Bessent Dealt Bitcoin a Winning Hand
On this episode of The Last Trade, a weekly show from Onramp Media, hosts Jackson Mikalic, Michael Tanguma, and Brian Cubellis open on the Treasury lifting its bond buyback program from a $2 billion daily maximum to $6 billion starting Thursday, and on ten- and thirty-year yields rising anyway, one day after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he is "the house" on the dollar-yen. Jackson walks through the yen carry trade, estimated anywhere from $4 trillion to $20 trillion, and what a 2024-style unwind did to equities and bitcoin in a single session. Brian argues the episode makes the case for owning a monetary unit no committee can steer, while Michael reads Bessent's announcement itself as a tell. From there, the hosts follow where capital is moving: Norway's $2.3 trillion sovereign wealth fund trimming government bonds, large managers rebuilding gold positions, and bank capital rules that treat allocated and paper gold differently. The back half covers reported use of bitcoin and stablecoins to move trade under sanctions, the hosts' discussion of MetaPlanet's compensation structure and what they see as the cost to retail holders versus institutions from the recent treasury-company stock unwind, a reported loss of roughly 4,000 BTC from the exchange Liquid to a security vulnerability, the publicly reported Malone Lam fraud case, and a recent Anthropic researcher resignation cited in the discussion. Views shared by the hosts are their own and are not investment advice from Onramp.
Chapters
00:00 - Housekeeping, Philly happy hour, and tokenizing iBit 05:00 - Treasury raises buybacks to $6 billion a day 07:25 - Brian: the bond market does not care about intervention 10:03 - Michael: reading what they are not saying 15:31 - Bessent is the house, and the yen carry trade 18:28 - You do not announce that you are in control 21:03 - Norway's $2.3 trillion fund cuts government bonds 23:44 - Why banks hold allocated gold but not paper gold 29:26 - Iran turns to Bitcoin and stablecoins to move trade 36:19 - The coming split between clean and dirty Bitcoin 40:06 - MetaPlanet, the comp package, and the DAT unwind 46:42 - Retail got fleeced, not institutions 49:35 - Physical attacks and the market structure gap 54:51 - The third path: distribute trust, not one key 57:23 - Liquid loses 4,000 BTC to a known vulnerability 1:03:29 - Malone Lam, $245 million, and fake Google calls 1:09:58 - Anthropic resignation and the 10% extinction claim
