BlackRock Just Made Bitcoin's Bull Case

Bitcoin ETFs just logged their biggest inflow day of 2026 at $999 million, and year-to-date flows turned positive as holders who sat through the bear market came back above their roughly $81,000 cost basis. The hosts debate whether retail is really back or a larger marginal buyer is behind the move, and whether Bitcoin ends up owned like gold. BlackRock's new paper, The Machine-Native Economy, casts stablecoins as the money AI agents spend and Bitcoin as the store of value, citing Bitcoin Policy Institute research. Howard Marks's latest Oaktree memo calls Treasury intervention in the bond market cosmetic and says dollar assets offer no escape. The back half covers tokenization and the CFTC after the Clarity Act stalled, the FBI data leak, $3.1 trillion in off balance sheet AI commitments, and why prices were nearly flat for 140 years before 1940.

Chapters

00:00 - Welcome and the Philly happy hour 03:00 - Bitcoin ETF flows turn positive for 2026 04:53 - Is retail back, or is there a bigger buyer? 10:34 - $999M: the biggest ETF inflow day of 2026 13:15 - Bitcoin vs gold: will retail ever FOMO in? 20:53 - BlackRock on AI agents, stablecoins and Bitcoin 30:03 - Saving a dollar two ways since 2020 33:23 - Howard Marks: Shall We Repeal the Laws of Economics? 39:14 - Bonds spike, gold slides, Bitcoin rises 45:49 - Is 60/40 becoming 80/15/5? 51:45 - Clarity stalls, the CFTC and tokenization 1:00:04 - Single point of failure of the week: the FBI data leak 1:06:31 - The AI documentary and pacing the frontier 1:15:20 - $3.1 trillion in off balance sheet AI commitments 1:17:44 - Either way, they have to print 1:19:30 - 140 years of flat prices, then 1940