This past Friday (August 2nd) saw a major selloff in the markets, seemingly hit with a convergence of factors, including:

• A worse than expected jobs report
• A rate-hike surprise out Japan and ensuing chaos there
• Recessionary fears

There was also anecdotal evidence to add fuel to the to fire, such as the disclosure that Berkshire Hathaway had been selling stocks – including half its stake in Apple – and was now sitting on $277 billion in cash.

Bitcoin and cryptos were down on this, along with everything else, but nothing too worrisome – a brief dip down to the $60K handle, and then recovering up to $62K into Saturday.

Then on Sunday, things began to go south as the news emerged that Iran and Israel were about to face off (so far, no major escalation), and to add some colour it, North Korea seems to be massing missile launchers near the border to South Korea.

As the Monday opening came into view, Japan came completely unglued, as circuit breakers kicked in everywhere from the Nikkei index (worst two-day drop in history) to Japanese government bonds – all from a 25bps rate hike, the first since 2007.

It looks like Japan is finally hitting the wall, the decades-old Yen carry trade unraveling, and all sorts of contagion radiating out from that.

Once markets opened here in North America, about $2 trillion of market capped was wiped out instantly (by comparison: the entire GFC bear market took out about $7 trillion). 

As the only markets open over the weekend leading up to this, cryptos tanked hard. Ethereum plunged 20% in something like an hour and Bitcoin didn’t fare too much better, down at times 15% and even peaking at about 21% itself.

There was a brief dip below $50K (props to anyone who caught it), we’re now a little more stable and hovering in the low-to-mid 50K’s, but it’s hard to believe that just over a week ago we were flirting with retaking $70K.

Life comes at you fast in this space.

My view is that this entire selloff in crypto is 100% a macro induced liquidity crisis and globally contagious margin call.

It has very little (nothing?) to do with Bitcoin, it has everything to do with a few chickens coming home to roost and a mad scramble for solvency.

Pretty well everything is down hard and the reason cryptos are down harder is because, as we all no, there are no circuit breakers or “plunge-protection teams” for Bitcoin or anything else in the space, and it trades 24x7x365.

That’s why it tends to overshoot to both the upside and down.

Let’s remember our own advice for surviving the volatility in this space:

It all comes down to whether you still believe “The Crypto Thesis” or not, in other words, it’s all about conviction.

If you do, then:

The only decision during volatility events like these is whether to hold or buy more.

If you no longer believe the thesis – either the macro crypto thesis or your position in an individual altcoin or stock: you sell regardless of the price.

Anybody who tries to preserve profits or minimize losses on their crypto positions from here (as distinct from say, 24 hours ago) runs a very real risk of being whipsawed and chasing.

Our advice on timing exits and sales remains that you take lifestyle chips off the table when your individual financial targets are hit – other than that it’s either buy the dips or hold through for dear life.

We have not had a meaningful pullback since the post-ETF approval drop in January and that was only about 17%, from (get this) $46K to $39K.

A year ago we were at $29K.

If you have any dry powder in your equities accounts, then go in and either put in your second or third tranche into the entire portfolio, or add to the heavyweights: Microstrategy, Coinbase, Galaxy and maybe DeFi,  HUT and/or MARA.

It looks like I’m not the only one thinking this: MSTR and COIN opened down hard,  yet all that initial volume on open seems to have pushed them both up, so that means investors stepped into those two:

Galaxy went the other way all day, now trading at a P/E of 2.35. Wow.

In some ways this reminds me of March 2020, when the pandemic hit and everything tanked hard – including Bitcoin, to the now unfathomable low near $3K.

Granted – back in 2020, as soon as the central banks panicked and started emergency rate cuts, it was “risk on” across the board.

While there have been rumblings and increased expectations of a rate cut from the US Fed – it remains to be seen if this panic progresses to the point where they do so before September.

If that happens, then it means the system really is coming apart at the seams.

It certainly feels that way.

Nothing has changed in our overall thesis – which actually expects systemic crises like these. If anything, this confirms it.

Recall the chart of gold volatility in times of crises during the Weimar hyperinflation – it was all over the place:

The thing to pay attention to is the right hand axis of that chart.

Bitcoin is following the same trajectory with the exponential function corresponding to each halving cycle.

This is almost a text-book setup for the “banana chart” portion of this cycle.

Buckle In.

— mark 

P.S If you have any dry powder, now’s the time to load up on more Bitcoin before we hit The Banana Zone :

 US Members here
 Canadians here.

Over the weekend the news emerged that the long awaited Mt Gox settlement payouts, which were orginally slated for October 31st, will now commence next month in July.

There has always been a certain amount of FUD around this, as it will bring another 144,000 BTC supply into the market, although as we’ve covered previously. I’m not too worried about it, but the Bitcoin price has been reacting – down now to around $61K.

Recall that our plan with Winland, specifically – was to “sell the news”, but we thought that would be a few more months from now (ideally torqued up by a higher BTC price)

Normally I would even wait, to see if there is any final “blow off” top in WELX ahead of these payouts – but, as it happens, I was doing some more digging into this over the weekend because I wanted to get a better sense of just how many claims Winland was holding.

After reading between the lines of some FRMO transcripts, and re-examining the older interim filings for Winland, my estimate for how many Bitcoin WELX will receive in the payout is now somewhere between zero and 60 BTC.

It’s possible Winland has already “monetized” their claims, altough they’re still carrying them on their books – I’ll explain more in the July letter, which I’m working on this week.

But if they haven’t, I think that the maximum number of BTC Winland will receive will be somewhere around 60 BTC, which will come in around $3 million USD at current pricing – against a current market cap of $23M.

This means the payout isn’t really that much, in terms of an asymmetric trade relative to WELX’s market cap, and given that this is another textbook “sell the news” event, I think it’s time to cash out WELX.

The other company we own with GOX claims is Galaxy Digital, obviously we’re keeping that, because there’s so many other things going on at GLXY – and their claims are much larger (My guess is Galaxy will receive somewhere north of 1,000 BTC and probably HODL them, or use them in their lending operations).

I am going to sell WELX and roll the proceeds into more DEFI.

Coinsnacks recently put out a short report on DEFI technologies, the report contained no accusations of malfeasance, no fraud allegations, the entire thesis is basically that “DEFI is doing too good a job hyping their stock”. 

Being good marketers isn’t exactly a crime, so this doesn’t really bother me. DEFI is down close to 50% on the report, combined with general weakness in the space.

I also cashed out my Ether Capital (ETHC) and rolled that into DEFI as well. You may want to keep ETHC now that it is a staking ETF, and cash out your plain vanilla Ethereum ETFs.

I’m underweight Ethereum on this cycle. I may regret it, but I still have a little exposure through the ETFs and some straight up ETH we earned at the biz. 

So the takeaways:

• Sell WELX, take profits
   
• Take profits on ETHC or keep ETHC as your Ethereum play and cash out straight ETH ETFs.
• Add to DEFI (or anything else you feel underweight on)
• Keep GLXY

The newsletter might be out a day or two late as it’s the holiday weekend (not to mention by b-day) but I’ll expand on the WELX analysis as well as the DEFI situation in there.

That’s it for now.

–mark 

We’re pulling the pin the HUT call options, we’re selling:

HUT 2026-Jan-16 10 Calls @
$4.50
We purchased them around $3.20, it makes for about a 45% gain in a little under five months. It’s a base hit, not a grand slam.

Also Ether Capital is halted at the moment through its conversion into an ETF.
When that’s complete, we’re cashing those out.
Personally, I’d roll it all into DEFI.NE – you can get about two shares of DEFI for every share of ETHC about now.

That’s it for now.

–mark

P.S If you missed the news, DollarCollapse has joined the Bombthrower Media stable. The focus will continue to be on gold and precious metals, (but don’t worry, we’ll orange pill more than a few of them  

You can jump on the DC mailing list there, and get a free ebook by the investing legend Bob Moriarty “Nobody Knows Anything”. 

 Get it here….

I was trying to get this month’s newsletter finished before the FOMC announcement in (looks at watch) 40 minutes – and in the cover letter I was going to mention that I’m putting on an irresponsible and reckless leveraged long on Bitcoin here (I’ll be using DyDx, which means I have to switch to my Australian VPN just to be able to access it)

The pullback right now is across all markets, it’s all macro on fading hopes for a Fed cut. 

Bitcoin has been hit accordingly and this is a good place to add more BTC, or any of our stocks.

For a leveraged bet, like what I’m about to do, I’ll either be right or wrong in the near term, and I’ll know fairly quickly. Either I get liquidated or make out like a bandit.

I wouldn’t advise this, but otherwise I’m just holding through everything.

After I get the letter out I will probably go back through my portfolio and see if there is anything outside the TBC holdings that I can roll into more MSTR, COIN, MARA and whatever else l want to shore up.

Not proofing this, just hitting send. 
(The May newsletter will be out today).

mark 

P.S This is a good place to add an extra Bitcoin buy for the long haul:

Canadians can use Bull Bitcoin
Americans use Swan.

  We’re in a bull market – expect more volatility like this.

As many of you know, HUT8 Mining was the subject of a “short report” by J Capital – a self-professed short selling company. 

Amid the sideways chop action in Bitcoin since the ETF approvals, and the downdraft created by this report, I believe HUT is drastically oversold and over-shorted (over 13% of the float now short).

As such I’m opening a small, speculative position in long-dated call options:

HUT 2026-Jan-16 10 Calls @ $3.20

These options are only available on the Nasdaq / US listing, (I didn’t see any long options on the TSX listing).

I may be erring on the side of caution going that far out into the future, but with options I prefer a wide margin for error – these things can take longer than expected.

As for J Capital – this is there schtick – they’ve been sued multiple times for this (to be fair, every short seller gets sued) but I don’t know many who as part of their settlement with a company had to issue a public apology and refrain from publicly commenting on them again.

HUT, for their part, issued a non-response statement, we’ll wait and see if they go any further.

Personally not worried about HUT, this smells like an opportunistic short attack, and I believe when the next upleg resumes, HUT will be a major beneficiary, as they usually are. We’ll expand on that in the next edition.

This is an options play – so only trade with money you can comfortably lose 100% of.

That’s it for now.

–mark

P.S If you missed the news, DollarCollapse has joined the Bombthrower Media stable. The focus will continue to be on gold and precious metals, (but don’t worry, we’ll orange pill more than a few of them 😉

You can jump on the DC mailing list there, and get a free ebook by the investing legend Bob Moriarty “Nobody Knows Anything”.

Get it here….

A supply chain hack has been introduced into the DeFi ecosystem via Ledger’s Connect Kit – a software package that numerous DeFi / Web3 apps use to facilitate connections with Ledger wallets.

This vulnerability does not affect Ledger wallets themselves, nor the Ledger Live management application.

This affects any DeFi / Web3 app with a “connect your wallet” function that makes use of the Ledger Connect Kit – and it can compromise any wallet connection to the dAPP, not just a Ledger.

A fix has already been issued, and all the platforms are busy upgrading and patching right now. 

In the meantime:

• Do not use any DeFi / Web3 apps
• Clear your browser cache before you do

Finally, find another hardware wallet if you are using Ledger. To be clear, the hardware wallet has not been impacted – but this is just the final straw in an ongoing series of missteps by the company.  

I have ended my endorsement of Ledger products and pulled down all my affiliate links.

Recommended alternatives: Coinkite from Canada, and I am also looking at iCoin – which may be simpler to use for non-techies.

I’m working on an abbreviated version of the mid-month portfolio update but it won’t be out until the weekend or Monday.

That’s it for now.

–mark 

P.S If you missed the news, DollarCollapse has joined the Bombthrower Media stable. The focus will continue to be on gold and precious metals, (but don’t worry, we’ll orange pill more than a few of them 😉  

You can jump on the DC mailing list there, and get a free ebook by the investing legend Bob Moriarty “Nobody Knows Anything”. 

Get it here….

So it was an honour and a thrill to sit down with him (it was after 2am his local time, apparently he works all night and sleeps all day), to discuss Marxist politicians, central banker induced financial crises and where to find a safe haven to hide among all the economic calamities, mostly self-induced, converging on us all right now.