Nik Bhatia

GM & PV The less time on Twitter the more free I feel. And my wife said she’s proud of me for not chasing the algo. Count your blessings!

GM and PV Wonderful day as always to count your blessings I have now logged out of Twitter on my trading station (phone was last year). Only laptop remains and I have been checking it much less. I had convinced myself in the past I needed Twitter because that’s where news happens, but at what cost to inner peace?

Monday Blessings to you all, PV

“The dollar” is a derivative of things that have value and are commonly denominated in dollars, such as assets. The dollar is itself fleeting, as is all currency today. Currency is not an asset. It used to be linked to an asset, gold, which is a mind trick used on the populace. Bitcoin is an asset.

GM and PV friends and readers Count your blessings and channel divine energy

Bitcoin has only had ~450 difficulty adjustments. Very early, very young network. Few understand this. GM, PV

I miss pre-Saylor bitcoin, but here we are!

How I feel these days

Letter from a student. Rewards of leaving a life on the trading desk to research and teach. It doesn't get better than this. Makes me realize how much I am blessed. Showing my wife these is an equally special moment because of proof-of-work. "Good morning/evening Professor Nik, I just wanted to take some time to thank you for everything I learned in your Bitcoin program. Honestly, when I first read "AI and Finance," I thought you were going to teach quantitative finance with AI as some new algorithm. I applied because it was literally the only class that interested me, and I'm pretty sure I put it as all three of my choices on the application. When I found out later that it was mainly about finance fundamentals, I thought I was going to have a horrible time. Boy, was I wrong—I accidentally discovered that besides computer science, finance might actually be my thing. I didn't realize how important the stuff we covered (especially credit creation and layered money) was until I started my recent internship at <REMOVED FOR PRIVACY>. The foundation you built for understanding markets—especially that class where you talked about credit creation and what happens to stocks and treasuries when more loans get taken out—has been incredibly helpful. The knowledge from your class has actually let me start conversations about crypto and stablecoins with some of my colleagues who've been in high finance for over two decades. I've been able to explain where Bitcoin gets its value and what stablecoins actually are. When they asked questions like what Bitcoin's market cap really means, I could talk about UTXOs and explain concepts like Bitcoin's realized value. This class really inspired me and honestly might even change the career path I end up taking. But above everything else, being able to actually transact Bitcoin in class was lowkey cool (not gonna lie, best thing ever)—it felt so much different than just reading the tech docs for the protocol. Thanks again for such an eye-opening semester!"

No Twitter on my phone for about a year now. Life much better. More attention on my family when I’m with them. Scrolling was causing neck pain on the side I hold my phone. Inner peace is the way. I still tweet from the desk and wish my business model didn’t depend on social media promo so much, but alas. GM, count your blessings!

GOOD MORNING BOOK SIGNING nostr:npub1key55ax33gkl50uqemvl4khrtqrhzm7wzpc7fhseutt5ddkcwcrqgxlt3h NYC AUGUST 5TH BOOK SIGNING nostr:npub1cxyr9w0dwkjxs7svmwjlg4veqp9uzw0qvwux0c0554lqzw5ut48qrahz6x SF AUGUST 14TH SEE YOU THERE! COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS!

Fiat makes it difficult to discern whether gains are from dilution or productivity

Money don’t make you solid, it just makes you 10 times more of the person you are before you got it

Bitcoin Age audiobook is now available. I hope you guys will take a listen!

I’m here all week!

good evening count your blessings I am officially on 1-hour candles across all charts on the desk tonight nice to be back on nostr!

Satoshi broke economics with digital scarcity. No supply response destroys every model.

In the spirit of doing right by our TBL readers, I went back to check on how I thought the year would play out from a rates perspective. I also wanted to see just how soon I thought cuts would be here (because I was clearly early to that call). Here is what I wrote in January: "Our big [2022] claim was “don’t assume that the Fed will pivot at the first sign of equity weakness”—this ended up being correct. Our next claim was that hikes would slow to a pause by the end of the year—this did not happen, but slowing inflation makes us confident we are merely early to the call." Postmortem: The pause happened after July's hike, and yes we were quite early to the disinflation party. It's for you to judge if we were correct and just early, or wrong. Next forecast: "This year, the debate will center around rate cuts during a recession. For that, we’ll need to understand when the recession has actually arrived (it hasn’t yet, especially with a relatively strong fourth quarter of GDP), how serious it is, and how much the housing market physically requires lower rates to carry on. The Fed’s job, in its own eyes, is not to rush to pivot its policy rate lower, but rather to maintain a restrictive rate for as long as it can to assure inflation has come back down. The Fed’s battle then becomes whether to protect its reputation as a two-way institution or succumb to the critiques that it is simply a money-printing whale with no long-term ability to stop. Currently, the Fed has been in tightening mode coming up to a year, but with the vast majority of the past decade and a half in easing mode, the onus is on the Fed to prove it can remain restrictive. Just as many believe them as those who don’t, which should sustain the lively debate for months to come." Postmortem: Without a doubt, I was wrong to suggest that a recession would arrive and that a debate around cuts would involve a recession. The US did not come close to a recession in 2023, but rate cut debates have begun with a few weeks to go in the year. I suggested that the debate on how restrictive they could be would remain lively for months to come, and I think this will mark the big difference between my 2023 and 2024 outlooks. My 2024 outlook will unabashedly predict a cutting cycle (we've already suggested cuts by March in Europe and by June in the US). I really don't have any problem being 6-12 months early to a call, because my investment framework is cyclically driven, so I am simply attempting to find where we are instead of running around like a chicken with its head cut off. My suggestion is to follow what we are doing at TBL, both the written and video/audio product, for intellectual honestly, macro analysis (with some predictions) without any trade ideas or commission-based or profit-based motivation, and the opinion of two dudes (Joe Consorti and I) who love and live and breathe and sleep markets.

this year, going long Treasuries might have gotten a trader or two fired next year, there will be asset managers fired for not locking in 5% Treasury yields during 2023 market shifts are much easier seen in hindsight

BLOODBATH IN US TREASURIES CONTINUES dollar squeeze as well, especially in Japan somebody is getting liquidated, or perhaps this is the blowup of the basis trade that many have been warning about, including the BIS most recently: https://www.bis.org/publ/qtrpdf/r_qt2309w.htm