TRACK GLOBAL INFLATION

“Effective immediately, the United States Navy, the finest in the world, will begin the process of blockading any and all ships trying to enter or leave the Strait Of Hormuz. He said the Navy would also intercept any vessel that had paid a toll to Iran, adding, quote, no one who pays an illegal toll will have safe passage on the high seas. And he finished with, at an appropriate moment, we are fully locked and loaded, and our military will finish up the little that is left of Iran.”

“A country cut off from the dollar system, cut off from SWIFT, cut off from correspondent banking, demanding payment for access to a fifth of the world's oil in Bitcoin. This is exactly why Bitcoin will matter more and more in geopolitics. Bitcoin is neutral and can't be sanctioned or censored. Iran is finding it useful for the same reason a protester in Russia or a working class saver in Argentina does.”

“Satoshi controlled a set of cryptographic keys that can unlock around 1,000,000 Bitcoin that have never moved. Those keys are the only way to prove beyond any doubt who Satoshi is. Everything else is just circumstantial. Adam Back himself flatly denied the claims again. He said, quote, I'm not Satoshi, but I was early and laser focused on the positive societal implications of cryptography, online privacy, and electronic cash.”

“Morgan Stanley launched its spot Bitcoin ETF last week, and it drew in about $34,000,000 in inflows on its first day, making it the best performing ETF debut in the firm's entire history. Amy Oldenburg, Morgan Stanley's head of digital assets, said on Bloomberg TV, quote, it was the best first day of trading for any of our ETFs. Now I have to say the timing of this launch is fascinating because we're in the middle of a Bitcoin price drawdown.”

“On Friday alone, Stretch traded $526,000,000 in volume, more than double its thirty day average of $258,000,000. Strategy CEO, Phong Li, said this week that Stretch is now trading with more liquidity as a percent of market cap than every single magnificent seven common stock. Not just some of them, all of them. That is crazy volume for a preferred stock.”

“I think prices are permanently higher. I mean, when I say permanent, nothing's permanent, but at least in the foreseeable future, this year, next year, the year after. You know, we're not there's no going back to the $60, $65 bucks a barrel we were paying before all this mess. You're still left with a fee that's not inconsequential, and then, of course, insurance companies are gonna demand a higher insurance premium for insuring the traffic that moves through this strait because, you know, who knows what will happen in the future.”

“Feels pretty close to script, more or less. You know, the president has gone down this path in other ways. And when push comes to shove, when markets start to react, when stock prices are down, when interest rates are up, and in this case, when oil prices are up, he figures out a way to pivot, to stand down, and to declare victory and hopefully move on.”

“Iran is charging $2,000,000 for every ship that passes through the Strait Of Hormuz. And they have said in the agreement that they have full sovereignty over the Strait, and now they're gonna charge people for moving goods through it. So I guess the question is, one, do you think that that holds? And two, how significant is it from an inflation perspective? Because it seems like that is, yes, ships can pass through, but now there's a toll.”

“I view this as a part of a broader, a very corrosive trend, and that that's the deglobalization of the economy that The US is pulling away from the rest of the world very quickly. I mean, you know, tariffs, immigration policy, what we're doing geopolitically. And then, of course, now the rest of the world is pulling away from us very quickly. If we are deglobalizing and this is just one more thing that will cause that process to continue and potentially even accelerate, it has all kinds of corrosive effects.”

“The US is a big economy—it's the largest on the planet—so, you know, it's still gonna play a very central role, but increasingly less of one as we move forward. We have benefited enormously from the globalization process and the fact that The US is central and the US dollar is central to everything that goes on in the world. And that is now gonna be under pressure; it was under pressure before all this, and it will be under even more pressure going forward.”