Hard Money Dispatch: Week of 12/29/25

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• Bitcoin holds ~$90K despite macro shocks and U.S.–Venezuela tensions — short-term chop, long-term conviction.
• 17 years since Genesis Block: fiat debt tops $38.5T, proving Satoshi’s message still hits harder than ever.
• Institutional accumulation continues — MicroStrategy adds another 1,129 BTC (~$109M), signaling corporate conviction.
• Greg Mikeska on the podcast: Bitcoin custody, quantum myths, and why PoS repeats fiat mistakes.
• 2026 risk radar: scientists, economists, and technologists warn of converging climate, AI, and debt crises.

📉 Price & Market Action
• Bitcoin has been trading around $89K–$91K, bouncing but failing to convincingly break higher amid wider market volatility. Coinpedia Fintech News+1
• Some analysts see technical signals pointing to possible price traps or sideways/choppy action into next week. Coinpaper

📈 Trends & On-Chain Activity
• Bitcoin has reclaimed key moving averages and may set up for upside toward $95K–$100K if momentum continues. Coinpedia Fintech News
• NFT sales surged ~37%, with Bitcoin’s network leading weekly sales volume — a sign of expanding activity beyond price movements. crypto.news

💰 Institutional & Corporate Moves
• Strategy (Michael Saylor’s firm) resumed Bitcoin buying with a ~1,129 BTC purchase (~$109M) after a short pause — showing continued corporate accumulation. Barron's

⚠️ Risks & Scams
• Bitcoin ATM fraud losses hit a record ~$333M in the U.S., according to the FBI — highlighting ongoing security and scam risks. Business Insider

🔎 Broader Context
• Market sentiment remains cautious after a ~30% correction from late-2025 highs and mixed macro and geopolitical influences continue to sway traders. Yahoo Finance

Seventeen years ago, on January 3, 2009, Satoshi mined Bitcoin’s Genesis Block — embedding the now-famous line:

It was a warning — and a prediction.

Fast-forward to today: the U.S. national debt just crossed $38.5 trillion. That’s $6 billion more every day, or $2.2 trillion in a single year. For perspective, it took the U.S. more than 200 years to hit its first trillion.

Fiat’s playbook hasn’t changed: Lie. Cheat. Steal. Print relentlessly. Confidence holds… until it doesn’t.

Meanwhile, Bitcoin keeps doing what it was designed to do — issue one block every ten minutes, on schedule, with a fixed supply and no bailouts.

Seventeen years later, the message in Block #0 still rings true: Bitcoin wasn’t just born out of the broken system — it was built to replace it.

Bitcoin slipped under $90,000 this weekend as news broke of U.S. military action in Venezuela.

Reports confirmed airstrikes in Caracas and the capture of Venezuela’s president, prompting a short burst of selling across risk assets. With traditional markets closed, BTC found itself as the only global asset still trading and absorbing the shock.

Still, this news hasn’t been all that negative (so far). BTC is holding the 21-day moving average (~$87,850) — a key level that’s supported every short-term rally since October. As analytics account @Wealthmanager put it in a post on X:

Meanwhile, Bitcoin has begun to outperform gold — up 5% since Christmas, while gold has pulled back 6% from record highs. Historically, Bitcoin’s strongest rallies have begun right as gold tops out. But my base case for 2026 is still a bear market, and perhaps even a “black swan” event that changes everything (more on that later).

In this week’s Hard Money Dispatch podcast, Greg Mikeska, CTO of SatsCapital and founder of the Emerald Foundation, brought valuable insights into the evolution of institutional bitcoin custody.

Greg explains why the Emerald Foundation is setting the standards for how financial institutions will hold Bitcoin — and why that matters for Bitcoin’s long-term integration into the global monetary system.

He also tackles myths like:
• Why quantum computing fears are overblown
• How proof of stake repeats fiat’s mistakes
• Why Bitcoin’s architecture remains unmatched
• And what it could mean if Bitcoin eventually backs the U.S. dollar

This is a must-listen for anyone thinking about Bitcoin beyond price — as technological infrastructure, not speculation.

🎧 Listen now → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/revolutionizing-bitcoin-custody-w-greg-mikeska/id1649814816?i=1000742424098

If you have a minute while you’re listening, please consider leaving a 5-star review!

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If you’d rather watch the podcast on YouTube, see the video version (thanks to Riverside) here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pM9IRGKHyAw

Speaking of YouTube…

Back when I started posting more videos about a year ago, the channel had just 7 subscribers. Most videos got less than 50 views.

To my surprise, many videos now get 500 - 2,000 views, and over a hundred people liked the content enough to subscribe.

The long-form videos people liked the most in 2025 were:

If you’re not already subscribed, here’s the link: https://www.youtube.com/@BrianNibley

I’ve seen some version of this chart popping up a lot on social media lately:

I don’t know what this chart is based on or how accurate it is, but historically it’s had some predictive power:

These are all years marked on the chart as being points in time of “good times, high prices, and the time to sell stocks.”

However, the chart also indicates 2025 as being a year of “hard times, low prices, and a good time to buy stocks.” Obviously, this time it was wrong.

If you ask me, if we’re to take this chart at face value, then 2035 should be the year we expect another great panic.

However, that doesn’t mean 2026 can’t have some panic, too. And it could indeed wind up being a good time to take profits on some investments, considering nearly all assets aside from bonds have absolutely soared over the last five years or so.

If you search for “scientists predict potential catastrophe 2026,” the results are shocking. Here are a few of the potential risks some experts are citing, categorized by the source of the problem:

Sorry to end things on such a distressing note, but that was the only way to structure this edition of the newsletter.

There’s always a chance 2026 winds up being just like any other year. But another 2020-like event is coming eventually, in my opinion – and this year has higher odds than most.

Thanks for reading! If you found value here, please consider sharing this newsletter with someone who you think might be interested.

Till next time,

(This newsletter shall not be considered investment advice. Do your own research).