What stood out
to me this week ↓

This chart from @NorthstartCharts tracks how major asset classes - stocks, currencies, money supply - are performing relative to gold. When they all turn red, it signals what analysts call a Capital Rotation Event: money rotating out of financial assets and into real assets like gold, silver, and commodities.

This has only happened three times before: 1930, 1972, and 2002. Right now, every single indicator is flashing red simultaneously - and the gauge on the right is pinned at maximum.

Each previous time this happened, stock markets tumbled (in gold terms!!) and spent a decade or more recovering - while precious metals and commodities rose hundreds, sometimes thousands of percent.

If history rhymes, gold's current rise may not be a spike. It may be the beginning of a decade-long shift where real assets dramatically outperform financial ones.

Have you heard about OpenClaw? I might be a bit too much in the AI and tech bubble, but this is the latest jump in AI disruption. It's an open source tool built by Peter Steinberger as a weekend hobby project that went viral.

For me, I've been waiting for agentic AI (meaning AI can actually DO things instead of just the chat experiences we've had so far) for over a year now. Book a hotel, build a website, now with OpenClaw this is all possible. Amazing!

It's still very technical and risky if you don't know what you are doing, but I'm sure very quickly Anthropic, OpenAI and Google will offer comparable functionality. For sure google and discover some more is my tip!

Lyn Alden is one of the best macro sources next to Luke Gromen in my opinion. In this 17 min YouTube video you get a very well summarized macro update. Some key insights:

• Software stocks have been crashing due to the impact of AI;
• Bitcoin is highly correlated to software stocks (probably due to algorithmic traders who put bitcoin in the same category);
• AI now has the "fast money investment" narrative;
• Bitcoin is only still 2% of ALL global assets in the world, so there is still a lot to grow;
• Gold to bitcoin ratio is at its lowest which might signal a bottom;
• We are in a structural era where hard assets have outperformed - and are likely to outperform - financial assets like stocks;
• AI agents need permissionless money, they will use stablecoins and bitcoin for their transactions;

In this list you can also see why macro, AI, gold & silver and bitcoin are related.

The narrative for gold versus bitcoin has always been that bitcoin is more for so-called "risk-on" environments while gold was for "risk-off" environments. Meaning that when there is a global crisis, bitcoin price would drop, gold would increase.

The response during the first days of the Iran war was reversed. Bitcoin went from around 60K to 70K, ETF inflows increased — a strong signal that bitcoin's role in portfolios may be shifting.

One of the reasons that gold is increasing in price is central banks purchasing more of it. One of the drivers behind that is the US freezing Russian central bank reserves in 2022 and taking them off the Swift system telling other central banks around the world: we can turn off your access to your assets (think of US treasuries) whenever we want. Thus they are looking for alternatives.

Add to that the enormous amount of debt the US is building which is creating doubts about the trustworthyness of the dollar and you understand why gold is in high demand for central banks.

Some are also dipping their toes in into bitcoin (like the Czech central bank), but for now bitcoin is too small of an asset to be able to function as an alternative.

Bitcoin mining has a positive impact on so many topics the world is struggling with: balancing the energy grid, reducing energy costs, being less dependent from IMF debt. By now over 23 papers have shown the positive impact of bitcoin mining on the environment (see summary of insights from all articles). It enabled Bhutan to not depend on debt from the IMF but build their economy indepently (learn more). And it also is balancing the energy grids in Finland (13 minute YT video) and Texas keeping the energy costs affordable in the process as well (link to blog).

As I mentioned before, bitcoin was always seen as risk-on and gold as risk-off. A few days into the Iran war though, gold dropped significantly while bitcoin increased 14%. It's just one data point which doesn't say it's a trend, yet it's an interesting development to watch.

In this 17 min YT update video Hurley shares relevant other updates — his videos are also standard food for me to digest. Not sure though if it contains sometimes too much "inside information", so if this doesn't resonate with you, let me know. For sure I will keep highlighting what I feel is most relevant.

I remember the days when I was sitting in front of my PC sweating for an hour and hope that the bitcoin transaction was not lost forever... We have come a long way since then! Apps like Strike and Bringin make is super easy to transact between fiat (banks) and bitcoin.

The latest feature Bringin just released - I'm part of their test group - means that I can set up a bank account link and a bitcoin wallet link which after the setup (connect means):

• Sending money to that bank account = instant bitcoin buy and sent to your wallet (within minutes)
• Sending bitcoin to that wallet = instant convert to euro in your bank account (within minutes)

Amazing new feature! For now, Bringin is still in pretty experimental stage, so if you are stressed when things don't immediately work, don't download the app yet, stay with Strike for example.