Bessent Said He's the House. The Bond Market Called.

From Yesterday's Simply Bitcoin Live | Episode 1589

The Numbers

Yields kept climbing even as the buyback tripled, a sign bond investors are not buying the intervention.

The News

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent tripled this week's bond buyback to $18.5 billion, one of the largest weekly buybacks on record, days after Bloomberg reported both Japan and China are dumping US treasuries. Bessent had just told markets he is "the house" and dared traders to bet against him. Yields ripped higher anyway, with the 10-year cracking 4.85%, the highest level since November 2023.

A purported Bank of Japan insider account fired back on X, warning that Japan is not just betting against the house, it is taking the whole house down. The Kobayashi Letter's numbers back that read: yields are now higher than before the first buyback announcement, despite three straight escalations in intervention size, from $2 billion to $6 billion to $18.5 billion.

Every time Bessent doubles down the market calls and raises, and that is not the read a Treasury desk wants on its own intervention.

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Trezor and Bitbox both confirmed phishing emails went out through a shared third party newsletter provider, spoofing security alerts about a fake STM32 entropy vulnerability. Both companies pulled the malicious domains within hours and warned subscribers the emails looked convincing enough to pass for a real security notice from either brand.

The attack leaned on real anxiety from the Coldcard entropy disclosure, using that fear to push people toward typing a seed phrase into a browser. Neither company's hardware was touched. The only shared point of failure was the newsletter pipe both brands used to reach subscribers.

Your seed phrase never belongs in an email, a browser, or anywhere near the internet, full stop.

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US Global Investors CEO Frank Holmes told Simply Bitcoin that China, Russia, Iran and North Korea are increasingly aligned, with China funneling weaponry to Iran while quietly building one of the largest gold reserves in the world. Japan, meanwhile, is leaning on the US for cover against Chinese pressure near the Philippines, adding another layer of stress onto the yen.

Holmes pointed to a rising correlation between gold and Bitcoin this year, arguing both are being repriced as monetary aggregates outside the dollar system. He said central banks stay on the sidelines on Bitcoin until the Clarity Act passes, and that a signing could send BTC through $100,000 in short order.

Gold and Bitcoin are starting to trade like the same idea, and that is the story nobody priced in a year ago.

The Culture

Guest Segment

Strive Chief Investment Officer Ben Werkman broke down the digital credit thesis behind SATA, the company's preferred stock that pays a 13% dividend distributed daily and is backed entirely by Strive's Bitcoin balance sheet. The bet: borrow at that rate, buy Bitcoin, and let its long-term appreciation outrun the cost of capital by enough to fund the payout indefinitely.

Werkman pushed back on the idea that products like SATA compete with self-custody, framing them as serving a different kind of buyer, the ones whose mandates block direct Bitcoin exposure but allow fixed income. He cited BlackRock's earlier move recommending a 1 to 2% Bitcoin allocation as evidence the on-ramps for that money keep widening.

Digital credit is not a Bitcoin substitute, it is a new pipe institutional money uses to get exposure without ever touching a wallet.