useful.eth

@usefulETH

REALWORLD

in block

Joined February 2021

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236 Followers

22 Posts

useful.eth

@usefulETH

about 2 months ago

The scarcity thesis is becoming increasingly compelling. In a world where intelligence, software, and even many traditional moats are becoming cheaper to replicate, truly scarce assets should command an increasing premium. Bitcoin may be one of the clearest expressions of that shift.

Matt Cole

@ColeMacro

about 2 months ago

Bitcoin priced in gold is reinforcing my view that the next Bitcoin cycle will be the strongest we have ever seen. The dollar thesis I wrote about below and the growing hunt for scarcity in an AI-driven world of abundance both point toward a powerful structural tailwind for scarce assets. The BTC/gold ratio adds another important signal: within that expanding scarcity trade, Bitcoin may be beginning to reassert its relative leadership and reclaim the title of fastest horse. The case starts with two structural forces driving more capital toward scarcity. The first is the dollar. As I wrote earlier this week in the post below, I believe the dollar is likely entering a secular leg lower, with the U.S. Dollar Index (DXY) showing the long-term structure behind that view. Bitcoin has never experienced that macro environment before, and it would create a tailwind unlike anything in its history. The second is the growing hunt for scarcity in an AI-driven world of increasing abundance. With intelligence becoming cheaper and more abundant, many things investors historically valued because they were scarce, including knowledge, software capabilities and many traditional corporate moats, become easier to replicate. Capital will increasingly place a premium on forms of scarcity that cannot be manufactured away, and scarce assets like Bitcoin, gold and silver stand to benefit substantially from that shift. This is also a structural macro force Bitcoin has never had at its back before. Together, those forces will drive substantially more capital toward scarce monetary assets. Gold will benefit. Bitcoin will benefit. My strongly held long-term view remains that Bitcoin will be the fastest horse in the global debasement and scarcity trade, and the BTC/gold ratio is the way to see when that leadership is showing up in the market. If Bitcoin is outperforming gold while capital flowing into both assets is expanding, the opportunity becomes significantly more powerful than either tailwind on its own. Over the last two years, BTC/gold has also been a remarkably strong leading indicator of Bitcoin itself. Bitcoin topped against gold in December 2024, while Bitcoin didn't top against the dollar until October 2025, nearly a year later. Bitcoin kept making new highs in dollar terms, but had already stopped making new highs against gold. For an emerging monetary asset, that matters because bull markets are reinforced by incremental capital, liquidity and the reflexivity that comes from being the asset investors increasingly want to own. In hindsight, BTC/USD was signaling strength while BTC/gold was showing that the underlying bull market was becoming increasingly fragile. Eventually, that fragility showed up in the dollar price too. That helps explain why sentiment became so negative during this bear market despite the drawdown in dollar terms being relatively mild by Bitcoin's historical standards. The bull market that preceded it never delivered the kind of relative leadership Bitcoiners expect. Bitcoin reached new dollar highs while underperforming gold and then rolled into a bear market from that weaker underlying position. A mild nominal drawdown can still feel brutal when it follows a bull market that never delivered on the fastest horse thesis. The bottom has given us a similar signal in reverse. Bitcoin bottomed against gold in February 2026, while Bitcoin didn't bottom against the dollar until July, roughly five months later. That is a major reason I kept discussing BTC/gold during the first half of this year at the True North event during Strategy World, at Bitcoin Prague and at times on The Hurdle Rate. The ratio had called the deterioration well before BTC/USD and was beginning to look like it might be forming a bottom even while Bitcoin remained weak in dollar terms. It was one of the signals I was watching for evidence that the broader Bitcoin bear market might be closer to ending than the dollar chart suggested. There was another important difference from prior Bitcoin bear markets: capital markets remained largely open and broader equity markets remained strong, making new all-time highs. Historically, Bitcoin bear markets have often occurred alongside much weaker conditions across risk assets. This time, the weakness was far more concentrated in Bitcoin and the Bitcoin-related ecosystem, which made the improving BTC/gold signal even more interesting. What makes this week particularly interesting is that Bitcoin has now broken out against both the dollar and gold. The breakout has been explosive. A meaningful retracement from here would not surprise me, but it may not happen at all. If it does, my expectation is that any meaningful dip will be bought aggressively, and my conviction is very strong that the Bitcoin bear market is over. If BTC/gold was again the earlier signal, seeing both relationships now turn higher together gives me more confidence in the next 12 to 18 months and in the much larger opportunity that could unfold over the years ahead. A weaker dollar alongside continued monetary debasement, combined with the growing hunt for durable scarcity in an AI-driven world of abundance, will create an extraordinarily favorable backdrop for scarce assets. Relative performance within that trade will help determine where incremental capital and liquidity flow. When Bitcoin is the fastest horse, it will attract a disproportionate share of that capital. Stronger relative performance will deepen liquidity, greater liquidity creates more optionality, and that optionality will attract still more capital. If these structural forces expand the overall scarcity trade while Bitcoin simultaneously reasserts leadership against gold, Bitcoin will likely be capturing a growing share of a growing pool of capital. That setup has me more bullish on Bitcoin today than I have ever been. Gold has thousands of years of monetary history behind it, while Bitcoin combines absolute scarcity with global liquidity, portability and a monetary network capable of moving and settling value anywhere in the world, 24 hours a day. The combination of a secular dollar decline, an AI-driven hunt for durable scarcity and Bitcoin reasserting relative leadership would create a setup Bitcoin has simply never had before. This framework has heavily influenced how we built Strive. When we think about risk, we do not only think about surviving a severe Bitcoin drawdown. With an emerging asset that has the upside potential we believe Bitcoin has, we think the bigger risk is being too conservative: either not being bullish enough or being bullish but structuring the company in a way that prevents the common equity from maximally participating when the upside scenario arrives. That is why we have been staunchly opposed to the idea that acquiring, investing heavily in or primarily focusing on building cash-flowing businesses is the optimal way to maximize total returns relative to Bitcoin itself. If your underwriting says Bitcoin will appreciate substantially, waiting for future cash flows to buy Bitcoin means buying less Bitcoin at higher prices. A cash-flowing business likely looks safer, but if monetizing that economic value today and buying more Bitcoin produces a higher expected total return across the scenarios you believe are most likely, then the more conservative cash-flow strategy ends up underperforming from a total-return perspective. Across a probabilistic range of outcomes, we believe the expected total return of $ASST is maximized by driving Bitcoin amplification as high as we can responsibly support while maintaining strict capital discipline, including no debt, no margin requirements and no financing structure that creates a forced-liquidation mechanism. The structure looks optically simple, which was intentional, but the real work is underwriting both sides of the distribution: how much downside can the structure survive, and how much upside are you giving away if Bitcoin performs the way you believe it ultimately can? If the macro thesis plays out, the setup becomes unusually powerful. The scarcity trade itself is expanding, Bitcoin will likely be capturing a growing share of that growing pool of capital, and $ASST is designed to amplify Bitcoin exposure on top of that. You effectively have three reinforcing layers of upside working together: a larger opportunity set, Bitcoin taking more share of it, and our common equity amplifying the Bitcoin return. That is why we care so much about getting the structure right. The upside is not simply Bitcoin going higher. It is Bitcoin becoming the fastest horse inside an expanding scarcity trade while $ASST is structured to amplify that outcome as much as we can responsibly support. The bear market has allowed us to test that design in real time. Particularly as Bitcoin approached its weakest point, we continued buying aggressively, including nearly every week over the last few months before this breakout. We built the structure to remain durable through difficult Bitcoin environments while preserving high amplification and the ability to deploy capital when the opportunity becomes most attractive, and we now have a real track record of it doing exactly that. There is another part of the bear market I find particularly interesting in the context of BTC/gold. Bitcoin bottomed against gold in February, roughly five months before it bottomed against the dollar in July. ASST also bottomed in February, well before much of the broader Bitcoin-equity complex reached its lows around July. I don't think that timing was coincidental. In both cases, the market seems to have been showing the turn first in the places most levered to improving liquidity and risk appetite. BTC/gold was beginning to signal renewed strength in what I believe will be the fastest horse in the debasement trade, while ASST was beginning to strengthen as a highly amplified expression of that same thesis. As confidence in Bitcoin improves and capital moves further out on the risk spectrum, our structure, amplification and liquidity are designed to make $ASST a natural place for incremental capital to flow. The timing of those two turns is another reason I find the parallel so interesting. It is one thing to underwrite a structure on paper and another to see both the balance sheet and common equity perform through a real drawdown. I believe our ability to create and sustainably support high Bitcoin amplification, backed by the capital structure and liquidity needed to maintain it through different market environments, is what will ultimately support a leading valuation relative to our Bitcoin holdings. The bear market was for building this performance engine, and we now have substantial liquidity in both our common and preferred equity, a capital structure built without debt or margin, and a company positioned for the type of Bitcoin environment I believe is developing. Dollar weakness and monetary debasement, AI-driven abundance and the bitcoin:native/gold ratio are telling us different but complementary things. The first expands the broader monetary opportunity, the second increases the premium on forms of scarcity that cannot be replicated away, and bitcoin:native/gold helps tell us how much of that opportunity Bitcoin is positioned to capture relative to the other scarce monetary assets competing for the same capital. Any one of those developments would be constructive on its own. If they continue moving in the direction of the thesis together, Bitcoin will be entering the most favorable macro and relative-performance setup of its history, creating the potential for a level of upside over the next several years that we simply have not seen before. TLDR: YOU ARE NOT BULLISH ENOUGH^2

ColeMacro's tweet photo. Bitcoin priced in gold is reinforcing my view that the next Bitcoin cycle will be the strongest we have ever seen. The dollar thesis I wrote about below and the growing hunt for scarcity in an AI-driven world of abundance both point toward a powerful structural tailwind for scarce assets. The BTC/gold ratio adds another important signal: within that expanding scarcity trade, Bitcoin may be beginning to reassert its relative leadership and reclaim the title of fastest horse.

The case starts with two structural forces driving more capital toward scarcity. The first is the dollar. As I wrote earlier this week in the post below, I believe the dollar is likely entering a secular leg lower, with the U.S. Dollar Index (DXY) showing the long-term structure behind that view. Bitcoin has never experienced that macro environment before, and it would create a tailwind unlike anything in its history.

The second is the growing hunt for scarcity in an AI-driven world of increasing abundance. With intelligence becoming cheaper and more abundant, many things investors historically valued because they were scarce, including knowledge, software capabilities and many traditional corporate moats, become easier to replicate. Capital will increasingly place a premium on forms of scarcity that cannot be manufactured away, and scarce assets like Bitcoin, gold and silver stand to benefit substantially from that shift. This is also a structural macro force Bitcoin has never had at its back before.

Together, those forces will drive substantially more capital toward scarce monetary assets. Gold will benefit. Bitcoin will benefit. My strongly held long-term view remains that Bitcoin will be the fastest horse in the global debasement and scarcity trade, and the BTC/gold ratio is the way to see when that leadership is showing up in the market. If Bitcoin is outperforming gold while capital flowing into both assets is expanding, the opportunity becomes significantly more powerful than either tailwind on its own. Over the last two years, BTC/gold has also been a remarkably strong leading indicator of Bitcoin itself.

Bitcoin topped against gold in December 2024, while Bitcoin didn't top against the dollar until October 2025, nearly a year later. Bitcoin kept making new highs in dollar terms, but had already stopped making new highs against gold. For an emerging monetary asset, that matters because bull markets are reinforced by incremental capital, liquidity and the reflexivity that comes from being the asset investors increasingly want to own. In hindsight, BTC/USD was signaling strength while BTC/gold was showing that the underlying bull market was becoming increasingly fragile. Eventually, that fragility showed up in the dollar price too.

That helps explain why sentiment became so negative during this bear market despite the drawdown in dollar terms being relatively mild by Bitcoin's historical standards. The bull market that preceded it never delivered the kind of relative leadership Bitcoiners expect. Bitcoin reached new dollar highs while underperforming gold and then rolled into a bear market from that weaker underlying position. A mild nominal drawdown can still feel brutal when it follows a bull market that never delivered on the fastest horse thesis.

The bottom has given us a similar signal in reverse. Bitcoin bottomed against gold in February 2026, while Bitcoin didn't bottom against the dollar until July, roughly five months later. That is a major reason I kept discussing BTC/gold during the first half of this year at the True North event during Strategy World, at Bitcoin Prague and at times on The Hurdle Rate. The ratio had called the deterioration well before BTC/USD and was beginning to look like it might be forming a bottom even while Bitcoin remained weak in dollar terms. It was one of the signals I was watching for evidence that the broader Bitcoin bear market might be closer to ending than the dollar chart suggested.

There was another important difference from prior Bitcoin bear markets: capital markets remained largely open and broader equity markets remained strong, making new all-time highs. Historically, Bitcoin bear markets have often occurred alongside much weaker conditions across risk assets. This time, the weakness was far more concentrated in Bitcoin and the Bitcoin-related ecosystem, which made the improving BTC/gold signal even more interesting.

What makes this week particularly interesting is that Bitcoin has now broken out against both the dollar and gold. The breakout has been explosive. A meaningful retracement from here would not surprise me, but it may not happen at all. If it does, my expectation is that any meaningful dip will be bought aggressively, and my conviction is very strong that the Bitcoin bear market is over. If BTC/gold was again the earlier signal, seeing both relationships now turn higher together gives me more confidence in the next 12 to 18 months and in the much larger opportunity that could unfold over the years ahead.

A weaker dollar alongside continued monetary debasement, combined with the growing hunt for durable scarcity in an AI-driven world of abundance, will create an extraordinarily favorable backdrop for scarce assets. Relative performance within that trade will help determine where incremental capital and liquidity flow. When Bitcoin is the fastest horse, it will attract a disproportionate share of that capital. Stronger relative performance will deepen liquidity, greater liquidity creates more optionality, and that optionality will attract still more capital. If these structural forces expand the overall scarcity trade while Bitcoin simultaneously reasserts leadership against gold, Bitcoin will likely be capturing a growing share of a growing pool of capital.

That setup has me more bullish on Bitcoin today than I have ever been. Gold has thousands of years of monetary history behind it, while Bitcoin combines absolute scarcity with global liquidity, portability and a monetary network capable of moving and settling value anywhere in the world, 24 hours a day. The combination of a secular dollar decline, an AI-driven hunt for durable scarcity and Bitcoin reasserting relative leadership would create a setup Bitcoin has simply never had before.

This framework has heavily influenced how we built Strive. When we think about risk, we do not only think about surviving a severe Bitcoin drawdown. With an emerging asset that has the upside potential we believe Bitcoin has, we think the bigger risk is being too conservative: either not being bullish enough or being bullish but structuring the company in a way that prevents the common equity from maximally participating when the upside scenario arrives.

That is why we have been staunchly opposed to the idea that acquiring, investing heavily in or primarily focusing on building cash-flowing businesses is the optimal way to maximize total returns relative to Bitcoin itself. If your underwriting says Bitcoin will appreciate substantially, waiting for future cash flows to buy Bitcoin means buying less Bitcoin at higher prices. A cash-flowing business likely looks safer, but if monetizing that economic value today and buying more Bitcoin produces a higher expected total return across the scenarios you believe are most likely, then the more conservative cash-flow strategy ends up underperforming from a total-return perspective.

Across a probabilistic range of outcomes, we believe the expected total return of $ASST is maximized by driving Bitcoin amplification as high as we can responsibly support while maintaining strict capital discipline, including no debt, no margin requirements and no financing structure that creates a forced-liquidation mechanism. The structure looks optically simple, which was intentional, but the real work is underwriting both sides of the distribution: how much downside can the structure survive, and how much upside are you giving away if Bitcoin performs the way you believe it ultimately can?

If the macro thesis plays out, the setup becomes unusually powerful. The scarcity trade itself is expanding, Bitcoin will likely be capturing a growing share of that growing pool of capital, and $ASST is designed to amplify Bitcoin exposure on top of that. You effectively have three reinforcing layers of upside working together: a larger opportunity set, Bitcoin taking more share of it, and our common equity amplifying the Bitcoin return.

That is why we care so much about getting the structure right. The upside is not simply Bitcoin going higher. It is Bitcoin becoming the fastest horse inside an expanding scarcity trade while $ASST is structured to amplify that outcome as much as we can responsibly support.

The bear market has allowed us to test that design in real time. Particularly as Bitcoin approached its weakest point, we continued buying aggressively, including nearly every week over the last few months before this breakout. We built the structure to remain durable through difficult Bitcoin environments while preserving high amplification and the ability to deploy capital when the opportunity becomes most attractive, and we now have a real track record of it doing exactly that.

There is another part of the bear market I find particularly interesting in the context of BTC/gold. Bitcoin bottomed against gold in February, roughly five months before it bottomed against the dollar in July. ASST also bottomed in February, well before much of the broader Bitcoin-equity complex reached its lows around July. I don't think that timing was coincidental.

In both cases, the market seems to have been showing the turn first in the places most levered to improving liquidity and risk appetite. BTC/gold was beginning to signal renewed strength in what I believe will be the fastest horse in the debasement trade, while ASST was beginning to strengthen as a highly amplified expression of that same thesis. As confidence in Bitcoin improves and capital moves further out on the risk spectrum, our structure, amplification and liquidity are designed to make $ASST a natural place for incremental capital to flow. The timing of those two turns is another reason I find the parallel so interesting.

It is one thing to underwrite a structure on paper and another to see both the balance sheet and common equity perform through a real drawdown. I believe our ability to create and sustainably support high Bitcoin amplification, backed by the capital structure and liquidity needed to maintain it through different market environments, is what will ultimately support a leading valuation relative to our Bitcoin holdings. The bear market was for building this performance engine, and we now have substantial liquidity in both our common and preferred equity, a capital structure built without debt or margin, and a company positioned for the type of Bitcoin environment I believe is developing.

Dollar weakness and monetary debasement, AI-driven abundance and the bitcoin:native/gold ratio are telling us different but complementary things. The first expands the broader monetary opportunity, the second increases the premium on forms of scarcity that cannot be replicated away, and bitcoin:native/gold helps tell us how much of that opportunity Bitcoin is positioned to capture relative to the other scarce monetary assets competing for the same capital. Any one of those developments would be constructive on its own. If they continue moving in the direction of the thesis together, Bitcoin will be entering the most favorable macro and relative-performance setup of its history, creating the potential for a level of upside over the next several years that we simply have not seen before.

TLDR: YOU ARE NOT BULLISH ENOUGH^2

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useful.eth

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over 1 year ago

useless.eth

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almost 3 years ago

Each potential enhancement Ethereum conceives will, in time, materialize within its realm.

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about 3 years ago

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about 3 years ago

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Concept #2

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about 3 years ago

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almost 4 years ago

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about 4 years ago

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about 4 years ago

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about 4 years ago

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And we finalized! Happy merge all. This is a big moment for the Ethereum ecosystem. Everyone who helped make the merge happen should feel very proud today.

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