Today is a special day for two reasons, first I’m turning 31.

I look back and can’t believe how fast everything has gone by.

My grandparents are gone, my parents are nearing retirement… so many moments that won’t come back.

But the important thing isn’t that it’s my birthday.

What matters is that this is the 500th article I’ve written.

Yes, 500 real articles about something as vital as finance.

This journey started over five years ago. And today I want to do a quick recap of my biggest wins… and the few mistakes I’ve made along the way.

I won’t lie.

There were far more wins than mistakes.

But the mistakes were necessary too.

The best part of this path is that I never wasted 10,000 hours analyzing companies.

I didn’t try to guess the best sector either.

Everything I’ve done has been based on rational thinking: reading, thinking independently, and writing what’s on my mind for all of you.

And if you joined late, let me be honest:

You missed a lot.

But like with Bitcoin, it’s never too late to get in.

Everyone buys Bitcoin at the price they’re willing to pay.

Some at $16k (like my subscribers), others will do it at $1M.

Now let’s go back to some gems.

Gold would outperform stocks – May 31, 2023

When the indexes were roaring like a Ferrari, we said this:

“In fact, based on our investment thesis, we believe that gold can be a much more profitable asset than the stock markets in the medium term. For those who don’t remember, I will mention other occasions when this has happened.”

Until that moment:

Since that moment:

Bullish signal – June 25, 2023

Almost two years ago, we shared a chart that clearly marked the beginning of a major bull cycle:

“As shown in a chart provided by Sentiment Trader, these bullish phases of the market, where the RSI surpasses 60% after being below 40%, tend to be clearly bullish.”

Avoiding cash – June 11, 2023

Not a shocking insight, but we knew cash was going to be useless.

Since then, even if not all, hard assets have made new highs along the way:

“What should you not own? Precisely the opposite:

Dollars

Euros

…

We are still in a premature situation, but we are already starting to see the signs, and it is most likely that within 12-18 months, we will enter a recession. If there is some correlation with history, it would be an extreme recession for the markets.”

When the FTX owner bought Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Gold — November 2025

One of the best-timed trades in history.

And we explained it from day one:

“Obviously, $500M can live his family for the next 20 generations. But it seems that this person really wants to go high. His next goal in the short term is to become a billionaire.

Will he make it? We have no doubt.”

The day we announced we were buying Bitcoin because we believed the bottom was between $15k–17k

“This week has been one of the worst for Bitcoin in a long time. It was just over a year since it hit the highs; since then, it has done -70%. For those of us who have been in this world for a long time, it is easy to understand that capitulations in Bitcoin are very painful for investors both economically and psychologically.

We are not saying that you lose 70% of your invested savings.

We are saying that the price of Bitcoin is even below where it was more than five years ago.”

“This pain in the share price is inversely proportional to the returns that can be acquired. There is no doubt about that.”

And the question was obvious:

Where is the limit?

Is Bitcoin worth zero?

Or did we already see the bottom and will watch it hit new highs again?

Other highlights:

Pelosi’s trades.

The gold cycles.

AI signals.

Sentiment charts.

It was all there.

Mistakes:

I could only find one clear mistake: Terra.

But since then, I’ve gone long hard assets, Bitcoin, gold, AI…

And all of them have performed extremely well.

From here on, I just hope to apply the Lindy effect and write another 500 articles, full of wins, independent thinking, and rational decisions.

What I know for sure is that 500 articles from now, whoever is still here will be here by choice.

Because they’ll be insanely wealthy.

Because they’ll live off their cashflow and never have to sell their best assets.

To win in finance, all you need is:

• The right mindset

• A bit of smart leverage

• And proper tax optimization

We’ll help you with the rest.

What if Warren Buffett is wrong when he says he’d simply leave his family invested in the Standard & Poor’s 500 and nothing else?

It’s a comforting idea. Feels clean, classic, proven. The market always goes up. Right?

But that worldview collapses the moment you shift your lens from nominal returns to real value. From price to purchasing power. From numbers to money itself.

Because when you invest in an index like the S&P 500, you’re not just buying companies. You’re buying future cash flows denominated in a specific currency. And your real return depends not only on the business, but on the long-term integrity of that currency.

And here’s the trap: most investors never factor that in.

Let’s run a simple thought experiment. Build an index of the top 100 companies in any country: Zimbabwe, Japan, South Africa, Argentina, Germany, Venezuela, Russia. Then roll that index back over the last 50, 70, 100 years. Now measure it not in local currency, but in hard money, like gold, Bitcoin or high-end real estate.

The result? Most of these indices tend to go to zero in real terms.

Why? Because each one of them is implicitly a bet on the currency it’s tied to.

Some real-world examples:

• Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Argentina: multiple collapses, endless money printing, repeated hyperinflation.

• Germany: wealth wiped out after WWI and again after WWII.

• Russia: currency reboots, capital controls, loss of convertibility.

• Japan: deflationary traps, lost decades, real stagnation despite nominal stability.

In fact, when you zoom out long enough, you’ll find that 95% of currencies (and their corresponding local stock indices) have failed to preserve real wealth. Not temporarily. Not in a bad year. But over the full arc of monetary and geopolitical history.

That’s the part nobody teaches you in business school.

That’s also why assets like gold, which are not tied to any single currency or central bank, have historically preserved purchasing power through war, collapse, and institutional breakdown. Not because gold is magical. But because it escapes the trap of local currency erosion.

So when someone says “just buy the index,” the real question is: “which index, in which currency, over which timescale?”

And here’s where we hit the blind spot.

By defaulting to the S&P 500, we’re cheating ourselves. We’re picking the best survivor. We’re anchoring to the one that didn’t fail (yet) and pretending that’s the norm.

But that’s backwards logic. That’s survivorship bias in its purest form.

Yes, the S&P 500 has delivered extraordinary returns in USD terms. But that’s precisely because (for now) the U.S. dollar has been the dominant global currency. The “least bad” fiat.

That doesn’t make it eternal.

Empires fall. Monetary regimes change. Reserve currencies die.

And the S&P 500 will fall too, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow. But to believe it will always remain the “safe index” is to believe in financial exceptionalism that history has proven false again and again.

It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t invest in it.

But it does mean we need to be clear-eyed about what it really is.

A bet on the United States. A bet on the dollar. A bet on a very specific phase of global history. And the moment that shifts the moment the empire staggers, or the currency weakens that index may stop being the “obvious” choice it seems today.

That’s the whole point.

When we measure everything in dollars, and then celebrate the outperformance of the dollar-denominated index, we’re grading our own exam. The system loops in on itself.

You can see this distortion clearly in historical comparisons. Take the S&P 500 vs. gold from 1970 to 2024, both in terms of price performance and real purchasing power. The “superiority” of equities fluctuates wildly once you remove the dollar as the measuring stick.

Even in the U.S., adjusted for real inflation, taxes, and drawdowns, returns are more fragile than they seem. The official narrative smooths over regime changes, central bank interventions, and CPI manipulation.

Again: the index only “always goes up” if the measuring tape doesn’t shrink.

So what happens if the dollar is next?

It doesn’t need to hyperinflate or collapse. Just lose 30%, 40%, 60% of its purchasing power over a few decades the way nearly every currency has at some point. Suddenly, all your “gains” are just numbers with less meaning.

This is what most investors miss.

They think they’re investing in companies.

But they’re actually investing in accounting entries denominated in fiat units that may not survive intact.

This is why building a real system of wealth requires stepping back and understanding the meta-game.

Not just choosing the “best stocks” or the “right index,” but choosing what units you want to measure and preserve your wealth in.

Because if you get that part wrong, everything else is noise.

And that, really, is the core of all of this.

Not to say “don’t invest in the S&P 500.”

But to say: let’s stop pretending it’s the universal answer.

Let’s stop playing solitaire and pretending we’re beating the market.

Because if we don’t understand what it means to tie our future to a currency, if we don’t understand what happens when that currency slips, then we’re not investing.

We’re just counting illusions.

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In 1751, the British government had a problem you’d recognize immediately: too much debt, too many creditors, too many different interest rates. Prime Minister Henry Pelham did something radical.

He took every outstanding government debt instrument and consolidated it into a single bond (the “Consolidated Annuities”) at a fixed rate of 3.5% per year. No maturity date. No obligation to ever repay the principal.

The instrument born that year lived for 264 years.

The British Consols were redeemed for the last time in 2015, when the government finally cancelled what remained in circulation. A bond that survived the Industrial Revolution, two World Wars, the end of the gold standard, the fall of the British Empire, and the creation of the euro. A bond nobody had to roll over. That never matured. That simply... existed.

Why did it last so long?

The answer is in the mechanics, not the politics.

The first reason was the elimination of refinancing risk. Governments facing extraordinary expenses (especially wars) could not know when they would be able to repay or roll over their debt. Perpetual instruments gave finance ministers the flexibility to choose when to retire the debt, instead of being forced to repay principal at a fixed date. Pelham didn’t just invent a financing vehicle. He invented a way to remove the market’s pressure from the government at precisely the worst possible moment.

The second reason was immediate cost reduction. The government cut its debt service costs by 25% in a single move. In 1749, the national debt was composed mainly of 4% bonds. By the end of 1750, the entire long-term debt had been converted to 3% bonds. That single maneuver, without doing anything else, freed fiscal capital equivalent to the infrastructure spending of an expanding power.

The numbers are concrete. When Pelham created the Consols, public debt stood at £76 million. It would rise to £133 million after the Seven Years’ War, £245 million after the American Revolution, and nearly £750 million after the Napoleonic Wars. All of that debt growth was financed on the backbone of the Consols. One instrument. Three centuries of imperial wars.

The third reason was liquidity. The Consols were liquid securities with an easily referenced and readily available market price, which increased their popularity. Unlike the life annuities used by the French government, Consols traded in real time. Any investor, from a Victorian widow to the Bank of England, could buy or sell at any moment. That liquidity generated confidence. That confidence generated demand. That demand allowed the government to issue more debt when it needed it.

The Consols served as the primary benchmark for long-term interest rates in Britain from the late 18th century onward, fluctuating with economic conditions and investor confidence, and were actively traded on the London Stock Exchange, attracting domestic savers, institutions, and foreign investors seeking stable income.

It was, in essence, the global “benchmark bond” before that concept even existed.

Now watch what Michael Saylor is doing.

STRC is a hybrid instrument between a traditional preferred share and a synthetic stable, designed to function as a monthly income vehicle with price stability. Issued at $100 per share. No maturity date. With dividends that adjust monthly to keep the price near par.

Sound familiar?

Pelham eliminated refinancing pressure. Saylor does the same. Perpetual preferred shares carry no maturity date, but offer dividend payments for as long as the company continues to operate. No amortization to manage. No rollover to negotiate. No market windows to cross at the worst possible moment.

The difference between the Consols and STRC is not structural. It’s the collateral backing them.

The Consols were backed by the fiscal capacity of the British Empire: the power to tax 400 million people across four continents. STRC is backed by Bitcoin. The BTC coverage ratio stands at 4.6x, meaning Strategy holds $4.60 in Bitcoin for every $1 issued in STRC. Bitcoin prices would need to fall more than 78% before the principal is affected.

The British Government never had that cushion. It was literally issuing debt backed by its own promise to keep existing.

STRC’s adjustment mechanism has no historical precedent either. Unlike traditional preferred shares, the dividend can be adjusted monthly under preset rules. The objective is straightforward: keep STRC trading close to $100 and reduce the price swings normally associated with high-yield securities. The Consols swung violently in secondary markets when rates rose or the Empire went to war. STRC is designed not to swing. The coupon adjustment absorbs the disturbance before it reaches the price.

As of March 2026, STRC pays an 11.5% annualized dividend, distributed monthly in cash, a rate that has been raised consistently since launch. With short-duration U.S. Treasury yields near 3.5%, STRC offers roughly three times the yield, without long duration risk or large price volatility.

What compounding looks like over 20 years

This is where most people stop reading. Don’t.

If you DCA €1,000 per month into STRC and reinvest every dividend which you can do automatically through any major broker here’s what the math produces at current yield levels. Toggle between €1,000 and €2,000 per month in the model above.

At €1,000/month over 20 years, you invest €240,000 in total. The compounding dividend reinvestment does the rest. At €2,000/month, the trajectory is identical in shape, just doubled in scale. The monthly income generated by year 20 doesn’t just beat what you were putting in. It dwarfs it.

This is not speculation about price appreciation. This is straight arithmetic: a fixed par value, a known yield, monthly compounding. The Consols made Victorian aristocrats wealthy on the same logic. Steady flow. No terminal date. Reinvested income.

The bears will tell you the yield will compress. That Strategy will implode. That Bitcoin will go to zero. Maybe. But the Consols also had bears, every single decade for 264 years. The critics who demanded the British Empire would default were eventually right. It just took two and a half centuries.

Meanwhile, the people who held the Consol and reinvested their 3% died richer than they expected.

What we’re doing with it

We don’t recommend instruments we don’t own.

We’ve added STRC to our portfolio as a cash replacement in the flow box. Not speculation, allocation. The 11.5% yield in monthly cash replaces what previously sat in money market funds earning 3%. The structural protection from Bitcoin collateral adds a layer that no traditional preferred share can offer. And the perpetual nature means we never have to decide when to reinvest.

The Consols taught the world that the most powerful financial instruments aren’t the most complex ones. They’re the ones that pay you every month, remove the reinvestment burden, and never ask for the money back.

The British Empire invented the instrument to finance its dominance. Strategy is using the same structure to accumulate the hardest asset ever created.

Pelham issued. The wise ones bought.

The rest spent the next century trying to understand what had happened.

Elon Musk, to me, is one of the greatest missionaries to ever live.

Yes, sometimes he seems exaggerated. Even eccentric. But if you strip the ego away and actually listen, you’ll see what I see: a brutally clear vision of the future.

A few days ago I watched a video saying one of the most valuable assets in the world today is attention. And that we’re losing it. Our ability to focus is now worse than a goldfish. Somewhere between 6 to 8 seconds. We’re drowning in short videos. People can’t finish a book. Can’t wait. Can’t tolerate boredom. They want dopamine every five seconds. And that’s killing their ability to build real wealth.

There are only two ways to play this game.

You’re either the one consuming.

Or you’re the one making money off the consumers.

That made me think about the three levers I always come back to. The ones Naval talks about. People. Capital. Code.

They always tell you: to scale, you need to hire. You need people. But what if you don’t? What if you use their energy, their attention, their time… without ever putting them on payroll? What if you make money while they watch the videos?

Elon said it best: energy is the only real currency

If you can monetize energy: attention, time, focus, you don’t need offices. You don’t need employees. You don’t need bureaucracy. You need systems. And leverage.

So here are the three clearest ways I see to monetize attention right now. And the exact assets I like in each one. No fluff. No theory. Just signal.

1. Platforms that capture mass attention

These are the companies turning time into cash. YouTube. TikTok. Meta. Netflix. But don’t look at them as entertainment. They’re cash engines. Because they’ve closed the full loop: distribution, addiction, monetization.

If you want to ride this wave with capital, use ETFs with concentrated exposure to these platforms. Two obvious plays: $QQQ (Invesco QQQ Trust) and $XLC (Communication Services Select Sector SPDR). You’re not just buying stock. You’re buying human time converted into profit. Self-learning algorithms. Network effects that get stronger by the day.

This isn’t a tech bet. It’s a human behavior bet.

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You can feel it.

The shift. The collapse. The quiet replacement of what you thought was the game.

We were sold the story of the free market. Competition, meritocracy, open systems. But that system is gone. And most people haven’t even noticed.

They’re still optimizing portfolios, diversifying like it’s 1990, listening to financial advisors who don’t understand what’s happening. Meanwhile, the people building the future are three steps ahead. They’re not protecting wealth. They’re replacing the infrastructure of civilization.

Let’s stop pretending.

This isn’t gradual.

You’re living through a transition from a market economy to a techno-feudal regime, where power concentrates in private hands, forever. A regime run by a small class who own the code, the data, the pipes, and the narrative.

Control.

Not just capital. Infrastructure. Distribution. Scarcity itself.

This isn’t theory. It’s happening.

When Elon Musk bought Twitter, it wasn’t about memes or free speech. It was about owning a centralized vector of influence. He didn’t just buy a company. He bought narrative bandwidth. That gives you cultural power. And political leverage.

When BlackRock launched BUIDL, a tokenized U.S. Treasury fund on private blockchain, it wasn’t about innovation. It was about creating a new financial stack, one that operates outside of Fedwire, outside of SWIFT, outside of your reach.

That’s the pattern.

Parallel systems. New rails. New rules.

Most people are still stuck in systems built a century ago. They rely on inflation-ravaged savings accounts, fiat pensions, public markets manipulated by central banks.

The wealthy?

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Like it or not, life is a question of leverage. There is no real middle ground. You either live with low leverage, medium leverage, or very high leverage.

And I’m not just talking about money. I’m talking about your time, your energy, your daily decisions, and the way you choose to play the game. Everything you do is a reflection of the level of leverage you are willing to accept in your life.

Most people never ask themselves this question consciously. They simply follow inertia. They study something. They get a job. They switch jobs. They save. They invest “diversified.”

And they wait.

The problem is that this path, by definition, is low leverage. Safe. Predictable. And mediocre.

Think about a barber. How many haircuts can he do at the same time? One.

Think about a plumber. Same thing. Even if they are exceptional at their craft, their ceiling is defined by the number of hours in a day and by their own body. There is no real scalability. No explosion. There is stability, yes. But there is no asymmetry.

Then you have medium-leverage careers. Consultants. Marketing agents. Well-paid executives in the corporate world. They may have big bonuses, stock options, and status.

But they are still inside a system where the upside is capped and the downside never disappears. They don’t own the game. They are well-paid pieces on the board.

And then there is high leverage. The one that actually matters if you want to arrive in 2030 playing in a completely different league.

1. Ownership as leverage

The first step is obvious, yet almost nobody takes it seriously. Get a job, or better said, position yourself in life, in a way that gives you the highest leverage possible. As Naval would say, this only happens when you own something or when you expose yourself to clear asymmetries. I’m not talking about being “employee number 347” at a large company. I’m talking about creating a startup. Or joining very early a new company where your upside is not limited by an annual salary, but by the size of the problem you are solving.

Yes, the risk is high. Of course it is. But the risk is asymmetric. And that is exactly what you want. I would rather try ten times, fail nine, and have one outcome that completely changes my life trajectory, than spend thirty years optimizing a career that was limited from day one.

Ownership is not glamour. It is uncertainty. But it is the only real path to extreme leverage.

2. Code as infinite force

The second step is understanding that the twenty-first century belongs to code. Creating a side hustle with code is no longer optional. It is a strategic necessity. Why? Because the marginal cost of reaching one more person is close to zero. You build once. You write once. And you can reach a hundred, a thousand, or a million people with the same initial effort.

This doesn’t mean you need to be the best programmer in the world. It means you need to think in systems that work while you are not there. Software. Automation. Digital products. Tools. Code is pure modern leverage. And when combined with distribution, it becomes brutal.

3. Capital over diversification

This is where most people get lost. They think the path is to build a portfolio with 50 stocks, 10 ETFs, and a bit of crypto “just in case.” That is not leverage. That is anesthesia. Even if you do it well, the upside is mathematically limited.

Capital, when used correctly, is one of my favorite forms of leverage. We live in a system where raising capital is easier than ever, where the Cantillon effect still exists, and where real assets tend to rise over time. If you know how to structure it, you can make money work for you at a speed that saving alone will never replicate.

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I almost didn’t write this.

Not because I don’t have a view. I always have a view. But because I’ve spent three years building a newsletter around timeless principles portfolio architecture, asset selection, the mechanics of wealth that work in any decade. Tactical calls have never been my thing. I leave that to the traders.

But there are moments when silence is its own kind of mistake.

This is one of them.

So before I get into what I think happens between now and July, let me give you the context that earns me the right to say it.

In June 2021, when Powell was on every screen telling the world that inflation was transitory, I wrote the opposite. In issue after issue that summer, I said the Fed’s monetary expansion was unsustainable, that printing money without creating wealth had a price, and that the CPI spike coming would be unlike anything we’d seen in forty years. Nobody wanted to hear it. The party was too good.

Two years later, that same Fed had raised rates eleven times. Inflation hit 9.1%. Portfolios built on the assumption that “the Fed has your back” lost 20, 30, 40%.

I also told you in late 2021 that the indices were masking what was happening underneath. That a handful of companies were holding up the S&P while the rest of the market was already correcting. That we were in the final sprint of the cycle, and that the final sprint is always the most dangerous place to be running.

The Nasdaq fell 33% in 2022.

I’m not saying this to impress you. I’m saying it because the pattern I’m seeing right now rhymes with those moments. Not identically. But close enough that I can’t stay quiet.

Here is what I think happens before July.

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And years ago, a very influential banker gifted them a palace. A real palace. The kind built in 1902, not hidden in a forgotten corner, but in one of the most strategic spots in the entire city. That’s where they have their offices today.

What’s funny is that during the visit, I felt more like the client than they did. They gave me a full tour of the place, showed me a beech and bonsai forest they keep on the grounds. I loved it. It breathed history, care, intention. Every detail had a reason.

And when we stepped outside, I looked up.

Right next to the palace, literally attached, they also have offices. In another building.

This one:

Two buildings. Same street. One built with soul, the other with excuses. One sculpted by hand, by art. The other, launched to market with spreadsheets and speed. One reflects an era that aimed for excellence. The other, a time that learned how to cheapen everything, especially our expectations.

That’s when it hit me.

It’s not just that prices have gone up. It’s not just that purchasing power has collapsed. It’s that everything has declined in quality. Everything.

Housing is just the mirror.

Back then, a middle-class family could live in a home with high ceilings, noble floors, architecture designed to last centuries. Today, even if you pay three times as much, you get a box with drywall, narrow hallways, plastic finishes, and a mortgage that chains you until retirement.

But it doesn’t stop there.

Food has been degraded too. I’ve written about this before, fiat food.

We eat more, but worse. More sugar, more processed garbage, fewer nutrients. Same label, but contents that quietly make us sick. Bread used to last three days. Now, if you don’t freeze it in two hours, it turns into rubber.

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A couple of weeks ago Ray Dalio shared a tweet about the new world order. And I believe that now more than ever we should listen to him carefully.

That tweet has surpassed 70 million views. That is not noise. That is signal.

Dalio was talking about the famous phase 6 of the big cycle. That uncomfortable phase where you are either protected… or you can lose a meaningful part of your wealth without fully understanding what just happened. It is not alarmism. It is history.

If you have been reading me for a while, you know this is not about apocalyptic predictions. It is about incentives. It is about observing how those at the top behave when they feel the ground starting to shake.

And right now, those at the top are buying gold.

For decades, central banks were net sellers of gold. They saw it as a relic. An unproductive asset. Today they are accumulating it as if it were oxygen. This is not a fashion trend. It is a regime change.

This chart is not just about gold. It is about trust. About how the system is starting to distrust itself. About the gradual reduction in faith in fiat money, in the dollar as the undisputed reference, and the quiet return toward hard collateral.

When the issuers of money themselves do not want to hold too much of that money on their balance sheets, you should pay attention.

We are in an environment where global debt is mathematically unpayable without inflation. Where demographics are working against growth. Where social polarization keeps rising. And where we increasingly talk about rights but rarely about obligations.

That rarely ends well.

Historically, when states become financially and politically stressed, capital pays the bill. Through inflation. Through extraordinary taxes. Through capital controls. Through market closures.

Yes, market closures.

There is something almost nobody considers because they have never lived through it. Stock markets have been closed many times in history. During wars, during banking crises, during deep confidence collapses. Days. Weeks. Months.

Imagine depending on your broker to be able to eat.

Now imagine not being able to sell anything.

That is why I want to bring this down to earth with practical examples.

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A few months ago, Elon Musk gave an interview that I’ve had on my TO DO list for far too long, and I’ve finally been able to analyze it with the calm it demands.

Watch it.

This isn’t the typical corporate advertorial designed to save Tesla’s quarterly earnings, nor is it a collection of empty soundbites for the mainstream press. It is a warning to sailors. It is one of the most brilliant minds in the world telling you to your face that the operating system of our society is about to be completely reformatted. What Musk unfolds in these two hours is not a tech talk.

It is a survival map.

The conversation starts with a disarming simplicity, between jokes and coffees, but it escalates violently toward concepts that should keep any traditional investor awake at night. Musk doesn’t speculate; he passes sentence. And his first sentence is lethal: money, as we know it, is a fiction with an expiration date.

For him, current money is nothing more than a database for labor allocation. And it is a terrible database.

It is full of latency, errors, political interference, and unpayable debts. In a future of radical abundance driven by artificial intelligence and robotics, where the marginal cost of producing anything tends toward zero, that database ceases to make sense. If robots do everything, fiat money loses its function as a coordinator. It becomes irrelevant.

Here is where he drops the conceptual nuclear bomb.

Energy is the only true currency.

You cannot legislate energy. You cannot print it in a Federal Reserve basement. You cannot counterfeit it with a legal decree nor inflate it to buy votes. In an advanced civilization, the limit to progress is not financial capital; it is the watts we are capable of capturing, storing, and converting into useful work.

If you look at the image summarizing his vision, you will see that giant wave. It isn’t a pretty drawing. It is a tsunami that will wipe out anyone who continues to think in terms of a “career path” or “savings account.”

Musk is describing, without naming it, the definitive argument in favor of hard money. While the dollar or the euro are political abstractions that melt in your pocket, a system based on energy is immutable physical truth.

The diagnosis he makes of the economy is equally brutal. The United States debt is mathematically unpayable. This isn’t ideology; it is arithmetic. When debt interest payments exceed the defense budget, the game is over.

The only exit he sees isn’t austerity (no politician is going to commit suicide by cutting spending) but a flight forward: skyrocketing productivity through AI.

If we manage to make the production of goods grow faster than the degradation of the currency, we will enter a cycle of technological deflation.

Things will be cheaper not because demand collapses, but because artificial intelligence will make them almost free.

If you don’t understand this, your portfolio is going to go to zero in real terms. In a world that is deflationary due to technology, assets that depend on selling artificial scarcity or rents protected by the state are going to be shredded.

Value flees toward infrastructure.

When asked what he would buy if he couldn’t invest in his own companies, Musk doesn’t hesitate for a second: Google and NVIDIA. He doesn’t say it because he likes their charts or their current P/E ratio. He says it because they own the rails of the future. Google has the data and the compute capacity; NVIDIA has the monopoly on the hardware necessary to train the intelligence that will move the world.

He doesn’t invest by diversifying to “reduce risk.” That is for mediocrities. He invests in infrastructure monopolies.

Tesla is not a car company; it is the largest real-world robotics company. SpaceX is not a rocket company; it is the owner of interplanetary transport. Starlink is not a telco; it is the backbone of the internet outside of cities. He sees a total convergence where AI, energy, and space are the same asset.

And this inevitably leads us to Bitcoin, even if he doesn’t say the word.

His thesis of “energy as currency” is the most aggressive validation possible of Proof of Work.

If fiat money is a corruptible database and energy is the truth, Bitcoin is the bridge. It is the only asset in history that transforms pure energy into economic security and digital scarcity.

In a future where governments are going to print to infinity to try and plug the debt hole, holding a store of value that cannot be legislated and is linked to physics is the only real life insurance.

Musk also talks about a “Universal High Income.” He says work will be optional. But be careful with this. He isn’t talking about the State supporting you; he is talking about an era of such abundance that survival will be free. The challenge will be psychological. What do you do when you don’t have to do anything?

Most people will go crazy or get lost in irrelevant digital simulations. Only those with skin in the game, who have built their own systems, will find meaning.

The transition is going to be savage.

Musk reminds us with a smile that “the most entertaining outcome is the most likely.” It is his elegant way of saying that we live in a chaotic simulation where black swans are going to punch you in the face again and again. Stability is a lie.

Stop watching the daily noise. Stop worrying about whether the Fed raises or cuts a quarter point. It is irrelevant.

Focus on owning the assets that own the infrastructure of this new world: energy, compute capacity, and hard money. Do not chase fiat money; chase utility and the ownership of the systems that will generate that abundance. Musk doesn’t play at predicting the market; he builds the tracks the train runs on.

We cannot build rockets, but we can buy the tickets and, above all, not stand on the tracks waiting to get run over.

Here is the operational synthesis so you can stop thinking and start executing:

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A few months ago Spain floated the idea of taxing crypto gains at 47 percent. The number hit me like a brick, not because it was surprising, but because it confirmed a pattern I’ve been watching for years.

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Today let’s talk about the financial masterpiece Saylor has engineered. I’ve spent the last four months trying to fully understand how it works, and I’ve finally decided to write this article.

I’m referring to his preferred shares, STRC, STRF, STRK…

Today I want to focus specifically on STRC. If you look at how much capital he has raised with each of these instruments, STRC is by far the most significant. And judging by his tweets, and those of Phong Le, CEO of Strategy, it’s clear they are prioritizing this vehicle over the others.

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Most people will be poor. And worse, most will be unhappy too.

Not because of bad luck. Not because of an unfair world. But because they obsess over the wrong problems, focus their attention where it doesn’t matter, and anchor their identity to small, visible sacrifices instead of silent, invisible compounders.

Here’s the brutal irony: while many skip the latte or agonize over $20 expenses, they keep 90% of their savings parked in a checking account earning 0%. An account that loses value daily, in real time, while inflation casually eats their future. Last year, a Big Mac in the U.S. cost $7. This year it’s $8.50. Welcome to the new normal.

The system isn’t broken. It’s working exactly as designed. It keeps savers poor, keeps consumers busy, and rewards those who take intelligent asymmetric bets.

You can clip coupons, chase offers, and cut every corner. But if your capital doesn’t work harder than you do, you lose. Slowly at first. Then all at once.

The poor will grow poorer because they’…

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Every cycle has a narrative.

And every narrative eventually becomes consensus.

Right now, the emerging consensus is simple. If Trump, Bessent, and Kevin Warsh are all openly advocating for large interest rate cuts, what do you honestly think is going to happen?

They are going to cut.

Not because the textbooks say so. Not because the Taylor Rule demands it. But because political power and monetary policy are converging again. And when that happens, theory usually loses.

You don’t float trial balloons like that unless you are preparing the ground. You don’t publicly argue for aggressive easing unless you believe you can implement it. The direction of travel is clear.

Rates are coming down.

But here’s the part that doesn’t fit the classic macro script.

Normally, GDP surges first. Employment tightens. Wages climb. Inflation heats up. Stocks lag initially. Then central banks step in and raise rates to cool the system down. That’s the traditional sequence.

This time is different.

GDP is booming. Corporate earnings are resilient. Equity markets are pushing toward highs. And instead of tightening into strength, we are discussing cutting into strength.

That inversion matters.

Because cutting rates in a booming nominal environment does not stabilize the system. It accelerates it. It pulls demand forward. It weakens the currency. It amplifies financial assets.

Unless something breaks.

And here’s the paradox. We could easily see stocks grinding higher while the job market quietly deteriorates. AI adoption, productivity gains, corporate margin protection. Headcount becomes optional. GDP looks fine on paper. But labor participation weakens under the surface.

Asset owners win. Wage earners struggle.

We’ve seen versions of this before. Liquidity flows into financial assets faster than it flows into real wages. The wealth effect replaces the employment effect. The S&P becomes the political scoreboard.

Now imagine layering rate cuts on top of that.

If you reduce the cost of capital while nominal growth is still positive, you are not tightening financial conditions. You are loosening them aggressively. You are telling the market that downside will be cushioned.

That only means one thing in the medium term.

The dollar gets weaker.

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“Whoever has the gold makes the rules.”

I heard that not long ago from a powerful banker. One who moves a serious chunk of my country’s GDP.

And while it sounds nice on a global scale, I think it’s simpler than that:

whoever has the money makes the rules.

In the 20th century, that was the banks.

They wrapped it all up in fancy words: fractional reserve, repayment capacity, you name it.

But if you really look at it, it’s much simpler:

If you have a banking license, you get permission to take people’s money, lend it to others, and even create money out of thin air.

You get to decide which projects get funded.

And we both know success often has more to do with luck and timing than with decks and plans.

Let me give you an example. I spent years working with the biggest fuel company in my country.

They were a client of mine.

One day, Boston Consulting Group came in to build a business case on how to grow the loyalty program.

After dozens of slides and Excel models… guess what worked?

Giving away a Micke…

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Everyone tells you to build wealth. No one tells you the biggest risk isn’t losing it, but getting trapped inside it.

The other day I read a comment that stuck with me. An investor said: “My problem now is cash flow and taxes. Everything I touch generates taxes. Selling properties costs in cash flow and more taxes. Dipping into the 401k also. I’m at 37%, so I lost my opportunity to transfer to a Roth at a low rate. The net worth on my spreadsheet has to be devalued by 25‑30%. I’m boxed in and married to the IRS. I honestly built a cage and put my family in it.”

That is the trap of conventional finance.

They teach you to accumulate assets. To climb the net‑worth hill. To build an “empire.” But nobody tells you that empire has bars. Every brick has a tax tag. Every exit costs 37%.

And the worst part is you did everything right. You played by the system’s rules. You contributed to the 401k. You bought property. You reinvested. You diversified. And now that you want to live from it, you find you can’t. Or you do only at the cost of draining the account or mortgaging your freedom.

That’s not freedom. That’s servitude in Excel.

Recently, in a course, the speaker asked: Are you free? Some said yes. “Great,” he said, “then let’s go to Mexico for three weeks now.” Silence. Nobody could. Work, family, commitments. Then he said: So you’re not free.

The same goes for money. If to use it you must ask permission from the IRS, the bank, or the market, then you’re not free. You’re hostage to a system that only lets you spend when it says you can.

The solution isn’t easy, but it starts by exiting the accumulation paradigm. Changing the mindset from “grow until you can sell” to “live from flow without selling.” Building a system that rotates around cash flow, liquidity and optionality, not net worth.

That’s where the asymmetric game comes in. Buy assets that generate flow without needing to sell. Use intelligent debt.

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The other day I got a WhatsApp from my fiancée. She works in the art world (auctions, collectors, that whole “beautiful object” ecosystem) and she sent me a photo from a conference she was attending. The slide read:

Picasso or Bitcoin? How art’s status is changing among the super-rich.

I laughed. Told her, “That’s interesting. Grab a pen. I’m going to quiz you later.”

What that headline reveals, without meaning to, is the exact moment a legacy narrative starts to die. And a new one takes over.

Art has always been about status. Picasso isn’t paint on canvas, it’s a signal. A flex. It’s what billionaires hang on the wall to say “I made it.” But Bitcoin? Bitcoin doesn’t ask for permission. It doesn’t need a gallery. It doesn’t care about your taste.

And here’s what’s really melting the brains of the old elite: Bitcoin doesn’t just store wealth. It absorbs it. Actively. Systematically. Day after day. While art depends on buyer sentiment and media hype, Bitcoin is pulling capital like a black h…

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Imagine this. You follow Asymmetric Finance principles, apply them with patience and conviction, and in five to seven years, you’re independently free. Not just financially stable. Free.

(And honestly, I don’t think that’s unrealistic at all.)

You’ve built a system that throws off cash every month. Your core assets are untouchable. You’ve stopped selling, stopped chasing, and started living.

And yet.

Some days I wake up, sit in silence, no calls, no alarms, no demands. The day is mine. And it hits me, this can’t be it. This can’t be the end goal.

Freedom without direction is just a prettier prison.

So today I want to show you how I would design my life, and how I think you should design yours, once you’re free. Not just to avoid the trap of meaningless comfort. But to actually enjoy the freedom you’ve earned.

Step 1 is brutally simple: define your “enough”.

Write it down. How much cashflow per month do you need to live well, travel when you want, eat how you like, support your family, and sleep without stress? Be honest. This number is lower than you think. If you’ve already hit it, then your job changes. You’re no longer building to get free. You’re building for alignment.

If you don’t define “enough,” the game never ends. You keep climbing, keep grinding, keep optimizing something that no longer matters.

And that’s how you end up rich and empty.

Step 2: audit your calendar.

This one stings. Because money gives you leverage, but time shows whether you’re actually using it. Pull up your week and ask yourself: how much of this time feels chosen? How many blocks are things you said yes to without thinking? How much space do you have to think, train, rest, or create?

Design begins here.

If your life is just a tighter version of the same corporate treadmill you escaped, you’re not free. You’re just better dressed.

I made a rule: no meetings before 10am, no standing calls after 3pm. Not because I’m special. But because I want to write, train, walk, and be present. I want space to think. Your rules will be different. But make them yours.

Step 3: curate your people.

Money makes it easy to end up isolated or surrounded by yes-men. Real wealth is choosing who you work with, who you build with, who you laugh with. Make a list of the five people who energize you. Spend more time with them. Send them your calendar link. Prioritize them.

And slowly, start saying no to everyone else.

Relationships are multiplicative. One toxic person ruins your month. One aligned collaborator changes your year. If you don’t design your social life with the same precision you use to build your portfolio, don’t be surprised when it feels empty.

Step 4: define your work box.

Once your flow covers your life, the question shifts. It’s no longer “what makes money?” It becomes “what do I want to master?” What game do I still want to play? What work would I do for free but happens to also make money?

Don’t overthink it.

Maybe you want to write, build a product, back other founders, or create content. Maybe it’s land restoration, software, design, or helping others optimize their lives. But it has to be yours. Work you chose, not work you inherited.

I think of it like this: once my core assets are untouchable, my work becomes a long bet on who I want to become.

No one teaches you this in traditional finance. Because most people never get here.

Step 5: invest in your base layer.

Health isn’t a luxury. It’s leverage. Your body is the multiplier on everything else. No energy, no clarity. No sleep, no strategy. No strength, no stability.

Pick one habit and get obsessive about it for 30 days.

Maybe it’s walking 10,000 steps, sleeping eight hours, lifting three times a week, or quitting sugar. Track it. Optimize it. Build the foundation for the rest of your system. I spent years focused on cashflow, but now my top three KPIs are resting heart rate, sleep consistency, and physical energy.

This is the design.

Not a fantasy. Not a retreat in Bali. But a hard-edged system for living on your terms.

It starts with defining enough. Owning your calendar. Curating your circle. Choosing your work. And optimizing your health.

Freedom isn’t the goal. It’s the starting point.

Once you’re free, the real work begins.

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Everyone keeps talking about “the economy” as if we all lived in the same one.

We don’t.

The economy split. It’s no longer a straight line. It’s a K.

One line goes up. The other sinks.

On the top line are the people who own assets. On the bottom line are those who only own cash.

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There’s a funny thing about wealth. People think it’s about picking the right assets, the right sectors, the right timing. They obsess over charts and valuations and price targets. They treat the market like a puzzle that rewards the smartest solver.

But the wealthy don’t care about solving puzzles.

They care about resetting the board.

Most investors live inside a timeline they can’t escape. They buy, they hold, they hope the number goes up. They worry about selling because selling triggers taxes, and taxes crush compounding. So they cling to their positions like they’re carrying a fragile antique. Every decision feels irreversible.

The rich don’t play that game. The rich use a much simpler technique, one that wipes their mistakes clean, boosts their compounding, and lets them take risk aggressively without worrying about long term consequences.

I call it the Step-Up Illusion.

It’s not magic. It’s not secret. It’s just uncomfortable to talk about because it exposes how unfair the system really is. The wealthy don’t just compound faster. They get to erase the tax downside of their entire strategy. And once you understand this mechanic, you stop looking at wealth as something you build. You start seeing it as something you architect.

The Step-Up Illusion works like this. If you hold an appreciated asset and pass it to the next generation, the cost basis resets. Completely. The tax man forgets the entire gain. Decades of appreciation vanish from the ledger. The slate is wiped clean. It’s as if the market blessed that family with a perfect scorecard and told them to play again.

Most people never touch this because they don’t hold assets long enough. They sell. They panic. They need the money. They want a lifestyle upgrade. They chase shiny objects. They break compounding every couple of years because they treat assets like lottery tickets instead of core positions.

But the wealthy build systems where they never need to sell.

They live from flow.

They borrow against core.

They use liquidity, not liquidation.

So the asset stays untouched, inflating quietly, building a wall of gains that would crush a normal investor with taxes. Except the wealthy will never pay those taxes.

This completely changes how you behave.

When selling disappears as a concept, fear disappears with it.

Your whole psychology shifts.

You become patient, calm, almost indifferent to volatility. You’re not fighting the market anymore. You’re letting time feed you.

This is the Step-Up Illusion in action. It turns patience into a weapon. It turns holding into a strategy. It turns time into the ultimate tax shield.

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