Nicolas Hasselbach

[Michael A. Gayed, CFA @leadlagreport]

This isn’t about Bitcoin.

This isn’t about Ethereum.

This isn’t about Solana.

This isn’t about Dogecoin.

This isn’t even about Michael Saylor.

This is, was, and always will be about overconfidence.

Overconfidence leads to leverage.

Leverage leads to crashes.

Few.

[Nicolas Hasselbach @Hasselbach_Nick]

@LukeGromen Hi Luke, long-time subscriber. Thank you!
A bit late maybe - @Rory_Johnston mentioned the historic backwardation in oil doesn't mean prices will fall, but signals huge premium for physical, & that crude is not good at being anticipatory. Could you share your thoughts vs 'whoosh'?

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

You've got to hand it to Iran: that's masterful asymmetric warfare.

If they pull this off and suddenly oil transiting through Hormuz is traded in Yuan, we're talking potentially close to $1 trillion less in annual demand for dollars (20% of the world's oil + LNG). It'd be insanely impressive to achieve this simply by controlling a 30-mile strait with a few missiles and drones.

And it'd have compounding effects: $1 trillion less in demand for dollars means less foreign buying of US Treasuries, higher borrowing costs in the U.S., more inflation, etc.

Heck even if this doesn't materialize, the mere fact they're suggesting it and that it's taken seriously by mainstream media like CNN is impactful in and of itself: at the end of the day dollar supremacy is also very much based on inertia. But inertia works both ways: once enough people start questioning it, the questioning itself becomes self-reinforcing.

Imagine you're a central banker and you're seeing this: you're undoubtedly telling yourself "mmm, maybe it's time to hold a bit more yuan, just in case."

It's also pretty ironic: the U.S. has weaponized the dollar against others countless times - including, of course, against Iran - but I can't think of a precedent of a country actively at war with the U.S. using the dollar's dominance as a weapon against them. Literally flipping the playbook, which sets an interesting precedent.

All in all, in this war you really have the feeling to witness Sun Tzu's maxim about "knowing the enemy and knowing yourself" in real time: Trump obviously completely failed to understand what he was getting into.

Iran, on the other hand, clearly studied its enemy's vulnerabilities, be it hitting Gulf countries until they question whether being a U.S. ally protects or endangers them, choking oil supply to inflict economic pain the US can't bomb its way out of, or now attacking the dollar itself.

The U.S. only has bombs to reply, but hard to see how they could bomb their way out of problems that were entirely predictable consequences of their bombing in the first place, if anyone had spent five minutes thinking about what Iran might do in response.

[Nicolas Hasselbach @Hasselbach_Nick]

@jam_croissant @LukeGromen, seems smart money has reacted to the ‘Bear Stearns moment’ and positioning for the whoosh down.

[Nicolas Hasselbach @Hasselbach_Nick]

@JoshYoung @BloombergNRG Worth viewing it in terms of gold as well? Less of a moving base than the USD.