Switzerland just backed away from a proposal to make its central bank hold Bitcoin. The campaign needed 100,000 signatures to trigger a national vote. It reportedly got about half. The Swiss National Bank has also argued Bitcoin is too volatile and not liquid enough for official reserves. Fair concern. But there’s an irony here. For decades, Switzerland represented something very specific in people’s minds: - Neutral ground - Strong property rights - Wealth protection - Distance from political chaos - A place value could hide when the world got messy That reputation made Switzerland feel like an old world financial fortress. Bitcoin is trying to play a similar role in the digital world. But instead of trusting a country, a bank, or a vault in the mountains, Bitcoin relies on a public network with rules anyone can check. Here’s how the analogy works: - Switzerland offered neutrality through geography and institutions - Bitcoin offers neutrality through code and global verification - Swiss banks protected value inside borders - Bitcoin lets people move value across borders - A bank account can be frozen - A Bitcoin wallet can be held by the person who owns the keys - A country can change policy - Bitcoin’s supply limit is built into the network rules That last part really, really matters. Bitcoin has a hard cap of 21 million coins. No central bank meeting can vote more into existence. That doesn’t make Bitcoin risk free. Cause sure the price moves and the technology requires responsibility. Self custody means the key is yours, and so is the burden. Not everyone may want that, but it's crucial people have that option in an increasingly centralized and digital world. But the bigger lesson is simple: People used to look for neutral places to protect wealth. Now they’re starting to look for neutral networks. That’s why “digital Switzerland” is such a useful way to understand Bitcoin. It turns Bitcoin from a confusing internet coin into something older and easier to grasp:

Bitcoin - $76,500 Ethereum - $2,289 Big headline news? - Jerome Powell's final press conference as Fed Chair. Rates held - no change! Yup, we called the chop. Expect to go slightly lower over the summer. Now let me tell you why the "bad news" is actually the setup for this summer. ________________________________________________________________________ 💠#1 - Powell's last words. Today was Jerome Powell's final press conference as Fed Chair. Rates held. No cuts. The vote wasn't even close to unanimous, it was 8-4, with 4 dissenters. Which to me is just additional writing on the wall that an interest rate cut is more likely to happen than not. Powell seemed "hawkish" which is a fancy way of saying, he's willing to be aggressive and accept financial/economic pain to bring inflation down. He kept highlighting the sustained tariff inflation and Iran War oil price shock. Basically, without saying it.. he signaled that the rates are going to stay higher for longer and won't change until the Iran War is basically over AND oil prices stabilize. ________________________________________________________________________ 💠#2 - The consumer is not fine + Iran War Like we said last week...jobless claims are still holding around 214,000 .... technically "stable," according to the headlines but people are hurting. Credit Card Debt is exploding almost at 1.3 trillion and just from personal experience I'm hearing close friends talk about how financially tough its been. Then add on the fact the Iran war isn't resolved, instead it's ramping up again. Trump rejected the Iran proposal and is looking to extend the blockade. Oil will stay above $100 for the summer keeping inflation sticky, which gives the Fed cover to hold rates unchanged, which keeps the squeeze on. We've known this. This is what leads to "the chop" where crypto ranges, doesn't go all the way down.. or all the way up, like a wave BUT that wave is telling. _______________________________________________________________________

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.

------- 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.

You've probably noticed it. Groceries cost more. Gas costs more. The same cart of stuff you bought in 2020 for $100 runs you closer to $130 now. And the weird part is, you might be earning more than you were back then. So what happened? Most people land on one of two conclusions: 1. "I'm spending too much." 2. "I need to earn more." Both feel logical. Both miss the actual problem. Between 2020 and 2022, roughly $6.4 trillion in new dollars were added to the U.S. money supply. That's about 26% of all dollars currently in existence, created in just 2 years. Here's where it gets interesting. When people hear "money printer," they picture a machine cranking out cash. The real version is quieter and way more technical. But the effect is the same. New dollars come from 4 places: - The Federal Reserve buys Treasury bonds from banks and pays with freshly created digital reserves. The Fed's balance sheet roughly DOUBLED during COVID. - Commercial banks take your deposit, keep a fraction, and lend the rest. That loan becomes someone else's deposit, which gets lent again. One dollar of reserves can generate around $10 in new loans circulating through the economy. - The U.S. Treasury issues bonds to cover spending that taxes can't. Stimulus checks, PPP loans, relief programs...all of these put brand new dollars into people's hands. - Shadow markets (repo lending, money market funds, derivatives) create money-like instruments that function as dollars. Mostly invisible, but massive in scale. So now there are trillions more dollars in the system. But the supply of houses, groceries, cars, and energy didn't grow at the same rate. More money chasing the same stuff. Prices go up. Your paycheck isn't the thing that shrank. It's the dollar. And that's the part that messes with people's heads, because the number in your bank account looks the same (or even bigger). But what that number buys keeps getting smaller, slowly, year after year. Most of us know it's happening. But the confusing academic jargon keeps most people from knowing how. Now you know.