ETF investors lack conviction to hold Bitcoin

Other (48)

• Cory Klippsten argues that sustained Bitcoin value requires broad participation and true understanding of on-chain Bitcoin, as "paper Bitcoin" like ETFs are easily sold.
• Cory Klippsten identifies Bitcoin as the superior and "fastest horse" in the long-term race against the dollar, treasuries, and gold, based on its technological and logical advantages.
• Cory Klippsten is in London for early expansion discussions into new markets and to facilitate media appearances due to more favorable time zones.
• Cory Klippsten advocates for a return to fundamental Bitcoin education and self-custody, shifting away from reliance on TradFi signals for adoption.
• Cory Klippsten notes London is the world's fourth-largest metropolitan economy, while Los Angeles is the third; New York and Tokyo rank first and second, Paris fifth.
• Cory Klippsten mentions that 40% of London residents were not born in the UK, fostering a cosmopolitan environment.
• Danny Knowles credits changes to X's algorithm for fostering a more positive sentiment in the Bitcoin space.
• Swan's "50 Days for Freedom" campaign, launched on the 21st, includes the return of Cafe Bitcoin, hosted daily by Cory Klippsten for 90 minutes.
• Cory Klippsten's recent article, "The Battle for Monetary Independence," is a 15-minute read, building on his previous pieces "10 Million Bitcoiners" (2020) and "The Race to Avoid the War" (2023).
• Swan dropped its Bitcoin buy fee to 0.5% for the summer and always covers network fees for withdrawals, making self-custody free. Over 80% of Sats bought through Swan move to self-custody.
• Cory Klippsten's article, "The Battle for Monetary Independence," compares the modern pursuit of monetary independence to the American Founding Fathers' fight for political independence 250 years ago.
• The article incorporates excerpts from Cory Klippsten's grandfather's World War II journal, detailing his service on the USS Yorktown from early 1944 through victory in Tokyo.
• Cory Klippsten suggests the 2021 bull market was hindered by "shitcoin chicanery," and the 2025 cycle by "lettuce hands" institutional adoption, preventing a higher price peak.
• Danny Knowles notes that current negative bear market sentiment stems from a lack of a single, clear catastrophic event, unlike the previous cycle's failures (FTX, Terra Luna).
• Cory Klippsten believes a $100,000 Bitcoin price triggered an exit for many early holders, but long-term holdings (over six and 12 months) are now at all-time highs.
• Cory Klippsten expects a "shallower bear" market, accepting $57.5K as a reasonable floor, and encourages buying the dip.
• Cory Klippsten predicts the Bitcoin bear market will bottom out precisely 12 months after the bull peak, around late October, consistent with historical patterns.
• Cory Klippsten identifies $73,000 as a critical resistance level for Bitcoin; surpassing it would signal the start of a run towards $200,000.
• Cory Klippsten anticipates the next Bitcoin bull market will be "vibe based" rather than achieving early cycles' extreme percentage gains, owing to the law of large numbers.
• Cory Klippsten believes early institutional adoption of ETFs (four to five years ahead of his expectation) shifted Bitcoin-only fintechs to serve mid-funnel users.
• Cory Klippsten notes that two-thirds of new Swan customers now come from ETF holdings, indicating a shift from first-time Bitcoin buyers to those seeking self-custody.
• Cory Klippsten argues that mass market Bitcoin advertising is ineffective, as it targets a "gambling" audience focused on hot stocks, leverage trading, and sports betting.
• Cory Klippsten asserts a "freedom narrative" and "bulwark against tyranny" are core motivations for his "50 Days for Freedom" campaign and the "Battle for Monetary Independence."
• Cory Klippsten cites recent governmental actions he deems anti-freedom: social media bans for under 16s in the UK, a VPN ban in Utah, and accelerated Euro CBDC development.
• Cory Klippsten highlights ID proof requirements for US LLMs (Anthropic, OpenAI) and the EU's controversial passage of "chat control" legislation.
• Cory Klippsten believes Bitcoin, free open-source software, and cryptography represent the "last bastion of liberty" against growing anti-freedom measures.
• Danny Knowles states that Bitcoin and other freedom technologies allow individuals to "exit without physically exiting," fostering parallel systems outside restrictive rules.
• Cory Klippsten stresses that Bitcoin educators must comprehensively teach their audience, even if it means repackaging existing knowledge for new learners.
• Cory Klippsten uses AI tools (Gemini, ChatGPT, Grok) to quickly grasp complex technical topics, prototyping Speakeasy and Vigil Protocol.
• Cory Klippsten declares the "altcoin battle" against Bitcoin's monetary claims over, citing Ethereum's Proof of Stake switch and January 2024 ETF launches as its definitive end.
• Cory Klippsten supports crypto/blockchain/DeFi merging with TradFi for incremental financial IT improvements, but views it as distinct from Bitcoin's core monetary mission.
• Cory Klippsten criticizes Andreas Antonopoulos's economic views, particularly his incorrect prediction of numerous competing village currencies, which ignored monetary network effects.
• Cory Klippsten reiterates that nothing can surpass Bitcoin; the rest of the century will see a competition between dollars/treasuries, gold, and Bitcoin, with Bitcoin as the superior asset.
• Cory Klippsten simplifies the Bitcoin scarcity equation to "8 billion people versus 21 million coins," emphasizing its fundamental supply-demand dynamics.
• Cory Klippsten deemed MicroStrategy's "refining Bitcoin into digital money" marketing, coupled with an oil derrick meme, a "bridge too far."
• Cory Klippsten coined "leveraged Bitcoin equity" (LBE) in late 2023 to accurately describe companies like MicroStrategy that offer levered price exposure to Bitcoin.
• Cory Klippsten warns that LBEs carry additional risks beyond Bitcoin, including key man, regulatory, and liquidity risks, making them unsuitable for long-term buy-and-hold strategies.
• Cory Klippsten notes that MicroStrategy reported 80% of its buyers were retail investors, despite the product being promoted as an institutional vehicle.
• Cory Klippsten advises a minimum of 90% of Bitcoin price exposure should be real on-chain Bitcoin, considering LBEs as a minor gamble.
• Cory Klippsten discusses the Bitcoin Security Consortium, initiated by Galaxy and others, with a total pledge of $15 million for quantum-proof cryptography research.
• Cory Klippsten views the consortium's structure as non-centralizing, as each participating company retains control over its allocated funds.
• Cory Klippsten dismisses recent quantum FUD as disingenuous penny stock pumping (early 2025) and VC marketing (fall), but finds value in the proactive research.
• Cory Klippsten describes Vigil Protocol (vigilprotocol.ai) as "family financial orchestration" software for individuals with complex financial lives, managing $1 million to $30 million in assets.
• Vigil Protocol replicates family office coordination benefits for high-net-worth individuals, without the typical $250,000 annual fee.
• Vigil Protocol, currently US-only, allows users to upload and audit extensive financial documents, identifying gaps and suggesting improvements for comprehensive financial planning.
• Cory Klippsten asserts Vigil Protocol addresses the second-highest source of family financial anxiety, after wealth storage, by ensuring coordinated financial planning.
• Cory Klippsten contends that price drives the narrative, not vice versa, and ample bullish narratives already exist to fuel the next Bitcoin bull market.
• Cory Klippsten encourages Bitcoiners to "buy the bear," take advantage of Swan's 0.5% buy fees, and be leaders in promoting Bitcoin during a downturn.

BTC Markets (3)

• Jake Woodhouse initially believed Bitcoin would solve his wealth problems, leading to overexposure and significant financial losses when the market experienced a major downturn.
• Jake Woodhouse had a price target of AUD 150,000 per Bitcoin by August 2025, which was met early, but the price later crumbled to approximately AUD 60,000 by early 2026.
• Income generation is a crucial lesson, as a lack of cash flow forced him to sell Bitcoin at low prices to cover family expenses, acting as a natural hedge against investment portfolio volatility.

Markets (1)

• His investment portfolio's purchasing power grew rapidly from mid-2023 to mid-2025, with his asset stack in 2024 outperforming top Wall Street hedge funds.

Protocol (1)

• He realized his mistake was asking Bitcoin to perform four distinct financial jobs - growth, income, optionality (liquidity), and stability - which are incompatible due to its inherent volatility.

Banking (2)

• Optionality, or liquidity, requires readily available capital like a savings account, ideally providing 24 months of runway, separate from volatile assets to avoid increased costs during market downturns.
• Jake Woodhouse took on a two-year loan for real estate, with leverage initially 10-20% of his net assets, which grew to over 50% when the Bitcoin market declined.

BTC Markets (7)

• Marty Bent notes that central banks' aggressive currency devaluation makes Bitcoin a compelling safe haven asset in a world of volatile fiat currencies, a core part of its bull case.
• Bitcoin currently sits in a historically low range on its power curve, indicating a statistically bullish phase. Matty highlights that recent market events like the 2022 crash expanded the realm of price probabilities.
• Matty notes that Bitcoin's price, if it were an exponential asset like others, should be around $600,000, but its power law trend, with a 96.1% R-squared, is more conservative.
• Bitcoin's power trend indicates its price doubles for every 13% increase in its lifespan, translating to a current compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of about 40% over two years, which is still substantial despite a slight slowdown.
• Comparing a 2016 power trend projection to today's data reveals only a $15-17k difference, demonstrating the model's stability over a decade, unlike other models that are orders of magnitude off.
• Matty and Marty Bent explore the 'grand thesis': whether Bitcoin's stable power trend will compel traditional finance (TradFi) to adopt sustainable growth, or if TradFi's volatile exponential growth will pull Bitcoin into its trajectory.
• A log-periodic model, derived from Giovanni's work, projects Bitcoin's price by the end of 2028: the power curve trend is $300,000, the log-periodic model is $520,000, and the Q90 (high probability) is $778,000, with an extreme upside (Q100) of $2.2 million.

Adoption (1)

• Matty refutes claims that Bitcoin's power law is broken, asserting that the power curve for network adoption continues to grow robustly, a trend he first charted in 2018.

Macro (2)

• Marty Bent argues the US economy functions as a quasi-socialist experiment due to the centralized fiat currency system, which undermines true capitalism and contributes to income inequality, often misattributed to capitalist principles.
• The global monetary base, which topped $30 trillion in 2021, now stands at approximately $26 trillion, reflecting a period where central banks globally have reduced money printing since the pandemic, a trend potentially influenced by Basel III initiatives.

Protocol (2)

• Bitcoin's cypherpunk ethos remains strong, with innovations in layered payments, privacy, and covenant solutions, challenging the narrative that TradFi integration has extinguished Bitcoin's freedom-tech roots.
• Bitcoin's value transferred reached a record $60 trillion (TTM) in 2022. While Fedwire transfers $1.2 quadrillion annually, Bitcoin's current annual clip is $24 trillion, now 47.6 times smaller than Fedwire, compared to 16-17 times smaller in 2022.

Fed (2)

• The Federal Reserve's balance sheet, which peaked near $9 trillion during the pandemic, has decreased to $6.74 trillion last week. Historically, gold comprised 86-87% of the Fed's balance sheet at the start of WWII.
• The Federal Reserve's ownership of US federal debt reached 20% in 2021 and currently stands at 11.38% as of June 30th. This indicates capacity for further monetization, if needed.

Protocol (1)

• Saylor announced the Bitcoin Security Consortium, comprising nine companies, to inform the community about Bitcoin security, particularly quantum threats, and fund related development efforts.

Digital Sovereignty (1)

• Steve acknowledged that the Bitcoin Security Consortium raises centralization concerns, echoing the 2017 New York Agreement, but noted his and others' involvement aims to represent open-source development.

Safety (1)

• The Bitcoin Security Consortium promotes a balanced view on cryptographically relevant quantum computing, avoiding extreme positions and planning for scenarios 15 to 20 years away.

Open Source (2)

• Steve adopted WhisperFlow for all text messaging, finding it significantly faster and more accurate than native iOS dictation, leveraging OpenAI's open-source Whisper model for improved context recognition.
• Steve argues Buzz is uniquely positioned for open-source adoption, as other LLM providers like Anthropic and OpenAI are unlikely to support the multi-vendor, multi-model harnesses open-source communities require.

Education (1)

• Presidio Bitcoin is expanding its Visiting Members program, offering 1-3 month residencies in San Francisco for individuals or small pre-seed startups focused on Bitcoin or AI open-source projects.

Censorship (2)

• Joe Rogan highlights the Kandahar Giant story's unusual sensitivity, noting high-level Pentagon officials warn him to be cautious, unlike their openness about UFOs. Timothy Alberino theorizes the secrecy is due to the topic's intermeshment with the occult.
• Timothy Alberino reports the Pentagon issued a statement denying the Kandahar Giant incident, which Joe Rogan finds suspicious. The pilot, fearing reprisal, said the body likely went to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Other accounts, including a high-level commander's, confirmed "giants of Kandahar" and a senator's staffer issued strong warnings.

History (6)

• Timothy Alberino distinguishes the alleged Kandahar Giant, estimated at 9-12 feet tall without gigantism, from exceptionally tall public figures. Joe Rogan notes deployed veterans' corroborating "weird shit" stories from Afghanistan, where dangerous, remote regions prevent study of ancient structures.
• Timothy Alberino calls Sardinia "ground zero" for giants, hosting over 7,000 standing megalithic Nuragi towers (estimated 10,000-30,000 originally), some over 100 feet tall, built in Cyclopean style during the Bronze Age (3300-1200 BC). The island also has 800 "tombs of the giants," which legends claim were built atop interred giants.
• Timothy Alberino states Peruvian archaeologist Edmundo de la Vega found numerous references to giants in colonial archives. Jesuit priest Pablo Jose Arriaga (1602) and Antonio de la Calancha documented two well-preserved giants, dressed in Kumbi (Inca nobility fabric) and enshrined as ancestors in a cave, which were later burned by "Visitadores of idolatry."
• Joe Rogan and Timothy Alberino discuss 19th-century newspaper reports of 10-foot-tall giant skeletons in North American mounds. Timothy Alberino highlights Abraham Lincoln's 1845 lecture notes, which, in a biblical context, reference "that extinct species of giants whose bones fill the mounds of America."
• Joe Rogan discusses engineer Alberto Donini's 2026 paper, which uses erosion patterns to suggest the Great Pyramid of Khufu is 20,000-40,000 years old (avg. 24,900 BP), challenging the 2560 BC timeline. Timothy Alberino notes archaeologists resist this because it implies advanced pre-cataclysmic civilizations, as supported by universal traditions of a "golden age" and lost knowledge.
• Timothy Alberino highlights Peruvian megalithic sites like Soxai Waman, Machu Picchu, and Ollantaytambo, whose cyclopean architecture is often attributed to the Inca, despite no construction records. Local Quechua and Aymara people credit "giants" or "progenitors" with building these sites, which feature advanced anti-seismic construction, curved stones, and mysterious "nubs" also found in other global megaliths.

War (1)

• Timothy Alberino recounts a C-130 pilot's 2005 experience transporting top-secret cargo: an 1100-pound, 10-to-12-foot-tall humanoid with red hair, six fingers, and six toes. The giant, too large for a 7x9-foot pallet, was described as "solid as a rock" and airlifted from a cave where it had killed and consumed soldiers.

Religion (2)

• Timothy Alberino links giant remains to a sinister, ancient cult that believed dead giant spirits could be summoned for possession, forming the basis for demons in Hebrew cosmology. Canaanites and Amorites practiced the necromantic Kispum rite to evoke ancestral "Rephaeim" for empowerment.
• Timothy Alberino describes Sardinia's necromantic "rite of incubation" where young boys were sealed in womb-shaped "tombs of the giants" to absorb the spirit of the mighty one buried beneath. He interviewed dozens of elderly Sardinians who unearthed giant bones, sometimes with jewelry or Roman coins from Emperor Antoninus Pius.

Corruption (1)

• Timothy Alberino suggests references to "Baal" in the Epstein files indicate a modern continuation of ancient cults among elites. Joe Rogan notes that while a bank document includes "b-a-a-l-name," it could be misinterpreted, but still finds the connection "creepy."