BOLT Finance

Bitcoin + macro for the sovereign generation. Tools and dashboards to track the economic storm. Newsletter: The Weekly BOLT ⚡

[BOLT Finance @StayBolted]

26 ships transited Hormuz via IRGC-controlled routes paying in yuan. Iran’s parliament is legislating the arrangement permanently. A price gap already exists between yuan-circuit oil and dollar-circuit oil.

The petrodollar is being exited. One tanker, one settlement, one treasury sale at a time.

The dollar didn’t get dumped. It just stopped getting its texts returned 💔

New Weekly BOLT is live on substack👇
https://t.co/i9OjUK61xM

[Halston @halstonvalencia]

Yes, $STRC is trading under par, but it still did $380M in volume today.

The entire perpetual preferred market (BofA, Citi, Wells Fargo etc.) doesn’t move like this.

Idk, volume doesn’t lie.

[Halston @halstonvalencia]

Don’t go out to bars too often, but did tonight and I ran into two bitcoiners, somehow ended up talking $STRC and $SATA for 30 mins on a rooftop while the DJ was popping off 🙌

[Halston @halstonvalencia]

The hardest money in history, and anyone can hold it. Excited to be at @BITCOINisforALL this week! 🥳

[NateSharp @Sharp_On_Sats]

Most macro recaps are either inflation takes or price action. The @StayBolted team cut through both this week.

Saudi Arabia refused to back the US operation in Hormuz. And Iran turned its Strait toll system into a formal sovereign institution.

Inflation came in hot enough to kill the 2026 rate cut narrative. And Warsh now inherits a Fed with no clean move.

Bitcoin lost $80K, ETF flows flipped negative, and Strategy made its smallest purchase of the year. That matters because Bitcoin is still trading like levered tech when liquidity gets tested.

Gold and silver sold off too, but that looked more like forced deleveraging than a broken thesis. The long-term hard asset case got stronger on the same news that took prices lower.

Hard assets are not the panic trade here. They are the portfolio response to a system where security guarantees, reserve credibility, and monetary policy are all being repriced at once.

If you’re trying to understand where Bitcoin fits as the system reorganizes, the Weekly BOLT is a must read every week.

🧡

[Halston @halstonvalencia]

Dodgers better not disappoint.

[Halston @halstonvalencia]

Really looking forward to this!! 🧡

[Halston @halstonvalencia]

I was asked about the ideological tension between tradfi and bitcoin on a panel this week. Here’s my 2 sats:

Institutions adopting bitcoin does not mean bitcoin is becoming tradfi. It means the asset is working exactly as designed: to be a neutral, incorruptible alternative that ANYONE can access.

Wall Street adopting bitcoin isn’t the threat. Your misunderstanding of bitcoin is.

[Halston @halstonvalencia]

Base layer: bitcoin in cold storage

Leverage: $MSTR + $ASST

Fixed income: $STRC + $SATA

A capital stack built for whatever comes next.

[BOLT Finance @StayBolted]

RT @halstonvalencia: Unpopular opinion: “stack sats and live below your means” is lazy advice.

Because that advice assumes you already hav…

[Halston @halstonvalencia]

Up +10% in the last month. Zoom out.

[Halston @halstonvalencia]

Fidelity and Capital Group loading up on $ASST

The thesis: @Strive runs a real $2B AUM business AND stacks BTC (13,767 and counting).

Two engines, one goal: SPS.
Bullish.

[NateSharp @Sharp_On_Sats]

This morning from the @StayBolted team:

Ignore the headline whipsaws, because Friday’s relief rally was built on a narrative that lasted less than 48 hours. Hormuz “reopened,” risk assets ripped, and everyone exhaled, but then Iran reversed, tanker incidents resumed, and the move started unwinding. Don’t anchor on the latest ceasefire headline when the underlying control of the chokepoint never changed.

Focus on structural dollar stress, not daily war theater, because the durable signal is underneath the noise: more non-dollar settlement, more reserve diversification, more Treasury fragility, and more visible strain in the institutions holding the old system together. The story is not one weekend’s geopolitical swing, but a monetary order getting more fragmented while most people still treat it like a normal cycle.

One point worth emphasizing from the newsletter is that one of the biggest systemic risks may be sitting in insurer balance sheets rather than bank balance sheets. My view, not the authors', is that this becomes a real fault line over the next 18 to 24 months. After the GFC, AIG, Prudential, and MetLife were pulled into the U.S. systemic-risk framework for a reason, and although those formal designations are gone today, the underlying vulnerability may not be. If opaque, mark-to-model private credit is sitting inside institutions the market still assumes are stable, then the repricing risk is much larger than most people think.

Accumulate Bitcoin, but understand the transition, while also keeping dry powder and avoiding opaque credit. Gold is still the cleaner monetary hedge today, and Bitcoin is the more volatile version of the same long-term shift. It is still exposed to liquidity, rates, and geopolitical shock in the near term, but it is increasingly being pulled toward monetary status by institutional allocation on one side and sovereign or quasi-sovereign settlement demand on the other. That argues for steady accumulation rather than chase behavior. And if the next real break comes from leverage nobody wants to mark honestly, then liquidity matters, cash matters, and hard assets matter, because smooth marks are not the same thing as low risk.

[Halston @halstonvalencia]

Strategy is proposing $STRC to pay dividends semi-monthly instead of monthly.

This is where it gets interesting for fixed income. And btw, you can get your divs paid in btc with @roxom 📈

[Halston @halstonvalencia]

I’ll take it. 🧡📈🚀 $MSTR

[Halston @halstonvalencia]

The preferred shareholders funding this aren’t getting bitcoin upside, $MSTR common holders are.

23,934 BTC so far this week, 760% of mined supply. If you believe in bitcoin, MSTR common is worth understanding.

[Halston @halstonvalencia]

Hate the suit all you want. Someone has to build the bridge 🧡😘

[Halston @halstonvalencia]

$1.1B in $STRC volume today, +46.5% higher than the previous all-time record from March 12

And that's why common shareholders will win (if bitcoin does what we all think)

@Strategy issues preferred stock to buy bitcoin. MSTR holders capture 100% of BTC appreciation above 11.5%. They use other people's capital to buy more bitcoin, without diluting ownership.

Repeated $100M STRC raises = 0% dilution. Same raises via MSTR would be ~0.2% per transaction, ~2.4% annually (at current price/shares)

The risk is bitcoin underperforming 11.5% for years, but then at that point that is a thesis bet, not a capital structure problem.

Leverage without margin calls. Today's proof: $1.1B in STRC volume funding that exact mechanism.

[NateSharp @Sharp_On_Sats]

Bottom line up front from the team at @StayBolted :
We can expect more stress in bonds, energy, and equities, and sees Bitcoin and gold as the main beneficiaries if geopolitical escalation and dollar-system fragmentation continue.

The six-day ceasefire was a headline event, not a real resolution. US-Iran talks failed, the US escalated with a Hormuz blockade, and the underlying supply and geopolitical shock never went away.

Markets briefly priced in peace anyway: stocks rallied, yields fell, oil softened, and gold pulled back. But the move was false and likely to reverse as markets reopen to renewed escalation.

On Bitcoin, institutions are still accumulating, sentiment improved during the ceasefire, and Bitcoin is be gaining relevance as a sanctions-resistant settlement asset.

For gold and hard assets, short-term volatility doesn't change the larger thesis. Central bank buying, reserve distrust, and France repatriating gold are signs of a weakening US-led monetary order.

If you're not subscribed to @StayBolted what are you even doing

🧡

[BOLT Finance @StayBolted]

@Sharp_On_Sats “If you’re not subscribed, what are you even doing” 🙌

[Halston @halstonvalencia]

On April 1st, US Treasury bought back $15B of its own debt.

No, not an April fools joke and yes, most people missed it.

Foreign CBs dumped $80B in treasuries in 6 weeks, yields hit 4.44%

The 10Y isn’t abstract btw, it’s your mortgage rate, it’s what the government pays to refinance trillions in maturing debt this year.

The treasury buying its own bonds is a warning sign. @StayBolted