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“The war in Iran has caused the price of all kinds of commodities to surge, and that has a negative economic impact almost everywhere. But the squeeze is really being felt hard in East Asia, which is the ultimate destination for a lot of oil and gas that come out of the Gulf.”

“We have to look past the daily headlines and realize the sheer capital being incinerated in this conflict is a massive tax on global growth.”

“They will ration it for whatever is the most beneficial both to them and to the I suppose the populace. But generally speaking, like that's that's up against it because Bitcoin's security policy is energy and it's like now if that starts getting eroded a little bit and the big miners start getting pushed out that has a it has a positive effect as well where big miners being broken up or hey Marathon you can't have five hydroelectric dams we need three of them running AI stuff for open AI.”

“In the 70s, in the 80s, in the 90s, in the 2000s, the answer would have been mostly from the private sector, even though the government was running deficits too. But once we got over 100% debt to GDP, so we have pretty substantial interest expense, and we're running these entitlement systems that are kind of no longer mathematically as sound as they were decades ago, that combination of the demographics and the accumulated debt made it so that even in a non-recession year, deficits are bigger than all the net new loan creation. And so that starts kind of, it creates like a run-it-hot environment.”

“I've said for a long time, I think the NASDAQ and the Dow are two of the worst metrics or most unhealthy metrics ever invented because they give the illusion that people are doing well. And it really is, it's a proxy for earnings and a proxy for the wealth of the top 10%. Mostly what I think this is about is that the markets have disassociated from the majority of people's well-being and their prosperity.”

“Per his channel checks, the region is already seeing a jump in demand for electric vehicles, with BYD dealers holding less and less inventory on hand. The extreme rationing and high prices are forcing a faster transition than previously anticipated.”

“In the last six weeks, how much has the US crude oil production risen by zero barrels? How many additional rigs has been employed in the US shale area? Zero rigs. Basically, where are the US producers? Why are we not seeing any response? And I think part of that is clearly the fact that the curve is very backwardated. So if you as an oil producer needs to hedge your production three to six months out, the prices are still not that great.”

“Okay, so here's what's going to happen. We're going to have 20% unemployment. Call it 15 to 20%. Then you've got mix that with 14 to 16% inflation or being generous, maybe it's 10, maybe it's 12, but it's double digits. So the problem is like they're not losing their job like, 'Oh, damn. I got to go figure out where to work next.' It's like, no, no, no. Monster.com, they've removed that job description. Like, you can't list a job for that anymore.”

“Going forward, we've already kind of optimized a lot of what we're going to get out of globalization, manufacturing automation, that sort of stuff, which means that kind of really the next realm to tackle is to try to make some of those white collar services less expensive, more, you know, less human labor intensive. And so, I do think that AIs, you know, it's kind of the next major thing, where depending on how good that technology can get and how efficient it can be used, that can keep costs down. And obviously, you know, just like how manufacturing, automation and offshoring had losers and winners from that, AI is kind of the main thing.”

“And so now we are definitively escalating and not only is the straight not going to be open, but we are going to make it even more closed than it was before. So an interesting, you know, reverse card being played here as always, you know, it's a bold strategy cotton. We'll see how it plays out, but yeah, big, big implications this week.”

“By owning the entire stack, Hyperliquid's advantage is vertical integration which allows for much higher efficiency.”

“We've gone from a bit of a liquidity and inflation shock, perhaps now more towards a growth shock, where the implications of this crisis will start to play out in the coming months in terms of soft economic growth. And with that also, the central bank struggle business between focusing on inflation on one hand, and perhaps focusing on economic stimulus on the other side. And I think that that will eventually send the gold prices higher again.”

“There does appear to be a large redirection of VLCCs, which are very large crude carriers to the Gulf here in the U.S. and that's in response to one of the main oil arteries and LNG arteries in the world, as we've discussed for the last month, getting closed off. So yeah, I think it's an interesting kind of illustration of something that we've been talking about.”

“Having the CEOs of the companies you are meant to regulate sitting in the West Wing effectively means the industry is writing its own rulebook.”

“Until the dawn of the telegraph until the dawn of Bitcoin, there was no fast settlement. And then so Bitcoin gets developed. And then even then, of course, it's worth nothing. It has no network effect. It's a novelty. So even, you know, for the first, say, decade of its life, it wasn't moving the needle at all. Even today, it's now it's increasingly part of the conversation, but it's still a small asset in the grand scheme of things. But basically, I would say that we've reached the height of fiat currency in the sense that we've been in this period of time where there was no alternative between fast transactions and slow settlements.”

“I think it breaks definitely. Quantum will be a pain in the ass for lots of things, but for cryptography, it's really like an advancement in the knowledge of prime numbers. Because that's sort of we build on not knowing these guys as well as we know everything else in the universe. And I think that's where the patterns will come through from. AI will be able to see what prime numbers are trying to do. And so prime numbers basically... every cryptographic key is the mixture of two prime numbers and we don't know how to unmix them.”

“The war will accelerate the region's appetite to restart nuclear power plants, ultimately lessening its dependence on imported natural gas. Though the acute pain may pass, this episode may already be reshaping the long-term energy trajectory of the region.”

“If gas prices go up, yes, it might have some impact on lower-income consumers, and we can get to that because it is very interesting. But ultimately, high earners are completely price insensitive. It doesn't matter to them. They drive consumer spending. Same thing with big companies, same thing with tech companies, they're going to be fine.”

“We are witnessing a massive shift in global markets as geopolitical tensions in the Middle East reach a breaking point.”

“Since we hit the bottom from the Iran war, so that was March 30th, that was the market bottom thus far, it's been a very different story. It's actually reversed. Energy has fallen, it's down 9% since the bottom. And the winners have been financials up 11%, communication services up 18%, and tech up 17%.”

“Asia is very heavily exposed right now and more acutely thinking about what the impacts might be, how they might want to preempt them than the United States. Asia is a massive crude importer, and principally from the Middle East because it's the most proximate supply and generally has the cheapest shipping distances.”

“I wonder if there's also been a little bit of what I would call the timeline fatigue, where we thought we understood what the story of this war was. And there were all of these different plot points. We strike Iran, we kill the supreme leader, but then the son is appointed. Then Trump says that we've had productive talks and we think that it's going to be resolved.”

“I think breaking up the pub codes to some degree might be really bullish. I think you were the first person to explain this side of it to me once upon a time because someone said it's a benefit to have these guys splitting their time and attention. These big guys that get to that status of like Iris or whatever where they go, you know what, we do a bit of AI because it's going to drop their ownership, relative ownership of the Bitcoin network down. And I think that trend in general is going to be a great benefit.”

“Okay, so here's what's going to happen. We're going to have 20% unemployment. Call it 15 to 20%. Then you've got mix that with 14 to 16% inflation or being generous, maybe it's 10, maybe it's 12, but it's double digits. So the problem is like they're not losing their job like, 'Oh, damn. I got to go figure out where to work next.' It's like, no, no, no. Monster.com, they've removed that job description. Like, you can't list a job for that anymore.”

“As you know, the figure I show here is 50% of sulfuric acid exports are used for phosphate fertilizers. And it's important because the first market and the downstream kind of agricultural markets that globally that it depends on, that depend on it, are already very disrupted from everything that's gone on thus far out of the Gulf.”

“If you take a look at what's going on in the strait of war moves, it still seems to be shut more or less. You can see the number of ships that are going through that particular choke point, and I have two as of today, which is basically nothing compared to normal ship traffic.”

“The market decided last week with the ceasefire announcement that everything was, was Gucci and we were heading back to all time highs. But as we mentioned last week too, let's not get immersed and succumb to the 24-hour news cycle and the changing of headlines and the ping-ponging of ceasefire, no ceasefire, deal, no deal.”

“Bitcoin has a chance of losing the energy conversation. It's not even going to be a question. It'll be, yeah, AI gets first preference. It will make it very scary the rounding up of the energy sources and sort of reprioritizing them. They will ration it for whatever is the most beneficial. That's up against it because Bitcoin's security policy is energy. You get to a point where countries need to start accumulating Bitcoin or figuring out how to accumulate Bitcoin because they need to.”

“Reason we just come to know as well that miners in South America then need sulfuric acids in order to break down the copper from their mines and that basically means with 50 percent of that coming out of the Middle East, then we also suddenly face a potential shortage in that area. We talked about helium has been mentioned prior to the chips industry. So it's just the whole, how the breadth of this crisis and how it impacts not only energy, but anything through to metals.”

“The cool thing from a Bitcoin perspective, and I could be wrong on this, but just the way I look at it is I think a lot of these AI data centers are going to need some amount of Bitcoin mining in them to help balance their load. Like it being flexible load within that stack is going to be super useful. And if these if we have more and more of these data centers popping up, hash rate might grow through this. It definitely could because it will be the residue or the offcuts of the big AI engine operating.”

“When we look at the historical data, Bitcoin cycle lows are projected for late 2026 based on current liquidity trends.”

“They will ration it for whatever is the most beneficial both to them and to the I suppose the populace. But generally speaking, like that's that's up against it because Bitcoin's security policy is energy and it's like now if that starts getting eroded a little bit and the big miners start getting pushed out that has a it has a positive effect as well where big miners being broken up or hey Marathon you can't have five hydroelectric dams we need three of them running AI stuff for open AI.”

“The industry is realizing that seat-based SaaS is facing a crisis as artificial intelligence reduces the headcount needed for enterprise tasks.”

“Middle East has obviously expanded its production base. Why just sell oil out of the ground and send it on the ship when you can actually make some money on the process of refining these into other areas. That's why we suddenly left with a market where besides gas, we have all the associated productions of commodities... the energy intensive commodities, that's anything from aluminium to especially fertilize which requires a lot of gas with the main feed stock.”

“SpaceX is no longer a science project; it's the primary infrastructure for the new space economy, and an IPO would be the largest liquidity event in history.”

“I think with AI as a species, its preference will be bitcoin and that's not like a 'I like bitcoin'—it needs to be that. It's just its job is to execute functions and that's what code bases do. It relies on objectivity, not subjectivity. So, it can't be like, no, no, no, it's good. The supply is good for it. My mate Jimmy works there. He told me that just doesn't fly for it. It's like, I need the data or no data at all. And so I think for that reason it'll choose Bitcoin.”

“The cool thing from a Bitcoin perspective, and I could be wrong on this, but just the way I look at it is I think a lot of these AI data centers are going to need some amount of Bitcoin mining in them to help balance their load. Like it being flexible load within that stack is going to be super useful. And if these if we have more and more of these data centers popping up, hash rate might grow through this. It definitely could because it will be the residue or the offcuts of the big AI engine operating.”

“I think breaking up the pub codes to some degree might be really bullish. I think you were the first person to explain this side of it to me once upon a time because someone said it's a benefit to have these guys splitting their time and attention. These big guys that get to that status of like Iris or whatever where they go, you know what, we do a bit of AI because it's going to drop their ownership, relative ownership of the Bitcoin network down. And I think that trend in general is going to be a great benefit.”

“If you have a market which is backwardation, i.e. it's a signal of a relatively tight supply, and you're holding a futures position to hedge your exposure... every time you roll that position, if we are in backwardation, you'll be selling an expiring contract at a higher price where you buy the next. That is giving you a positive roll yield over time. And obviously, the opposite occurs if you have a period with ample supply.”

“They've actually managed to mostly avoid the cascading problem. So they were highly productive for a long time. So they had huge trade surplus, which then turned into a current account surplus because they would, you know, they take all their capital and then they buy bonds and equity and commodity deposits and all these assets around the world. So they're getting interest and dividend income from the rest of the world. So they've kind of set up a financial fortress, even though they have a high sovereign debt in their own currency, they also have tons of assets.”

“The intensifying Iran conflict creates extreme oil price volatility that has kept global markets on edge all week.”

“But alas, we're not a golf podcast for Bitcoin slash. I think we're macro podcast now. I think I've gotten some feedback. Some of the brightest minds in macroeconomics globally have been listening week in, week out just to come and get your thoughts, John, because they're good thoughts, as you alluded to. Things are chaotic.”

“My closest analysts I follow, they're always like, no, it's fine. They're like, okay, this one's not fine. This is like DEF CON 5. This is a catastrophe. And everything I track says the same thing. 15 to 20 percent of global energy production is just offline, or at least can't get to where it has to go, and then starts going offline. Some of it's damaged. It's not clear when it's going to reopen. The economy is based on upside-on pyramid, and that little tip is basically raw materials. And that's the part that's disrupted. Because when you have molecules that just can't get to where they have to go at that scale, that is the third component.”

“I think it breaks definitely. Quantum will be a pain in the ass for lots of things, but for cryptography, it's really like an advancement in the knowledge of prime numbers. Because that's sort of we build on not knowing these guys as well as we know everything else in the universe. And I think that's where the patterns will come through from. AI will be able to see what prime numbers are trying to do. And so prime numbers basically... every cryptographic key is the mixture of two prime numbers and we don't know how to unmix them.”

“I think these small modular reactors, like all the red tape that stops them from really being able to be deployed, that's just going to get ripped straight off because they're going to there's going to be a huge energy shortage. These companies like Olo are just going to like put one of those reactors in the middle of nowhere and you just have a data center there. Like that's 100% going to happen. They find the most optimal ground with the most because one of the things the balance is weather.”

“Bitcoin has a chance of losing the energy conversation. It's not even going to be a question. It'll be, yeah, AI gets first preference. It will make it very scary the rounding up of the energy sources and sort of reprioritizing them. They will ration it for whatever is the most beneficial. That's up against it because Bitcoin's security policy is energy. You get to a point where countries need to start accumulating Bitcoin or figuring out how to accumulate Bitcoin because they need to.”

“I think there's a good chance. I mean, yeah, you could have like a robot tax, you know, basically, like, so yeah, the equivalent, yeah. I think on a long enough timeline, that could become more commonplace. And I guess if things get more automated, certainly from the left side of politics, you're going to get more and more calls for UBI, and it'll probably be more and more enticing to a larger share of the population should some of these AI technologies keep taking off as the polls expect.”

“I think there's an argument that once the dust settles and we're on the other side of this, we should expect prices to settle in at least $10 higher level, maybe even $15 higher. The floor has moved higher for this. That basically means if you're looking at Brent Crude for December at $80, that's potentially where the new floor should be. So I'm struggling to see any forward prices really reflect what potential will unfold in the coming months because it will take time.”

“It's commonly what you think, because that's how many debts matter. If you have private debt, it often matters all at once. It doesn't matter until it does. Sovereign debt tends to work differently. It tends to be more of a process. So one of the arguments that I was making at the start of that talk was kind of saying that it has been mattering. Realistically, I would say it's somewhat mattered since the global financial crisis. But really, I would say, since about 2018, 2019, I think it's been really mattering, which is to say that we're shifting more and more toward that kind of fiscally dominant environment.”

“The old world is striking back against the new world because the new world wants to accelerate at 100 miles an hour towards progress, but the old world is bumping along at a much lower speed because they can't keep up with the demand that is coming from all the different, all the new technologies and all the direction that we want to go. I think that basically leaves us in a situation where the old saying that the best cure for high price is a high price because it incentivizes supply.”

“We are witnessing a massive shift in global markets as geopolitical tensions in the Middle East reach a breaking point.”

“I think these small modular reactors, like all the red tape that stops them from really being able to be deployed, that's just going to get ripped straight off because they're going to there's going to be a huge energy shortage. These companies like Olo are just going to like put one of those reactors in the middle of nowhere and you just have a data center there. Like that's 100% going to happen. They find the most optimal ground with the most because one of the things the balance is weather.”

“It really only takes one bad season for that whole equation to change around. And that's really the worry in the coming months, that if we see some troubled weather potential as well... we will see downgrades to crop production targets for this year. And that will start to eat into an overhanger supply because we are coming into this, just like the oil market, we're coming into this fertilizer crisis with ample supplies of some of the key crops.”

“I think with AI as a species, its preference will be bitcoin and that's not like a 'I like bitcoin'—it needs to be that. It's just its job is to execute functions and that's what code bases do. It relies on objectivity, not subjectivity. So, it can't be like, no, no, no, it's good. The supply is good for it. My mate Jimmy works there. He told me that just doesn't fly for it. It's like, I need the data or no data at all. And so I think for that reason it'll choose Bitcoin.”

“If you look at the last three exogenous events in America, basically there was a dip, and then the markets ripped back the following year. I think what's happening is the cycle time between fear and uncertainty around a war and the opportunity to buy is compressing, and now people are like, let's move to the part of the program where we make money.”

“We've developed a system where STRC fixes the yield gap with price-stable returns for long-term holders.”