Nobody Was Ready for What Bitcoin Just Did

The Last Trade: Bitcoin just posted its second best week since February 2021, up about 24% from roughly 62,000 to a high near 80,000, and Brian calls it the biggest dollar magnitude move ever inside a three to five day span. Gold and Bitcoin ETFs pulled a combined $7 billion in a single week, a record for any five day period. Jackson, Michael, and Brian trace it back to the Treasury's bond buybacks and Stanley Druckenmiller's op-ed calling out his own former protege.

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The Last Trade: a weekly, bitcoin-native podcast covering the intersection of bitcoin, tech, & finance on a macro scale. Hosted by Jackson Mikalic, Michael Tanguma, & Brian Cubellis. Join us as we dive into what bitcoin means for how individuals & institutions save, invest, & propagate their purchasing power through time. It's not just another asset… in the digital age, it's The Last Trade that investors will ever need to make.

🎙️ About This Episode

The show opens on Stanley Druckenmiller's Wall Street Journal op-ed, Let the Bond Market Speak, calling out his former protege Scott Bessent a week after Treasury doubled its long dated buybacks from $2B to at least $4B per operation. Brian reads it as the early stage of a controlled demolition, arguing yield curve control is QE by another name and that the plan is to debase the dollar and monetize gold, with Bitcoin as the second order effect. Michael pushes on the idea that debasement was never a trade at all but a structural shift, and the guys work through why allocators still believe there is a way out. Then the price: 24% on the week, the biggest dollar move ever in a three to five day span, and a record $7 billion week for gold and Bitcoin ETFs per Eric Balchunas. The back half covers Jamie Dimon entering stablecoins, the rush to charter new banks, dying Ledger screens as the single point of failure of the week, a white hat who spent two years inside North Korea's Lazarus Group, and Bill Gates warning that there is no plan for AI.

🧠 Chapters

00:00 - Live from a WeWork pod and a hotel room

03:18 - Druckenmiller's op-ed: Let the Bond Market Speak

06:41 - Nearing the end game: why these interventions are blunt tools

08:00 - Controlled demolition, debasing the dollar, monetizing gold

10:46 - Debasement was never a trade, it is a structural shift

16:12 - Recency bias, real versus nominal, and the coming repricing

19:19 - The most interventionist Treasury Secretary in decades

22:20 - Is the Iran conflict a blunder or air cover for more liquidity

26:29 - Bitcoin as the loaded gun at the table

29:06 - Second best week since February 2021: 62K to 80K

30:21 - The biggest dollar move ever in a three to five day span

36:50 - Balchunas: a record $7B week for gold and Bitcoin ETFs

37:51 - Central banks buy a record 289 tons, Jamie Dimon enters stablecoins

42:37 - The rush to charter new banks, and stablecoins as a captive T-bill buyer

46:13 - Single point of failure of the week: Ledger screens are dying

51:24 - The third way: you do not have to do it all yourself

54:09 - Two years inside North Korea's Lazarus Group

56:07 - Bill Gates says there is no plan for AI

1:00:00 - Jordi Visser on machine time versus human time

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