BTC: Desperate Times Require Centralized Measures

By Matthew Piepenburg

Partner

January 26, 2025

Just three years ago, BlackRock’s Larry Fink and the current White House’s Donald Trump openly declared that BTC was a scam.

Fast-forward to today, and the Trump administration is promising a BTC “strategic reserve” stockpile while Fink (who has since launched a $50B+ BTC spot ETF) is at Davos front-running a 700,000 price target due to BTC’s critical role in a world of currency devaluation.

Meanwhile, more future investors will be accessing a pre-planned and well-telegraphed digital highway of distributive ledger tech toward BTC by wrapping it within a stable-coin pair trade.

What Gives?

How does one wrap their arms around the new BTC “wrapper” and its undeniably powerful/political new direction?

How can a President threaten the BRICS with 100% tariffs for moving away from the “mighty” Dollar while simultaneously supporting an anti-fiat crypto whose original “decentralized/anti-government” narrative was openly and entirely anti-Dollar?

And how does a once “maverick” anti-system, decentralized BTC narrative become the belle of the ball to the very centralized system it originally promised to circumvent?

The ironies may abound, but the darker realities behind the BTC-pumping headlines are plain for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear.

Getting Past Fights/Debates

As we’ve maintained from day 1 of the otherwise unnecessary “BTC-Gold debate,” there is no debate at all. BTC is a digital speculation asset, gold is an analog wealth preservation asset.

We have nothing against speculation in general and speculating in BTC in particular. Many within our circles own gold and BTC. We fully respect this.

But we have always been weary of the attempt by this fixed-supply digital asset (promoted visually as
a “B” in gold-coin form) to co-opt the gold narrative to its advantage while slowly becoming a centralized wolf in sheep’s clothing.

In short, BTC is trying to be gold-like in visual and narrative form, but it’s a tech stock in substance and a growing tool of centralization in action.

Of course, every BTC bull will disagree. Strongly.

We understand that. We are all, it seems, blinded by our biases?

What Lies Beneath? BTC & Centralization

But even if we get past the passionate and often not-so-pleasant ideological war of words, math, bias and history when it comes to gold vs. BTC, we can’t ignore the possibility that something darker lies beneath the evolving BTC narrative.

For years, I’ve pounded my fist with the evidence of math, politics and history that all debt-soaked regimes throughout history follow a pattern from currency debasement to inflation-driven social unrest, which unrest is then “managed” by forms of extreme centralization from the extreme political left or political right.

This historical/financial trend is true without exception: Political centralization always follows a currency crisis.

Always.

Told You So?

Toward this end, I gave particular attention in 2023 to our neighboring Davos crowd in general and the tragic inevitability of CBDC in particular.

Precisely two years ago, I openly warned in The ABCs of CBDC that “broke countries do bad things”—and I recommend a re-read of the warnings made then.

Why?

Because they are playing out in real-time today.

Will Technology Save Us?

The inherent centralization which lies beneath the “stakeholder capitalism” of the Schwab clique is undeniable, namely: More institutional in-roads (i.e., curtailments) to otherwise private enterprise and private rights (including privacy) are the clear end-game of the “digitalized” new normal coming our way at full speed.

As I wrote in January of 2023:

“There are many who believe that we can replace corrupt institutions (from Davos to Brussels, DC to Beijing) with wiser technologies, which can and sometimes do allow a freer and more decentralized flow of information (as evidenced by non-main-stream platforms like this one) and even money (as evidenced by the thirst for decentralized, encrypted currencies like BTC).”

But I also warned that “like faith in human nature or faith in institutions, faith in technology is no cure-all.”

Specifically, I foresaw that in the “slow yet inevitable evolution of Central Bank Digital Currencies, technology can in fact be used to further diminish rather than enhance human liberties.”

I then explained the rapid political telegraphing of all the “warm and fuzzy” advantages and evolutions of the CBDC propaganda campaign, from the IMF and BIS to the Fed itself.

But what CBDC really boils down to is the slow evolution to a cashless society where “citizen money can be digitally monitored, withheld, frozen, taxed, penalized or otherwise controlled should such a citizen (or collection of citizens) challenge or threaten the state—rightfully or wrongly.”

I Got BTC Wrong

Toward this end, I argued that BTC (with its openly anti-government, anti-banking, de-centralized and maverick narrative, See, i.e. Erik Voorhees) would be a direct threat to this centralization trend.

Well. It appears I was dead wrong.

BTC, as we see below, is not a threat to the great digital re-set to come, it is a partner to the crime.

Sound crazy? Just a gold-bugger afraid of BTC’s rising market cap? Sensational?

Let’s dig a bit deeper…

The Devil in the Details: BTC and the UST

Understandably, almost no one reads the TBAC reports (Treasuring Buying Advisory Committee) out of DC, as they read like a lawnmower manual in Swedish.

But recently, after pages and pages of TBAC trying to figure out why no one is buying a weaponized and debt-top-heavy UST, their report included a telling little addendum entitled, “The US Treasury and Digital Assets.”

Hmmm…

What did digital assets have to do with unloved US IOU’s?

As importantly, what did any of this have to do with the sudden political rise of the BTC mania?

BTC to Bail out Uncle Sam

This got me to thinking about the magical modern “digitalization” and “tokenization” of just about any and everything (from crappy credit pools to cross-border transactions, smart contracts and meme alt coins to intra-bank payment transfers) via the awesome new “distributive ledger” highway to allegedly improve all our lives…

But with the digitization of all things comes a far darker side—namely the digitalization of our I.D.’s and the backdoor monetization of our sovereign debt levels via a stable-coin (UST-backed CBDC) conveniently paired with an enticing BTC carrot.

Confusing?

Not really.

Conveniently timed to help a desperate Uncle Sam?

Absolutely.

The New Oil

When Trump famously touted BTC as the “new oil,” I was reminded by Luke Gromen that oil was deliberately inflated by hundreds of percentage points in the 1970s to deliberately inflate the dollar-backed oil trade to pay down post-Vietnam US debt levels.

In short, an oil bubble was created (between the US and OPEC players) to benefit criminal US debt levels at the expense of, well, just about everyone in the energy-dependent world.

Fast-forward to today, and it seems BTC is indeed “the new oil,” the new bubble, and yes, a new and openly front-runnable scheme to ease American debt sins while making some BTC investors rich.

How so?

How It Works

For any player, trade, nation, investor, asset or idea to ride the modern new wave of our digital dystopia masquerading as “efficiency, transparency and progress,” it has to carry the banner of “ISO20022 Compliant Blockchain Compatibility” to make any tokenized asset “inter-operable” in our Brave New World of all things techy, digital and “tokenable.”

This blockchain communication highway is extremely complex, but like all hidden and rigged profit schemes, including the derivatives trade, it’s meant to be complex so that no one can follow the bread trails of its real purpose…

This ISO-compliant protocol (entry pass) to the blockchain digital highway was created by a cadre of former NSA types at places like Ripple, who, by the way, conveniently came up with its exclusive XRP “toll booth” infrastructure BEFORE the creation of BTC—whose real creator remains a convenient and troubling mystery…

I mean it kinda does matter, doesn’t it, who really created BTC and why, no?

And the timing between Ripple and BTC seems a bit more than just coincidently convenient, no?

My Theory

Well, what if BTC was deliberately (and falsely) rolled out as a maverick, decentralized, anti-government alternative currency (to gain popularity, traction and public interest) only because its ultimate use was entirely the opposite of its original narrative?

That is, what if BTC was designed to be an entry-drug and eventual, slow-dripped trading pair with a UST-backed stable coin (think Tether—which is just a CBDC by another name) to help speculators pay down Uncle Sam’s otherwise unpayable bar tab?

The dots do seem to connect, don’t they?

The dark-state play is very simple: Deliberately inflate BTC to draw money into a paired, UST-backed stable coin in order to take pressure off the Fed and have investors (the public), rather than a central bank, monetize the US government debt?

If so, BTC investors, no longer de-centralized and a-political, are thus knowingly (or unknowingly) becoming very centralized and very political.

Ah, the ironies…

Does It Matter? Good for BTC

The maverick BTC camp may hate this theory. But then again, the theory (using speculative investors to monetize Uncle Sam’s debt) only adds to the price momentum of BTC, which Fink, a former BTC-hater, is now projecting to the moon.

Frankly, the BTC camp can and should be thrilled.

In speculation terms, BTC has tremendous wind behind it—even if that wind be politically centralized.

In short: There’s no need to mock the BTC crowd. After all, they’ve seen 100% price climbs in just 60 days. Impressive.

Good for Gold

And as for gold, it will do just fine, but for entirely different reasons.

We know gold’s price is going up for no other reason than fiat currencies are going down a debt spiral, an opinion even our BTC “competitors” fully share.

And like the central banks of the East and the steadily rising BRICS+ nations, we also know that gold, rather than BTC, is the analog asset (pet rock?) they prefer as a trade-settlement asset in a world of increasingly unloved and weaponized dollars and USTs.

Even the highly centralized BIS, of which I’m no fan, has confessed gold’s eminence as the only other Tier-1 asset beside the return-free-risk of the once admired “risk-free-returning” US 10Y Treasury.

The implications behind gold’s Tier-1 status are massive…

Why? Because unlike BTC, gold actually IS a store of value. Not even the BIS is bold enough to give BTC such a label or status.

We also know that even the IMF’s vision of CBDC and other distributive ledger compliant stable coins will need to be anchored in gold to have any credibility beyond being just another digital fiat in the future.

This is a point I made almost five years ago here; even the IMF’s own Kristina Georgieva has openly confessed its truth.

So yes, despite the mania, questionable/darker motives and even undeniable price moves and direction in a now openly politicized BTC, we are quite comfortable with the honest direction and future role of physical gold in a debt-mad world.

Gold: Genuine Autonomy from Centralization

But here’s the timeless kicker.

By owning physical gold outside of this increasingly centralized digital new normal, we “old-fashioned” physical gold owners retain something the “future-thinking” BTC camp will have lost—namely true and genuine autonomy outside of not only the USD, but of all broken fiat systems now racing toward a desperate centralization.

Physical gold held in private vaults like ours has no “compliance protocol,” no digital ID attached, counterparty-banks, nor any dependence on the Ripple/XRP highway (and inevitable political/technical risk) of all things digital, centralized and freedom-threatening.

We’ve been proponents of true autonomy, anti-fiat wealth preservation and personal financial freedom for decades.

And like BTC investors, we’ve been passionate in our history-proven concerns and warnings regarding the now irreversible fall of fiat money in a world wherein debt destroys.

But unlike the digital camp and the 2008 BTC “emergence,” we are protected not only from currency destruction, but also from volatility and centralization, which is what gold has been doing since 480 BC.

This matters.

Gold matters. Yesterday. Today, and especially – Tomorrow.