• 🧠Quote(s) of the week:
• 🧡Bitcoin news🧡
• 💸Traditional Finance / Macro:
• 🏦Banks:
• 🌎Macro/Geopolitics:
• 🎁If you have made it this far, I would like to give you a little gift:

§🧠Quote(s) of the week:

’The stages of a Bitcoin maxi:

1. I’ll buy Bitcoin, hold, and sell for profit
2. I’ll trade alt coins and convert profit to Bitcoin
3. Alt coins were a bad idea. Bitcoin only from here
4. I’ll read some Bitcoin books for the next 2 months 4.a. Make that 2 years…
5. 8 billion people finally have the opportunity to be in the service of 8 billion people without any censorship or debasement of their time and energy. Prices fall forever towards the marginal cost of production when participating in the world’s first free market. I need to pass this knowledge on so humanity can thrive.’ - Ron Sovereignty Swanson

§🧡Bitcoin news🧡

Photos hosted by Azzamo ( https://azzamo.net/)

On the 8th of February: ➡️Your next move should be obvious if you want generational wealth

The post-COVID class of bitcoin-ers has earned their stripes, having experienced 4 of the top 10 bitcoin drawdowns.

What do you see? The most interesting part of this chart is how the drawdowns are getting smaller.

➡️River: Friendly reminder: Bitcoin isn’t the bubble. It’s the pin that terrifies the establishment.

’Bitcoin as a decentralized system:

• ~88K bitcoin nodes around the world. Of which ~24K are ‘reachable’.
• ~3M ASIC mining machines around the world
• ~100M-300M people globally have Bitcoin
• ~17K lightning nodes’ - Stephan Livera

➡️’Germany once had 1,750 tonnes of its Gold stored in the U.S. After years of negotiations, only 300 tonnes were returned. It has now requested the remaining 1,350 tonnes. Why did it take three years to move just 300 tonnes? Because in the modern financial system, Gold isn’t just stored — it’s leased, rehypothecated, and claimed multiple times over. The system runs on confidence.’ Documenting Saylor

Recent calls from German politicians and economists to repatriate it emerged in late Jan 2026, citing U.S. geopolitical risks. No public U.S. response yet. For context, Germany completed partial repatriation in 2017. “System runs on confidence” is just a polite way of saying the vault is full of IOU notes (paper claims) and legacy trust.

Anyway, got Bitcoin? If you don’t hold it, you don’t own it!

➡️River: Something that deeply excites our team is how many businesses of all sizes keep pouring into Bitcoin. We’ve onboarded thousands over the past years, and there is so much room for growth.

On the 15th of February:

➡️’One of the biggest mining difficulty increases in over 10+ years. And that marks the end of the 3-month miner capitulation.’- James van Straten

➡️In 2010, 99.99% of the world didn’t own Bitcoin. Today? Still 98.7%. 2010: 0.0001% of the world owned Bitcoin. Basically nobody. 2015: 0.07% owned Bitcoin. Still microscopic. The crowd laughed. 2020: 0.6% owned Bitcoin. 99.4% of humanity still trusts fiat. 2025: 1.3% own Bitcoin. We’ve cracked 1%.

Many think “it’s too late.” And if you’re reading this without owning any Bitcoin, you are voluntarily choosing to be part of the 98.7%. You are choosing to be late. -Jeff Swanson

➡️Bitcoin adoption is like the internet in 2001.

On the 16th of February:

➡️’Google’s interest in “Quantum Computing Bitcoin” peaked when Bitcoin peaked. The risk evaluation was at a maximum when the price was, leading to derisking, a leading indicator of a price decline. The Quantum threat drove Bitcoin down. The floor interest in quantum risk to Bitcoin is also steadily rising. The good news is that at least this means we are starting to get traction and attention in the right places to solve the problem (Strategy, Eth Foundation, etc.). - Charles Edwards

Believing that quantum computers pose a threat to Bitcoin may prove to be the last great transfer of BTC from the foolish to the wise. The last time it was this easy was the Blocksize Wars.’ - Samson Mow (is spot on)

➡️Strategy can withstand a drawdown in $BTC price to $8K and still have sufficient assets to cover our debt fully. Saylor: ‘We plan to equitize our convertible debt over the next 3–6 years.’

➡️Capitalism started in 1602 in the Netherlands with the world’s first stock exchange. Capitalism just died in the Netherlands in 2026 with the introduction of the first unrealized gains tax. Neofeudalism is here! Taxing unrealized gains has already failed in Norway. Norway’s government is expected to raise more than $150 m in revenue from Taxing Unrealized Gains. Instead, it caused a massive $54 BILLION to flee the country, and it cost them (-$600 million) instead.

Just a great explanation by Yogi: ‘Unrealized gains tax for Gen-Z: You buy a Pokémon card for $50. Someone offers you $500 for it. You say no. You love that card. You’re keeping it. The government says, “Cool, but that card is worth $500 now. You owe us $100 in taxes.” You: “…I didn’t sell it.” Government: “Don’t care. Pay up.” You don’t have $100 lying around. So you’re forced to sell the card you love to pay a tax on money you never received. Next month? That card drops back to $50. Your card is gone. Your money is gone. And the government shrugs. That’s a wealth tax on unrealized gains. They don’t pay you back the tax…

Now picture this. Your mom calls you crying. She has to sell the house she raised you in. Not because she can’t afford it. She’s lived there for 30 years. It’s paid off. But some websites say it’s worth more now, and the government says she owes $15,000 she doesn’t have. So she sells your childhood home. The kitchen where she made you breakfast. The doorframe where she marked your height every birthday. Gone. To pay a tax on money that was never real.

Now, picture the opposite. Your dad put everything into his small business. For 20 years, he built it from nothing. One year, the business is “valued” at $2 million on paper. He owes a massive tax bill. He empties his savings. Sells his truck. Borrows money. Pays it. Next year, the market crashes. His business is worth $200,000. He lost everything to pay a tax on a number that no longer exists. Does the government give him his money back? No. Does the government give him his truck back? No. Does the government care? No. They sold this idea as “taxing billionaires.” But billionaires have armies of lawyers, offshore accounts, and trusts. They’ll be fine.

You know who won’t be fine? Your mom. Your dad. Your neighbor has a small business. The farmer down the road who’s had the same land for four generations and now has to sell it because dirt got expensive. You’re not taxing wealth. You’re taxing people for owning things. It’s like getting a parking ticket for a car you might drive somewhere someday. They want you to own nothing and be happy. To fund the fraud, waste, and abuse of the welfare state, they created. There is enough money. More tax isn’t needed. It’s all a lie. But you’ve been gaslit into believing this is a rich-versus-poor debate. I hope you understand what’s at stake.’

Anyway, got Bitcoin?

On the 17th of February:

➡️Worst Q1 in over 8 years.

You’ll never guess who bought the 2nd most IBIT in Q4. Jane Street! Market manipulation during U.S. hours has been a regular show. (Remember this for next week’s recap)

Institutions and sovereigns are accumulating.

➡️21 million coins, shifting hands over 16 years. Pay attention—a great overview of who owns Bitcoin by TFTC.

Everyone is screaming “bear market.” Meanwhile, institutions are quietly buying the dip like it’s Manhattan in 1800.

Slowly moving from the impatient to the disciplined. Retail exits. Treasuries accumulate. Supply tightens. This isn’t a crash. It’s redistribution. That’s the whole story of Bitcoin. Don’t let it be your story too.

➡️Nearly 700,000 Bitcoin left individual hands in 2025. That’s 3.3% of the entire supply flowing to corporations, ETFs, and governments. - Marty Bent

On the 18th of February:

➡️Crypto lending firm Ledn sold $188 million of securitized bonds backed by Bitcoin, making it the first ever BTC deal in the market for asset-backed debt — Bloomberg

➡️Largest new IBIT holder: Laurore Ltd. $436 million. Single holding. No website, no press, no footprint. HK-based. Filer named Zhang Hui, the Chinese equivalent of John Smith. Chinese investors can’t hold Bitcoin. But they can hold a BlackRock ETF. - TFTC

➡️Over 217 companies and projects are building on Bitcoin’s Lightning Network. The Lightning industry continues to grow. - Sam Wouters

On the 19th of February:

➡️Marco Rubio: “We won’t have to talk about sanctions in five years because there will be so many countries transacting in currencies other than the Dollar that we won’t have the ability to sanction them.” Bitcoin is the opt-out.

➡️Eric Balchunas: The Tortoise and the Hare: Store of Value edition. Love this chart of $GLD vs Bitcoin over the past three years; it shows the same 39% annual return, but two VERY different paths. One’s a teenager, and the other is 5,000 years old, and they act like it.

➡️Only 4.9% of all #Bitcoin remain to be mined. After that, no more will be created. Forever.

➡️Bitcoin’s Lightning Network exceeds $1B in monthly transaction volume. - River (17) Sam Wouters op X: ‘Bitcoin’s Lightning Network exceeds $1 billion in monthly volume’ / X

That’s like 15,000 BTC per month moved on Lightning—instantaneous P2P bitcoin payments.

Jeff Booth: ‘In a world of endless noise, the signal often whispers. Outrage cycles and algorithm-fed drama cloud our attention. Yet, sovereign protocols like Bitcoin and Nostr offer clarity. They are the quiet builders, the true connectors. Are we listening?’

On the 20th of February:

➡️’▲ 14.73% to 144.4T Bitcoin mining just got ~15% harder, with the largest ever increase in absolute difficulty, completely erasing last epoch’s huge downwards adjustment. The last two adjustments erased 15.8T from the mining difficulty, and then immediately added 18.5T back on. For context, it took the entire Bitcoin network over 11 years to reach 15T in TOTAL difficulty. ’ - Mononaut

➡️Bitcoin’s current price is almost -40% below the model ‘fair value’ implied by global ETP flows. Once risk appetite and flows return, #bitcoin could literally run it back turbo. - Andre Dragosch

➡️At $67k, the unrealized loss in the market equals ~19% of the market cap. Current market pain echoes a similar structure seen in May 2022. - Glassnode

➡️’Bitcoin does nothing most of the time. Once or twice a year, it moves in 10-day spurts, delivering massive returns. I can’t tell you when the next one is coming, but I can tell you it will come, and it will be fast.’ - Fred Krueger

I seriously cannot believe people aren’t buying as much Bitcoin as possible at $67,000. How much lower do you think it can go? Fair value vs Gold is already over $180,000 — we’ve never been so undervalued compared to precious metals—just my two sats.

On the 23rd of February:

➡️Wicked: Looks like every Bitcoin daily DCA’er is back under a $100k cost basis. Even the ones who started around the all-time high. That means once Bitcoin gets back above $100k, we’ll all be in profit.

➡️Institutions may end up owning the most Bitcoin. But only if we let them. - River

➡️TFTC: New BPI Report; ‘Basel’s 1,250% risk weight forces banks to hold $100M in capital against a $100M Bitcoin position. Gold requires $0. AA-rated bonds require $1.6M. With 153+ companies holding $78B in Bitcoin on their balance sheets, the math doesn’t work.’

➡️Bitcoin falls below $64,000 as selling pressure builds and levered liquidations accelerate. - TKL

➡️Bitcoin Returns since 2010…

➡️There was no bull run. This was the worst bull market in history. We’re practically at the bottom. We haven’t put a new high in against Gold. ETFs and treasury companies bought millions of coins, yet we haven’t even kept up with Inflation. Extremely disappointing cycle. Is it over? - The Bitcoin Therapist

➡️Priced in Bitcoin: “Bitcoin is down 47% from ATH. Historically, buying at -50% drawdown has a 90% win rate over 1 year with a median return of +95%. At -70%, the win rate is 100%. Never lost. Worst outcome was still +25%.”

§💸Traditional Finance / Macro:

On the 15th of February:

👉All 7 members of the Magnificent Seven are now down on the year and underperforming the S&P 500.

On the 19th of February:

👉TKL: 54.0% of S&P 500 stocks are currently overbought, the highest percentage since June 2025. At the same time, 26.8% of names are oversold, the highest since October. Last Friday marked only the 13th day since 2007 when both the proportion of overbought and oversold stocks rose by more than 10 percentage points over a single month. Under usual market conditions, these metrics move in opposite directions. This means a significant number of stocks are seeing aggressive buying and selling simultaneously. Markets are experiencing a rare shift in price action.

On the 23rd of February:

👉This is what the Bitcoin price was warning us about yesterday.
Over $700 billion was wiped out from the U.S. stock market today.
Massive crash in cybersecurity stocks after Anthropic launched Claude Code Security.
China is making AI free and open source, building on U.S. models for the world. - Simon Dixon

§🏦Banks:

👉🏽No news

§🌎Macro/Geopolitics:

On the 8th of February:

👉🏽The new asylum minister is immediately faced with 53,000 family reunification arrivals, with the vast majority of applications being approved. The number of Syrians in the Netherlands (first- and second-generation combined) is expected to exceed 200,000 by early 2026.

And the counter keeps ticking. According to Mona Keijzer, a large number of family reunification applications — including Syrians — are still in the pipeline. At the same time, dozens of status holders already have housing but will only begin their mandatory integration courses in 2028. We don’t find that merely odd — we find it outright antisocial 😡 Whoever is responsible for this policy should be deeply ashamed. Bottom line: Roughly 60,000 social housing units, at a cost of approximately €160 billion, are paid for by Dutch taxpayers.

The Oude IJsselstreek municipality purchased a house for a family of at least 10 status holders. Asking price: €469,000. “A semi-detached home with a spacious garden and no fewer than seven bedrooms,” according to Funda.

Will this ever be done for Dutch priority cases? Source: https://t.co/LYyWpMVEpH

👉🏽New legal residents and future citizens arriving in Spain. Word has reached all of Africa.

1. Go to Spain
2. Hang out for 5 months
3. Spain gives you legal residency
4. Then you can move anywhere in the European Union because of their silly rules Video: (20) RadioGenoa op X: ‘Pedro Sanchez’s friends have arrived in Spain. With him in power, Spain no longer has any borders. https://t.co/86ltjHEFim

👉🏽Suddenly, pensions are no longer a problem. Suddenly, healthcare costs are no longer a problem. Suddenly, wages are no longer a problem. When will people realize they’re being deceived in plain sight? They casually drive up public debt and raise taxes — as if none of it has consequences. I get it, though. The price of freedom is necessary, but the outcome and the road to it are debatable.

👉🏽The US runs a $300B+ SERVICES trade surplus. Its biggest foreign market is Europe. The EU relies heavily on U.S. cloud, software, and tech platforms. -Steve Hanke

It’s impossible to replace U.S. tech providers in the EU due to the insane levels of ultra-regulation. The EU has no leverage. There are no European replacements for those services. EU regulations make it nearly impossible for such companies to be created in European countries. They are created elsewhere. The EU will extract revenue via invented regulations and fines.

Oh, and by the way, we have laughed countless times about the world-famous EU bottle caps. But take a look at how expensive the implementation was. How is such nonsense even possible? Wouldn’t it make more sense for Europe to invest in new technologies like AI instead?

👉🏽China, India, and Russia have risen to #2, #5, and #9 in GDP.

👉🏽The U.S. economy is on pace for 4% to 5% growth in 2026. And that is with negative immigration for the first time in American history. 2.5 million deportations and self deportations. 10x the deportations and make it even greater. Recession odds reach a low of 22%.

On the 14th of February:

👉🏽TKL: China is stuck in its longest deflationary streak in decades: China’s GDP deflator fell -0.7% in Q4 2025, marking the 11th consecutive quarterly decline, the longest streak in at least 30 years. China has been in deflation for 3 consecutive years now, the longest stretch since the country transitioned to a market economy in the late 1970s. By comparison, the streak lasted just 2 quarters following the 2008 Financial Crisis. Most recently, producer prices fell -1.4% YoY in January, marking the 40th consecutive month of factory deflation. This comes as weak consumer demand, driven by a property market crisis, continues to drag prices lower. Furthermore, Chinese factories are producing far more than consumers can buy, forcing companies to slash prices to survive. China’s deflationary spiral is showing no signs of improvement.

👉🏽The Netherlands’ House of Representatives has approved a 36% tax on unrealized capital gains.

This one makes me laugh every time I see it. After the left morons introduced the wealth tax in California, more than a trillion $ in wealth left. There are still some geniuses in the Netherlands, France, Germany, and the UK who are seriously advocating wealth taxes. Will they ever learn?

Aakash Gupta: ’The Netherlands was forced into taxing unrealized gains. Their Supreme Court struck down the old Box 3 system in 2021. The previous framework assumed a fictional rate of return on your assets and taxed you on profits you never actually made. The court ruled it unconstitutional. That left a €2.3 billion annual hole in the Dutch treasury and no legal way to tax investment returns.

So parliament passed the replacement with 93 votes (needed 75). Multiple parties who publicly voted yes said that taxing unrealized gains was not their preferred approach. They backed it because the alternative was collecting zero on investment returns indefinitely while refunding €1.2 billion in overpaid taxes from the old illegal system.

The math on what happens next is predictable. France ran this experiment for 20 years. Between 1988 and 2007, an estimated €200 billion in capital fled the country. 60,000 millionaires left between 2000 and 2017. The wealth tax cost France roughly €7 billion in annual fiscal shortfall, about twice what it actually collected. Macron killed it in 2018.

The Netherlands just approved something far more aggressive. France taxed total wealth at progressive rates starting around 0.5%. The Dutch version taxes annual paper gains at a flat 36%. Your portfolio goes up by €100,000 on paper, and you owe €36,000 in cash. You haven’t sold a single share. The government acknowledged this liquidity problem directly, which is why it exempted real estate and startup shares. Stocks, bonds, and crypto get no such protection. The bill still needs Senate approval. Implementation targets 2028. But the EU has free movement of capital and people. Portugal, Malta, and Cyprus are a short flight away.

This matters for the U.S. because unrealized gains taxation keeps surfacing in American policy proposals. California has a wealth tax ballot initiative that’s already triggered an estimated $2 trillion in capital flight threats. The Biden administration proposed taxing unrealized gains above $100M. The Netherlands is about to become the first country to implement one at scale broadly. France spent 20 years proving the model fails. The Netherlands is about to rerun the experiment at 36%.’

The Netherlands had a €2.3 billion budget hole. Their 2026 budget planned to spend €7 billion on refugees (excluding Ukraine). Plus tens of billions more in indirect costs. The 7 billion on “refugees” are ADDITIONAL expenses on top of what’s already annually spent on mass immigration. Every Somali allowed into Europe costs the taxpayer about 750,000€ for life. The Netherlands alone allowed in ~1500 of them in 2025. Another 1.1 billion euros wasted. It’s trivial to fix this by closing the borders to the worst people in the world.

Every tax-paying Dutch citizen pays almost €6,000 per year for: ▪ €2,100 asylum and migration ▪ €1,700 EU membership ▪ €1,500 Ukraine ▪ €650 development aid (foto)

On the 15th of February

👉🏽TKL: ‘The U.S. Dollar continues to lead all global transactions: The U.S. Dollar’s portion of international transactions via SWIFT is up to 50.5%, the highest since 2023. This percentage is up by +11.6 points over the last 4 years. The Euro remains in 2nd place at 21.9%, followed by the British Pound at 6.7%, the Canadian Dollar at 3.4%, and the Japanese Yen at 3.4%. By comparison, the Chinese Yuan is just 2.7%, roughly unchanged over the last 3 years. Meanwhile, SWIFT processed 13.4 billion trade instructions in 2024, up from 11.9 billion in 2023. The U.S. Dollar’s position in international finance remains strong.’

👉🏽 U.S. job numbers were revised down by -1,029,000 jobs in 2025, the largest annual revision in at least 20 years. This follows downward revisions of -818,000 in 2024 and -306,000 in 2023. In total, -2,153,000 jobs have been revised out of initially reported data over the last 3 years. Since 2019, -2,500,000 jobs have been erased from official data, with negative revisions occurring in 6 of the last 7 years. By comparison, the 2009-2010 combined downward revisions were roughly -1,200,000. What is happening with U.S. labor market data?

More on the labor market.

U.S. job gains are now entirely driven by education and healthcare: Education and health services have led nonfarm payroll gains for 18 consecutive months, the longest streak this century. This exceeds the previous 16-month peaks in 2008 and 2024. Since 2023, these two sectors have led job creation in 34 months. Over the last 12 months alone, private education and health services have added +773,000 jobs. If not for these sectors, the U.S. economy would have lost -413,700 jobs during this period. The U.S. labor market is far weaker than it seems.

On the 16th of February:

👉🏽Talking about democracy… ‘Ursula von der Leyen is now openly pushing to scrap the EU’s unanimity rule, the very safeguard that protects national sovereignty. “To act faster, the EU must abandon unanimity,” she says, in other words: efficiency over democracy. Unanimity isn’t some bureaucratic inconvenience; it’s the last line of defense for smaller nations against domination by the bloc’s biggest powers. Strip away veto rights, and the EU stops being a union of sovereign states. It becomes a centralized power structure in which Berlin and Paris call the shots, and everyone else falls in line. Remove unanimity, and you remove equality. At that point, the European Union ceases to be a partnership; it becomes a hierarchy.’- Richard.

👉🏽Jack Prandelli: ’THE WORLD RUNS THROUGH 8 STRAITS Trade, Oil, LNG, and Military power. Key chokepoints: • Malacca ~25% of global traded goods • Hormuz ~25% of global oil, ~⅓ of LNG • Singapore ~50% of global seaborne trade • Gibraltar Atlantic Mediterranean • Bosphorus Black Sea outlet • Magellan Atlantic Pacific backup • Bering Arctic gateway • Bass Australian passage

These are pressure points. Close Hormuz… Oil spikes. Disrupt Malacca… Asia freezes. Block Bosphorus… Black Sea trade halts. Geopolitics isn’t abstract. It’s maritime geometry.’

👉🏽U.S. National Debt projected to soar to $64 Trillion over the next decade.

If you spent $10 million per day for the last 2,000 years since Jesus was born, you would have spent about $7.4 trillion by today. The United States national debt is $38 trillion.

👉🏽’Gold is at the heart of modern portfolio construction.

• Ray Dalio: Investors should have a 5–15% gold allocation
• Morgan Stanley: It should be more like 20%
• Bank of America: Nah, 30% is rational
• Average portfolio manager: I am at 1.9% Despite Gold’s record price rally, almost no one has a meaningful gold allocation. We are witnessing a paradigm shift in portfolio construction, away from the traditional 60% equity/40% bond portfolio toward an equity/gold standard portfolio. This bull market is far from over.’ - Lukas Ekwueme

👉🏽Investing Visuals (Jan):

“The Dutch government is destroying long-term compounding by introducing a 36% tax on unrealized gains.

As a Dutch citizen and long-term investor, I’m at a loss for words about the lack of vision behind this new tax. I normally don’t post anything political, but what our government is planning is disastrous for long-term investors. This is the sad truth. Most people here start investing to protect themselves against Inflation and ever-rising pension ages. They’re trying to put their hard-earned money to work, hoping to retire before age 71. And they had a real shot at that before this bill. If you started at 25 with €10,000 and contributed €1,000 every month, you could compound to €3,320,000 over 40 years. If you lived prudently, you could retire early and live off it for the rest of your life. With the new capital tax? After 40 years of compounding, you’d end up at €1,885,000. That’s a €1,435,000 difference.

This tax denies generations the chance of early retirement, punishes those who take risks, and introduces severe liquidity issues for people who have been compounding successfully for years. And to what end? To fill a €2.4 billion tax hole.

I’m beyond words. If you’re Dutch like me, please share this visual with fellow investors to increase awareness. We want our politicians to understand the severity of this tax and the breadth and depth of its destructive implications.

Capitalism started in 1602 in the Netherlands with the world’s first stock exchange. Capitalism just died in the Netherlands in 2026 with the introduction of the first unrealized gains tax. Neofeudalism is here!

Just a great explanation by Yogi:

Unrealized gains tax for Gen-Z: You buy a Pokémon card for $50. Someone offers you $500 for it. You say no. You love that card. You’re keeping it. The government says, “Cool, but that card is worth $500 now. You owe us $100 in taxes.” You: “…I didn’t sell it.” Government: “Don’t care. Pay up.” You don’t have $100 lying around. So you’re forced to sell the card you love to pay a tax on money you never received. Next month? That card drops back to $50. Your card is gone. Your money is gone. And the government shrugs. That’s a wealth tax on unrealized gains. They don’t pay you back the tax…

Now picture this. Your mom calls you crying. She has to sell the house she raised you in. Not because she can’t afford it. She’s lived there for 30 years. It’s paid off. But some websites say it’s worth more now, and the government says she owes $15,000 she doesn’t have. So she sells your childhood home. The kitchen where she made you breakfast. The doorframe where she marked your height every birthday. Gone. To pay a tax on money that was never real.

Now, picture the opposite. Your dad put everything into his small business. For 20 years, he built it from nothing. One year, the business is “valued” at $2 million on paper. He owes a massive tax bill. He empties his savings. Sells his truck. Borrows money. Pays it. Next year, the market crashes. His business is worth $200,000. He lost everything to pay a tax on a number that no longer exists. Does the government give him his money back? No. Does the government give him his truck back? No. Does the government care? No. They sold this idea as “taxing billionaires.” But billionaires have armies of lawyers, offshore accounts, and trusts. They’ll be fine.

You know who won’t be fine? Your mom. Your dad. Your neighbor has a small business. The farmer down the road who’s had the same land for four generations and now has to sell it because dirt got expensive. You’re not taxing wealth. You’re taxing people for owning things. It’s like getting a parking ticket for a car you might drive somewhere someday. They want you to own nothing and be happy. To fund the fraud, waste, and abuse of the welfare state, they created. There is enough money. More tax isn’t needed. It’s all a lie. But you’ve been gaslit into believing this is a rich-versus-poor debate. I hope you understand what’s at stake.’

👉🏽UK 10-year yields down to 4.4% again this morning, a full 70bp below the level in the OBR’s November forecast. That’s an £11bn addition to headroom on a mark-to-market basis - so not unhelpful ahead of the Spring Forecast in just over two weeks (if captured/conditioned). But dig below the surface, and the spread between Gilts and other G7 sovereigns has nudged out by 20bp since Labour leadership speculation has amplified. That domestic discount is the more relevant piece of information for measuring “fiscal vibes”. - Simon French

On the 17th of February:

👉🏽Mayor Mamdani: “We are forced to raid our rainy day fund, retiree benefit fund, and to increase property taxes.” THAT WAS FAST, FFS!

Zohran Mamdani announces he will raise taxes on all New Yorkers. He wants a 10% increase in property taxes and to “raid” the city’s savings accounts. This is only the start. His communist wish list will require more tax increases. NYC and its residents will be bankrupt faster than originally thought. - Wall Street Mav

Or… hear me out in this one: cut spending.

👉🏽A study in Finland found that one Somali immigrant costs taxpayers about $31,600 per year (€27,000), which is nearly as much as the median salary in Finland, which is about €33,000 per year ($38,500).

A simple explanation of why Europe used to be safe, and it isn’t anymore.’ - Martin Varsavsky

👉🏽A larger investor has been buying December gold call option spreads at $15,000/$20,000 on the Comex. This means gold prices would have to TRIPLE from current levels by late 2025 for the trade to expire in the money and pay off. The trade can also profit from a sharp rally or a spike in gold volatility well before the expiration of these options. The position started building after gold prices hit a record $5,600 in the last week of January. Even after gold prices fell below $5,000, the buyer of these calls has continued to accumulate contracts, with open interest surging to ~11,000 contracts. Someone is betting on a near-term violent move higher in Gold.’ -TKL

On the 18th of February:

👉🏽Spain has the highest youth unemployment rate in Europe, making it difficult for young people to start a family. The birth rate is in free fall, as people without jobs don’t have children. Can someone explain the logic behind almost 4 million net immigrants to Spain since 2018?

👉🏽TKL: ‘Non-asset owners are being left behind: U.S. consumer sentiment among non-stockholders stands at near its lowest level in at least 8 years. This metric has been in a downtrend for 6 straight years. At the same time, sentiment among the largest stockholders is at its highest in 12 months. The gap between the two groups has widened to ~15 points, the highest since 2024. By comparison, in 2018-2022, sentiment between the groups moved in lockstep. Own assets or be left behind.’

👉🏽The President of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde, is expected to resign before the end of her 8-year term, per FT.

‘For all of you celebrating the talk of early retirement of ECB president Christine Lagarde, you may want to put the champagne on ice. If she leaves early, it’s only so French President Macron can handpick her successor. You know, before it’s done through elections, and they lose control of the process. Have a great evening.’ -James Lavish.

👉🏽More on Macron… French President Macron: ‘Free speech is pure bullshit if nobody knows how you are guided through this so-called free speech—especially when it is to be guided from one hated speech to another hated speech. I want to have a transparent road through these different speeches, and, by the way, a sort of public order. I want to avoid a racist speech, hateful speech, and so on.’

Well said, Comrade Macron! Let‘s send all the others to a gulag! Free speech, open societies, and liberty are often glorified slogans. Every authoritarian in history started with “I just want order.” Macron’s not the first leader to argue that free speech is dangerous. See the picture below for some examples. He’s just the first Western one dumb enough to say it on camera at a democracy conference.

“Free speech is a complete bullshit.” - Emmanuel Macron “Emmanuel Macron is a fucking idiot and as a kid got groomed by a man (now his husband/wife).” - Bitcoin Friday You see how free speech works? Kinda cool, innit?

A few days later, on the 19th of February: German Chancellor Merz: “I want real names on the internet. I want to know who is speaking. Those who hide behind anonymity demand the greatest transparency from others.” Brace yourself, censorship in action!

👉🏽Global bond market returns are deteriorating: 87% of bonds worldwide are currently trading at yields below 5%. In fact, 14% of bonds yield less than 2%, 32% less than 3%, and 60% less than 4%. With Inflation running near 3%, the vast majority of bond investors are earning just a ~2% real return per year, while roughly one-third are effectively earning nothing. This also does not factor in transaction costs or taxes. By comparison, $18.4 trillion of global bonds had negative yields in 2020 before falling to 0 in early 2023. Are global bond markets gradually heading back toward sub-zero yields?’ -TKL

👉🏽‘Diversification has become more difficult in recent years. Stocks and bonds increasingly sell off together, weakening a core hedge that investors relied on for decades. This shift raises new risks for investors and financial stability.’ - IMF Ergo: Buy scarce assets -> Bitcoin

👉🏽The Netherlands: Classic: create the problem, then tax the side effects.

In the Netherlands, homeowners pay tax on “imputed rent.” It’s called eigenwoningforfait. If you live in your own home, the government assumes you receive a financial benefit (because you don’t pay rent). A small % of your home’s value is added to your taxable income. You’re taxed on the benefit of living in your own house. This system exists to balance mortgage interest deductions and homeownership advantages.

The state assumes a “fictional rental income” you never receive, and adds it to your taxable income. Meanwhile, property prices are driven up by policy itself.

Max Schoon: ‘What most people miss about eigenwoningforfait is the bait and switch. It was designed to offset the hypotheekrenteaftrek (mortgage interest deduction), so the two were supposed to cancel each other out. But the government has been quietly reducing the mortgage deduction for years while keeping the forfait in place. Meanwhile, WOZ valuations (the government property assessments that determine your forfait) have been skyrocketing. Some homeowners saw WOZ increases of 15-20% in a single year. So you’re paying more imputed rent tax on a house that’s worth more on paper, while getting less deduction on your actual mortgage payments. Now add the new 36% unrealized gains tax (Box 3) on top. Dutch homeowners are getting squeezed from every direction.’

Ergo: In the Netherlands, it sometimes feels like you’re better off not working, not owning a house, having four kids, and letting the government take care of you. The system punishes effort and rewards dependency.

👉🏽Spain’s debt soars to 1.7 trillion euros. However, that is “debt under the excessive deficit protocol,” which is significantly lower than total debt outstanding, which exceeds 2.1 trillion euros. Debt under the “excessive deficit” protocol to GDP only “declines” due to elevated Inflation, large immigration, bloated public spending, and one-off EU funds. So debt rises, and official debt-to-GDP declines due to factors that make you poorer in both the numerator and the denominator. Furthermore, total public administration debt-to-GDP exceeds 134%. - Daniel Lacalle

On the 19th of February:

👉🏽A new Fed study reveals Kalshi’s forecasts for the federal funds rate and CPI have outperformed both Fed funds futures and professional economist surveys. Unlike traditional tools, Kalshi provides a continuously updated full probability distribution rather than a single point estimate. Notably, the most likely outcome in Kalshi’s distribution has matched the actual fed funds rate on the day of every FOMC meeting since 2022. - Bitcoi News (foto)

👉🏽Americans 55+ now account for 45.3% of all U.S. consumer spending. Highest in at least 28 years. Nearly double the 28% in the early 2000s. They also hold 73.7% of all U.S. wealth, up from 56.2% in 2000.

👉🏽The UK is blocking President Trump from using their bases for potential strikes on Iran, per The Times. UK-US tensions are rising:

1. Block is owing to concerns that it would be a breach of international law 2. Trump has withdrawn support for Keir Starmer’s Chagos Islands deal
2. White House is still reportedly preparing “detailed plans” for a strike against Iran
3. Strikes expected to use both Diego Garcia and RAF Fairford in the UK
4. These bases are home to America’s fleet of heavy bombers in Europe. Oil prices are now up to a 6-month high.

👉🏽’Muslim populations in Europe vote for left-wing parties because they are after two things:

1. More Muslim immigration. Mainly, more family reunification.
2. Bigger welfare cheques from European governments. The Left-Muslim coalition is not at all confusing.’

In Dutch elections, those Turks vote left or for the Turkish Islamic party “Denk”. Denk originated from the Social Democratic Party. Importing voters is the worst strategy ever; it made me lose a lot of faith in democracy.

Now I am just going to share some stats on our Dutch fan favorite, “Moroccans.”

• Population: ~430k Moroccans (CBS 2025 data), ~2.4% of 18M total.
• Lifetime cost: Studies (e.g., IZA 2024) estimate €167k-€400k+ for non-Western immigrants;
• Unemployment: Historically 3-4x higher for Moroccans (CBS); recent Dutch rate ~4%.
• Welfare: Higher usage (30-50% vs. 7-12% Dutch per some reports).
• Crime: 40-50% of 2nd-gen males involved in investigations (older studies); rates 3-5x higher.

First question: Is Morocco at war? Why do they need to be migrants? Second question: Does the Netherlands need remigration? I’m not sure; that is subjective. But when you have ca 3% of the population on your hand (left-wing parties), that is a strategy. Sources: http://CBS.nl, Euronews, and academic papers.

Last week, an article in Foreign Policy with the title: ‘Migration can provide the Manpower for European Defense.’

But also Canadian Minister Lena Diab: “This will keep Canadians safe…” Canada launches a new ‘Immigration Category’ for the Armed Forces to allow ‘Recruits’ from the Chinese Communist Party and other foreign adversaries to merge with Canada’s Military.

For fuck sake, haven’t we learned anything from the past? Read some goddammn history books. ‘Sure, inviting in foreigners to defend them didn’t work for the Romans with the Goths, or Britons with the Saxons, or Abbasids with the Turks, or Ayyubids with the Mameluks, or Southern Italians with the Normans, or Polish with the Teutonic Knights…but it might work for us.’ - Roman Helmut Guy

People don’t fight for “economies”; they fight for their people, their nation, their religion.

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”–George Santayana.

Buy this time it’s different, right?

👉🏽Meanwhile in Germany: German Chancellor Merz says he wants MORE immigrants to come to Germany. Factories are closing, jobs are leaving because electricity is 2x more expensive. Germany doesn’t need more workers. The factories aren’t being built in Germany anymore.

Labor supply and industrial competitiveness are two different levers. If energy costs stay structurally high, capital reallocates regardless of workforce size. Jobs create workers, and currently their economy is hollowing out.

👉🏽France’s strategy to reduce its budget deficit this year remains “very uncertain,” the country’s audit court says.

‘France has always missed its fiscal deficit targets. Always. Why should it be different this time? With no structural reforms, the next euro crisis will start in France. And next time it will be about trillions, not billions. Many freshly printed Euros will be needed.’ - Michael A. Arouet

Rules hold for countries like mine, not for their friends. THE EU MUST BE BURNT TO ASHES, and I mean that in a good way.

Source: France’s Deficit Reduction Plan Faces ‘Very Uncertain’ Outlook, Auditor Warns - Bloomberg

👉🏽In Glasgow, there are so many Rapes now that crisis centres cannot keep up. The UK is now the rape CAPITAL of Europe.

The chart accurately cites World Population Review/UNODC data: the UK reported ~109 rapes per 100k (England & Wales focus, recent years), the highest listed in Europe, vs Sweden ~86, etc. The second chart from the Centre for Migration Control shows the UK low on broader sexual offences per 10k, compared with select countries. UNODC and experts (Reuters, DW fact-checks) note direct comparisons are unreliable due to varying rape definitions, recording rules, and reporting rates across nations, not true incidence. UK police recorded ~71k rapes in 2024, up sharply from prior decades, partly from better logging.

👉🏽European countries where right-wing nationalist/populist parties are currently leading in national polls as of 2/15/2026:

As a Bitcoiner, I am neither left-wing nor right-wing, but the following statement by Youn Macro is spot on. That’s how politics, power, and NOT a democracy work.

‘Something is interesting happening in European politics right now, and you’ve probably overlooked it:

As you might be aware, the incumbent President of France, Emmanuel Macron, is very unpopular – with favorability ratings frequently below 20%, he’s at the bottom of virtually all comparable groups. It’s no surprise then that his camp is widely expected to be replaced at the upcoming April 2027 presidential election. Opinion polls show Jordan Bardella, the leader of the “far-right” National Rally (Rassemblement National), as the clear frontrunner.

Bardella’s expected victory, under normal circumstances, would have been a rare opportunity for his party to reshape European economic policy meaningfully: the terms of Christine Lagarde (President of the European Central Bank, the top monetary policy official in Europe), François Villeroy de Galhau (Governor of the Bank of France, the top monetary policy official in France), Philip Lane (member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank and the chief economist, plausibly the most influential ECB technocrat), and Isabel Schnabel (member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank) are all set to expire shortly after the 2027 French presidential election.

This means that Bardella would have been able to appoint the next Governor of the Bank of France and have influence over the appointments of the successors to the three top ECB officials, including the President, who make up half of the 6-member Executive Board and shape the European Central Bank’s policy agenda. Aware of this, Bardella has periodically signalled a somewhat heterodox vision he’d like reflected in his picks. The prospect of a right-populist running amok in the Eurosystem naturally alarmed the European bureaucracy, and so they’re stepping in. In a surprising and uncommon move last week, François Villeroy de Galhau announced that he would step down from the Bank of France before his term ends. He, of course, avoided the obvious political implication, citing personal reasons as his motivation. But the move will ensure that Macron gets to decide his successor for a 6-year term, denying Bardella.

In a similar unusual fashion, reports have started circulating that Christine Lagarde, the President of the ECB, is also planning to step down in 2026, a year early – which would clear the way for the usual “horse-trading” for Executive Board positions to take place a year early as well, keeping France’s say with Macron in all three of the upcoming appointments. Instead of helping pick half of the Executive Board members, Bardella will have helped pick none.

The maneuver has recent precedent – in 2024, ahead of a telegraphed right-wing victory in an upcoming legislative election, the Austrian National Bank had its Governor appointed more than a year in advance of the job’s actual mandate, violating the country’s public governance guidelines, but ensuring it was the outgoing incumbent who got the final say. Anyway, are you still a believer in democracy? Because at our age it’s marginal right’ - Yung Macro

On the other hand, democratic monetary policy would destroy civilization. But hey, it seems some bureaucratic institutions don’t like people’s democratic decisions. In the end, it is very simple. The international banking cartel IS the Empire. This is why analysis based on national interests makes no sense in those places where the cartel controls. Also explains why countries outside its control are declared enemies.

Oh, by the way. Peach water, drink wine! Christine Lagarde receives €140,000 per year from the BIS, even though ECB rules prohibit staff from accepting external payments. Her predecessors, Mario Draghi and Jean‑Claude Trichet, also kept the money. By contrast, Jerome Powell does not accept the payment for the same role at the Bank for International Settlements. The European Central Bank response: The rule applies to employees — and Lagarde is technically not an employee, according to the bank. Source: https://t.co/IciEbL1G1P

👉🏽Eye-opening chart: despite spending almost $8 trillion globally on renewables since 1995, the percentage of renewables in total energy consumption has stayed flat. Had we spent a fraction of this on nuclear, the climate change issue would be resolved by now. Why don’t we do this? - Michael A. Arouet

👉🏽UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer warned ‘nobody is above the law’ hours before ex-Prince Andrew’s arrest. Except Pakistani-Muslim grooming gangs. And oh, by the way, Julian Assange spent about five years in a UK prison. vs. Andrew (Prince Andrew) just 9 hours. Hypocrisy!

👉🏽So here we have Les Wexner confirming that Epstein worked for the Rothschild family, the architects of the Federal Reserve, as well as for Jeff Bezos and Google. His lawyer, clearly uneasy about the level of openness, leaned in and said: “I will f*cking kiII you if you answer another question with more than 5 words.” Fascinating, innit?!

👉🏽’Singapore has 67.8% of its population employed, and only 3.8% are government employees. Cuba has only 37.6% of its people employed, and 68.3% are government employees. Less government = More Employment. ’- Tim Draper

Source: The chart is a custom compilation for this analysis, based on 2024-2026 estimates. Data draws from national stats offices (Singapore MOM labour force reports for employment/population ratios; Cuba economic overviews for public sector share), cross-referenced with ILO and World Bank aggregates on workforce and government employment. No single external document matches exactly—it’s synthesized to compare the examples shown.

Grok: The Netherlands (2025 est., matching table metrics): ~55% of population employed (~10.2M out of 18.35M total pop). ~12% public sector employees (of the total employed, per the latest OECD). High employment rate, low public share vs many in the chart. The Netherlands fits the chart’s pattern perfectly. ~56% of total population employed (10M+ out of ~18.4M), public sector ~12-13% of employed—higher gov share than Singapore’s 3.8% (with its 67.8% emp rate), lower than Cuba’s 68.3% (37.6% emp rate). This supports the observed correlation in Draper’s data. Causation isn’t proven; factors such as demographics, the business environment, and welfare policies also matter. NL still delivers strong productivity and living standards in the middle ground.

§🎁If you have made it this far, I would like to give you a little gift:

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Click here: https://youtu.be/id3HAlaPDVU

Credit: I have used multiple sources!

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Get your Bitcoin out of exchanges. Save them on a hardware wallet, run your own node…be your own bank. Not your keys, not your coins. It’s that simple. ⠀ ⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀⠀⠀ Is this post helpful to you? If so, please share it and support my work with a zap. ▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃ ⭐ Many thanks⭐ Felipe - Bitcoin Friday! ▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃