Don’t pretend nothing’s wrong - I know you’re disappointed. Even disillusioned.

Years spent telling each other about Bitcoin’s unique and inimitable properties, about the technological marvel in its simplicity, and about the fascinating game theory that accompanies its adoption. All to find ourselves at price levels that were already reached back in 2021, at a historical moment when popular interest seems to have vanished - searches for the term “bitcoin” on Google are near their five-year low.

The market is crashing and, with it, the certainties that many have carried around for years. Online I read opinions from enthusiasts whose hope seems lost: maybe they already lived through a bear market in the past, but “this time is different,” they say. The comments section is a graveyard.

The data confirms the sentiment. On Monday, June 1, the Fear and Greed Index - the thermometer that measures market mood - read 11 out of 100: extreme fear. Bitcoin is trading around $65,000, roughly 47% below the October peak, three red monthly candles in a row.

I know for certain that some of you, these days, feel lost: it’s to you that I’m speaking in this issue.

Let’s start with the facts, which is always a good idea when emotions take over.

The most obvious pressure comes from spot ETFs. At the end of May, U.S. funds recorded nine consecutive days of outflows, the longest streak since they’ve existed, with roughly $2.8 billion flowing out of bitcoin. Then, at the start of June, a single week of $3.4 billion in sales, the largest withdrawal since these instruments were born in 2024. IBIT from BlackRock alone saw more than $2 billion leave since mid-May. The reasons are the usual ones: rising Treasury yields, shifting Fed expectations. But that’s not all.

There’s the news that made more noise than its actual weight warranted. Strategy, for the first time, sold bitcoin. For four years Saylor’s message had been one and one only, repeated like a mantra: buy, hold, never sell. Promptly contradicted.

How much did they sell? 32 bitcoin. 0.0038% of their holdings, roughly $2.5 million, to cover distributions owed on preferred shares. Strategy still sits on approximately 843,706 bitcoin.

Then there’s the deepest current, the one that actually moves big capital. This year is the season of the IPO of the century.

• SpaceX kicked off its roadshow just these past days, with a valuation oscillating between $1,800 and $2,000 billion and a raise that could reach $75 billion: the largest listing in history, surpassing even Saudi Aramco’s in 2019.

• OpenAI (ChatGPT) is targeting a fall listing, after a valuation of $852 billion.

• Anthropic (Claude) closed a round at $65 billion that brings it to $965 billion, with the $1 trillion milestone as the base-case scenario.

Put together, these three companies are worth roughly $3,600 billion: as much as France’s GDP. Goldman Sachs estimates that 2026 IPOs will raise something like $160 billion. That’s where the money is running right now. Money chases the most exciting story of the moment, and right now the most exciting story is called artificial intelligence.

Now, a capital rotation is a market fact. Financial markets look at the next six months, one year, chase returns, have the memory of a goldfish and the self-control of a child in front of a candy shelf. That’s perfectly fine - it’s what they do.

The problem arises when we confuse price with value. When we let a thermometer reading 11 tell us who we are and why we’re here.

So let’s ask ourselves the question that nobody asks in the middle of panic: these wonderful companies, these $3,600-billion machines - do they solve the same problems that Bitcoin solves?

Let’s go through them in order.

Bitcoin guarantees mathematical scarcity in a digital world where everything can be copied infinitely. On this topic, I’d point you to issue #288, where I analyze precisely the relationship between the abundance enabled by artificial intelligence and Bitcoin’s future role.

Does SpaceX solve this problem? It launches rockets, and it launches them brilliantly, but it doesn’t compete with Bitcoin on the field of absolute scarcity.

Bitcoin offers a store of value without counterparties, one that nobody can devalue, freeze, or dilute with a decision made in a room. Does OpenAI solve this problem? It builds extraordinary models, but its shares are worth something only as long as markets believe in them, and their number depends on the choices of those who control it.

Bitcoin is an answer to inflationary money, an emergency exit from the system that we’ll dig into in a moment. Does Anthropic solve this problem? It too writes astonishing models - ones I myself use daily and that have already revolutionized the way half the world works - but it doesn’t issue money, and you pay for its products in the same currency that loses purchasing power every year.

Bitcoin mining is capable of stabilizing electrical grids by monetizing surplus energy, as analyzed ad nauseam in this newsletter (just search for ERCOT, Mining, gas flaring, etc., in the search bar to find the articles). Which of the three multi-trillion-dollar companies rebalances an electrical grid? None - at best, they might use mining to balance their own operations.

The answer, in short, is one and it repeats four times: no. SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic are splendid companies that will do splendid things. But the problems Bitcoin solves remain right there, intact, and Bitcoin remains the only answer to each of them.

Ok, store of value, inflation protection. But is fiat currency really performing that badly? Or are we perhaps solving a nonexistent problem?

It’s worth looking at what Bitcoin is actually competing against, because it’s from the numbers of the existing system that you understand why someone, 16 years ago, felt the need to invent a new one. Take the money supply. U.S. M2 went from roughly $15.4 trillion at the start of 2020 to about $22.8 trillion today. Roughly a third of the dollars in circulation today simply didn’t exist six years ago. In the eurozone, M3 rose from €13 trillion at the end of 2019 to over €17 trillion today: here too, a third more. Money was created out of thin air, in quantities that no digital scarcity would tolerate.

Take debt. U.S. public debt has blown past 122% of GDP, starting from roughly 107% in 2019. In the eurozone, the average sits at 88%, with peaks that are staggering: Greece at 151%, Italy at 138%, France at 116%. These are figures that get repaid in only one way - printing more money and devaluing the money in your pocket.

Take prices. In the United States, groceries, rent, and utility bills cost roughly 25% more than at the start of 2020. In the eurozone, the cumulative increase in consumer prices has exceeded 20%, with the 2022 peak when annual inflation hit 9.2%. A fifth of purchasing power evaporated in five years, in already-developed areas with some of the most powerful currencies in the world. A FIFTH.

And real wages - those adjusted for inflation? They chased, struggling. In the eurozone they collapsed in 2022, with an average purchasing-power drop close to 4%, continued to lose ground in 2023, and only between 2024 and 2025 did they painstakingly recover what they had left on the table. Only to then, in 2026, stall again because of the energy shock. Translation: for years people worked the same and became poorer, and when they finally got back to the starting point, the starting point had moved again.

This is the mess. Money that multiplies, debt that balloons, prices that climb, wages that chase without ever catching up. It’s the system that most people consider “normal,” simply because they were born into it.

Bitcoin was created as a way out of all this. A fixed supply, rules that don’t change depending on who wins the elections, a value that nobody can dilute while you sleep. This is what you’re holding onto when you buy bitcoin. And this is what the thermometer at 11 is making you forget.

So let’s return to those among you who feel disillusioned.

Today’s price tells you nothing about Bitcoin’s ability to solve problems over the next twenty years. These are two quantities that live on different time scales.

The price measures this morning’s mood, while the fundamentals measure whether this thing will still be needed a generation from now.

And the answer, as we’ve seen, is that it absolutely will - because the mess from which Bitcoin offers a way out has only gotten worse in the meantime.

Past cycles have already told this story. Bitcoin lost 78% in 2021, over 80% in previous cycles. Today’s drop, that 47% that hurts so much, in historical perspective is almost composed. It’s not true that “this time is different.” Every time, on the rubble, someone stopped watching the price and started studying the technology. That’s where, in the midst of despair, bitcoiners are forged: the ones who stay when others leave, the ones who understand why they own what they own.

So, dear disillusioned ones, don’t sell your conviction at the first thermometer that reads fear. Keep it anchored to the fundamentals, to the long horizon, to the simple question we started with: is there anything else that solves what Bitcoin solves? Answer: no. There wasn’t yesterday at $126,000, and there isn’t today at $65,000.

When the streets fill with blood, there are those who flee and those who stay to build. The next cycle will be written by the latter.