Lepard defends Strategy’s recent sale of ~1,600 Bitcoin to buy back its STRC preferred (which pays a 12% tax-deferred dividend and briefly crashed from par to $72), arguing Sailor isn’t running a Ponzi but borrowing at 12% to deploy into an asset with historically higher returns — and that Strategy only fails if it gets over-levered into forced liquidation or if Bitcoin itself fails, though he’d advise Sailor to “shut up and sit on your hands” since a higher Bitcoin price solves everything. He leans on the power law model — correlation above 90%, mean fair value around $134,000 versus Bitcoin trading at $62,000, only this cheap versus the 200-day average 8% of the time — to argue a new bull market begins within three to six months, with a lower boundary in the low $50,000s that, if broken, would force him to reconsider. His macro thesis: the leveraged system mathematically requires perpetual money-supply growth (190 years to create $4 trillion in debt, now four years), the Treasury-BOJ yen intervention is shadow yield-curve control, and the “cracks in the dam” — SpaceX below its IPO price, gated private-credit funds, 1.6–1.8 trillion in off-balance-sheet AI SPV debt — make it feel like “the summer of 2007 or 2008,” with a third “big print” coming that takes the Fed balance sheet from ~$6.5 trillion to $20 trillion or more.
Strategy’s STRC repair job: The preferred grew to roughly $9–10 billion notional and became the largest holding in the three biggest US preferred ETFs, but a liquidity cascade sent it from par to $72 after Sailor spent reserve cash retiring debt; the fix was raising the dividend to 12%, rebuilding cash by selling stock and small amounts of Bitcoin (~1,500 coins against a stack of 840,000+), and refusing to issue new STRC below 100. Lepard calls Strategy “Bitcoin with time decay” — a levered option that dies faster than Bitcoin if Bitcoin fails, and was in far worse shape during the 2022 Silvergate episode.
The power law case for a bottom: Fitting log price to log time yields 90%+ correlation over 16 years, with Bitcoin oscillating between roughly half a standard deviation below the mean (where it sits now, near the ~$50–54K lower boundary across model variants) and one to three above; the mean is ~$134K. Lepard expects the next bull leg within 3–6 months toward $150K–$250K (overvalued at $250K), notes drawdowns have shrunk each cycle (90% → 80% → 70% → ~55% from October’s $124K), and says a sustained break of the lower band would force him to re-examine the thesis.
The coming third “big print”: Correlation-of-one seizures (2008, COVID — when even Treasuries couldn’t be sold) force monetary firetrucks; the next trigger could be Japan or an AI/private-credit bust, with everything — Bitcoin, gold, stocks, bonds — potentially down 50% before Warsh takes the balance sheet to $20+ trillion with yield-curve control. His prescription: hold analog money that can’t be printed (gold) and digital money that can’t be printed (Bitcoin), sized to survive a 50% drawdown without panic.
Yen intervention as shadow yield-curve control: Japan, the largest foreign Treasury holder, would have to sell Treasuries to defend a weakening yen, so the US selling euros to buy yen (plus swap lines) prevents that selling and caps the long end — money created from thin air to avert a carry-trade unwind. Lepard maps the timeline analogy: if Japan is July 2007 (the Bear Stearns funds), the real break could be a year-plus away; if it’s summer 2008, “all hell could break loose this fall.”
Fourth Turning and the sound-money endgame: Every ~80 years (Revolution → Civil War → Depression/WWII → now) a broken system resets; this cycle’s flaw is the post-Bretton Woods fiat architecture. Lepard sees teens inflation after the next print, a possible political movement for a one-time monetary reset before hyperinflation (which he considers the tail case of bad policy — MMT-style deficits tested to Weimar), and predicts his grandchildren will price things in satoshis, with Bitcoin around its “1997–98” internet-adoption phase.
Rubino argues the coordinated BOJ-Treasury yen intervention — three shrinking green candles totaling about a 5.5% yen rally — is already fading because the fundamentals haven’t changed: Japan is the most indebted government per capita ever, its 10- and 30-year yields are hockey-sticking, and once intervention stops, the yen resumes falling, threatening a trillion-plus dollar carry-trade unwind that governments are desperate to delay past the US midterms. He contends historians will mark this period as the start of a “currency debt spiral,” with US interest costs at $1.5 trillion a year exceeding the defense budget and the US having just officially crossed 100% debt-to-GDP, and he expects the bad news to be released in the six months after the November midterms, per the standard electoral playbook. On markets, he sees a classic tech bubble — SpaceX’s IPO at 100x revenue as a possible AOL-Time Warner-style peak marker, now down 53%, with SanDisk down 58% — while Bitcoin’s 50% drawdown versus the NASDAQ’s 5% shows crypto has decoupled as gold stole the “reset hedge” bid; meanwhile he’s placing lowball bids on miners down 33–50%, believing precious metals have likely bottomed with gold basing at $4,000 and eyes on $10,000–15,000 gold and $200 silver at the eventual currency reset.
Failing yen interventions: Japan’s zero-rate era let debt pile up painlessly, but with JGB yields in the 2–3% range the carry trade no longer rolls over easily, and each intervention works briefly before fundamentals reassert. Rubino says there’s “no hint of success,” a trillion-plus in carry-trade positions is at risk, and both Tokyo (new government) and Washington (midterms) are simply buying time.
The currency debt spiral thesis: US interest costs of ~$1.5 trillion annually exceeded defense spending until this year — “you can’t run a global military empire” that way — and the US just hit 100% debt-to-GDP. He frames rising rates on unpayable debt as death-spiral mechanics that historians will date to this moment, with the post-midterm window (first six months) the likely time for authorities to “admit to all your problems” before the presidential cycle begins.
Tech bubble topping signs: SpaceX IPO’d at ~100x revenue on an unprofitable company and has crashed 53% ($225 to ~$110), SanDisk fell 58%, and Oracle and IBM have been clipped; Rubino likens the SpaceX IPO to AOL buying Time Warner as a retrospective peak marker. He notes bubbles typically burst only after skeptics capitulate into buying, predicts some hedge fund will make “life-changing money” on the big tech short, and counsels capital preservation now.
Bitcoin’s decoupling from the NASDAQ: With the NASDAQ down 5% from highs and Bitcoin down 50%, the decade-long correlation has broken; Rubino attributes it to real gold outperforming “digital gold” as reset-hedging money chose metal, plus the failure of Bitcoin treasury companies — the “perpetual motion machine” of selling overpriced stock to buy Bitcoin — with Strategy forced to sell coins it said it never would. A tech-bubble burst could drag crypto lower still.
Precious metals bottoming and the miners trade: After a dramatic correction (miners down a third to half), gold is basing at the $4,000 round-number support in a two-month range with silver near $55, negative seasonality is ending as Asian demand months approach, and Trump has electoral incentive to end the Iran war (bullish gold, bearish oil). Rubino is layering stink bids on whacked miners — GDX still 36% below its high — while holding long-term energy (Exxon, pipelines, uranium, quality solar) because the grid was underbuilt even before AI “turbocharged” electricity demand.
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