetary crisis and the knock on effects for stocks, gold, and bitcoin Check it out!

If you keep waiting for perfect conditions, you’ll never do it Sometimes you just gotta take the leap. Start the business, move to the new city, ask the girl out. What are you afraid of losing when nothing in life is truly yours?

Hosting a Bitcoin Bazaar marketplace booth today as a fundraiser for the non profit Cypherpunk Institute in Seattle! I’m auctioning a signed copy of my book and a copy of Bitcoin Art Magazine for the foundation. You can see the magnanimous @Kyle Huber selling his wares on the right 👊 Support decentralized economies ⚡️

Modern day UFO disclosure is not hitting like the tin foil hats thought it would 40 years ago. I know a guy who was deep into the UFO investigations in the 1970s-1990s, reading all the books, listening to Art Bell, etc. he thought if real disclosure came out that the world would fall into pandemonium View quoted note →

Great macro podcast with Capital Flows and Marty Bent on @TFTC I especially agree with the idea that future political campaigns are won by who has the best short form edit 🤣

Spotify

#738: The Dollar Empire Is Just Beginning with Capital Flows

TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast · Episode

For now View quoted note →

Someone is buying a massive amount of $20,000 an ounce gold call options

this applies to almost every problem in the West

Me too, bro. Me too.

banger View quoted note →

BITCOINER DINNER with the greats! Talking Bitcoin circular economies, the end of fiat, and the best places to travel to (Julian and I say Japan but Paul is a Costa Rica Maxi) @paul keating @Julian Figueroa @nilli studio @Peruvian Bull @Alex Petrou

The dollar milkshake is one of the most important macro theories of the last 20 years… It was developed by Brent Johnson of Santiago Capital, and it starts with a simple structural fact: the dollar isn’t just a currency, it’s the operating system of global trade and finance. every country needs dollars to buy oil, service debt, and settle international transactions. that external demand is something no other currency on earth has. not the euro, not the yen, not the yuan. the dollar is the only fiat with structural demand from outside its own borders. this creates a feedback loop. when global stress rises, capital doesn’t flee to safety in some abstract sense, it flees to dollars specifically, because dollar-denominated debt has to be repaid in dollars. a Chilean copper miner, a Nigerian oil producer, a South Korean car manufacturer, all of them borrowed in USD, all of them generate revenue in their local currency, and all of them need to convert that local currency into dollars to service their debt. when the dollar rises, that conversion becomes more expensive, forcing more dollar buying, which strengthens the dollar further, which tightens the screws on every other dollar borrower simultaneously. financial stress abroad doesn’t weaken the dollar. it strengthens it. But the craziest part is what happens when the dollar weakens. dollar bears see DXY falling and declare the end of American monetary dominance. what they’re actually watching is the system reloading. cheaper dollars make dollar-denominated borrowing more attractive globally, so more eurodollar loans get created, more EM corporates issue USD debt, more offshore dollar credit gets extended through the eurodollar system, which operates entirely outside the Fed’s regulatory reach. that’s more fuel going into the milkshake. when the cycle inevitably turns and the dollar rips back, all those new borrowers get squeezed at once, capital floods back into U.S. markets, and American equities and bonds catch the bid while everyone else bleeds. that capital recycling is a big reason why $1 invested in the S&P 500 in 1980 became $98.68 by end of 2023. that same $1 in global equities ex-U.S. became $19.63. the milkshake explains the gap. Johnson is clear that this isn’t sustainable forever. the U.S. fiscal situation is a disaster, the debt trajectory ends badly, and eventually the system breaks. but the sequencing matters. before the dollar dies, it probably kills everything else first. every country running the same loose monetary policy as the U.S. is doing so without the reserve currency backstop, which makes them more vulnerable, not equally vulnerable. the U.S. is the cleanest dirty shirt in the laundry, and a falling DXY is a coiled spring, not a death rattle. the lower it goes, the harder it snaps back. View quoted note →

Dollar falls last in the global economic collapse View quoted note →

Dollar Milkshake still in full swing

My favorite Jordan Peterson quote

the IEA announced the largest coordinated oil release in history on March 11th: 400 million barrels from strategic reserves. Brent was trading around $103 that day. it's now been almost four weeks. Brent closed last week above $111. the price went UP. the math never worked- the world burns 105 million barrels of oil per day. 400 million barrels covers less than 4 days of global consumption, and barely 20 days of normal Hormuz flows. the US contribution alone, 172 million barrels, takes 120 days to deliver at max discharge rates, with a 13 day lag before any of it even reaches the market. so the "emergency" reserve has a two week shipping delay. meanwhile Hormuz is running at roughly a seventh of normal traffic. the IRGC said yesterday the strait "will never return to its previous status, especially for the US and Israel." Iran rejected the 45 day ceasefire proposal. Trump set a Tuesday deadline to reopen it or he hits bridges and power plants. QatarEnergy, Kuwait Petroleum, Bapco, Aramco, and ADNOC have all either shut production or declared force majeure. the strategic reserve was designed for temporary supply disruptions. a hurricane, a pipeline outage, maybe a few weeks of chaos. not an open ended war over the chokepoint that moves 20% of global energy. you can't fix a structural crisis like this with a stockpile that covers 4 days.

Al Jazeera

Strategic oil release may calm markets but cannot fix Hormuz disruption

Record oil release steadies markets, but war-driven disruption in the Strait of Hormuz keeps energy supplies uncertain.

“It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.” ― Voltaire