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	<title>Mark E. Jeftovic is The Bombthrower</title>
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		<title>The &#8220;Bitcoin Only&#8221; Era is Over.</title>
		<link>https://bombthrower.com/the-bitcoin-only-era-is-over/</link>
					<comments>https://bombthrower.com/the-bitcoin-only-era-is-over/#comments</comments>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark E. Jeftovic]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Fri, 07 Aug 2026 16:57:37 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Bitcoin]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://bombthrower.com/the-bitcoin-only-era-is-over/</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[This month's FUD: Coinkite Edition]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;" class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons" ></div><div class="body markup" dir="auto">
<p><em>(From <a href="https://thesovereigncapitalist.io">The Sovereign Capitalist Letter #65</a>. I was traveling at the time of the Coinkite vulnerability, surfacing a recurring theme around how to safely balance cold storage and emergency access when on the road). </em></p>
<p>Just when I thought the sentiment couldn’t get any worse, on July 29-30 reports began to emerge of “certain” Coldcards (which were supposed to be the industry standard of self-custody cold wallets), being <em>drained </em>of their funds.</p>
<p>The reports are true, and this has enormous implications, not just for Coinkite, the Canadian company who manufactures the Coldcard, but for the entire worldview of self-custody and perhaps even for Bitcoin itself.</p>
<p>“Not your keys = not your coins” has been the mantra of Bitcoin since the Genesis Block. Self-custody was The Way. Anything else was for “shitcoiners”, “suitcoiners” and general retards.</p>
<p>It is impossible to overstate how strongly the Bitcoin in-club feels about this. If you don’t self-custody &#8211; and until this happened, on a Coldcard by Coinkite &#8211; then you were not <em>really </em>a “true” Bitcoiner, you were just LARPing as one. A spectator in the land of the pureblood anarcho-capitalist cyberpunks.</p>
<p>(Admission: my BTC wasn’t on a Coldcard &#8211; <em>but I had recently bought new one that I was planning to migrate to after the BIP-110 and eCash forks).</em></p>
<p>When Utopia arrives… only the self-custody maxis would be admitted &#8211; all else would be chattel and serfs under various permutations of slavecoins, CBDCs and (the worst of all) <em>paper Bitcoin.</em></p>
<p>It all sounds very eschatological and in the earlier days of my journey, I would openly admit “Bitcoin is my religion” and only be <em>half-</em>kidding about it.</p>
<p>While this bear market has been a “mild winter” in terms of price action (only about ~ 50% off the all-time high), this has been one of the more self-destructive bear cycles in terms of Bitcoin culture and the movement in general.</p>
<p>None of it helped by the fact that <em>the Coldcard flaw turned out to be real.</em></p>
<p>People who had done everything right, took their BTC off of the exchange, put it into an air-gapped Coldcard <em>powered by a 9V-battery</em> and thought they were safe, found their life-savings irrevocably drained away in an instant…</p>
<p><img fetchpriority="high" decoding="async" class="" src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!coT5!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5d323e4f-17fb-4ead-8669-f7a21a857fef_1331x452.png" alt="" width="877" height="298" /></p>
<p><span data-color="rgb(51, 51, 51)">Via </span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1vdjlls/i_lost_my_one_bitcoin_in_the_coldcard_exploit/"><span data-color="rgb(0, 0, 255)">r/bitcoin</span></a>Over the years I’ve recommended Coldcard to my readers a few times. We were traveling when the news broke but as soon as I corroborated the vulnerability, I put out an emergency bulletin to the mailing list.</p>
<p>At first it appeared as though the flaw was limited to older Mk2 and Mk3 models, but over the next couple of days Mk4 and Q1 series were also being drained &#8211; it just takes more computing power, and thus time, to crack the entropy on the later models.</p>
<h2><strong>What Happened &#8211; The Coldcard Firmware Flaw</strong></h2>
<p>As everyone here knows, a Bitcoin wallet address is a very long cryptographic private key that can be transmitted or stored in a human readable form via a 12- or 24-word seed phrase, consisting of words pulled from a word list (BIP-39) of possible values.</p>
<p>The words themselves are actually unimportant &#8211; they’re just there for humans to be able to read the values. The discrete value they comprise is what matters.</p>
<p>And because a given wallet address is secured by a private key derived from a seed-phrase, those words must be in order.</p>
<p>That makes the universe of possible values enormous:</p>
<ul>
<li>12 words gives 2¹²⁸ possible valid phrases</li>
<li>24 words gives 2²⁵⁶ possible valid phrases</li>
</ul>
<p>A 12-word seed space is a vastly larger number than every grain of sand on Earth or every star we can see in the observable universe.</p>
<p>A 24-word seed space is larger than the number of atoms in the entire galaxy, and approaches (but is generally a bit smaller than) the estimated number of atoms in the observable universe.</p>
<p>But that’s only if those words are generated from a truly random seed (entropy source).</p>
<p>Take an extreme example: simply picking the first 12 or 24 words from the BIP-39 word list isn’t random, and a wallet protected by such a seed phrase would be cracked in short order by a brute force computer.</p>
<p>The Coldcard ships with an onboard RNG (Random Number Generator) to generate your seed phrase, however their own documentation states that to achieve maximum entropy (randomness), you should <em>also </em>add some “external entropy” such as dice rolls &#8211; real, actual physical dice, rolled, 50 or 100 times &#8211; combined with the onboard RNG for maximal security.</p>
<p>Many people did not roll the dice, assuming that the onboard RNG would provide more than enough entropy for a secure seed phrase (remember those numbers above).</p>
<p>The problem was in Coldcard’s firmware itself, where the RNG generator turned out to be <em>bypassed</em> &#8211; resulting in extremely <em>weak </em>entropy &#8211; and thus, weak seed phrases.</p>
<p>This bug has been sitting there since November 2021 (the Coldcard firmware <a href="https://github.com/Coldcard/firmware"><span data-color="rgb(0, 0, 255)">is open source/viewable</span></a>),</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-conversation="none">
<p dir="ltr" lang="en">5/ The Mk2 and Mk3 firmware intends to use the hardware random number generator to generate keys. A mistake in a macro defined in the firmware leads to using only a known UID, timer state and call history &#8211; wallet generation is deterministic, not random.</p>
<p>— Max Guise (@max_guise) <a href="https://x.com/max_guise/status/2083007877049098628?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 31, 2026</a></p></blockquote>
<p><script async src="https://platform.x.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
<p>The <a href="https://x.com/max_guise/status/2083007923450720433"><span data-color="rgb(0, 0, 255)">follow-up tweet</span></a> lays out what went wrong in the Mk4 and Q series:</p>
<blockquote><p><em>“Mk4, Q, and Mk5 attempt to compensate at boot with secure-element input, but the reseed truncates it to 32 bits, sharply limiting the secret entropy it contributes – far below what wallets should have.”</em></p></blockquote>
<p>It later came out that it looks like a developer <a href="https://x.com/BitcoinNewsCom/status/2083715303087673392"><span data-color="rgb(0, 0, 255)">simply disabled the RNG</span></a> to workaround some compiler errors:</p>
<blockquote><p><em>A new technical analysis by Core-Lightning dev ddustin suggests the 2021 COLDCARD vulnerability may have started while a developer was trying to connect three layers of the firmware: the wallet’s Python code, MicroPython’s C code, and the STM32 hardware random number generator.</em></p>
<p><em>The custom code appears to have conflicted with MicroPython’s existing implementation, likely triggering a compiler error.</em></p>
<p><em>The evidence suggests the developer then disabled the hardware RNG by <strong>setting MICROPY_HW_ENABLE_RNG to 0</strong>, allowing the firmware to compile.</em></p>
<p><em>That change had an unintended consequence. When users created new wallets, the firmware no longer used the hardware random number generator. Instead, it fell back to MicroPython’s much weaker Yasmarang software random number generator.</em></p></blockquote>
<p>There are people out there implying that any wallets drained are somehow on the Coldcard owners, because they didn’t add enough external entropy (read: they didn’t do enough dice rolls, or any dice rolls).</p>
<p>This is a fucking retarded take. It actually makes my blood boil.</p>
<p><em>No other Bitcoin hardware wallet requires the user to provide external entropy as a condition of the fucking thing working.</em></p>
<p>People buy these wallets because they purport to be an ultra-secure, self-contained Swiss-Bank-in-your-pocket solution for escaping the fiat treadmill and putting your life savings beyond the reach of The State. Full stop.</p>
<p>There is no asterisk beside those claims that “you have to jiggle your body and roll a bunch of dice dozens of times while waving a dead chicken over your head to add entropy or it won’t work”.</p>
<p><em>Except, on a Coldcard</em></p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p dir="ltr" lang="en">go on&#8230; say it <a href="https://t.co/JZS22uznfF">pic.twitter.com/JZS22uznfF</a></p>
<p>— Mark E. Jeftovic (@jeftovic) <a href="https://x.com/jeftovic/status/2083964863873720738?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 2, 2026</a></p></blockquote>
<p><script async src="https://platform.x.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<hr />
<p><em><strong>Actions to take: </strong>If you have a Coldcard, regardless of how you set it up &#8211; I would move all of my funds out of it.</em></p>
<hr />
<h2><strong>What Does this mean for Self-Custody and for Bitcoin?</strong></h2>
<p>Indeed. That is the question.</p>
<p>I have been thinking long and hard about this, not to mention conducting a deep dive into the entropy generation on other wallets.</p>
<p>The gist is this:</p>
<p>Every other wallet I came across uses well-known methods for generating entropy that come off of the device itself (such as the the o/s level Cryptographically Secure Pseudorandom Number Generator &#8211; CSPRNG) and many of them combine that with several other sources of entropy &#8211; any given computing environment offers a few of those (clock speed jitter, etc), and in some cases, dedicated chips just for entropy generation.</p>
<p>But this still had me rattled: why bother worrying about a quantum attack on SHA-256 in 5 or 50 years, when you can just crack the entropy using Fable or Opus 5.6-sol today?</p>
<p>Fortunately, it turns out that is not the case. The Coldcard vulnerability was entirely exploitable, and discoverable, because of a series of bad decisions and programming bugs. <em>It was not a case that entropy had been cracked, it was that insufficient entropy was generated in the first place.</em></p>
<p><a href="https://x.com/zherbert/status/2082993276324319713"><span data-color="rgb(0, 0, 255)">This X post </span></a>from another wallet provider lays out the reasons why, years ago, Coinkite switched their open-source licensing scheme as well as their own code in the Coldcard firmware &#8211; and how by doing so they set the stage for the disaster unfolding in front of our eyes today.</p>
<p>Also noting that @nvk (Coinkite’s CEO) deleted the tweets referenced above and has been dutifully scrubbing his timeline since all this broke out. Absolutely abysmal leadership.</p>
<p>All this to say &#8211; (because it bears repeating): the issue is <em>not </em>that AI could crack the <em>entropy</em> used to generate seed phrases. That would be game-over for Bitcoin.</p>
<p>What happened instead was that AI was used (at least once it became known that there was an exploit to be found) to <em>uncover a flaw in entropy generation.</em></p>
<p><em>Very different.</em></p>
<p>That means the industry-standard wallets (Trezor, Bitkey, and software ones like Sparrow or Electrum) are fine &#8211; and I still feel OK typing that &#8211; in fact more so, after the rabbit hole I’ve been down these last 48 hours.</p>
<p>But there are some practical takeaways now, and some possibly unpleasant ramifications, at least for me, and I’ll lay them out frankly here, in no particular order:</p>
<ol>
<li>
<h3><strong>Multi-sig self-custody is now the bare minimum.<br />
</strong></h3>
<p>Wallets that require multiple signatures to spend &#8211; if you are handling it all yourself, you can still do solo multi-sig, where you require two-of-three signatures to originate an outbound transaction.What I will probably end up doing is prepping some docs or tutorials on getting that set up.</li>
<li>
<h3><strong>Institutional custody is a serious option, which should be considered.<br />
</strong></h3>
<p>But it comes with trade-offs, one of which is that it’s very difficult to create a multi-generational custodial entity in a nascent space. You almost by definition need to fuse some venerable old tradfi institutions with cypherpunks.The reality is the institutions best equipped or positioned to do this, are <em>not </em>“Bitcoin-only”, which seems to matter to the hardcore maxis.But there’s another problem with that:</li>
<li>
<h3><em><strong>Most Bitcoin-only businesses are on their way to bankruptcy.</strong><br />
</em></h3>
<p>If not this bear cycle, then the next one.This is because in the overall scheme of things, <em>not enough people actually give a shit about Bitcoin </em>to make a “Bitcoin-only” business viable over the long haul. This includes as many as 90% of the people (total guesstimate) <em>who are actually allocated to Bitcoin</em>.Most of <em>them </em>couldn’t care less about self-custody, retiring their bloodline, “everything divided by 21 million”, escaping the state, or any of the long string of maximalist purity tests.</p>
<p>They want a double-digit CAGR, and to catch the next bull market updraft. That’s it. That’s the <em>majority </em>of people invested into Bitcoin. Reality check.</li>
<li>
<h3><strong><strong>ETFs are fine.</strong></strong></h3>
<p>This needs to be said. Again, there are trade-offs (surprise!):You’ll miss out on the proceeds of any forks (the ETF sponsor will pocket those) and you’re very much inside the financial system. But they are a way to capture the upside of Bitcoin, hold for the long term, with total liquidity.</li>
<li>
<h3><strong><strong>The right exchanges are also fine.</strong></strong></h3>
<p>Another blasphemy but it’s true. One thing I’ve been saying for years is that most people don’t want the hassles associated with self-custody. It’s a high bar and what most people really want is “PayPal for crypto”. And notice I didn’t say “Bitcoin”, I said “crypto” &#8211; another no-no word for “True Bitcoiners”, but the reality is that the mass adoption underway is of <em><em>crypto.</em></em></p>
<p>Bitcoin just happens to be a subset of that.I can envision setups where of the total allocation in a portfolio to Bitcoin, the majority is held via ETFs, while self-custody BTC is akin to our “Bug-out bag” component, along with a lightning wallet loaded up with some “walking around money”.</li>
<li>
<h3><strong><strong>Bitcoin is not the apex asset.</strong></strong></h3>
<p><em> I have been wrong about this.</em> It’s still a category-of-one in the digital asset space, it’s still digital sound money and a store of value, but it’s just another asset class across the possible choices one can allocate into.The maxi proposition that allocating to anything other than Bitcoin in one’s investments or savings is “retarded” is itself retarded. I remember seeing a tweet some time ago that just broke my heart, where some pleb took his daughter to Burger King for her fifth or sixth birthday and was thrilled that she understood why instead of buying her a birthday present he bought some Bitcoin.Horrible parenting. Buy your five-year-old a birthday present. Pay them for chores in Bitcoin. Don’t take them to Burger King, ever. Grow the fuck up. You’re supposed to be the adult here.</p>
<p>The apex asset is business ownership. We can talk more about this, and we will.</li>
<li>
<h3><strong>Being 100% invested in Bitcoin or having all your life savings in Bitcoin is a mistake.<br />
</strong></h3>
<p>Another mistake of mine, in the sense where I proudly declared that easyDNS holds 100% of its retained earnings in BTC. Others hold the sum total of their life savings in Bitcoin.This is a big mistake &#8211; which anybody who just had their life savings drained in under 20 seconds in this episode understands all too viscerally.</p>
<p>Speaking for myself, I will be adjusting my allocation. Probably gradually, because I do think we’re “at bottom” in this cycle, so as we climb out of this bear market, I will be diversifying &#8211; likely more aggressively into cashflow-producing businesses.</p>
<p>I’ll do this through a combination of collateralization in a (hopefully) up-trending market, and sales under the right circumstances.</p>
<p>There are a couple of special situations I’m working on where it feels like the most sensible move is to create an investment partnership &#8211; so I will be cashing out some chips to seed that fund.</p>
<p>I’m glad I still have gold and numerous investments outside of the Bitcoin and even crypto space. I’m also looking at more real estate. The market is in the toilet now so it’s a good time to buy &#8211; and this actually brings us to an important point:</p>
<p><em>The Bitcoin maxi axiom that it’s always a good time to buy, never a good time to sell, and that Bitcoin is the only investable asset, forsaking all others, has to be abandoned by anybody who is serious about building wealth.</em></p>
<p>I don’t care about passing the Bitcoin purity tests. Maybe I did in the past, which was also a mistake.</p>
<p>Remember when Luke Gromen sold Bitcoin <em>right near the top of the cycle </em>and everybody in the Bitcoin space called him an idiot?</p>
<p>Who are the idiots now?</p>
<p>I’ll give you one guess.</p>
<p>I’m not saying we should have sold when Luke Gromen sold, I’m observing that a professional investor applied his framework and made a determination on when <em>he </em>should sell &#8211; and that gave him optionality that none of us “pureblood Bitcoiners” have, as long as we’re trapped in this “never sell” / Bitcoin-only mentality.</li>
</ol>
</div>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p dir="ltr" lang="en">Bitcoin maximalism is over. Bitcoin &#8220;culture&#8221; is over. Bitcoin influencers are over. Every popular hardcore Bitcoin figure has disgraced themself in some way.</p>
<p>Bitcoin will remain, beneficially stripped of the cult around it.</p>
<p>— nic carter (@nic_carter) <a href="https://x.com/nic_carter/status/2083985178825765251?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 2, 2026</a></p></blockquote>
<p><script async src="https://platform.x.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
<p>If I could sum up the above list in one pithy tweet, it would be the opening image of this mornth’s edition, by way of Nic Carter, who also found himself excommunicated from The Bitcoin Cathedral for indulging in shitcoinery.</p>
<p><em>Sign up for the Bombthrower <a href="/join">mailing list here</a> and get an executive summary of my new book: <strong>The Blueprint Survive &amp; Thrive In An Overclocked Timeline.</strong> Sovereign Capitalist members get early access to <a href="https://thesovereigncapitalist.io">the full book here.</a></em></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
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		<item>
		<title>Deflationary Money Hits Different: Losing Half Its Price and Winning Anyway</title>
		<link>https://bombthrower.com/deflationary-money-hits-different-losing-half-its-price-and-winning-anyway/</link>
					<comments>https://bombthrower.com/deflationary-money-hits-different-losing-half-its-price-and-winning-anyway/#respond</comments>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Bryan Lutz]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Tue, 14 Jul 2026 21:28:28 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Bitcoin]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Investing]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://bombthrower.com/?p=12524</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[&#160; Written by Bryan Lutz, Contributor at The Sovereign Capitalist: The FUD is back, baby. Bitcoin is down nearly half from its 2025 high. And now, the obituaries are out of cold storage and back in heavy rotation. Sentiment surveys are scraping levels we haven’t seen since the 2022 crypto-winter, and the financial press has [&#8230;]]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;" class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons" ></div><p><img decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-12531" src="https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/BTC_Deflationary_Money_072026-1-1024x687.png" alt="" width="700" height="470" srcset="https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/BTC_Deflationary_Money_072026-1-1024x687.png 1024w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/BTC_Deflationary_Money_072026-1-300x201.png 300w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/BTC_Deflationary_Money_072026-1-768x515.png 768w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/BTC_Deflationary_Money_072026-1-600x403.png 600w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/BTC_Deflationary_Money_072026-1.png 1264w" sizes="(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px" /></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong><a href="https://thesovereigncapitalist.io/">Written by Bryan Lutz, Contributor at The Sovereign Capitalist:</a></strong></p>
<h2></h2>
<h2>The FUD is back, baby.</h2>
<p>Bitcoin is down nearly half from its 2025 high. And now, the obituaries are out of cold storage and back in heavy rotation. Sentiment surveys are scraping levels we haven’t seen since the 2022 crypto-winter, and the financial press has rediscovered its favorite genre: the Bitcoin post-mortem.</p>
<p>And this time they’ve got a chart to wave around. The Dow just had its best year against Bitcoin since 2022 – the Dow/BTC ratio has more than doubled off its August 2025 low, from 0.36 to 0.84.</p>
<p>Here it is. We’ll even draw the red line for them:</p>
<figure id="attachment_12526" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-12526" style="width: 700px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img decoding="async" class="wp-image-12526" src="https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/tsc_dow_bitcoin_2yr_zoom-1024x580.png" alt="" width="700" height="397" srcset="https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/tsc_dow_bitcoin_2yr_zoom-1024x580.png 1024w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/tsc_dow_bitcoin_2yr_zoom-300x170.png 300w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/tsc_dow_bitcoin_2yr_zoom-768x435.png 768w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/tsc_dow_bitcoin_2yr_zoom-1536x870.png 1536w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/tsc_dow_bitcoin_2yr_zoom-600x340.png 600w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/tsc_dow_bitcoin_2yr_zoom.png 1744w" sizes="(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-12526" class="wp-caption-text">The Dow’s twelve-month winning streak against Bitcoin. Note what the line still hasn’t touched: 1.0.</figcaption></figure>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Anyone holding through it felt every point. If you wanted to write the “Bitcoin is finished (again)” piece, this is the chart you’d lead with.</p>
<p>Notice what the line still hasn’t done, though.</p>
<p>It hasn’t touched 1.0.</p>
<p>After the worst sentiment stretch in years, after a ~45% drawdown, after twelve months of losing to the most boomer-coded stock index on earth, the entire Dow Jones Industrial Average <em>still cannot buy one Bitcoin</em>.</p>
<p>Against thirty of America’s biggest companies, the coin wins, with change left over.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h2>Flip the fraction.</h2>
<p>If that seems impossible, it’s because you’re reading the fraction the way CNBC wants you to read it:</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p style="text-align: center;">Bitcoin</p>
<p style="text-align: center;">───────</p>
<p style="text-align: center;">$$$$$$$</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Bitcoin as the numerator, dollars as the denominator, and the numerator just got cut in half. Case closed, right?</p>
<p>Wrong fraction. As Mark Jeftovic laid out in <strong><a href="https://bombthrower.com/its-the-denominator-stupid/">It’s the denominator, stupid</a></strong>, the entire point of Bitcoin is that it isn’t the thing being measured. It’s the thing you measure <em>with</em>. Put the index where it belongs:</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p style="text-align: center;">  DOW</p>
<p style="text-align: center;">───────</p>
<p style="text-align: center;">BITCOIN</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Now extend the chart back a decade and hit the log button, which is a one-click jailbreak for fiat-denominated brains:</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<figure id="attachment_12527" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-12527" style="width: 700px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-12527" src="https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/tsc_dow_bitcoin_ratio-1024x580.png" alt="" width="700" height="397" srcset="https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/tsc_dow_bitcoin_ratio-1024x580.png 1024w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/tsc_dow_bitcoin_ratio-300x170.png 300w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/tsc_dow_bitcoin_ratio-768x435.png 768w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/tsc_dow_bitcoin_ratio-1536x870.png 1536w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/tsc_dow_bitcoin_ratio-600x340.png 600w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/tsc_dow_bitcoin_ratio.png 1744w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-12527" class="wp-caption-text">The Dow, denominated in Bitcoin. A 99% decline that survived every Bitcoin crash along the way, including this one.</figcaption></figure>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>In 2014 it took more than 40 Bitcoin to buy the Dow. At the 2015 extreme, 84.</p>
<p>Today: 0.83.</p>
<p>Measured in the new denominator, the Dow has lost roughly 99% of its value in twelve years, and the “comeback” everyone is celebrating shows up on that chart as a wiggle at the bottom of a cliff. Bitcoin just took its worst beating in years and gave back approximately <em>none</em> of a decade of relative gains.</p>
<p>That’s what deflationary money does. It hits different.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h2>It’s about the maths</h2>
<p>The Dow is priced in dollars, and dollars multiply, inflate, depreciate, and then die&#8230; which is the business model for the whole fiat system. M2 only ever pauses on its way up, every crisis gets solved with more of it, and index earnings get marked up in the same shrinking units.</p>
<p>Bitcoin’s supply schedule, meanwhile, doesn’t attend FOMC meetings. The halvings keep halving. Twenty-one million, take it or leave it.</p>
<p>Run the numbers since January 2000: the Dow is up 361% in dollars. M2 is up 394%. Divide one by the other and the twenty-six-year bull market vanishes: measured in the money itself, the index has gone nowhere. Every point of &#8220;Dow 52,000&#8221; that isn&#8217;t printer output rounds to zero.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<figure id="attachment_12529" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-12529" style="width: 700px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-12529" src="https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/tsc_dow_vs_m2-1024x580.png" alt="" width="700" height="397" srcset="https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/tsc_dow_vs_m2-1024x580.png 1024w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/tsc_dow_vs_m2-300x170.png 300w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/tsc_dow_vs_m2-768x435.png 768w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/tsc_dow_vs_m2-1536x870.png 1536w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/tsc_dow_vs_m2-600x340.png 600w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/tsc_dow_vs_m2.png 1744w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-12529" class="wp-caption-text">The Dow and the money supply, same starting line, 26 years later. The index never got ahead of the printer.</figcaption></figure>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>So, the fraction has a numerator inflated by an expanding money supply, sitting on top of a denominator that does not expand. Run that equation for a decade and the line on the chart is the only possible output. The drawdowns – 2018, 2022, this one – are volatility <em>inside</em> the trend. And that trend is division between fiat money and Bitcoin.</p>
<p>A Dow’s comeback measured in a shrinking yardstick must sprint just to stand still. This year, it’s rallied hard in dollars. In Bitcoin terms, it clawed back a rounding error.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h2>Same story, slower clock.</h2>
<p>If this framework sounds familiar, it should. Gold holders have been living it since 1971, just at a different tempo.</p>
<p>In 2001 the Dow cost 42 ounces of gold. Today, with the Dow at <em>nominal record highs</em> and the algos doing victory laps, it costs 12.7 ounces. Two-thirds of the index’s gold-denominated value, gone, during a quarter century of “stocks always go up”.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-12528" src="https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/tsc_dow_gold_ratio-1024x580.png" alt="" width="700" height="397" srcset="https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/tsc_dow_gold_ratio-1024x580.png 1024w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/tsc_dow_gold_ratio-300x170.png 300w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/tsc_dow_gold_ratio-768x435.png 768w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/tsc_dow_gold_ratio-1536x870.png 1536w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/tsc_dow_gold_ratio-600x340.png 600w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/tsc_dow_gold_ratio.png 1744w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px" /></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Yes, gold and Bitcoin diverged this cycle. Gold at $4,142 while Bitcoin sits in a drawdown. They have different volatility profiles, and different adoption curves. Yet, they share the same denominator maths. One asset is the incumbent hard money, the other is the challenger still crossing the chasm. The DOW index can’t outrun either of them over any window that matters.</p>
<p>“Stocks at record highs” is mostly the yardstick shrinking. It is always has been.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h2>Deflationary Money Still Undefeated this Decade</h2>
<p>Here’s the thing about extreme bearish sentiment: it’s a report on the emotional state of leveraged tourists, not on the asset. Nothing about Bitcoin(or gold) changed this year. The supply schedule didn’t change. The halvings didn’t change. The $300+ trillion in bonds denominated in a melting currency didn’t change, except to get bigger.</p>
<p>The only thing that changed is the price, quoted in the old denominator, and the old denominator’s entire job description is to go down.</p>
<p>So, the mainstream news cycle might be right about one thing:</p>
<p>Deflationary money doesn’t win every year.</p>
<p>However, it does win every decade, and it’s undefeated.</p>
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		<title>When The Monetary Laws Of Physics Change</title>
		<link>https://bombthrower.com/when-the-monetary-laws-of-physics-change/</link>
					<comments>https://bombthrower.com/when-the-monetary-laws-of-physics-change/#respond</comments>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark E. Jeftovic]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Sun, 05 Jul 2026 18:29:41 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Zeitgeist]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://bombthrower.com/?p=12502</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[&#160; &#8220;You just wait until the next bear market&#8230;&#8221; Last month, I talked about how many of the legendary investors I’ve long followed as well as many of my contemporary financial commentators (speaking specifically of the contrarian ilk), are almost unanimous in the opinion that the AI trade is well into bubble territory and stocks [&#8230;]]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;" class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons" ></div><p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-12512 aligncenter" src="https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/when-the-monetary-physics-change-1.png" alt="" width="800" height="400" srcset="https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/when-the-monetary-physics-change-1.png 800w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/when-the-monetary-physics-change-1-300x150.png 300w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/when-the-monetary-physics-change-1-768x384.png 768w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/when-the-monetary-physics-change-1-600x300.png 600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" /></p>
<h2 style="text-align: center;">&#8220;You just wait until the next bear market&#8230;&#8221;</h2>
<p class="p1">Last month, I talked about how many of the legendary investors I’ve long followed as well as many of my contemporary financial commentators (speaking specifically of the contrarian ilk), are almost unanimous in the opinion that the AI trade is well into bubble territory and stocks in general are overvalued. Hell, even I think that and I’m personally “all in” on AI and have a fair bit of equities exposure to it (not a tonne, but it’s there, and the biggest winners in the TSC portfolio lately have all been AI stocks and HPC stocks).</p>
<p class="p1">Angela sent me <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32u5T6lO8qk"><span class="s1">this Diary of a CEO interview with Jeremy Grantham</span></a> &#8211; another legend &#8211; and she said it was scary. At his peak he managed something like $165B AUM, but he’s down to $80B or $90B now (he also says the only reason he’s still counted as a billionaire today, personally, is because they include the money he’s given away. Grantham has donated over 90% of his net worth to the Grantham Foundation, which invests and incubates primarily green-tech innovation to combat climate change.</p>
<p class="p1">Although Thomas Braziel, whose name you might recognize as a notable distressed asset investor who specializes in crypto i.e. Mt Gox claims, FTX, <a href="https://x.com/Bkclaims/status/2071039236283965905"><span class="s1">put out an interesting analysis</span></a> of Grantham’s green tech foundation’s filings &#8211; and surmised that what he’s saying on the talk-show circuit isn’t lining up with where he’s actually allocating the foundation’s …money <span class="s2"><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/17.0.2/72x72/1f914.png" alt="🤔" class="wp-smiley" style="height: 1em; max-height: 1em;" /></span> )</p>
<figure id="attachment_12507" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-12507" style="width: 800px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-12507" src="https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/granthams-letter.png" alt="" width="800" height="339" srcset="https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/granthams-letter.png 1754w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/granthams-letter-300x127.png 300w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/granthams-letter-1024x434.png 1024w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/granthams-letter-768x326.png 768w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/granthams-letter-1536x652.png 1536w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/granthams-letter-600x255.png 600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-12507" class="wp-caption-text">Via: <a href="https://www.gmo.com/globalassets/articles/quarterly-letter/2025/gmo-quarterly-letter_4q-2025.pdf">GMO Q4 2025 Letter</a></figcaption></figure>
<p class="p1">Grantham occupies an exalted perch in the pantheon of institutional investors, so when he opines on something, it tends to get picked up on, which one may find somewhat quizzical, given his lifetime batting average isn’t really in the same league as the likes of Buffet, Munger, Klarman, et al.</p>
<p class="p1">His lifetime average returns? The closest analog could be the lifetime average of the GMO Global Asset Allocation Composite, which he co-founded.</p>
<p class="p1">Their number? 8.43%. And 0.8% of that was because of a one-time litigation settlement received in 2024</p>
<p class="p1">Warren Buffet’s lifetime batting average<a href="https://www.investing.com/analysis/why-warren-buffetts-198-annualized-returns-remain-unmatched-200639673"><span class="s1"> is pushing 20%</span></a> (19.8%).</p>
<p class="p1">The S&amp;P itself, 10%.</p>
<p class="p1">In case you’re wondering how somebody became a billionaire by lagging the major index by 200bp over their entire career, it’s because Grantham is proficient at one thing in particular: not losing money.</p>
<p class="p1">The TL;DR from the DOAC interview? A lot of people are about to lose a lot of money.</p>
<p class="p1">When Stephen Bartlett told him he was invested in SpaceX, Grantham dead-panned, “Good luck with that”.</p>
<p class="p1">Bitcoin? <i>“It’s a zero”.</i></p>
<p class="p1">The interview went a bit viral and I saw a lot of “Billionaire says Bitcoin is worthless” headlines in the mainstream financial press. Grantham has since been on a punditry tour (perhaps in promotion of his latest book, “<a href="https://amzn.to/4eUoruq"><span class="s1">The Making of a Permabear</span></a>” &#8211; yes, really); and the soundbites that are being repeatedly teased out from them are his “Bitcoin is a zero” sermons, in one case<a href="https://x.com/JoeyTweeets/status/2070658084700062129"><span class="s1"> getting into a somewhat heated exchange</span></a> with Joe Kernen on CNBC &#8211; where Kernen, incredibly, makes some of my points far less diplomatically than I have here.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p dir="ltr" lang="en">At least it’s not just Bitcoiners getting into scraps! <a href="https://t.co/pfJyXM3ZFc">pic.twitter.com/pfJyXM3ZFc</a></p>
<p>— JOEY (@JoeyTweeets) <a href="https://x.com/JoeyTweeets/status/2070658084700062129?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 26, 2026</a></p></blockquote>
<p><script async src="https://platform.x.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
<p class="p1">After Grantham trotted out the usual “no use case”, “there’s no there there”, “it’s a bubble”, Kernen straight-armed Grantham in the face with his underperformance over the past two decades,</p>
<blockquote><p><i>“You’ve done a great disservice to anybody who’s listened to you over the last twenty years”.</i></p></blockquote>
<p class="p1">Grantham’s response and attempt at a defence, combined with something else he said in the DOAC interview, are all leading up to my point here, while being 100% oblivious to it:</p>
<p class="p1">To Joe Kernen: he said <i>“We’ve been in a bull market since 2009, let’s see how all this stuff holds up when the next bear market hits”</i></p>
<p class="p1">To Steven Bartlett:<b> </b>he cautioned how Amazon sold off a staggering <i>92%</i> during the Dotcom bust.</p>
<p class="p1">During the drive to Hamilton for a board meeting, I listened <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-game-with-alex-hormozi/id1254720112?i=1000774164917"><span class="s1">to this short Alex Hormozi clip</span></a> and his analogy (which he cribbed from Brian Johnson) hit me full force and I finally had a working metaphor that explained what I’ve been trying to articulate about these living legends of finance.</p>
<p class="p1">That they’re underestimating the significance of fiat debasement is true, but it doesn’t really explode in your brain as much as make your eyes glaze over.</p>
<p class="p1">The analogy is fish are swimming around in water. Some of them become experts at swimming. They train their entire lives, they practice every day, they study the expert swimmers of yore, and they analyze nearly every aspect of the water they inhabit: it’s PH levels, alkaline, currents, flow &#8211; everything.</p>
<p class="p1">They know how a slight variance in one factor impacts the others &#8211; they know “which way the current is going”.</p>
<p class="p1">But over time, the water heats up; they may pick up on this, but they’re never quite prepared for what it means beyond a certain point.</p>
<p class="p1">When that point arrives, the water evaporates &#8211; and now it’s gas. Steam.</p>
<p class="p1">Setting aside for our purposes how this would fry the fish, imagine they’re still alive, but now they’re trying to apply everything they know about <i>swimming </i>in <i>water </i>to this new environment, which is gaseous, not liquid.</p>
<p class="p1">They would be flailing and flapping around like the proverbial “fish out of water”.</p>
<p class="p1">What happened?</p>
<p class="p1">They were never wrong about their fluid dynamics.</p>
<p class="p1">The physics changed and they had no model for the new reality.</p>
<p class="p1">Hormozi’s short clip was applying this metaphor to AI &#8211; which is certainly among the key drivers of the “monetary physics change” that we are now undergoing.</p>
<p class="p1">But the point of no return, when the phase shift started, was &#8211; I believe, and as Raoul Pal has always said &#8211; the Global Financial Crisis of 2007-2009.</p>
<p class="p1">That was when the water started turning to gas.</p>
<p class="p1">Grantham’s own yardstick measures the current bull market from then &#8211; when the central banks stepped in, when The Big Print started and when interest rate suppression and credit expansion became permanent features of the global monetary system (I would argue that the process started in 1980-82, and the GFC was a major tipping point).</p>
<p class="p1">Yes, Amazon came off 92% when the dotCom bubble burst. But anybody who had bought, even at the high right before that, is now up about 4,642.7 %</p>
<p class="p1">On the new Sovereign Capitalist site, <a href="https://thesovereigncapitalist.io/was-jeremy-grantham-right-or-wrong/"><span class="s1">we can model all this out interactively</span></a> (see below).</p>
<figure id="attachment_12506" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-12506" style="width: 800px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-12506" src="https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/grantham-right-or-wrong.png" alt="" width="800" height="872" srcset="https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/grantham-right-or-wrong.png 1560w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/grantham-right-or-wrong-275x300.png 275w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/grantham-right-or-wrong-940x1024.png 940w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/grantham-right-or-wrong-768x837.png 768w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/grantham-right-or-wrong-1410x1536.png 1410w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/grantham-right-or-wrong-600x654.png 600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-12506" class="wp-caption-text">Run the <a href="https://thesovereigncapitalist.io/was-jeremy-grantham-right-or-wrong/">interactive widget here</a></figcaption></figure>
<p class="p1">On its surface, Grantham’s fixation on loss avoidance serves a purpose (recall Buffet’s top rules of investing: number one is “Don’t lose money”, number two is “See Rule number one”).</p>
<p class="p1">If I ever experienced a staggeringly huge life-changing windfall in one moment, I would carve out a “retire your bloodline”-type allocation and hand it to a guy like Grantham (more likely it would be Vito Maida<span class="Apple-converted-space">  </span>over <a href="https://patientcapital.com"><span class="s1">at Patient Capital</span></a>, here in Canada).</p>
<p class="p1">But being good at preserving capital has its own opportunity cost, which is far more pronounced now that we’ve traversed the inflection point into the Exponential Age.</p>
<p class="p1">The world has transitioned from flat to hyper-cubed &#8211; the architecture is completely different now, and the linear measuring stick known as fiat money is ill equipped for the task of describing it.</p>
<p class="p1">To Grantham’s point “you just wait until the next bear market”, there won&#8217;t <i>be </i>a next bear market, not until we change that measuring stick.</p>
<p class="p1">Until the monetary regime change happens &#8211; that “change in physics” &#8211; <i>any </i>drawdown, no matter <i>how deep,</i> will be papered over with incessant Big Prints until the system itself completes its metamorphosis.</p>
<p><em>Today&#8217;s post was an excerpt from The Sovereign Capitalist my recently relaunched premium service. This goes beyond a dashboard, it&#8217;s more of an operating system for high agency net-producers.  All members get access to the full pre-release version of my new book: <strong>The Blueprint &#8211; Survive &amp; Thrive in an Overclocked Timeline.</strong></em></p>
<p><em><a href="https://thesovereigncapitalist.io/"><strong>Try it out for a month for $7</strong></a>, when you use the promo code <strong>TSC_PREVIEW26 <a href="https://thesovereigncapitalist.io/">here</a>.</strong></em></p>
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		<title>Canada Was a Liberal Paradise &#8230;Until the Liberals Took Over</title>
		<link>https://bombthrower.com/canada-was-a-liberal-paradise-until-the-liberals-took-over/</link>
					<comments>https://bombthrower.com/canada-was-a-liberal-paradise-until-the-liberals-took-over/#comments</comments>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark E. Jeftovic]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Wed, 01 Jul 2026 18:47:06 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Zeitgeist]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://bombthrower.com/?p=12450</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[There was a version of this country that worked. This was a country that used to punch above its weight across all key metrics and in a large part, did so espousing classical liberal values. Multiculturalism here was both uncontroversial and functional. People came from everywhere, integrated, and got on with building lives, businesses and [&#8230;]]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;" class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons" ></div><p data-sourcepos="5:1-5:87;103-189"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-12454 aligncenter" src="https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Canada-was-a-liberal-paradise.png" alt="" width="947" height="474" srcset="https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Canada-was-a-liberal-paradise.png 1774w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Canada-was-a-liberal-paradise-300x150.png 300w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Canada-was-a-liberal-paradise-1024x512.png 1024w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Canada-was-a-liberal-paradise-768x384.png 768w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Canada-was-a-liberal-paradise-1536x768.png 1536w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Canada-was-a-liberal-paradise-600x300.png 600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 947px) 100vw, 947px" /></p>
<h2 class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" style="text-align: center;" data-sourcepos="5:1-5:87;103-189">There was a version of this country that worked.</h2>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" style="text-align: left;" data-sourcepos="5:1-5:87;103-189">This was a country that used to punch above its weight across all key metrics and in a large part, did so espousing classical liberal values.</p>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" data-sourcepos="7:1-7:429;191-619">Multiculturalism here was both uncontroversial and functional. People came from everywhere, integrated, and got on with building lives, businesses and contributing to that overall ethos Canadian culture.</p>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" data-sourcepos="7:1-7:429;191-619">Minority rights and gender equality stopped being fights and became defaults.</p>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" data-sourcepos="7:1-7:429;191-619">Ontario, the most populous province, ran one of the cleanest grids on the continent for half a century on the back of CANDU, a reactor we designed ourselves. Peaceful, homegrown, zero-carbon, clean energy, and nobody lost any sleep over it. In fact, most people probably weren&#8217;t even <em>aware</em> of that.</p>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" data-sourcepos="9:1-9:107;621-727"><em>By every classical liberal measure that actually mattered, Canada was a success story that inspired the rest of the world.</em></p>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" data-sourcepos="11:1-11:201;729-929">I want to be precise about the word &#8220;liberal&#8221;. The small-l, &#8220;classic&#8221; version meant open markets, open minds, equal treatment, and a state clueful enough to stay out of the way. That Canada earned its stature honestly.</p>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" data-sourcepos="13:1-13:117;931-1047">Then, in 2015, the big-L Liberals took over the small-l idea. They have spent a decade undertaking what looks like something between a &#8220;controlled demolition&#8221; and act of subversion.</p>
<h2 class="text-text-100 mt-3 -mb-1 text-[1.125rem] font-bold" data-sourcepos="15:1-15:54;1049-1102">Start with energy, our single largest missed opportunity</h2>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" data-sourcepos="17:1-17:138;1104-1241">We can&#8217;t build pipelines. A country sitting on one of the largest energy endowments on earth cannot get its own product to its own coast <em>or even to its own citizens. </em>In 2017 the Trudeau government changed the rules and moved the goalposts on the Energy East pipeline which resulted in its cancellation.</p>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" data-sourcepos="17:1-17:138;1104-1241">Canada is sitting on the fourth largest oil reserves on earth, after other political temperate zones: Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and Iran, and we import between 500K &#8211; 600K barrels per day, nearly all of it, from the United States (&#8220;Elbows Up!&#8221;)</p>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" data-sourcepos="19:1-19:322;1243-1564">When Germany came knocking in 2022, Chancellor Scholz flew here and asked, practically begged, for us to sell them natural gas. Russia has just invaded Ukraine, and that put the Germans (which had wisely demolished their own nuclear power grid) into an awkward spot of having to buy energy from Putin.</p>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" data-sourcepos="19:1-19:322;1243-1564">Our answer?  There has &#8220;never been a strong business case.&#8221; Maybe we could interest the Germans in some solar panels and windmills. They went and signed a fifteen-year deal with Qatar instead. Qatar. Not exactly a human-rights exemplar, especially during Pride Month.</p>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" data-sourcepos="21:1-21:203;1566-1768">We did eventually sign an LNG deal with Germany, off the West Coast, in May of this year. Four years late, for volumes that would have looked modest in 2022. Better than nothing. Slower than everything.</p>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" data-sourcepos="23:1-23:636;1770-2405">None of this was an accident of incompetence. It was ideology. A decade of WEF-flavoured talking points, degrowth dressed up as climate virtue, and a governing instinct that treated Canadian resource wealth as something to apologize for.</p>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" data-sourcepos="23:1-23:636;1770-2405">Ottawa&#8217;s own reports spelled out the anti-capitalist drift in black and white (<a class="underline underline underline-offset-2 decoration-1 decoration-current/40 hover:decoration-current focus:decoration-current" href="https://bombthrower.com/canadian-government-report-unveils-anti-capitalist-agenda/">Bombthrower covered one here</a>). When the environment file is handed to a former Greenpeace activist pinned to the far left of the spectrum, the pipeline math and the LNG math and the nuclear math all start to make a grim kind of sense.</p>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" data-sourcepos="25:1-25:306;2407-2712">Speaking of nuclear. The recent strategy was supposed to prove we still build things. <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/canada-sets-out-plan-up-10-new-nuclear-reactors-2026-06-22/">&#8220;10 New Nuclear Reactors!</a>&#8221; Oh boy.</p>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" data-sourcepos="25:1-25:306;2407-2712">Read past the headline. The plan is:</p>
<ul>
<li class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" data-sourcepos="25:1-25:306;2407-2712">two reactors under construction &#8230;by 2035, and</li>
<li class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" data-sourcepos="25:1-25:306;2407-2712">five more &#8220;planned&#8221; (or &#8220;under development&#8221;) by&#8230; (checks notes)&#8230; 2040.</li>
</ul>
<p>Planned. Under development. Unserious.</p>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" data-sourcepos="27:1-27:316;2714-3029">Meanwhile&#8230;. over in China,  they&#8217;re projecting roughly 200 gigawatts of total capacity, which means about 100 new reactors, finished and powered-on by 2040. They finish a reactor in about five years, and they a couple dozen under construction simultaneously. We are going to have <em>started</em> two.</p>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" data-sourcepos="29:1-29:85;3031-3115">We invented the CANDU. We are now a rounding error in the industry we helped create.</p>
<h2 class="text-text-100 mt-3 -mb-1 text-[1.125rem] font-bold" data-sourcepos="31:1-31:62;3117-3178">On Indigenous affairs, honesty requires two things at once</h2>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" data-sourcepos="33:1-33:33;3180-3212">Most people can only manage one.</p>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" data-sourcepos="35:1-35:278;3214-3491">The first is that the historical record is genuinely damning. Broken treaties. Mishandled reserves. The residential schools. Generational neglect. Like slavery in the United States and elsewhere across the world, our treatment of First Nations casts a long shadow, and pretending otherwise isn&#8217;t helpful.</p>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" data-sourcepos="37:1-37:106;3493-3598">The second is that none of us alive today built that system. Nobody alive today bears any culpability for it. How could we?</p>
<p data-sourcepos="39:1-39:238;3600-3837">The dichotomy between responsibility and duty was always so cogently captured in a lecture I remember in college, given by the late Jack Richardson: the great Canadian producer. I remember it well, but I&#8217;ll paraphrase:</p>
<blockquote>
<p data-sourcepos="39:1-39:238;3600-3837"><em>&#8220;When you&#8217;re the producer on a record, your job is to deliver the master to the label &#8211; full stop.</em></p>
<p data-sourcepos="39:1-39:238;3600-3837"><em>Anything that gets in the way of that: the bass player dies of a heroin overdose, somebody burned the studio down, the lead singer&#8217;s wife left him and now he&#8217;s out on a ledge&#8230; </em></p>
<p data-sourcepos="39:1-39:238;3600-3837"><em>&#8230;all kinds of things can go wrong and none of them may actually your fault, but <span style="text-decoration: underline;">every single one of them is your problem</span>. </em></p>
<p data-sourcepos="39:1-39:238;3600-3837"><em><strong>You have to deliver the fucking record. That&#8217;s on <span style="text-decoration: underline;">you</span>&#8220;</strong>.</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" data-sourcepos="41:1-41:93;3839-3931">That is exactly where reconciliation should sit. Something we did not cause and still have to remedy&#8230; somehow.</p>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" data-sourcepos="43:1-43:581;3933-4513">But nothing that we do are actual remedies.</p>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" data-sourcepos="43:1-43:581;3933-4513">Instead of the hard, unglamorous business of<em> clean water</em>, functioning services and honoured agreements, we got theatre: Never-ending land acknowledgements read off laminated cards. Streets renamed, it seems deliberately, to incomprehensible text strings. Empty gestures that move no needle on any stated goal and instead breed the exact resentment they claim to be healing.</p>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" data-sourcepos="43:1-43:581;3933-4513">A growing share of the public has stopped seeing any of this as a lingering injustice to be addressed but now views it as a permanent guilt-management industry to tune out.</p>
<h2 class="text-text-100 mt-3 -mb-1 text-[1.125rem] font-bold" data-sourcepos="45:1-45:58;4515-4572">The elephant in the room: Immigration</h2>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" data-sourcepos="47:1-47:33;4574-4606">Immigration was our masterpiece.</p>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" data-sourcepos="49:1-49:432;4608-5039">For decades we skimmed the cream of the planet. Skilled, educated, motivated people from every culture and country, selected through a points system that drilled down on simple KPI: can you come here, integrate, and build something? Successful applicants kept their heritage, celebrated it, added it to the mix, &#8230;and got to work.</p>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" data-sourcepos="49:1-49:432;4608-5039">We took people on humanitarian grounds too, generously so, but never more than we could economically and culturally absorb.</p>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" data-sourcepos="51:1-51:440;5041-5480">That gave us extraordinary dynamism. Entrepreneurs and investors who arrived with nothing and hit it out of the park. Chamath Palihapitiya came as a refugee from Sri Lanka and became one of the most influential venture investors of his generation.</p>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" data-sourcepos="51:1-51:440;5041-5480">Prem Watsa came from India and built Fairfax into a company that earned him the &#8220;Canadian Warren Buffett&#8221; tag honestly.</p>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" data-sourcepos="51:1-51:440;5041-5480">Legends, both. We could use as many of those as the world will send us.</p>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" data-sourcepos="53:1-53:30;5482-5511">Then we changed the filter.</p>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" data-sourcepos="55:1-55:425;5513-5937">The points system asked whether you could succeed here. The volume model, switched on after (guess when?) 2015, asked almost nothing. The targets stopped being calibrated to housing, services, and absorption capacity, and got calibrated to two different things instead: cheap imported labour for the mega-employers who lobbied for it, and a river of tuition to turn colleges into degree farms selling permanent residency with a diploma stapled to it.</p>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" data-sourcepos="57:1-57:332;5939-6270">The numbers got loud. Population grew faster in 2023 than in any year since the 1950s, almost entirely through immigration, into a housing market that was already broken. We&#8217;ve all seen the graph, I don&#8217;t need to repost it. By 2024 Ottawa was admitting north of 480,000 permanent residents a year, with temporary-resident inflows stacked on top that pushed the real figure far higher.</p>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" data-sourcepos="59:1-59:425;6272-6696">Then, even the Capital-L Liberals blinked. In late 2024 they slashed the targets and Justin Trudeau conceded, in his own words, that they &#8220;didn&#8217;t get the balance quite right.&#8221; Permanent-resident targets came down to 395,000 for 2025 and 380,000 for 2026, with brutal cuts to international students. Mark Carney, having replaced him, kept the lower numbers. Governments do not reverse that hard, that fast, on policies that are working.</p>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" data-sourcepos="61:1-61:80;6698-6777">Here is the part that gets people shouted down for raising, so let me be clear here:</p>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" data-sourcepos="63:1-63:540;6779-7318"><em>This is a screening argument, and nothing else.</em></p>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" data-sourcepos="63:1-63:540;6779-7318">When you select immigrants, you screen. At least you&#8217;re supposed to.</p>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" data-sourcepos="63:1-63:540;6779-7318">Skills, language, education, and yes, background. When you stop selecting and simply move volume, you stop screening, and you get the entire Bell-curve of humanity &#8211; and quite possibly the wrong tail of it. That includes people from low-trust societies who carry their grievances and factional conflicts across the border with them, and it includes the criminal minority that any large, unvetted inflow will contain.</p>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" data-sourcepos="63:1-63:540;6779-7318">Ethnicity is beside the point here. The removed filter is the entire point.</p>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" data-sourcepos="65:1-65:373;7320-7692">The failure compounds when institutions respond to the predictable problems by looking away or dismissing credible criticisms as racism. When a serious crime involving a recent arrival gets softened in the media coverage, or when the judge sentencing a convicted violent criminal dials back the penalties in order to avoid deportation, ordinary people notice. They are not stupid.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="65:1-65:373;7320-7692">People start rumbling about &#8220;two-tier&#8221; justice systems and &#8220;immigration discounts&#8221; for criminals, <em>and they are correct.</em></p>
<h2 class="text-text-100 mt-3 -mb-1 text-[1.125rem] font-bold" data-sourcepos="67:1-67:21;7694-7714">True story: Racism in Canada had been all but eradicated.</h2>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" data-sourcepos="69:1-69:43;7716-7758">This is reason I bothered writing any of this. Because it&#8217;s Canada Day. And I see too many reactions to what has happened in this country get boiled down to the lowest-IQ filter that exists: racism.</p>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" data-sourcepos="71:1-71:311;7760-8070">For what now seems like a bygone Golden Age, racism in this country was basically over.</p>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" data-sourcepos="71:1-71:311;7760-8070">Structural racism had been excised from the systems and institutions while garden variety cultural racism was confined to relatively few fringe dwellers. Every few families had one of those Archie Bunker type uncles and nobody really took them seriously.</p>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" data-sourcepos="71:1-71:311;7760-8070">The overwhelming majority of Canadians, born here and immigrants alike, simply did not organize their lives around skin colour. That was the win. That was paradise. We had it.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="71:1-71:311;7760-8070">Some may say we always sorted ourselves, that Little Italy and Little India prove it (&#8220;Checkmate, multiculturists!&#8221;). They actually prove the opposite. Ethnic neighbourhoods are on-ramps: the first generation clusters for the food and the familiarity, the second scatters to the suburbs and marries out (including inter-marriage with other groups); and the whole thing runs on choice and empties itself by design. A multi-generational bakery on a corner is culture. A Tim Horton&#8217;s staffed with TFWs is policy. The paradise ran on the former and its destruction happens on the latter.</p>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" data-sourcepos="73:1-73:44;8072-8115">Look at where a decade of <em>dismantling </em>this has left us.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="73:1-73:44;8072-8115">For starters, racism is back from both sides, with a twist:</p>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" data-sourcepos="75:1-75:452;8117-8568"><em>Structural racism came back</em>, only this time wearing progressive branding. Job postings openly signal racial and other identity preferences. Criminal sentencing now weighs a defendant&#8217;s race, background and immigration status.  A system that largely made race irrelevant has spent the last decade making it central again, then acts astonished at the reaction.</p>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" data-sourcepos="77:1-77:509;8570-9078">And because of that reaction <em>cultural racism is now, also back with a vengeance.</em> Resentment festers among perfectly normal people, including fully integrated <em>immigrants</em> from the earlier waves who did everything right and now watch the standard collapse behind them. That Archie-Bunker racism, the crude ambient kind we had mostly shamed out of public life, is back and being said out loud. Grassroots organizations that used to sit at the crank-fringe are growing past it. Social media runs on lowest-common-denominator rage bait, and a lot of it is now straight-up racist.</p>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" data-sourcepos="79:1-79:155;9080-9234">We spent forty years turning down the temperature on race in this country and it worked. Then, in the name of turning it down further, we cranked it al the way back up.</p>
<h2 class="text-text-100 mt-3 -mb-1 text-[1.125rem] font-bold" data-sourcepos="81:1-81:47;9236-9282">The title isn&#8217;t a joke, it&#8217;s the truth.</h2>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" data-sourcepos="83:1-83:221;9284-9504">A classically liberal paradise is precisely what we built. Open, tolerant, prosperous, boringly functional, (&#8220;peace, order, good government&#8221;) the envy of people who had to flee places that were none of those things. The small-l achievement was real, and it was ours.</p>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" data-sourcepos="85:1-85:258;9506-9763">The big-L party inherited it, mistook the inheritance for a mandate to undertake a mass civilizational social engineering project, and spent a decade trading competence for platitudes, energy for symbolism, selection for volume, and hard-won racial peace for a fresh cycle of division marketed as inclusivity.</p>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" data-sourcepos="87:1-87:28;9765-9792">We had this one in the bag.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="87:1-87:28;9765-9792">Now, not so much.</p>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" data-sourcepos="89:1-89:18;9794-9811">Happy Canada Day.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="89:1-89:18;9794-9811"><em>If you&#8217;re a net-producer, high agency Canadian interested in joining a like-minded group for the politically homeless in Canada, check out <a href="https://ready.ca">Ready.ca</a></em></p>
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		<title>Is Jeremy Grantham Right Or Wrong About Bubbles (and Bitcoin)?</title>
		<link>https://bombthrower.com/is-jeremy-grantham-right-or-wrong-about-bubbles-and-bitcoin/</link>
					<comments>https://bombthrower.com/is-jeremy-grantham-right-or-wrong-about-bubbles-and-bitcoin/#respond</comments>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark E. Jeftovic]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Sat, 27 Jun 2026 21:09:24 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Bitcoin]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://bombthrower.com/?p=12438</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[The data shows the opportunity cost of avoiding bubbles in the modern era. Jeremy Grantham built a career calling bubbles. With his AUM ranging from the 65B to 120B level over his career, he&#8217;s been fairly prescient about avoiding them on behalf of his clients, and in the process became a billionaire himself. In a [&#8230;]]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;" class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons" ></div><h2></h2>
<h2><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-12440 aligncenter" src="https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/jeremy-grantham-vs-amazon-vs-bitcoin.jpeg" alt="" width="800" height="494" srcset="https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/jeremy-grantham-vs-amazon-vs-bitcoin.jpeg 1199w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/jeremy-grantham-vs-amazon-vs-bitcoin-300x185.jpeg 300w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/jeremy-grantham-vs-amazon-vs-bitcoin-1024x632.jpeg 1024w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/jeremy-grantham-vs-amazon-vs-bitcoin-768x474.jpeg 768w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/jeremy-grantham-vs-amazon-vs-bitcoin-600x370.jpeg 600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" /></h2>
<h2 style="text-align: center;">The data shows the opportunity cost of avoiding bubbles in the modern era.</h2>
<p>Jeremy Grantham built a career calling bubbles. With his AUM ranging from the 65B to 120B level over his career, he&#8217;s been fairly prescient about avoiding them on behalf of his clients, and in the process became a billionaire himself.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32u5T6lO8qk">a recent appearance on Diary of a CEO</a>, he cautioned about Amazon’s 92% drop during the dotCom bust, and he&#8217;s now warning about the AI bubble (as are many others). In a now viral clip on CNBC, he got into it with Joe Kernan and laid into Bitcoin using all the usual objections: &#8220;no use case&#8221;, &#8220;headed to zero&#8221;, and &#8220;not worth a bucket of spit&#8221;.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p dir="ltr" lang="en">At least it’s not just Bitcoiners getting into scraps! <a href="https://t.co/pfJyXM3ZFc">pic.twitter.com/pfJyXM3ZFc</a></p>
<p>— JOEY (@JoeyTweeets) <a href="https://x.com/JoeyTweeets/status/2070658084700062129?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 26, 2026</a></p></blockquote>
<p><script async src="https://platform.x.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
<p>But if you actually look at the data, you would have been better off <em>holding through bubbles</em> instead of handing your wealth over to Grantham&#8217;s GMO Fund to protect you from them. <em>And this remains true vs. most assets and across nearly all time frames.</em></p>
<p>You can see for yourself in <a href="https://thesovereigncapitalist.io/was-jeremy-grantham-right-or-wrong/">this interactive widget I put together for the next Sovereign Capitalist</a> newsletter (due out in a few days). Plug in an invetsment amount, pick an entry point: right before the DotCom bubble blew, or on the eve of the Global Financial Crisis, right on up into the pandemic: Grantham&#8217;s GMO <em>lagged everything</em> including simply indexing the S&amp;P500.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p dir="ltr" lang="en">Jeremy Grantham is making rounds sermonizing about Bitcoin and bubbles.</p>
<p>But if you look at the actual data, anybody following his advice would have been a lot worse off, across nearly every time frame over the last 30 years. <a href="https://t.co/HgJenRBtsL">pic.twitter.com/HgJenRBtsL</a></p>
<p>— Mark E. Jeftovic (@jeftovic) <a href="https://x.com/jeftovic/status/2070926275049590982?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 27, 2026</a></p></blockquote>
<p><script async src="https://platform.x.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
<p><strong>When The Monetary Physics Change</strong></p>
<p>In the letter, I get into why this is the case: why are &#8220;the perma-bears&#8221; (in Grantham&#8217;s own words, and the title of his new book) may be looking at the wrong measure, and the wrong axis when it comes to figuring out what&#8217;s <em>overvalued</em> and what, if anything, is truly headed to zero (I&#8217;ll give you a hint: it&#8217;s not Space-X and it sure isn&#8217;t <em>Bitcoin)</em> but I&#8217;ll lay out the analogy here (which was admittedly cribbed from Alex Hormozi, who swiped it from Brian Johnson).</p>
<p>Hormozi used it in the context of how I is changing the world. This is true, but it also applies to the inexorable debasement of the monetary layer through debasement.</p>
<p>Here&#8217;s the analogy of &#8220;<em>when the physics change</em>&#8220;:</p>
<p class="p1">A school of fish are swimming around in water. A few of them become experts at swimming. They train their entire lives, they practice every day, they study the expert swimmers of previous eras, and they analyze nearly every aspect of the water they inhabit: it’s PH levels, acidity, currents, flow &#8211; everything.</p>
<p class="p1">They gain an intuitive feel for how even a slight variance in one factor impacts the others &#8211; they know “which way the current is going”.</p>
<p class="p1">But over time, the water heats up &#8211; they may pick up on this, but they’re never quite prepared for what it means beyond a certain point.</p>
<p class="p1">It&#8217;s the point that puts them wrong-footed, <em>the phase-shift:</em> the water evaporates &#8211; and now it’s gas. Steam.</p>
<p class="p1">Setting aside for our purposes how this would fry the fish, imagine they’re still alive, but now they’re trying to apply everything they know about <i>swimming </i>in <i>water </i>to this new environment, which is gaseous, not liquid.</p>
<p class="p1">They would be flailing and flapping around like the proverbial “fish out of water”.</p>
<p class="p1">What happened?</p>
<p class="p1">They were never wrong about their fluid dynamics.</p>
<p class="p1">The physics changed and they had no model for the new reality.</p>
<p>The measuring stick of fiat currency is the water that is boiling away.</p>
<p>I&#8217;ve been saying it forever, <em><a href="https://bombthrower.com/its-the-denominator-stupid/">it&#8217;s the denominator stupid.</a></em></p>
<p>People like Grantham don&#8217;t even look at it. Over the course of the Diary of a CEO interview I don&#8217;t think he mentions it once. In his <a href="https://amzn.to/4eUoruq"><strong>&#8220;The Making of a Perma-Bear&#8221;</strong></a> book, he mentions inflation in exactly three places, and always with respect to their effect on P/E multiples. In the third instance he only mentions to acknowledge that during the pandemic, multiples went the <em>opposite</em> direction he would have expected, given the higher inflation.</p>
<p><a href="https://thesovereigncapitalist.io/was-jeremy-grantham-right-or-wrong/">Go take a look at the data</a>, plug in some numbers and starting dates for yourself. You&#8217;ll see exactly what the phase shift looks like.</p>
<p>More in this in the next edition of my premium newsletter <a href="https://thesovereigncapitalist.io/coming-soon/">The Sovereign Capitalist</a>.</p>
<p><em>You can get on the waiting list and members get an advance copy of my new book: <a href="https://thesovereigncapitalist.io/coming-soon/"><strong>The Blueprint: Survive and Thrive in an Overclocked Timeline. </strong></a></em></p>
<p><em>Follow <a href="https://x.com/jeftovic">me on X here.</a></em></p>
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		<title>Ask not ‘for whom the bonds toll’…</title>
		<link>https://bombthrower.com/ask-not-for-whom-the-bonds-toll/</link>
					<comments>https://bombthrower.com/ask-not-for-whom-the-bonds-toll/#respond</comments>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark E. Jeftovic]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Sat, 13 Jun 2026 15:36:19 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Zeitgeist]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://bombthrower.com/?p=12403</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[Two inexorable realities have come into sharpened focus over the last month or so. Both are themes we have been exploring and monitoring &#8211; one, since practically the very beginning of this service, the other, over the last year or so. The first is the unsustainable nature of the global monetary system: we are not [&#8230;]]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;" class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons" ></div><figure id="attachment_12405" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-12405" style="width: 800px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-12405" src="https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Battle-of-the-Novgorodians.png" alt="" width="800" height="1083" srcset="https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Battle-of-the-Novgorodians.png 1166w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Battle-of-the-Novgorodians-222x300.png 222w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Battle-of-the-Novgorodians-757x1024.png 757w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Battle-of-the-Novgorodians-768x1039.png 768w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Battle-of-the-Novgorodians-1135x1536.png 1135w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Battle-of-the-Novgorodians-600x812.png 600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-12405" class="wp-caption-text">“Battle of the Novgorodians with the Suzdalian” circa 1450</figcaption></figure>
<p>Two inexorable realities have come into sharpened focus over the last month or so. Both are themes we have been exploring and monitoring &#8211; one, since practically the very beginning of this service, the other, over the last year or so.</p>
<p>The first is the unsustainable nature of the global monetary system: we are not unique in calling that out &#8211; it’s practically a trope and has been for a long time.</p>
<p>The other is the existential necessity to <em>win </em>the new arms race &#8211; which is less about kinetic weapons now and more about <em>computation, </em>information and 5GW<em>.</em></p>
<p>In the past, when the Soviet Union put as astronaut into space before NASA, it was a humiliation and a psychological defeat &#8211; but the USA arguably still held strategic advantage where it counted <em>at the time,</em> which was here on earth, with more nuclear missiles, tanks and military bases than the USSR.</p>
<p>The US space program kicked into overdrive, and NASA was able to slingshot past the Russians, and over time and across more dimensions, the Soviets never caught back up or retook the lead &#8211; in anything.</p>
<p>To this day, Russia’s resurgence onto the world stage &#8211; articulated through concepts such as Neo-Eurasionism or “Third Rome” (basically their version of “Manifest Destiny”) &#8211; is more than anything, an aspirational framework for “getting up to speed”, while rationalizing their inability to do so in traditionalist, volk-ish trappings.</p>
<p>Their high priest of this quixotic mix, is “Fourth Political Theory” author, university professor and philosopher, Alexander Dugin &#8211; whose other titles include “Last War of the World-Island” and &#8211; perhaps most tellingly, although least known of his works here in the West &#8211; “Katechon and Revolution”.</p>
<p>The word “Katechon” (from the Greek: ὁ κατέχων / τὸ κατέχον which translates loosely as “the Restrainer”) is important in the Russian collective psyche because it contains a massive “tell”.On its surface, it’s supposed to encompass Russia’s “state messianism” and symbolize its opposition to The West &#8211; their “Antikeimenos”.</p>
<p>The day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Dugin posted on Facebook <em>“Now we are in a war of the spirits. Katechon vs. Antekeimenos”.</em></p>
<p>Antikeimenos (from the Greek: ὁ ἀντικείμενος) is the term St. Paul uses in Thessalonians 2:4 for the figure of the Antichrist. It appears exactly once in the Greek New Testament, in that single verse. The literal sense is “the one who opposes” or “the one set against”.</p>
<p>And therein lays “the tell” &#8211; what the Russian collective psyche is admitting to, and trying to come to grips with, and it is this:</p>
<p>If we reframe the Cold War as the first <em>technological contest</em> between Great Powers, Russia has to confront the fact that <em>they lost</em> &#8211; and they’ve never been able to recover from it.</p>
<p>In the contemporary pantheon of international relations and political economy, absolutely nobody today thinks of Russia as a “great power”. When you peel back the ideations of “The Fifth Empire” or “The Soviet Union 2.0”, you get to that underlying underdog mentality &#8211; trying to recapture super-power status.</p>
<p>They lost the space race. Then the Cold War, and now they can’t even beat the Ukraine.</p>
<p>That was <em>supposed to be </em>an overwhelming military victory, but the Ukrainians, mainly through wholesale adoption of drone warfare, have managed to give the invaders a rough time of it, even penetrating deep into Russian territory using high-altitude balloons to deliver suicide drones.</p>
<p>Make no mistake, all that financial support from the West aside, the Ukrainians have been able to stave off complete defeat through technological means and because cheap, sophisticated weaponry (drones) completely upended the conventional battlefield.Such are the travails of an erstwhile great power that has lost a technological competition. You can bet today’s incumbents &#8211; namely the USA and China &#8211; understand these stakes, and neither of them has any intention of losing:</p>
<ul>
<li>AI</li>
<li>Energy</li>
<li>High Performance Computing (which leads us into)</li>
<li>The Space Race 2.0</li>
<li>Quantum Computing</li>
</ul>
<p>This is why the “catastrophic climate change” narrative has been rather suddenly sunsetted in The West (at least, the non-Euro west): we need more energy, including nuclear &#8211; lots, and lots of nuclear.</p>
<p>It’s why White House Asset Management (WHAM) is pumping money into quantum computing companies (including, from our wish list: D-Wave, which we hadn’t yet pulled the trigger on).</p>
<p>It’s also why China has moved further out on the interventionist side of the state capitalism spectrum, with mandated “Capital Reallocation” programs where the government has issued structural directives forcing state-owned pensions, insurance funds, and enterprise pools to funnel trillions of yuan directly into equities, while the state-backed “National Team” continues steady, strategic purchases of domestic ETFs to put a floor under major indices.</p>
<p>The Chinese debt overhang on bad real estate loans is even larger than what we had here in the run up to the GFC, so regulators there are pulling out all the stops to keep the balloon duct-taped together:In early 2026, Beijing quietly abolished enforcement of its strict “three red lines” policy. Developers are no longer required to report monthly data regarding debt-to-equity, cash, and asset metrics, freeing up fresh credit channels.</p>
<p>They’ve backstopped an additional 7 trillion yuan under a new “property project whitelist” mechanism, which extends developer loan maturities by up to five additional years to stave off defaults.</p>
<p>Commercial and state banks are aggressively financed to help local governments buy up unsold, completed housing inventory directly from developers to convert them into subsidized public housing (this is a nominally communist country, so why not).</p>
<p>To top it all off, we’re seeing capital flight restrictions &#8211; going so far as to prevent technology transfers to the West via acquisition (we covered last month how Meta’s acquisition of Manus was blocked and reversed by state authorities).</p>
<p>Any rational observer of finance and economics knows that all world economies, including The World Economy, is levitating in mid-air buoyed by stimulus, signal suppression and pure white-knuckled will.</p>
<p>In prior years, when all the financial commentators and contrarians were waiting for this to hit a wall, we all marvelled (at least I did) how the system was kept on the rails <em>at all costs</em> &#8211; because too much was riding on it to let rational economics and market restructuring take their course.</p>
<p>That was before AI. Before it became apparent that not being number one in this technological arms race had civilizational consequences, like joining Russia as another “also-ran”.</p>
<p>Once again, the contradictions and distortions that this imperative amplifies are bubbling to the surface.</p>
<p>On one hand &#8211; all rational analysis of the market is <em>screaming “</em>overbought”. Practically every financial commentator I came up following is looking at this and making comparisons with the dot-com bubble; the AI high flyers now look a lot like Global Crossing, Nortel, L3, VA Linux before they all imploded.</p>
<p>My X feed is absolutely jam-packed with people posting screenshots of 7-figure trading accounts that were ostensibly amassed in under a year trading HPC, AI, chip makers, memory, and now quantum (again).</p>
<p>Zerohedge has remarked <a href="https://www.zerohedge.com/ai/entire-ai-boom-built-fake-revenues">on the circular nature</a> of the AI economy more than once:</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter" src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!DYFT!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fea52cc37-daa5-4021-8839-ec32b147c78d_1881x1295.png" alt="" width="805" height="554" /></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Note that the above-linked article (from which the screenshot came) is a Tyler Durden original, it is not a repost of somebody else’s article.</p>
<p>Tyler has this annoying trait: he’s always early and he’s often right.</p>
<p>Yet it’s possible the man himself buried the lede (from that screen cap):</p>
<p><em>“The Infinite Money Glitch”</em></p>
<p>By all rational and financially coherent measures, the equities markets are overvalued, beyond bubble levels and primed for a catastrophic drop on the order of, pick one, 50%, 75%, <em>90%. </em>Yes. 90%. We’ve been pumping since 2008 folks. Even further if you go back to the beginning of the equities supercycle in 1982.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter" src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!sZHp!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe27c33f1-5297-41f3-b7c6-f1d3942583dc_1574x749.png" width="895" height="426" /></p>
<p>After the dot-com bust, we were in a bear market for two years. When the GFC finally hit, it was straight down for a good 18 months. When COVID was coming, the banking system was starting to crack up under the hood (the reverse repo situation in late 2019) but when it came unglued in March, it was about two weeks before the monetary bazookas were unleashed and <em>everything</em> reversed hard of the March low.</p>
<p>What happens after that is instructive:</p>
<p>The Regional Banking crisis erupted, and was even larger in nominal terms than the GFC when it came to the amount of assets tied to bank failures. The Fed threw the taper overboard, did a massive liquidity injection and after a failed attempt to pick and choose winners in terms of which banks to save, caved in to public uproar and backstopped <em>everything.</em></p>
<p>Liberation Day, Japan-ageddon, Israel/Iran/Gaza barely perturb the trajectory.</p>
<p>If you switch out of linear mode for that long-term chart, and go to logarithmic &#8211; you should recognize the pattern:</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter" src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!GZqG!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F36763047-c65e-49ba-b105-c672664bfdc8_1580x738.png" width="899" height="420" /></p>
<p>It’s the same as Bitcoin, which is the same as gold during the Weimar Republic and it’s the same signal being broadcast from every one of those charts.</p>
<p>We should acknowledge that the Nasdaq took 15 years to recover from the Dotcom shakeout, which is a long time to be underwater if you bought in at the tippy-top.</p>
<p>But I believe two things have changed since the GFC:</p>
<p>The first is that tech, despite taking the biggest hit, almost by definition when the Dotcom bubble blew, also became the apex asset class from here on out.</p>
<p>If you look at the long-term chart for the Nasdaq, it basically went parabolic for the first half of the equities supercycle, and formed a double-bottom from the Dotcom crash to the GFC</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter" src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!UIDK!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffafe8386-989e-44a8-82d0-82517fa535bd_1580x743.png" width="930" height="438" /></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>After that it blasted off and has left everything else in its dust:</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter" src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!BwLY!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3bd8b77d-129f-4b32-b4c5-21707fc0f634_1483x458.png" width="896" height="277" /></p>
<p>This makes perfect sense, because tech is the asset class of choice in a world driven by acceleration and tachyosis.</p>
<p>We can’t put Bitcoin in that chart because it’s basically a divide by zero error. But if we take the commonly held, first market price ever for Bitcoin, which was $0.10, it pencils out to an absurd value. Call it 77,719,900% and leave it there.</p>
<p>It’s not uncommon to hear criticisms of Bitcoin that are simply “all it does is follow tech”.</p>
<p>Yeah, no shit. That’s because it <em>is</em> tech.</p>
<p>The other thing I believe about all this, is Raoul Pal’s theory that after the GFC, the world’s central banks got together and made a deal to <em>never </em>let anything like that happen, ever again.</p>
<p>Which means that central bank balance sheets will grow in perpetuity, and stock market will <em>never </em>have a meaningful bear market &#8211; <em>for the remainder of the duration of the current monetary system:</em></p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter" src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!lYKy!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe22cb8ff-de50-49fa-900a-a54f52e78b63_1831x930.png" width="830" height="422" /></p>
<p>That’s from Raoul Pal’s “Everything Code”, it goes on:</p>
<ul>
<li>They don’t understand valuations are a function of debasement.</li>
<li>They don’t understand why technology rises and valuations can keep rising.</li>
<li>They don’t understand why crypto is being adopted and is the fastest horse in the race.</li>
<li>They don’t understand why the dollar keeps rising.</li>
<li>They don’t understand that energy transition is real and is crucial for the world economy.</li>
<li>They don’t understand why rates won’t remain high.</li>
<li>They don’t understand why GPT4/AI is the biggest humanity-scale event since the splitting of the atom.</li>
<li>They don’t understand why this is all so fucking deflationary. They want their sticky inflation. They will not get it.</li>
<li>They don’t understand why nothing in their world makes sense.</li>
</ul>
<p>We understand it. Because we know the cheat code, which is:</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter" src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!kFgx!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3f825a8a-d888-4183-9f9b-8e05a3f215fa_1896x1243.png" width="912" height="598" /></p>
<p>Put the chart into logarithmic view.</p>
<p>Look at the X axis.</p>
<p>Then own the assets that are outpacing everything else on that scale.</p>
<p>That’s it.</p>
<p><em>Get on the Bombthrower <a href="/join">mailing list here</a>. Premium members of The Sovereign Capitalist have already received advance copies of my new book: <strong>The Blueprint: Survive and Thrive in an Overclocked Timeline </strong>&#8211; we launch in two weeks, <a href="https://thesovereigncapitalist.io">get on the invite list here.</a> </em></p>
<p><em>Follow me </em><a href="https://x.com/jeftovic"><em>on X here.</em></a></p>
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		<title>De-Banking and Institutional Pressure: The Systematic Financial Sabotage of Chris Horlacher</title>
		<link>https://bombthrower.com/de-banking-and-institutional-pressure-the-systematic-financial-sabotage-of-chris-horlacher/</link>
					<comments>https://bombthrower.com/de-banking-and-institutional-pressure-the-systematic-financial-sabotage-of-chris-horlacher/#respond</comments>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Chris]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Tue, 09 Jun 2026 09:00:20 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Bitcoin]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Business]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Clown World]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cryptocurrencies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Disruption]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cibc]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[CSIS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[de-banking]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Equibit]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Five Eyes]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[revolut]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sabotage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[td canada trust]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[zersetzung]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://bombthrower.com/?p=12383</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[If you are new to the Equibit story, please read The Assassination of Equibit, originally released in 2023. A recurring and particularly damaging element in the campaign against Equibit Group founder Chris Horlacher has been the repeated disruption of his access to banking and payment systems — commonly referred to as de-banking. These incidents have not only [&#8230;]]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;" class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons" ></div><p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-12372" src="https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/de-banking.jpg" alt="" width="1168" height="784" srcset="https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/de-banking.jpg 1168w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/de-banking-300x201.jpg 300w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/de-banking-1024x687.jpg 1024w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/de-banking-768x516.jpg 768w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/de-banking-600x403.jpg 600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1168px) 100vw, 1168px" /></p>
<p><em>If you are new to the Equibit story, please read <a href="https://bombthrower.com/the-assassination-of-equibit/">The Assassination of Equibit</a>, originally released in 2023.</em></p>
<p>A recurring and particularly damaging element in the campaign against Equibit Group founder Chris Horlacher has been the repeated disruption of his access to banking and payment systems — commonly referred to as <strong>de-banking</strong>. These incidents have not only created severe operational challenges but also appear designed to isolate him financially while he pursues justice in the Canadian courts.</p>
<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Major Incidents of Financial Interference</h2>
<p><strong>Revolut / Lead Bank (2025–2026)</strong></p>
<p>Chris maintained two U.S. business accounts with the fintech platform Revolut. After months of normal activity, both accounts were frozen without any notice being provided to Chris. One suspension occurred shortly after Revolut had upgraded the account to a custom “Enterprise” plan based on the company’s foreign exchange volumes. Despite multiple support inquiries, Revolut provided almost no meaningful explanation, citing only a vague “security review.” Both accounts were ultimately terminated with no right of appeal, causing significant disruption to business operations.</p>
<p><strong>TD Canada Trust – The Norm Bailey Case</strong></p>
<p>In early 2026 Norm Bailey, a hopeful member of one of Chris’s clients, attempted to send a legitimate payment for a membership fee. TD Bank blocked the transaction and subjected Norm to aggressive interrogation by a senior representative who only identified himself as “Phil.” Norm later described the ordeal in an email to Chris, whom he had recently met at the <a href="https://anarchapulco.com/">Anarchapulco 2026</a> conference:</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow"><p>“Subsequently, three days later we were contacted by a mystery figure in the TD organization who only identified himself by his first name… He proceeded to drill us on what the wire transfer was for… After a lengthy question period and listening to his repeated accusations that we were taking part in a scam he suddenly said he was closing all my accounts at TD… We were in serious shock. Ive been with them for 65 years… We were both very close to having a heart attack.”</p></blockquote>
<p>Under extreme duress, Norm and his wife were pressured into admitting the payment might be related to a “scam” and promising never to do business with the Horlacher-linked entity again. Only then were their accounts restored. Norm explicitly stated that <strong>“our lives were in danger due to the stress we were under.”</strong></p>
<p><strong>CIBC – Suspicious Inquiries</strong></p>
<p>Chris has received multiple calls from individuals expressing interest in his client’s services but who refused to provide their full names or the name of their employer. One such call originated from the CIBC toll-free number <strong>1-866-639-5014</strong>, which was recorded by Chris. These interactions appeared structured to entice Chris into performing regulated money transmitter activities without proper licensing — a potential entrapment scenario.</p>
<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Broader Pattern</h2>
<p>These events are not isolated. They form part of a sustained pattern of financial and institutional pressure that has intensified around key milestones in the Equibit lawsuits. Clients and business associates have reported unusual scrutiny whenever Horlacher’s name or associated entities are involved. Traditional banking relationships have become unreliable, forcing Chris to operate with reduced access to essential financial infrastructure.</p>
<p>This type of economic isolation is a hallmark of <strong>Zersetzung </strong>— the Stasi’s strategy of quietly undermining a target’s ability to function normally so that their struggles appear self-inflicted.</p>
<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Why This Is So Concerning</h2>
<p>Access to banking and payment systems is fundamental in a modern economy. When financial institutions appear to act in coordination — or at minimum show unusual responsiveness — to pressure someone engaged in litigation against intelligence agencies, it raises profound questions about:</p>
<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>The independence of Canada’s financial sector</li>
<li>Potential weaponization of “risk management” and “compliance” processes as tools of retaliation</li>
<li>The practical ability of citizens to challenge powerful state actors without facing extralegal consequences</li>
</ul>
<p>Chris has been personally out-of-pocket hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal costs while simultaneously fighting to maintain basic financial functionality.</p>
<p><strong>Further Reading &amp; Evidence:</strong></p>
<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><a href="https://equibitlawsuit.com/router-sabotage-exposed/">Router Sabotage via TR-069 Protocol</a></li>
<li><a href="https://equibitlawsuit.com/dns-man-in-the-middle-attack-exposed/">DNS Man-in-the-Middle Attack</a></li>
<li><a href="https://equibitlawsuit.com/microsoft-under-fire/">Microsoft Unauthorized Access Incidents</a></li>
<li><a href="https://equibitlawsuit.com/nasa-caught-in-honeypot/">NASA HPCC Honeypot Probe</a></li>
</ul>
<p>The combination of technical surveillance, financial de-banking, and institutional obstacles paints a disturbing picture of alleged multi-domain harassment.</p>
<p>If you believe financial institutions should remain neutral and that litigants deserve protection from economic retaliation, please share this post and help bring greater awareness to these issues.</p>
<p><em>Stay tuned to <a href="http://equibitlawsuit.com/">equibitlawsuit.com</a> for more updates on the Equibit lawsuits against CSIS and related actors.</em></p>
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		<title>Microsoft Under Fire: Evidence of Unauthorized Access, Mass Updates, and Potential Intelligence Agency Exploitation</title>
		<link>https://bombthrower.com/microsoft-under-fire-evidence-of-unauthorized-access-mass-updates-and-potential-intelligence-agency-exploitation/</link>
					<comments>https://bombthrower.com/microsoft-under-fire-evidence-of-unauthorized-access-mass-updates-and-potential-intelligence-agency-exploitation/#comments</comments>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Chris]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Tue, 19 May 2026 15:04:27 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Bitcoin]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Clown World]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cryptocurrencies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Disruption]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Zeitgeist]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[bill c-22]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[CSIS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Equibit]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Five Eyes]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[microsoft]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[windows]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://bombthrower.com/?p=12369</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[If you are new to the Equibit story, please read The Assassination of Equibit, originally released in 2023. Chris Horlacher has documented multiple sophisticated intrusions through his Microsoft ecosystem. These incidents go well beyond ordinary malware and align with key moments in his legal activities. They indicate a close collaboration between Microsoft and the Five Eyes [&#8230;]]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;" class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons" ></div><p><img decoding="async" src="https://equibitlawsuit.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/microsoft_danger.jpg" /></p>
<p><em>If you are new to the Equibit story, please read <a href="https://bombthrower.com/the-assassination-of-equibit/">The Assassination of Equibit</a>, originally released in 2023.</em></p>
<p>Chris Horlacher has documented multiple sophisticated intrusions through his Microsoft ecosystem. These incidents go well beyond ordinary malware and align with key moments in his legal activities. They indicate a close collaboration between Microsoft and the Five Eyes to deliver undetectable spyware onto targeted devices in order to steal information and interfere with the normal functions of the computer.</p>
<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Key Incidents of Unauthorized Access</h2>
<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><strong>July 19, 2025 – Unauthorized Sharing of Sensitive Memo<br />
</strong>A confidential memo was suddenly made publicly shareable via OneDrive using Chris’s own Microsoft account. He did not perform this action. During the event, his computer’s built-in screen recorder was disabled. Luckily Chris was able to capture the event with his cell phone’s camera.</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Watch the incident:</strong></p>
<p><iframe loading="lazy" title="MS OneDrive Hacking 1" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YVTAubIGWGY?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><strong>August 27, 2025 – Spontaneous File Movement<br />
</strong>A critical security report analyzing router compromises was mysteriously moved to the desktop.</li>
<li><strong>October 27, 2025 – Camera Roll Breach<br />
</strong>OneDrive logs showed someone browsing the Camera Roll folder containing images taken directly by the device, as well as two files related to psychology that provide insight as to the hacker’s identity (more on that in later posts!)</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Watch the Camera Roll intrusion:</strong></p>
<p><iframe loading="lazy" title="MS OneDrive Hacking 2" width="422" height="750" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/C78HfMvJT7Q?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Mass Windows &amp; BIOS Updates – Highly Suspicious Timing</h2>
<p>On August 18, 2025, immediately before a strategy call with his lawyers about upcoming discovery sessions, Chris’s computer began installing an unusually large wave of updates — including Windows, BIOS, and more than a dozen other components. He described it as one of the largest simultaneous update pushes he had ever experienced. Call quality then rapidly deteriorated and the connection was terminated exactly when the discussion turned to sensitive topics.</p>
<p>This event is especially concerning in the context of Bill C-22, Canada’s proposed Lawful Access Act. Part 2 of the bill would require electronic service providers (including software and operating system vendors) to build and maintain technical capabilities to facilitate authorized access to information by law enforcement and CSIS. Critics argue this could effectively compel companies like Microsoft to enable mechanisms for delivering signed updates or payloads that Windows would trust by default. Because Microsoft-signed updates are automatically trusted by the operating system, they represent a powerful and nearly undetectable vector for delivering targeted tools to specific users.</p>
<p><strong>For more on Bill C-22:</strong></p>
<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><a href="https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/csj-sjc/pl/c22/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Department of Justice Backgrounder</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.michaelgeist.ca/2026/05/the-lawful-access-two-headed-surveillance-monster-how-bill-c-22-went-off-the-rails/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Michael Geist Analysis</a></li>
</ul>
<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Nightmare Eclipse Zero-Days and Browsergate</h2>
<p>These incidents occurred against the backdrop of major Microsoft security controversies. In 2026, researcher <strong>Nightmare-Eclipse</strong> (also known as Chaotic Eclipse) publicly released several high-impact Windows zero-days, including exploits targeting Windows Defender and privilege escalation mechanisms. Some researchers have speculated that certain vulnerabilities may have been known internally for extended periods before public disclosure.</p>
<p>Additionally, <strong>Browsergate </strong>exposed serious allegations against LinkedIn (owned by Microsoft). According to a detailed report by Fairlinked e.V.:</p>
<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>LinkedIn allegedly injected JavaScript that scanned users’ browsers for over <strong>6,000 Chrome extensions</strong>.</li>
<li>The script reportedly collected detailed device telemetry and extension data without clear user consent or prominent disclosure in the privacy policy.</li>
<li>This allowed LinkedIn to build extensive user profiles, potentially identifying competitors, corporate tools, and other sensitive software.</li>
</ul>
<p>The revelations led to privacy lawsuits and widespread criticism. You can read the original report here: <a href="https://browsergate.eu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">BrowserGate.eu</a></p>
<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Broader Implications</h2>
<p>These events demonstrate deep access into Chris’s systems, precise timing aligned with legal activities, and the ability to manipulate core operating system functions. When combined with other documented technical attacks, they highlight growing risks around proprietary platforms and the potential for state-level exploitation.</p>
<p><strong>Further Reading &amp; Updates:</strong></p>
<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Additional technical evidence and interviews in the Media section</li>
<li>Ongoing lawsuit developments at equibitlawsuit.com</li>
</ul>
<p>This case raises important questions about digital privacy, corporate responsibilities, and the balance between security and individual rights. Share this post if you believe these issues deserve greater public scrutiny.</p>
<p><em>Stay tuned to <a href="http://equibitlawsuit.com/">equibitlawsuit.com</a> for more updates on the Equibit lawsuits against CSIS and related actors.</em></p>
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		<title>Router Sabotage Exposed: Clear Evidence of Targeted Attacks via TR-069 on Equibit Founder’s Network</title>
		<link>https://bombthrower.com/router-sabotage-exposed-clear-evidence-of-targeted-attacks-via-tr-069-on-equibit-founders-network/</link>
					<comments>https://bombthrower.com/router-sabotage-exposed-clear-evidence-of-targeted-attacks-via-tr-069-on-equibit-founders-network/#comments</comments>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Chris]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Tue, 12 May 2026 09:00:49 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Bitcoin]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Business]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[CBDCs]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Clown World]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cryptocurrencies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Disruption]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Transhumanism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[CSIS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Equibit]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Five Eyes]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[hacking]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tr-069]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://bombthrower.com/?p=12358</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[If you are new to the Equibit story, please read The Assassination of Equibit, originally released in 2023. In the ongoing campaign of digital harassment and sabotage documented by Chris Horlacher, one of the most technical and intrusive episodes involves repeated compromises of his home routers in Mexico. These incidents directly affected Chris Horlacher’s ability [&#8230;]]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;" class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons" ></div><p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-12360 size-large" src="https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/router-1024x687.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="687" srcset="https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/router-1024x687.jpg 1024w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/router-300x201.jpg 300w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/router-768x516.jpg 768w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/router-600x403.jpg 600w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/router.jpg 1168w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></p>
<p><em>If you are new to the Equibit story, please read <a href="https://bombthrower.com/the-assassination-of-equibit/">The Assassination of Equibit</a>, originally released in 2023.</em></p>
<p>In the ongoing campaign of digital harassment and sabotage documented by Chris Horlacher, one of the most technical and intrusive episodes involves repeated compromises of his home routers in Mexico. These incidents directly affected Chris Horlacher’s ability to work, communicate securely, and access the internet—targeting only specific devices while sparing others on the same network.</p>
<p>This pattern aligns with advanced persistent threats, often linked to state-level or ISP-enabled capabilities.</p>
<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Background: Part of a Broader Pattern</h2>
<p>After fleeing Canada due to chronic digital intrusions and other events stemming from what he believed to be the lawsuits he just filed, Chris continued facing disruptions. VPN instability, selective device blocking, and unexplained connectivity issues prompted deeper investigation. Factory resets provided temporary relief, but problems returned rapidly—classic behavior of persistent malware or remote management exploits</p>
<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The Attacks: Huawei HG8145V5V3 and ZTE F670L Routers</h2>
<p><strong>Key Anomalies Observed:</strong></p>
<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><strong>1981 Timestamps:</strong> Multiple log entries show dates like 1981-01-01. This is a strong indicator of Real-Time Clock (RTC) reset or deliberate log tampering/manipulation, often seen when firmware is altered or during boot-level interference. Security analysis reports explicitly flag these as “Backdated logs to 1981 (RTC reset or tampering).”</li>
<li><strong>Custom Firewall Rules &amp; Selective Blocking:</strong> Firewall settings changed to “user defined.” Specific devices (Chris’s and his wife’s) lost internet access while others worked, consistent with targeted rules or a Remote Access Trojan (RAT).</li>
<li><strong>Rapid Re-infection Post-Reset:</strong> Issues returned within hours, even on a replacement router from the ISP (Telmex).</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>From the ZTE Log (August 2025, post-reset):</strong></p>
<pre class="wp-block-code"><code>2025-08-04T16:16:01Z [Error] |dnsmasq| bind interface socket failed 99
2025-08-04T16:16:01Z [Error] !!!!!![high Alert for send msg in POWERON]...
[Warning] RunPCB process[omci] Event[0x3e81]...</code></pre>
<p>High-priority OMCI/GPON messages immediately after boot, IPv6 route injections before full WAN negotiation, and MultiAPD errors point to remote provisioning activity.</p>
<p><strong>From Huawei Logs (July 2025):</strong></p>
<p>Numerous <code>1981-01-01</code> entries alongside PPPoE renegotiations, deprecated SSL methods, and DHCP NAKs (potential MAC spoofing or rogue activity). Frequent PPPoE sessions suggest possible DoS or disruption attempts.</p>
<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Expert Security Analysis</h2>
<p>Independent analysis by a professional (using SIEM-style detection) on both routers confirmed:</p>
<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><a id="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TR-069" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TR-069">TR-069/OMCI</a> remote provisioning activity.</li>
<li>Backdated logs and tampering indicators.</li>
<li>Potential RAT presence and DoS patterns.</li>
<li>Recommendations: Replace/reflash router, disable TR-069, scan devices, and isolate vulnerable hardware (e.g., older Smart TV).</li>
</ul>
<p><a href="https://equibitlawsuit.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Huawei_Router_Security_Analysis_Report_Detailed_Final.pdf">Huawei Router Analysis Report (PDF)</a></p>
<p><a href="https://equibitlawsuit.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Huawei_Router_Security_Analysis_Report_Detailed_Final.pdf">ZTE Router Analysis Report (PDF)</a></p>
<p><strong>TR-069 (CWMP) Vulnerabilities:</strong> This Broadband Forum protocol enables ISPs to remotely manage Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) like routers via an Auto-Configuration Server (ACS), often over port 7547. While intended for legitimate management, it is notoriously exploitable. Compromised ACS servers or weak implementations allow attackers full remote control, DNS redirection, firmware backdoors, and persistent access. It has been weaponized in botnets (e.g., Mirai variants) and enables exactly the selective targeting and re-infection seen here. Many ISPs do not allow users to fully disable it.</p>
<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Video Evidence: Router Investigations</h2>
<p>Watch Chris document the issues in real-time:</p>
<p>Part 1: Initial router access and strange behavior.</p>
<p><iframe loading="lazy" title="Router Investigation - Part 1" width="500" height="375" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/QoV4TvfRjV4?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
<p>Part 2: Firewall changes, selective blocking, and admin interface interference.</p>
<p><iframe loading="lazy" title="Router Investigation - Part 2" width="500" height="375" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/53DDBxaPsT0?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
<p>Part 3: Factory reset, log downloads, and post-reset observations.</p>
<p><iframe loading="lazy" title="Router Investigation - Part 3" width="500" height="375" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Y71k7Nb67sA?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
<p>Part 4 (Short): Post-reset functionality vs. actual device connectivity failure.</p>
<p><iframe loading="lazy" title="Router Investigation - Part 4" width="422" height="750" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/TAnkcbMdYDc?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Implications</h2>
<p>These attacks go beyond typical criminal hacking. The precision (device-specific blocking), persistence across hardware swaps, use of ISP-managed protocols, and alignment with other documented sabotage (e.g., Microsoft OneDrive tampering, email spoofing, bank disruptions) point to sophisticated actors with significant resources—potentially leveraging intelligence or ISP cooperation.</p>
<p>Combined with the broader evidence in the Factum (honeypot hits from government networks, Keybase anomalies, etc.), this leaves little doubt that Chris Horlacher’s infrastructure was under targeted surveillance and disruption.</p>
<p><strong>What You Can Do:</strong></p>
<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Demand transparency from ISPs on remote management (TR-069/OMCI).</li>
<li>Support calls for accountability in intelligence oversight.</li>
<li>Share this post—stories like this highlight risks to innovators and due process.</li>
</ul>
<p>Full logs and analysis reports (Huawei and ZTE PDFs) are available for review upon request for credible researchers/journalists.</p>
<p>This is not paranoia. This is documented technical evidence of invasive digital warfare against a Canadian entrepreneur and litigant, across national boundaries, violating the property of a foreign ISP.</p>
<p><em>Stay tuned to <a href="http://equibitlawsuit.com">equibitlawsuit.com</a> for more updates on the Equibit lawsuits against CSIS and related actors.</em></p>
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		<title>The Technate Was Always Coming.</title>
		<link>https://bombthrower.com/the-technate-was-always-coming/</link>
					<comments>https://bombthrower.com/the-technate-was-always-coming/#comments</comments>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark E. Jeftovic]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Fri, 24 Apr 2026 16:07:55 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Zeitgeist]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://bombthrower.com/?p=12343</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[And what you can do about it (besides complaining). Palantir dropped a manifesto last weekend. 22 bullet points distilled from Alex Karp&#8217;s book The Technological Republic, posted to X with the casual framing of &#8220;because we get asked a lot.&#8221; I haven&#8217;t seen a reaction so widespread, unanimously opposed and viscerally aghast since James Damore&#8217;s [&#8230;]]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;" class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons" ></div><figure style="margin: 16px 0;"><img decoding="async" class="aligncenter" style="max-width: 100%; height: 427px;" src="https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/technate-hero.jpg" alt="The Technate Was Always Coming. " width="1068" /></figure>
<h2 style="text-align: center;">And what you can do about it<br />
(besides complaining).</h2>
<p>Palantir <a href="https://x.com/PalantirTech/status/2045574398573453312">dropped a manifesto</a> last weekend. 22 bullet points distilled from Alex Karp&#8217;s book <em>The Technological Republic</em>, posted to X with the casual framing of &#8220;because we get asked a lot.&#8221; I haven&#8217;t seen a reaction so widespread, unanimously opposed and viscerally aghast since James Damore&#8217;s infamous &#8220;Google&#8217;s Ideological Echo Chamber&#8221;.</p>
<p>The usual suspects lost their shit. Engadget called it &#8220;the ramblings of a comic book villain.&#8221;</p>
<p>TechCrunch clutched its pearls at the bits about &#8220;regressive&#8221; cultures and &#8220;vacant and hollow pluralism.&#8221;</p>
<p>Bellingcat&#8217;s Eliot Higgins observed, (<a href="https://bsky.app/profile/eliothiggins.bsky.social/post/3mjtot35nxk2n">via Bluesky</a>, of course), that these aren&#8217;t philosophical musings floating in the ether: they&#8217;re the public ideology of a company whose revenue depends on the politics it&#8217;s advocating.</p>
<p>He&#8217;s not wrong, Palantir sells to ICE, DoD, NYPD, and the intelligence community. It may be a manifesto, but it&#8217;s also product literature.</p>
<p>Even Alexander Dugin, the Russian &#8220;Fourth Political Theory&#8221; philosopher, not exactly known for having a libertarian bent, seemed triggered by it, calling it &#8220;the plan of the Western techno-fascism&#8221; on X, &#8220;Pure Satanism&#8221; on his Substack.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p dir="ltr" lang="en">Palantir manifesto is the plan of the Western techno-fascism. The superiority of the white race based on the technology. No antisemitism, no sacredness, no socialism of old historic fascism. This time pure capitalist, Jews friendly, profane, materialist. Anglo. Posthumanist.</p>
<p>— Alexander Dugin (@AGDugin) <a href="https://twitter.com/AGDugin/status/2045857431280828555?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 19, 2026</a></p></blockquote>
<p>Former Greek FM Yanis Varoufakis called it &#8220;evil&#8221; and put out <a href="https://x.com/yanisvaroufakis/status/2045981489603461309">his own point-for-point on it</a> &#8211; he calls it a refutation, it&#8217;s actually more of a rant.</p>
<p>So everybody across the horseshoe is big mad. Fine.</p>
<p>The thing is, none of this should surprise anyone. Let&#8217;s now look at why the policy this &#8220;manifesto&#8221; outlines was always going to arrive, with or without Karp&#8217;s prosaic stylings.</p>
<h2>Karp Didn&#8217;t Invent &#8220;The Technate&#8221;</h2>
<p>The merger of corporate power and state apparatus, the &#8220;technate&#8221; that people are suddenly discovering with horror on a Sunday afternoon, is not a new idea. It&#8217;s not even a recent one.</p>
<p>Back in 2013, Eric Schmidt (then Google&#8217;s executive chairman) and Jared Cohen (Google Ideas, ex-State Department advisor to Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton) published <em>The New Digital Age</em>. The book was blurbed by Henry Kissinger, Madeleine Albright, Tony Blair, and General Michael Hayden, the former director of the CIA. That&#8217;s an elite-class blurb list for a book that explicitly argued for the intersection of Silicon Valley and state power, the fusion of corporate infrastructure with national security logic, and the reshaping of diplomacy through private platforms.</p>
<p>In 2013 it was called &#8220;transformational.&#8221; Kissinger gushing that it was, &#8220;a searching meditation on technology and world order&#8221; (he would go on to co-author <em>The Age of AI</em> with Eric Schmidt that should be every bit as concerning as Karp&#8217;s <em>Technological Republic</em>).</p>
<p>Not too long after that, Google&#8217;s Sergey Brin and Klaus Schwab held a fireside in Davos where Herr Schwab pontificated that with the advent of AI, since the algos would be able to predict election outcomes with 100% certainty, <em>they may as well pick the winners anyway and we could do away with elections altogether.</em></p>
<p>Nobody batted an eye. My timeline certainly wasn&#8217;t overflowing with rage over it and the people who were calling attention to it were using facing all kinds of headwinds.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p dir="ltr" lang="en">In a conversation with Google founder Sergey Brin, founder of the WEF, Klaus Schwab, delights at the thought of a future without elections:</p>
<p>&#8220;Digital technologies mainly have an analytical power. Now [we&#8217;re going] into a predictive power, and your company is very much involved in… <a href="https://t.co/9shJlXw3DG">pic.twitter.com/9shJlXw3DG</a></p>
<p>— Wide Awake Media (@wideawake_media) <a href="https://twitter.com/wideawake_media/status/1690645285712678915?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 13, 2023</a></p></blockquote>
<p>My personal favourite goto clip about all-pervasive corporate surveillance that absolutely nobody gave a shit about, was this one, also via the darlings of Davos:</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p dir="ltr" lang="en">This is important to understand:<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/CBDCs?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#CBDCs</a> will not be &#8220;money&#8221;: in the sense we understand it. They will be social credit scores, capped by your personal carbon footprint quota<img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/17.0.2/72x72/1f447.png" alt="👇" class="wp-smiley" style="height: 1em; max-height: 1em;" /> <a href="https://t.co/e6ibVwXM65">pic.twitter.com/e6ibVwXM65</a></p>
<p>— Mark E. Jeftovic (@jeftovic) <a href="https://twitter.com/jeftovic/status/1842343046752436673?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 4, 2024</a></p></blockquote>
<p>Here we have an ex-Goldman Sachs guy running a Chinese multi-national sermonizing about mass surveillance and personal carbon footprint quotas and my timeline was not filled with angry tweets from elite A-listers calling for the dismantling of Ali Baba.</p>
<p>Here in 2026<strong> it&#8217;s the exact same structural narrative</strong>, now with Karp&#8217;s sharper edges and fewer Davos euphemisms, only this one is being called a fascist manifesto instead of drooled over by media elites.</p>
<p>The only major difference I can see is where Davos/WEF inspired technocracy was globalist, Palantir, Karp, Thiel et al are <em>nationalist</em>. Perhaps, a North American nationalist.</p>
<figure id="attachment_12355" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-12355" style="width: 800px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-12355" src="https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/technate-1940-map-1.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="557" srcset="https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/technate-1940-map-1.jpg 1200w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/technate-1940-map-1-300x209.jpg 300w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/technate-1940-map-1-1024x713.jpg 1024w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/technate-1940-map-1-768x534.jpg 768w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/technate-1940-map-1-600x418.jpg 600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-12355" class="wp-caption-text">This map is from 1940</figcaption></figure>
<p>(This fits with what I wrote in my last edition of The Bitcoin Capitalist, about the factional rivalry between the intellectual descendants of Samuel Huntington (&#8220;The Clash of Civilizations&#8221;) vs his former pupil, Francis Fukuyama (&#8220;The End of History&#8221;) I <a href="https://cryptohedge.substack.com/p/the-end-of-history-vs-the-clash-of">posted an excerpt here</a>.</p>
<p>Fukuyama thought the entire world would become one big Neo-Liberal circle-jerk.</p>
<p>Huntington said future conflict wouldn&#8217;t be between countries, but between <em>cultures</em>. And some cultures were less compatible with how we live here in the West, than others (Palantir&#8217;s point #21).</p>
<figure id="attachment_12353" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-12353" style="width: 983px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class=" wp-image-12353" src="https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/PLTR-21.jpg" alt="" width="983" height="277" srcset="https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/PLTR-21.jpg 1322w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/PLTR-21-300x84.jpg 300w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/PLTR-21-1024x288.jpg 1024w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/PLTR-21-768x216.jpg 768w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/PLTR-21-600x169.jpg 600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 983px) 100vw, 983px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-12353" class="wp-caption-text">He&#8217;s not wrong&#8230;</figcaption></figure>
<p>Overall, the project didn&#8217;t change. The faction driving it did.</p>
<p>Driving what? The inexorable drive toward post-Democratic technocracy.</p>
<h2>Here&#8217;s what nobody wants to hear.</h2>
<p>If you&#8217;re reading Karp&#8217;s 22 points and feeling a cold prickle of recognition, if you&#8217;re realizing that what Palantir is describing is the operational blueprint for the next 40 years, there&#8217;s something you have to sit with first:</p>
<p><em>You put your hand up for this.</em></p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p dir="ltr" lang="en">In case you wondering what makes a company like Palantir even possible&#8230;. (find out why, here <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/17.0.2/72x72/1f447.png" alt="👇" class="wp-smiley" style="height: 1em; max-height: 1em;" />) <a href="https://t.co/1mOEQ9JkLR">https://t.co/1mOEQ9JkLR</a> <a href="https://t.co/aLIjg1Sqw5">pic.twitter.com/aLIjg1Sqw5</a></p>
<p>— Mark E. Jeftovic (@jeftovic) <a href="https://twitter.com/jeftovic/status/2046255967969353900?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 20, 2026</a></p></blockquote>
<p><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
<p>Perhaps not <em>you</em> personally. But collectively, <em>&#8220;we&#8221;</em>, the Western mass public already ran a dress rehearsal. And we all passed (or flunked) with flying colours.</p>
<p>During the pandemic and in the years immediately after, the political and managerial class <em>was wrong about effectively everything.</em></p>
<p>The origin of the virus. The (non)-efficacy of lockdowns. The vaccines didn&#8217;t work and were in fact, kill-shots for many. The money printing.</p>
<p>The correct response to being that wrong, that publicly, and that unwaveringly, about that much, should have been pitchforks and torches in the streets, if not guillotines.</p>
<p>At the very least, in our enlightened civilization: recall elections, mass firings, inquests and class actions. There should have been a generational reckoning with expertise that got captured by politics, a media cartel that went full agitprop and Chapter-7 bankruptcy for institutional credibility.</p>
<p>That is not what happened.</p>
<p>What happened instead was that people stood on the dots. We wore the masks on the walk from the restaurant door to the table, then took them off to eat, sitting in saran wrap bubbles on the street in the middle of winter.</p>
<p>People snitched on their neighbours. They watched elites throw lavish maskless parties while they got tased by cops at their kids&#8217; soccer games.</p>
<p>In other words: we <em>&#8220;followed the science&#8221;</em>, even as the science was revised quarterly to match policy because the facts on the ground refused to conform to the narrative.</p>
<p>And now, most people will fight tooth and nail to defend the very system that did this to them.</p>
<p>The pandemic was the trial balloon. The political class, Wall Street, and Silicon Valley watched carefully.</p>
<p>What they learned was this: <strong>the population will comply</strong>. The population will inform on itself. The population will absorb humiliating, contradictory, demonstrably false directives from authorities, and <em>the dominant social behaviour will be enforcement of those directives on anyone who objects.</em></p>
<p>The Technate has been an ideation of post-Democratic elites since at least the 1930&#8217;s.</p>
<p>It has been moving forward inexorably ever since, but it was probably that event, the pandemic and the populace cucking out at a mass level when the technate became inevitable.</p>
<p>Not because of any single manifesto, book, or CEO. Because a civilization that behaves that way under stress has already told its elites what it will accept.</p>
<h2>The Technocracy Is Already Here</h2>
<p>The manifesto isn&#8217;t about Palantir specifically. It&#8217;s the blueprint for what I&#8217;ve already been noticing, not just in the US but everywhere, that I&#8217;ve been calling<strong> State Capitalism.</strong></p>
<p>It&#8217;s the fused-lattice model of corporate-state power where the company doesn&#8217;t lobby the government, it is part of the governing apparatus, and the government in turn provides the regulatory moat that keeps the company&#8217;s competitors out, and to whom they can outsource things that national governments aren&#8217;t supposed to be doing.</p>
<p>This is where we&#8217;re headed for the next few decades. And it&#8217;s where we&#8217;re headed precisely because the population demonstrated that it would tolerate it, even while they decried &#8220;fascism&#8221;.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p dir="ltr" lang="en">Ever notice how some people who want to lock you down, censor your speech, cancel you for wrongthink, force an experimental vaccine on you and take away your gas stove think of themselves as “anti-fascists” ?<img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/17.0.2/72x72/1f914.png" alt="🤔" class="wp-smiley" style="height: 1em; max-height: 1em;" /><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/17.0.2/72x72/1f921.png" alt="🤡" class="wp-smiley" style="height: 1em; max-height: 1em;" /></p>
<p>— Mark E. Jeftovic (@jeftovic) <a href="https://twitter.com/jeftovic/status/1614731028240949248?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 15, 2023</a></p></blockquote>
<h2>Welcome to the Era of Mass Compliance.</h2>
<p>Karp&#8217;s 22 points are the tidy, sanitized version of what we&#8217;ve already said in our <a href="https://bombthrower.com/repricing-sovereignty/">&#8220;Repricing Sovereignty&#8221;</a> piece. The early iterations are already in production. Every ICE deployment, every DoD contract, every integration between federal databases and private analytics, every AI-for-defense procurement cycle, every surveillance-as-a-service rollout is a beam in the Cathedral.</p>
<p>And here&#8217;s the part that separates the individuals from the crowd:</p>
<p><strong>If you can&#8217;t beat &#8217;em. Own &#8217;em.</strong></p>
<p>Long PLTR. This is straight out of the playbook my premium readers will recognize as <strong>&#8220;The Post Singularity Stack.&#8221;</strong> It&#8217;s a barbell trade that allocates to State Capitalism on one side, while personally building out sovereign technology on the other.</p>
<p><img decoding="async" class="aligncenter" style="max-width: 100%; height: 610px;" src="https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/technate-singularity-stack.jpg" alt="" width="915" /></p>
<p>This isn&#8217;t an endorsement of the politics, because frankly, I&#8217;m done with politics (&#8220;vote harder, mofos&#8221;). Politics is a racket to keep the rabble in line.</p>
<p>Stand on the dots. Flap your arms. Good boy.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p dir="ltr" lang="en">This will go down in history as the most assinine, ill-conceived campaigns ever produced<br />
Most of these people don&#8217;t even know what Elbows Up means <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/17.0.2/72x72/1f644.png" alt="🙄" class="wp-smiley" style="height: 1em; max-height: 1em;" /><br />
Honestly, it&#8217;s like a Monty Python skit <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/17.0.2/72x72/1f633.png" alt="😳" class="wp-smiley" style="height: 1em; max-height: 1em;" /><a href="https://t.co/9MKFCGOHA8">pic.twitter.com/9MKFCGOHA8</a></p>
<p>— Canada has gone mad <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/17.0.2/72x72/1f34e.png" alt="🍎" class="wp-smiley" style="height: 1em; max-height: 1em;" /> (@HaveWeAllGoneM1) <a href="https://twitter.com/HaveWeAllGoneM1/status/1960030473587245378?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 25, 2025</a></p></blockquote>
<p>True self-sovereignty can only be acquired individually.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s an acknowledgement of the <em>structural reality</em>. We&#8217;ve been talking about this for a long time (we call it <strong>The Great Bifurcation</strong>, and as we always suspected, the branch you wind up in is largely an exercise in self-selection). For the next few decades, The Technate will be the vehicle through which capital will compound, and the only rational response is to own a piece of it. Capital is optionality. Wealth is exit velocity. And by wealth I mean not being economically dependent on The State, not living paycheque to paycheque, and not being one frozen bank account away from being forced into <em>compliance.</em></p>
<p>There is an ancient Chinese aphorism,</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><em>&#8220;It is unlucky to remain obstinate in the face of overwhelming odds&#8221;.</em></p>
<p>Being morally aghast while your purchasing power erodes in losing sectors leaves you with neither the moral high ground nor the means to act on it.</p>
<p>The most important points of the manifesto are #5&#8230;</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-12345 aligncenter" src="https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/technate-manifesto-5-1.png" alt="" width="876" height="229" srcset="https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/technate-manifesto-5-1.png 1200w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/technate-manifesto-5-1-300x79.png 300w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/technate-manifesto-5-1-1024x268.png 1024w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/technate-manifesto-5-1-768x201.png 768w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/technate-manifesto-5-1-600x157.png 600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 876px) 100vw, 876px" /></p>
<p><strong>And #12:</strong></p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-12346 aligncenter" src="https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/technate-manifesto-12-1.png" alt="" width="893" height="151" srcset="https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/technate-manifesto-12-1.png 1198w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/technate-manifesto-12-1-300x51.png 300w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/technate-manifesto-12-1-1024x174.png 1024w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/technate-manifesto-12-1-768x130.png 768w, https://bombthrower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/technate-manifesto-12-1-600x102.png 600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 893px) 100vw, 893px" /></p>
<p>The people who are panicking at the manifesto are the same people who voted, complied, and shamed their neighbours into the conditions that made it possible. They don&#8217;t get to be outraged now.</p>
<p>Some people saw this coming years ago. Some of us <a href="https://bombthrower.com/life-in-2033-monetary-apartheid/">even wrote it down</a>.</p>
<p>What happened to many of those people was they got deplatformed, canceled, debanked and generally villainized by the same people who are now screaming about Palantir.</p>
<p>I&#8217;m mostly done trying to warn the wider public on where things are going.</p>
<p>Now we&#8217;re just buying the ticker.</p>
<p><em>Get <strong><a href="/join">on the mailing list</a></strong> for the follow-up to this (The Pareto Paradox In The Age of Mass Compliance), <a href="https://x.com/jeftovic"><strong>follow me on X here</strong>,</a> or if you want to get a look at <strong>The Post Singularity Stack</strong>, take the <a href="https://www.privateworld.com/twjuqt9d"><strong>premium trial here »</strong></a>.</em></p>
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