Iran deal masks new war prep

Other (45)

• Strike provides Bitcoin-backed loans featuring zero origination, early repayment, or liquidation fees, positioning itself as a financial institution built for Bitcoiners.
• Stackwork.ai facilitates earning KYC-free Bitcoin by completing bounties, catering to developers seeking to accumulate sats without identity verification.
• Marty believes Bitcoin will triumph in a global environment where central banks actively devalue fiat currencies, acting as a safe haven asset against inflation.
• Marty reports Bitcoin's price at $61,430, with a $1.23 trillion market cap and a conversion rate of 1,628 sats per dollar.
• The current Bitcoin block height is 956,371, with the next difficulty retarget estimated for July 10th, 1,229 blocks away. It projects a negative 2.3% adjustment after a prior 7.2% increase.
• Clark's dashboard shows 14,549 transactions in the mempool, while mempool.space reports 112,560. High-priority transaction fees are 6 sats/vB, costing around $0.50.
• Paco VM initiated a Bitcoin crowdfunding campaign for Venezuela earthquake relief, leveraging "freedom money" to acquire supplies. Marty contributed 1 million sats to the effort.
• The Venezuela relief campaign has collected almost 8 million sats from 139 contributors, translating to approximately $4,800 USD.
• Matt emphasizes that Lightning transactions provide strong privacy, preventing recipients from tracing the sender's full transaction history. This contrasts with USDC over Base, where history is easily discoverable.
• Strike obtained authorization under Europe's MiCA regulation across all 27 EU countries. This enables the company to market its services and offer localized app translations throughout the bloc.
• Matt describes Bark Wallet's new encrypted snapshotting feature for ARC protocol, which automatically saves VTXO state to iCloud or Google Drive. This maintains "liveliness" without constant app opening.
• Matt cautions that Bark Wallet, while convenient, should be used as a spending wallet, not for long-term savings. Its reliance on corporate clouds for uptime introduces a trust trade-off.
• Blink Wallet is transitioning to a non-custodial account model, moving away from its previous custodial Lightning solution.
• Marty explains that Blink Wallet's shift to non-custodial services is a direct response to escalating regulatory pressures. These include Google's licensing mandates in 15 jurisdictions and Europe's MiCA regulation, both defining custody broadly.
• Matt notes that many wallet providers are integrating the Spark protocol. This pragmatic choice offloads regulatory and compliance burdens to LightSpark, a well-funded and connected entity.
• Marty introduces OpenUSD, a new stablecoin backed by a consortium of major financial and tech companies including Visa, Stripe, MasterCard, American Express, Coinbase, BlackRock, Google, and Samsung.
• The OpenUSD consortium plans to compete with existing stablecoins by passing interest earned on treasury holdings directly to integrators and participating banks. This contrasts with Circle and Tether's current models.
• Matt believes the OpenUSD consortium will exert significant pressure on Circle, especially since Coinbase, a major partner and investor, is a signatory. Marty observes Tether operates as a "gray market" entity, potentially ignoring MiCA.
• Calvin Kim has been awarded an OpenSats long-term support grant to contribute to Bitcoin Core development.
• Marty describes OpenSats as a 501c3 non-profit converting dollar donations to Bitcoin, taking no cut, and holding funds in a multi-sig treasury. It supports developers like Aggie (Cashew) and Raj, who educated over 1,500 Bitcoin contributors in India.
• OpenSats launched opensats.org/map to visualize its global impact. Marty encourages developers to apply to OpenSats, as funding is application-led, not dictated.
• BitGo CEO Mike Belshe announced a nearly 15% reduction in their workforce. This aims to sharpen focus on security, trading, stablecoin settlement, and AI-powered infrastructure.
• Michael Saylor announced MicroStrategy's "Digital Credit Capital Framework." This outlines policies for managing their balance sheet, including potential Bitcoin sales to repurchase preferred shares and MSTR common stock.
• The Human Rights Foundation's Financial Freedom Report details Cambodia's China-backed smart policing initiative in Phnom Penh. It connects 487 AI-powered cameras capable of identity and vehicle tracking to a centralized command center.
• Marty interprets OpenAI's reported offer of a 5% stake to the Trump administration as a "diabolically clever" strategy to buy influence and align incentives for regulatory capture.
• Marty notes that Claude 3.5 was "nerfed" and reverted to Opus 4.8 for certain tasks. This exemplifies what he calls the "state capture" of frontier AI models.
• Matt highlights Palantir CEO Alex Karp's call for open-source AI models, arguing they protect enterprise clients. Karp states closed-source providers like Anthropic and OpenAI can exploit client data, raise prices, and launch competing products.
• Claude Code faces accusations of embedding "China proxy fingerprints" within its system prompts, flagged by the International Cyber Digest. Anthropic claims these prompts deter "distillation attacks" from Chinese open-source models.
• Bitcoin In Space queried the benefits of Stratum V2 for individual miners. Marty explains that with Stratum V2, individual miners construct their own blocks and select transactions, then submit them to the pool for broadcast.
• Marty explains that Stratum V2 allows individual miners to construct blocks, whereas Stratum V1 pools dictate block content. Stratum V2 minimizes plausible deniability for censorship by making it obvious if a pool manipulates blocks.
• Ashigaru Terminal Version 1.0.0, a Whirlpool CoinJoin client built from Sparrow, has been released, enhancing privacy options for Bitcoin users.
• Coldcard released firmware versions 5.5.1 and 1.4.1q, which include BIP-322 Proof of Reserves, Wif Store, and Secure Notes upgrades.
• Wasabi Wallet Version 2.8.0 and Noah Version 0.1.3 have been released, alongside a new checkout method for in-person BTC Pay stores.
• Bitcoin Core's SecP256K1 pull request #1884 marked Jonas Nick's departure after seven years of maintaining the critical cryptographic library. Marty and Matt laud his foundational work for Bitcoin's security.
• Matt clarifies that Jonas Nick is not leaving Bitcoin entirely but shifting focus. He is reportedly engaged in research to make Bitcoin quantum resistant by updating its ECDSA signature scheme.
• Tails version 7.9.1 has been released. Users are advised to consider updating immediately due to the project's adversarial nature and focus on security.
• Whitney Webb and Mark Goodwin published "The Secret History of Polymarket Part One: DARPA, Teal and Prediction Market Origins," an investigative piece exploring the roots of prediction markets.
• Matt suggests prediction markets primarily benefit insiders through trading on privileged information. However, they also offer outsiders valuable data points, often funded by insiders, to gauge market movements.
• The Bitcoin Policy Institute released "Foreign Influence Campaign Against American AI Data Centers, Part Two: The Singham Ground Game." It unearths a rich communist's funding of anti-data center NGOs in the US.
• Marty, a BPI board member, links Bitcoin mining and AI infrastructure. He attributes rising electricity prices to neglected generation capacity, not AI data centers, citing New York's Indian Point nuclear plant shutdown as an example.
• Marty advocates for expanding generation capacity in the US, including nuclear, natural gas, solar, and wind. He suggests building gigawatt facilities in remote areas with dark fiber for data centers.
• Matt acknowledges legitimate community concerns about data centers causing sound pollution in residential neighborhoods. He calls for industry self-policing and careful site selection to mitigate negative impacts.
• Alex Vera Mayanko shared the story of Morpho, a Franco-Brazilian startup utilizing AI and autonomous drones for reforestation in the Amazon rainforest. The drones analyze terrain, select suitable seeds, and deploy "seed bombs."
• The "Home Mining and Energy Playbook" was released with the XRG team on TFTC, providing guidance for individuals seeking to mine Bitcoin at home.
• Marty predicts the AI boom will push existing Bitcoin miners off the grid, creating significant opportunities for distributed and at-home mining. He suggests leveraging ASICs for home heating and excess solar.

Energy (9)

• Rory Johnston notes oil flows out of Hormuz have impressively exceeded 20 million barrels on multiple days, with all reroutes maxed out, briefly pushing total Middle East supply to 130% of pre-war levels.
• Rory Johnston explains that the current high oil exit pace from Hormuz is sustained by drawing down over 4 million barrels a day of stranded floating crude, which can only last another week or two. Fresh loadings are lagging.
• Rory Johnston finds the rapid return of inbound ballast tankers surprising, with over eight confirmed VLCC crossings in one day and a 10-day average of 10 million barrels a day, exceeding recovery expectations.
• Rory Johnston acknowledges that earlier expert predictions of $200 crude oil due to a prolonged Hormuz closure proved wrong, primarily because China significantly cut imports and Strategic Petroleum Reserves (SPRs) were released.
• Rory Johnston identifies a spot crude oil surplus, evidenced by contango in Brent and Dubai futures, as the surge of Middle Eastern oil combines with reduced Chinese buying.
• Rory Johnston observes that crude oil is currently the weakest part of the petroleum market, while refined crack spreads for diesel and gasoline are near 2022 all-time highs. Diesel crack spreads are around $60 and gasoline $50 per barrel, compared to a norm of $20.
• Rory Johnston attributes refined product market tightness to refining bottlenecks, including hobbled Middle Eastern refineries and effective Ukrainian attacks on Russian facilities. This leads to high Russian crude exports but low product exports.
• Rory Johnston believes the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve, currently above 330 million barrels, could be drawn down almost entirely due to its salt cavern design. The current weekly draw pace is around 0.5 million barrels.
• Rory Johnston reports Kuwait's oil production capacity is recovering faster than anticipated, reaching 1.9 million barrels a day, or 73% of its pre-war level of 2.6 million barrels, ahead of schedule.

Markets (5)

• Rory Johnston notes a near-record accumulation of short interest in crude oil, providing downside protection for flat prices. This positioning could create a $6-10 per barrel upside if it normalizes, or $15-20 with a significant fundamental shift.
• Patrick Szna recommends a bull call spread on Valero (VLO) for August 21, 2026, buying the $270 call and selling the $300 call for a $9.25 net debit. This capitalizes on refining strength with defined risk.
• Massel Begnan reports large speculators covered nearly 150,000 S&P 500 short contracts in a week, making them the least short all year. This removes a natural cushion for market dips, especially if semiconductors enter a profit-taking cycle.
• Massel Begnan highlights an extreme short position in the British pound, with commercials at their most net long and large/small speculators at their most net short in a year, making it the most "washed out" currency.
• Massel Begnan identifies large speculators as heavily long corn futures, in the high 80s on a one-year scale, while smaller speculators are in the mid-50s. This suggests a long continuation pattern with room for more retail participation.

Startups (1)

• Massel Begnan announces the launch of cotssignal.com, a free, no-registration resource providing access to Commitment of Traders data for all major futures markets, updated immediately upon CFTC release.

Other (7)

• Krystal Ball reports that Donald Trump, since returning to the White House in 2025, has accumulated at least $2.2 billion, compared to $622 million in 2024. This wealth largely stems from crypto ventures and includes a substantial investment from an Emirati firm.
• Ball details how Trump's crypto ventures, including World Liberty Financial, a meme coin, AL-5 Sigma, and American Bitcoin, generated $2.3 billion for his family. This profit came at the expense of investors, who lost a corresponding $2.3 billion.
• Comparing Trump's 2025 crypto income to Hunter Biden's past earnings, Ball presents a chart indicating Trump's $1.4 billion from one year of crypto business ventures is 280 times larger than Hunter Biden's $5 million personal board salary from Burisma over five years.
• Trump conducted 22,000 stock transactions in 2025, a significant increase from 517 during his entire first term and Joe Biden's 13 transactions over four years. Ball highlights potential insider trading, such as Trump investing $500,000 in Abbot Laboratories two months before the DOJ dropped an investigation into the company.
• Trump invested up to $5 million each in Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Broadcom, and Meta in July 2025, coinciding with his unveiling of an AI action plan that could benefit these companies. He also received $86.5 million from settlements in five lawsuits against media and tech companies.
• A US declaration of emergency authorizing temporary duty-free importation of phosphate fertilizer from Morocco indicates continued economic strain from Strait of Hormuz disruptions. Parsi explains that disruptions impact fertilizer supply, which is critical for agriculture and food security.
• Parsi highlights a New York Times report stating Saudi Arabia is charting a 'middle course' in the Iran conflict, seeing the US as a less reliable partner. The Saudis initially supported the war but were disappointed by US effectiveness and Iran's strength, leading them to diversify their alliances, including with China and Iran.

Diplomacy (2)

• Trita Parsi discusses Vice President J.D. Vance's comments that the administration uses the Iran Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to “refill the world’s oil economy” and build stocks for a potential Plan B. Parsi views this as both sides preparing for military escalation if diplomacy fails.
• Parsi argues the US-mediated Israeli-Lebanese agreement undermines the Iran MoU by making Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon contingent on Hezbollah's disarmament. Iran believes Israel has gained a strategic advantage by seizing Hezbollah positions during the war, compromising future defensive capabilities.

Iran (1)

• Parsi indicates that Iran is rebuilding civilian infrastructure and advancing weapon systems, similar to its actions after the 'Junie War.' He notes that global oil inventories were 'extremely high' during the recent conflict, preventing higher price spikes.

War (3)

• Krystal reports renewed US-Iran hostilities, including strikes on ships in the Strait of Hormuz, followed by a market-timed agreement to halt violence.
• Saagar notes Trump's True Social posts threatened Iran with military action, claiming it "will no longer exist," directly contradicting the signed Memo of Understanding.
• Ben Shapiro praised US strikes against Iran as a "Marco Rubio-like foreign policy" shift, arguing that credible force is necessary to ensure Iranian compliance with agreements.

Trade (1)

• Krystal states that despite a ceasefire agreement, ship traffic through the Strait of Hormuz remains significantly below pre-war averages of over seventy ships per day.

Diplomacy (2)

• Saagar highlights a controversial US-Israel-Lebanon agreement that excluded Hezbollah, undermined Lebanese sovereignty, and sparked protests in Beirut, preventing legal action against Israelis.
• Saagar notes Netanyahu interprets the Lebanon deal as allowing indefinite Israeli occupation; Krystal warns the global economy’s reliance on the Strait of Hormuz prevents the conflict from fading.

Banking (1)

• Joe Consorti argues global central banks' accelerating money printing validates Bitcoin's existence as an absolutely scarce monetary asset, continually absorbing excess liquidity.

Macro (2)

• Joe Consorti states the global M2 money supply is expanding at its fastest rate since 2021, which massively benefits asset owners amid inflation, a dynamic he attributes to the Federal Reserve's function.
• While US manufacturing and services show expansion via the PMI (above 50), consumer sentiment is at a 53-year low. This reflects a K-shaped economy, where asset owners thrive while consumers face record credit card and auto loan delinquencies.

BTC Markets (6)

• Bitcoin recently closed below its power law floor, a level held for its entire price history, now trading around $58,000, down from the high $70,000s. Joe Consorti suggests this break, and others like it, indicate further potential downward pressure.
• Joe Consorti forecasts Bitcoin's bottom will likely occur in the low $50,000s or high $40,000s around October or November 2024, expecting a demoralizing period of chopping after breaking several historical models. He had previously predicted $40,000.
• Joe Consorti identifies four factors influencing Bitcoin's bottom: US midterm elections, the inflation backdrop, capital rotation from the AI trade, and the persistent four-year cycle. Bitcoin historically underperforms during midterm years due to market uncertainty.
• Bitcoin's 200-week moving average (low $60,000s/high $50,000s), the long-term holder cost basis ($49,500), and network-wide realized price ($53,000) indicate a low $50,000s/high $40,000s bottom. Joe Consorti expects the long-term holder cost basis to rise with active buying.
• The current Bitcoin market structure is fundamentally different due to ETFs, with institutional holders two times more likely to hold during drawdowns. Joe Consorti thus estimates a max drawdown of around 65%, rather than the historical 70%.
• Joe Consorti advises Bitcoin holders in their first bear market to remove leverage and focus on spot Bitcoin, emphasizing that the underlying thesis and Bitcoin's performance as the best-performing major macro asset remain unchanged.

Energy (1)

• The Strait of Hormuz, critical for 20% of the world's cheap oil, was closed for nearly five months, significantly impacting inflation. Inflation rose above 4% for the first time since 2022; Joe Consorti anticipates a 5-6% peak before declining, following the strait's mid-June reopening.

Startups (1)

• The AI trade is currently drawing record capital expenditure and funds through major IPOs like OpenAI and Anthropic (expected Q1 2025). This massive capital redirection is diverting funds from other markets, including Bitcoin, contributing to its current underperformance.

BTC Markets (1)

• Bitcoin trades at $60,440 with a $1.21 trillion market cap on Monday, June 29th, 2026, 52.1% down from its $126,160 all-time high reached on October 6, 2025.

War (1)

• Jack Mallers observes continued global conflict, disrupted supply chains, and a relatively closed Strait of Hormuz. He predicts Western debt markets cannot sustain current disruption, noting US oil reserves are at their lowest since the early 1980s.

Macro (2)

• The US dollar index (DXY) is above 100, strengthening the dollar and making global dollar-denominated debt harder to service. This leads to broad asset sell-offs, with silver down almost 60% from its highs, exceeding Bitcoin's 52.1% decline.
• The US Treasury increasingly finances itself with short-duration bills, reflecting low long-term confidence in its creditworthiness. The Financial Times reports over $8 trillion in privately held marketable US Treasury debt matures within one year, indicating significant rollover risk.

Fed (1)

• Jack Mallers argues Fed Chair Worsh's hawkish rhetoric is disingenuous, believing the dollar's current strength is unsustainable. Higher short-term rates would accelerate the sovereign debt crisis and force widespread deleveraging.

Other (5)

• Foreign official institutions largely stopped buying US debt post-2008, with the private sector, particularly Cayman Island hedge funds, filling the void since 2016. These funds absorbed 37% of net issuance of notes and bonds since January 2022 using leverage, creating systemic deleveraging risk if asset prices fall.
• The tech sector's shift towards AI necessitates massive capital expenditure for hardware and infrastructure, re-rating hyperscalers from low-cost, high-margin businesses. This transition contributes to the NASDAQ's current weakness, returning to early May levels despite strong AI narratives.
• US consumer savings are near negative, and credit card delinquencies (90+ days) have reached 13%, a 15-year high. A University of Michigan survey indicates businesses expect the worst conditions in over 40 years, reflecting widespread economic struggle and reliance on consumer debt.
• Jack Mallers' essay, "Bitcoin: The Last Honest Market," argues Bitcoin provides unmediated reality, unlike centrally managed fiat systems that suppress natural entropy and volatility. This suppression creates systemic fragility, shifting volatility into social contracts like crime rates.
• Jack Mallers describes Bitcoin bear markets as testing character and revealing hidden fraud, asserting they get worse than imagined. He learned to differentiate momentum from competence and build for customers, not applause, during the painful 2022 bear market.

Other (5)

• Anas al-Haji contends that it is in neither party's interest to resolve the conflict over the Straits, implying it will remain an ongoing geopolitical issue.
• WTI crude oil is trading at $70.50, up 1.25%, remaining significantly below its highs from previous war escalations.
• Marty Bent notes Scott Bessent's 'America 250' speech at the Economic Club in New York focused on re-architecting supply chains to withstand pandemics, cyber attacks, war, and financial shocks.
• The core question for US economic strategy is whether its supply chains can withstand coercion and reliance on countries that could use economic leverage.
• Marty Bent observes efforts to reshore critical supply chain components within the US, citing companies like Knox Metals and Valor Atomics, which brought a small modular reactor online in nine months.

Diplomacy (2)

• The phrase 'economic statecraft,' previously confined to analysts like Michael Every, is now being directly used by prominent decision-makers like Scott Bessent, signaling a mainstream shift in rhetoric.
• Despite geopolitical fracturing, the dollar has remained strong, with Scott Bessent arguing that nations cut off from the dollar system would rejoin due to its unmatched liquidity.

Regulation (2)

• The US issued 60-day waivers for Iranian oil sanctions, unlocking billions in revenue for Tehran, provided oil is invoiced in US dollars, a measure reportedly taken up aggressively by China and Iran.
• Marty Bent discusses the US administration's increasing control over frontier AI model releases, suggesting powerful AI will be treated as a national security asset.

Markets (2)

• The DXY index is currently at 101, near post-Liberation Day highs, contradicting many predictions of the dollar's demise following geopolitical conflicts.
• Apollo Global Management experienced 17% withdrawal requests from a private credit fund, renewing concerns about liquidity risks in the private credit and private equity sectors.

Energy (1)

• While oil prices trend towards pre-war levels, consumer electronics are experiencing 10-20% year-on-year price increases due to intense AI-driven memory demand.

Stablecoins (1)

• Britain has relaxed stablecoin rules, a move Simon Dixon sees as critical for building privatized programmable money. These stablecoins, backed by government debt, integrate with AI and social credit systems, serving the technical industrial complex (Tick) agenda.

War (1)

• A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) calls for immediate cessation of military operations and non-interference. Simon Dixon expects a reconstruction contract worth hundreds of billions, funded by GCC and China, to replace military intervention and signal a strategic US retreat.

BTC Markets (2)

• Bitcoin traded below $60,000, a level not seen since 2021, amid a record $6.4 billion outflow from Bitcoin ETFs over 30 days. Simon Dixon attributes this to an institutional rotation into the AI trade, engineered by tools like BlackRock's Aladdin.
• Bitcoin treasury companies face rising capital costs, with equity issuance diluting Bitcoin per share. Simon Dixon notes MicroStrategy's STRC dropped from $100 to $75, suggesting Wall Street aims to centralize Bitcoin via "fear and accumulation vehicles."

AI Infrastructure (1)

• A correction in the AI trade wiped trillions from global markets, but investment persists. Trump accelerated quantum computing with billions in funding; SpaceX seeks an additional $20 billion in debt, demonstrating capital influx into the technical industrial complex.

Macro (2)

• The Japanese Yen weakened to its lowest level since the mid-1980s, despite Japan spending $73 billion on currency intervention. Simon Dixon warns continued Yen weakness could force Japan, a major US bondholder, to sell treasuries, impacting global markets.
• Venezuela faces a potential sovereign debt restructuring of approximately $250 billion, one of history's largest. Simon Dixon states oil production is central to its future, with reconstruction investments from China, Gulf, or Western sources influencing regional stability.