For years, the official line on Bitcoin went something like: "It's for criminals, it's a scam, it's going to zero, insert more screeeeeeeeching" Elizabeth Warren called it a threat. The SEC sued everyone in sight. The Fed acted like it didn't exist. And if you watched the FTX collapse, saw billions vanish, and heard "crypto" in the same sentence as "fraud" for two straight years, then that skepticism DEFINITELY made sense. The loudest voices in the room were either selling something or stealing something. So here's what makes the next part interesting. While the lawsuits were flying, the money was moving underneath. BlackRock filed for a spot Bitcoin ETF. Fidelity built custody infrastructure. Congress started drafting legislation to regulate Bitcoin as a legitimate asset. The politics shifted because the money shifted first. Then came the executive order. The facts: - On March 6, 2025, the White House signed an executive order creating the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. - The US government holds roughly 198,000 BTC, worth over $17 billion. The largest known state holding on earth. - That Bitcoin is explicitly not to be sold. Held as a long-term reserve asset. - Treasury and Commerce are developing budget-neutral ways to acquire more. - The White House has signaled the full reserve architecture will be announced by mid-2026. Why this matters: - The country that issues the world's reserve currency is stockpiling a scarce, permissionless asset it cannot print. - The reserve is still an executive order. The next president could erase it with a signature. - If Congress codifies it into law (the NDAA is the likely vehicle), those BTC become a permanent national asset backed by statute. - If the US codifies it, every central bank on earth has to answer the same question Switzerland is already asking: do we need one too? The part worth sitting with: Governments hold reserves for one reason. Insurance against the failure of the thing they print. Gold served that role for a century. A nation building a Bitcoin reserve is a nation hedging its own currency.

You've heard it a hundred times. Usually from someone typing on a laptop plugged into a coal-powered grid. "But bitcoin uses sooooo much electricity bro." Let's look at the actual numbers. The headline everyone repeats: "THE ENERGY OF A SMALL COUNTRY!!!" Here's the facts: Bitcoin uses roughly 150 terawatt-hours of electricity per year (TWh, the standard unit for measuring national-scale energy consumption). This is equivalent to the annual electricity usage of Poland, Egypt or Pakistan. Sounds damning. Feels damning. Case closed, right? Well there's a tiny question you should always ask when people parrot common talking points like this. Here's the question: "Relative to what?" The comparison that changes the conversation: The traditional banking system (the one quietly running in the background of your life) uses between 260 and 700 TWh per year, depending on how you count it. That includes: - Bank branches: lights, AC, servers, 24/7 - Every ATM on the planet, running all day, every day - Card network data centers (Visa, Mastercard, the whole stack) - Physical cash: printing, minting, armored trucks driving it around - Corporate headquarters the size of small cities - Gold vaulting, transport, and insurance infrastructure And that's just keeping the current system running. It doesn't include the energy cost of bailouts, fraud, or the wars fought to protect the dollar's dominance as the world's reserve currency. Bitcoin's energy is the security. That's the whole point. That energy is what makes the ledger resistant to counterfeiting. It's what keeps the record honest without trusting a single institution to do it. It's the moat around the castle. Without it, there's no castle. Asking "why does Bitcoin use energy?" is like asking "why does a vault have walls?" But relative to the banking systems that people already are frustrated with...it's extremely efficient. We should also remember that over a billion people globally are unbanked with no access to safe savings or basic lending services. Bitcoin is bringing open finance to everyone at a way more energy efficient cost.

------- Let's start today's market update with an interesting stat --------- Bitcoin is up 12.3% and Ethereum is up 20.2% since the Iran war began. Yup. I don't think there's a bigger signal than this no matter what I think might happen, it seems the market is pretty over it and the smell the Trump Admin's desperation to get this war over. So as I've said over the last few weeks, the Iran Chart is the only chart that matters and right now it seems like it's legitimately the only thing holding markets back in the short to medium term. For example here's a few more interesting bits: - Spot ETFs posted $471 million in single-day inflows last week - Smart money is buying. - Iran put a toll on the Strait of Hormuz of $1 per barrel of oil - payable in Bitcoin or stablecoins! - The power is shifting away from USD... slowly but surely. - Kevin Warsh, Trump's nominee to chair the Federal Reserve, filed his 69-page financial. What's inside? Investments in more than 20 crypto entities, including dYdX, Polychain, Dapper Labs, the Solana and Optimism networks. -- Lol, I think we can say he likes crypto. Interesting note for sure. - Iran talks failed on 1st attempt, expected - markets rallied later. - With the Strait of Hormuz closed by the US, more countries are forced back into trade with the US Dollar via US oil companies - Short term gains with long term consequences. Okay so after all this what's my diagnosis? Well... this smells like accumulation-chop. The market is okay with bad news because they can see the ending.... and that's really telling. I mean the US literally just created a blockade forcing a complete stop, choking the world of oil even further and for what? So US oil companies can make more money? Nope. The short-term pressure is pulling countries back into dollars. The long-term question is what happens when the war ends and those same countries remember exactly why they were looking for alternatives in the first place. What it means for you: The dollar is getting a short-term break, not a long-term rescue, the devaluation will continue. The structural pressure that was building before the war, US debt, weaponized sanctions, fracturing trade blocs, hasn't gone anywhere. It's just paused while everyone figures out their energy situation with multiple countries running low on oil reserves. When that resolves, the de-dollarization conversation comes back stronger, louder, with more urgency, and with countries that now have even more reason to want alternatives. This is why even with terrible Iran War updates, the Bitcoin and Ethereum bottom continue to get bought up.

So this number blew my mind when I saw it this week and I had to share it with you all. Since Bitcoin ETFs launched back in early 2024, over $53 billion has flowed into them from institutional investors. The original prediction from analysts? $15 billion max. It tripled that and kept going. We're talking the biggest names in finance. The same people who spent years on CNBC calling Bitcoin a scam, a fad, a pet rock. Now look at what they're actually doing: - BlackRock has been the single biggest driver of Bitcoin ETF inflows all year, pulling in roughly $1.7 billion in just the last few weeks - Morgan Stanley just filed to launch their own Bitcoin AND Solana ETFs - On April 6th alone, $471 million flowed into Bitcoin ETFs in a single day - For perspective, it took gold ETFs five years to hit this level of inflows. Bitcoin ETFs did it in just over two That last one is worth sitting with for a second. Five years vs two years. That tells you how much big money demand was sitting on the sidelines just waiting for a "legitimate" way in. So what does this actually mean for regular people like us? It means the debate is already over at the top. The institutions made their decision. They moved. Meanwhile the mainstream conversation is still stuck on "is crypto even real?" This is how it always works with money. The big players move first and move quietly. Then years later everyone else finds out and wonders why they didn't pay attention sooner. It happened with real estate in the 70s. It happened with tech stocks in the 90s. It happened with index funds. It's happening right now with Bitcoin. I'm not saying go buy anything tomorrow. That's not what this community is about. But understanding what the biggest money managers on Earth are doing with their capital is probably worth 10 minutes of your time. So be honest in the comments... Did you know about the $53 billion number before reading this? Does it actually surprise you that big institutions are buying?

Key take away this week? - We're seeing how US leadership is trying to keep the USD from losing relevance globally. The US government had the most consequential week in crypto history and most people were watching red candles as the market tanks without realizing what’s actually happening…. Every story this past week connects to the same thread: The old financial system is cracking, Washington knows it, and crypto isn't the threat they're racing to contain, instead it's the lifeboat they're trying to build by making the US the crypto capital of the world. What happened this last week #1 Iran talks collapsed. Remember what we said last week - this is THE CHART that actually matters. So after 21 hours of closed-door negotiations, JD Vance confirmed Iran rejected US red lines. The war continues. The Strait of Hormuz stays constrained. Oil inflation isn't going away. It's only getting worse now with the naval blockade set by Trump. - What it means for you: The Fed's rate cut window shifts later probably towards the end of Q4. The thesis is still holding strong. Expect a resolution as May draws nearer. Political pressure is mounting, but a part of me feels like Trump will go scorched earth Iran... the more I listen to talk the more it feels like it's a Now or Never situation. He's leaning towards NOW.  #2 Treasury & Fed called a secret bank CEO meeting. Scott Bessent and Jerome Powell summoned the heads of Citi, Goldman, Morgan Stanley, BofA, and Wells Fargo to an unannounced meeting over Anthropic's new AI model, Mythos, which can crack vulnerabilities in every major operating system and web browser for under $50. Yes. That’s my bank, probably your bank and millions of other people around the US are potentially in trouble. - What it means for you: The digital pipes the dollar runs on are more fragile than anyone admits publicly. Nobody commented on the record. Watch what they do, not what they say. Everyone said quantum was a Bitcoin threat, we’re not even there yet and the financial system is already in peril from language focused AI models. Smelling a bank run (will start withdrawing some cash to have on the side like what happened in 2023 with Silicon Valley Bank (SVB).