Dry powder

Greetings, fellow bulls!

BlackRock’s IBIT Bitcoin ETF recently hit $70 billion in assets under management. Do you know how long it took to get there? 341 days. That’s 5 times faster than it took their gold ETF (GLD) to reach that milestone. Bitcoin moves at a different speed.

Remember when the Bitcoin ETF launch was supposed to be a sell-the-news event? The midcurvers did it again.

On 6 June, Metaplanet announced an accelerated 2025-2027 Bitcoin acquisition plan, targeting 210,000 BTC by 2027. The company started this new phase with a 555 million share issue, with expected proceeds of $55.4 billion, to buy more Bitcoin. You can find the whole plan outlined here. You have to hand it to these guys for having mega conviction. Go, go, go!

If the ETFs were the catalyst for the 2024/25 bull market, Bitcoin treasury companies have been the other major force driving ongoing demand. Michael Saylor’s Strategy (formerly Microstrategy) hoovered up another 1,045 BTC on 9 June and now holds 582,000 Bitcoin acquired at an average price of just over $70k. Strategy has a nice overview of the company metrics here.

All this makes you wonder how the BTC price isn’t higher…

Not that $108k BTC is cheap, but institutional demand for the orange coin is surging, with copycat treasury companies springing up almost daily.

So why isn’t BTC at $150k? Probably the number one reason is that retail fever has yet to show up in this cycle. Maybe people got too badly burned by FOMO in previous bull markets. Or maybe Bitcoin at $100k+ just feels too expensive.

There’s also a lot of selling going on. OG whales, who accumulated coins at far lower prices, are cashing out. It turns out that $100k really is a magic number in that respect.

At some point, those guys will be satisfied and look to hold the rest of their stack for even higher prices. It feels like we might be getting close. Whether retail shows up or not remains to be seen. Part of me hopes they don’t – this is the herd that buys at the highs and ends up getting burned. Part of me is resigned to the fact that there is always a level of buzz where they can’t resist jumping in. It is what it is.

Where do we go from here?

If you managed to ignore the haters and the naysayers and accumulate the best-performing asset in the world and then sit on it this cycle, congratulations. That’s no mean feat!

Now don’t screw it up!

What do you think this is going to look like in another 4 years? How about 8 years? Hey, maybe governments will rein in their rampant spending and start behaving responsibly. Perhaps they’ll pay down some of that debt instead of creating more.

If you haven’t already, I suggest you check my previous post: It’s going up forever, Laura.

I’ve been writing about this stuff since 2017, imploring people to educate themselves on Bitcoin. I’m still shocked how few people have made the effort.

“I only invest in things I understand.”

Oh really? Explain to me how that bond fund you own works. What’s the sector breakdown in that stock index ETF you’ve got there?

Hey, if you’ve actually spent the time on Bitcoin and decided it’s not for you, that’s cool.

Or maybe your hobby is hunting Japanese deep value stocks, and you’re not interested in doing anything else – this one I can respect. If you’re happy and you don’t care, it’s all good.

But most people are just a combination of lazy and slaves to their own biases.

If this is you, you have until about the end of 2026 to change it or get left behind.

Times are changing

This summary thread on GMI’s ‘Everything Code” is worth 5 minutes of your time. That’s the reading time. It might take a little longer to digest.

The Tldr: Human productivity is heading down, to be replaced by robots and AI. More debt is coming. Debt to GDP is going up only. Spending power gets vaporised. Tech stocks and Bitcoin are the two things that can still outperform the debasement, and one is way more efficient than the other.

Things are going to get weird and very difficult for a while. It’s not a good scenario to sleepwalk into.

Death and taxes

“But, what about the tax on crypto?” This concern is understandable. Japan’s taxation on crypto is indeed heinous. Personally, I think it will change and be taxed like stocks sooner or later. But I might be wrong.

What is occurring is the financialization of Bitcoin. It’s crossed over to tradfi already. Don’t miss this. Pretty soon, you won’t have to sell your Bitcoin. You’ll be able to borrow against it.

No capital gains if you don’t sell. It’s how the rich spend their money.

It’s already here with various institutions, including Xapo Bank – I wrote about it in Banking your Bitcoin. This stuff is only going to get easier and more accessible. Just sit tight a little while.

What’s the game plan?

Bitcoin still has room to run this year, but next year is likely to be brutal. It will be ok to laugh at it again. You will feel smart for not owning it.

Metaplanet and other copycat BTC treasury companies might even turn out to be the FTX/Luna of this cycle. One or more of them could blow up spectacularly. This is not the time for FOMO. If you missed it, you missed it. Metaplanet is currently trading at a massive premium to its Bitcoin holdings. In the bear market, I would expect it to trade at a big discount.

However it works out, my thanks go out to this company for providing me with a larger-than-anticipated pile of dry powder to allocate this summer.

If you still have zero bitcoin exposure, 2026 is your best opportunity. You have until then to get your head around it and set aside some cash. Put the work in. Jameson Lopp has an excellent list of reputable Bitcoin news sites and newsletters here.

I talked to a young guy the other day, and every time I said Bitcoin, he came back with ‘crypto’. If you think these two are the same thing, you have some catching up to do. I cover this in The investment case for Bitcoin.

This cycle has been a real eye-opener in this respect. Every time Bitcoin pulls back 5%, crypto (meaning alts) gets destroyed. The bleed has been insane. You will go broke very quickly trying to outperform BTC – and why do you need to anyway?

The name of the game is to accumulate as much Bitcoin as you can, without putting yourself in the position where you could become a forced seller. You don’t have to go crazy, just average in when nobody wants it. ETFs are fine – you don’t have to go crypto native.

If you want to get excited about crypto, stablecoins are where it’s at. USDC founder Circle Internet Group’s (CRCL) IPO just blew away expectations. This could be the start of a gold rush in crypto IPOs. (I would be keeping an eye on Tether here) Societe Generale just announced that it will launch a USD-pegged stablecoin on Ethereum and Solana. I don’t think the average person on the street has any idea how easy it is to transact in stablecoins. Money is going to start moving so much faster.

The 2024/25 bull cycle may well accelerate from here. Things could get crazy. Maybe we’ll even get the alt season traders have been waiting for. Do what you have to to accumulate more BTC, and don’t be scared to set aside some dry powder for next year.

Good luck!

Disclaimer: This should go without saying, but the information contained in this blog is not investment advice, or an incentive to invest, and should not be considered as such. This is for information only.