I feel like beards need more study. -Measurable differences between bearded and beardless men. -Measurable differences between women who like bearded vs beardless men. It seems like one of the most binary decisions/preferences out there.

Good afternoon. My June public newsletter, "The Wild West" is now available: https://www.lynalden.com/june-2026-newsletter/ This issue discusses: -How the modern period of investing coincided with the comparatively peaceful post-war period, and how that is changing. -Strategies for investing in this new "Wild West" geopolitical environment. -The information bell curve and its implications. -The latest snapshot of the newsletter portfolio.

When my husband Mohamed first visited London a few years ago, his first remark was, “why are there so many foreigners here? I wanted to see more Brits.” And as he was dismayed by the high ratio of foreigners, he ironically meant people who looked like him (and he was aware of the fact). He was like, “I’m not visiting Turkey or Dubai or Pakistan or my own country. I’m visiting Britain. I want to see British people.” Anyway, not all foreigners want to destroy or displace the West and so forth. Even some them are like, “why are you guys doing this?”

Let’s just say without spoilers my novel doesn’t pull any punches, but also doesn’t set out to make despair-porn either. Choices matter, outcomes are messy, and realism is paramount in that sense. This description, lol:

I was talking to my half-brother about his world travel plans like, “btw if if you ever want to come to Egypt let me know”. And he’s like, “that’s awesome, how about in 3 weeks? Can you be our tour guide for the last five thousand years in the region?” And I’m like, “yeah man, it’ll be fun. Let me, uh, check with our two dozen local relatives and our summer beach plans so we can coordinate between them.” “Checks details.” “…Shit. Alright let’s go!”

I wrote a longform piece for Bitcoin Magazine's latest print issue, which includes a series of essays about the world 10 years from now in 2036. They've put up an online version now too:

Bitcoin Magazine

The 2036 Issue: What Choices Will You Make On The Way To A Multipolar World?

From The 2036 Issue: How will Bitcoin fare as the world shifts into a state of increasing multipolarity? By Lyn Alden

Here's the portion where I talked about risk, about downside scenarios: "If Bitcoin fails to catch on by 2036, I think it will be because humanity didn’t want it, or wasn’t ready for it. The technology itself is robust. Proof of work helps keep the network secure. Tight limits on bandwidth and storage help keep the network decentralized. Layers built on top of it help provide scaling and privacy. There is more work to do, but the foundation is already strong, open for business, and being used at scale. To the extent that major challenges arise, the network is upgradable whenever sufficient consensus is achieved. In this latest bull/bear cycle, Bitcoin further separated itself from other cryptocurrencies, but failed to attract many new users. AI services caught on with the public far more quickly, leapfrogging Bitcoin in adoption, because people and businesses could see AI’s immediate benefits to them, while Bitcoin’s benefits were unclear to many who haven’t gone down a rabbit hole of research. There are many stores of value to choose from, and volatility is painful. In order for Bitcoin to truly catch on, it will need to be because people value financial sovereignty. It will need to be because hundreds of millions of people, not just several million as we have now, appreciate the importance of self-custodied savings, permissionless payments, and financial privacy. Those collectively are the attributes that Bitcoin uniquely provides at scale." In other words, bitcoin is money. To succeed, it'll be because people value it for its monetary properties. That doesn't mean I'm against bitcoin companies. Bitcoin is open for anyone, and most things are better when bitcoin is added. And there's no world where bitcoin at scale is only used by people but somehow is magically avoided by companies and governments. I bought MSTR the week they announced their bitcoin strategy back in August 2020. I invite more companies, especially cash-flowing companies, to use bitcoin as a treasury asset. But it does mean that bitcoin cannot *only* scale that way. Bitcoin's core value is that if you hold it yourself, it gives you a unique superpower: you have debasement-resistant and confiscation-resistant liquid savings, and you can permissionlessly send portions of those savings around the world, and with decent privacy if you use the right tools. Bitcoin's long-term success relies on one or two more orders of magnitude of people desiring those traits. TL;DR Bitcoin is money.

A really cool (and quite rare) aspect of The Stolguard Incident audiobook is that @walker and @CARLA⚡️ perform full duet narration. In most dual-narrated audiobooks, the male narrator reads all male point-of-view sections, including any female dialog that occurs in them. And vice versa: the female narrator reads everything, including all male lines, in the female POV sections. A harder subset is duet narration, where the male narrator reads every male dialog line, and the female narrator reads every female dialog line, while one of them reads the narration for the section depending on which POV it is in. This makes it feel more immersive, realistic, and well-acted. I initially assumed we would just do standard dual narration, though I brought up duet as an option. The reason duet narration is not more popular is because it is far more complex to produce. But it was Walker and Carla who convinced me, since in their unique case they were able to do duet narration rather efficiently (the narrators are married, already do skits together, won’t have the scheduling issues of nonlocal narrator teams, and thus can perform live duet recordings together). The result is truly special, and it’s thanks to Walker and Carla. Can’t picture the audio version of the story any other way. https://www.amazon.com/Audible-The-Stolguard-Incident/dp/B0H29Y33PQ

GM Not sure why, but I liked the look of this desert sunset last evening.

GM. The audiobook version of The Stolguard Incident is now available! https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H29Y33PQ It’s dual-narrated by @CARLA⚡️ and @walker , and they brought their full voice acting ability to this.

I had a great uncle named Hugh. When he turned 18 in 1943, he decided to enlist in the military and go fight Nazis in WW2. As one does. In early 1944, he found himself as the radioman on a B-17 bomber, as the Americans upped their bombing raids on Berlin. Their bomber was attacked by German pilots, heavily damaged, and the pilot said they gotta parachute out, it's going down. So, Hugh funds himself parachuting over German countryside from a destroyed bomber. Early in the war, it was relatively uncommon for American/British/German pilots to shoot at enemy parachuting pilots. It was considered dishonorable. However, when the Americans/British really upped the bombing over Germany, and the war was increasingly turning against Germany, the German pilots increased their rate of shooting at parachuting American/British pilots. Their cities had been disastrously struck, some of them lost friends/family in the bombings, so they were more likely to just finish off downed enemy pilots. Hugh, as he parachuted down, was terrified at that thought, expecting that the German pilot who destroyed his bomber would finish him off. He watched as the pilot performed a wide arc and come back around, and he's like, "oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit," but then the German pilot flew by him and saluted, and left. Trolled him but let him live, basically. Showed him he could've done it, but didn't. So Hugh lands in a tree in German farmland. He cut the parachute and fell to the ground, fracturing three vertebrae. So he's 19, injured, and realizes he doesn't know shit about geography, but decides he'll try to make his way in the general direction of Switzerland. He spends a week sneaking around the farmland, injured, and eventually gets severely dehydrated. So he sneaks up to a well to get a drink, and comes across a 10-year old German girl, who stares at him wide-eyed since he's a disheveled soldier-looking foreigner. He panics, and has absolutely no idea how Germans greet each other. So he does an enthusiastic Nazi salute and yells "Sieg Heil!" which of course is *not* how most Germans greet each other. The girl screams and runs away, so he's like, "oh shit" and goes to hide in a tool shed. The townsfolk come out and find him, capture him, and turn him over to the authorities. He gets sent to a prisoner of war camp for the next 16 months. Him and his fellow detainees circulated a newsletter within the camp at one point, and formed a music band out of like discarded cans and pots and stuff. Toward the end it got trough, because as Allied forces took more and more land, the outer prison camps would do forced marches where the prisoners would have to walk to a deeper camp, while malnourished, and if they got exhausted and couldn't go on, they'd be shot. So he had to do two of those forced walks, but eventually got rescued by Allied forces. Came back to the US, used his GI bill to go to college, and became a social worker at a hospital. Really quiet, calm guy. Most people didn't know he had this crazy story arc. Anyway, that's the post.

Back in 2018-2020, I wrote a lot about how the upcoming issue of fiscal dominance would contribute heavily to populist politics. For example, 2020: "Populist politics then become more commonplace, and while some strands of it can be quite rational based on countering prevailing policies that are rightly viewed as needing reform, there are also more dangerous or extreme strands that begin to emerge as well, particularly if those initial and more rational strands go unaddressed. Policymakers historically face the choice of doing something to alleviate the financial burdens of the broad population, or risking outright revolution." https://www.lynalden.com/fiscal-and-monetary-policy/ During eras of fiscal dominance, the state tends to take more control of the economy, tends to restrict capital movement, and tends to limit personal freedom, whether it's a right or left government. And they drum up as much public support as possible with a narrative. But witnessing it playing out first hand has still been a sight to behold. I could jot it all down on paper but then admittedly have still been surprised at times as it keeps playing out. And we see both left and right varieties occurring. For folks who want to keep government pretty limited where possible, these past six years have been absolutely wild to watch in practice. So many people forget the basic principle that any power you give your current government, a future government that you don't agree with can use that power against you. The poles of right and left keep drifting outward, and the horseshoe theory of politics is on full display as the two populist extremes are closer together than the moderates of each side are (but then ironically, some of those moderates also unite to oppose those extremes as well). So many people lose their minds and go full communist or full fascist. And then some normal things get labeled as extreme, so people who just believe in a handful of principles that were normal a few decades ago are like out in the wilderness now. And the centralized algos certainly contribute to it. As someone who has been active on social media for a long time, 2025 really stuck out to me, at least as much as 2020 did. I see people reorienting their positions so rapidly around new things in a sort of mass groupthink, I see people retweeting so many things that support their view despite being obvious AI slop or clearly false or out of context with just a 2-minute factcheck. Some real populist momentum waves build, and then centralized algos give them rocket fuel. Both the main wave, and the reactionary wave on the other side, are fueled by the algos for maximum engagement. When I interviewed @jack at the Oslo Freedom Forum back in 2024, he focused on algos affecting not just what people can say, but what people think. And in the year and a half since then, I think that has very much played out. There is an enormous premium these days for being able to recognize the algo's influence on you, and to continually factcheck and emotion-check yourself, take a breath and step back, touch grass, get sun, and assess what your foundational principles are.

Can anyone shill me on why Superman 2025 was a good movie? I thought it was awful, but apparently I'm in the minority.

I see a lot of people on Twitter who talk about Nostr but I don’t see them here.

I have a lowkey but strong desire to see how long I could hang on a bar at one of the @primal booths amid bitcoin conferences lately. It's such a great marketing thing. I'm literally riding my bike around a beautiful neighborhood today like, "I wonder how long I could hang if I really wanted to, though." Back in my martial arts days, we did pull-up contests. I touched 21 (ironically) at my absolute retarded peak where all I did was optimize for that like an absolute psycho, but couldn't do so today. Not even close. Never was I measured to just hang, tho. I feel like I could hang for a while and ignore the pain, which is why I'm like, "I want to go to one of these events, seems fun." I've been so busy at home that I keep turning down events and writing weird stuff, but in the meantime I'm mentally I'm like, "how long could I hang, tho."

When someone asks you what Nostr is like.

GM My August public newsletter has now been published: https://www.lynalden.com/august-2025-newsletter/ This issue covers: macro impacts from tariffs (ie a slightly slower but still unstoppable fiscal train), upcoming Fed easing, and the latest newsletter portfolio snapshot.

In the entire original Star Wars trilogy, no two named female characters ever spoke to each other. In fact there, were only four named women across the trilogy, throughout six and a half hours of content spread across multiple worlds, and for most people they can only name Leia. I'm not bringing it up as a criticism; just an observation. Sometimes guys wonder why their girlfriends/wives don't love their favorite fiction quite as much as they do. It's not to say a given story *should* have more characters of XYZ demographic, but basically if a guy tunes into a movie and no two guys ever speak to each other in it, and it's ladies everywhere with hardly any men around, you'd basically just get the vibe pretty quickly that this wasn't written with you in mind at all. If you like it, that's great, but it's kind of by accident since you just weren't really considered as part of it being put together. I do like Star Wars, for example. I love the Breaking Bad show, too. The premise didn't appeal to me on the surface (middle-aged guy with cancer, young drug maker guy, and to the extent that there are women in the show it's mostly the wives of the important characters), but my husband told me it was great so I watched it with him and loved it. Wouldn't change a thing about it. And then of course, since we can't have nice things, over the past decade the attempts to put more diversity into fantasy or science fiction have been pretty ham-fisted. Rey is a trash character, basically. Almost any attempt with this sort of stuff is lazy. Books have generally done it better because it comes from one author's mind rather than some committee. I think part of why the TV show Arcane was so well-received (especially the first season) was that it had a ton of different characters in it but it wasn't *about* that diversity. It just happened naturally as a byproduct of good writing and care. A bunch of very different characters dealing with themes that are about technological progress vs safety, economic disparity and sovereignty, extremism to achieve goals, etc. Young and old, male and female, rich and poor, all different colors. Rather than feel forced, it just seems obvious in that setting. I've put some thought into this when writing fiction. Men and women, and people of various cultures, do have a ton in common in the fiction they like. Probably more than most realize. -My number one priority is to just write good stuff and tell the story I want to tell. By default there are a broad range of characters in a story like that, at least in my head. Otherwise it would feel boring. Unless I was writing a specific period piece (something like Saving Private Ryan set in WWII battle zones where obviously it would almost all be men), I'd have to go out of my way to write a story where no two men ever speak to each other, or no two women ever speak to each other. That would take effort. -My second consideration is to of course think about my audience (which a lot of current media trends ironically don't do- they just create a piece to fulfill their own grievances and forget about the main demographic that would actually want to watch/read what they made). How would different people experience it? That's where beta readers are helpful, but also just a basic 101 test of imagining like five different people reading it and getting the vibe of whether it's written with them in mind, or not. The goal in that case is certainly not to write for everyone (eg most stories I think of tend to be quite dark and violent, and with substantial complexity, which is a combo that already excludes a lot of people), but to at least be aware of the types of people I might be writing for. The natural state of things in a sufficiently complex setting is a broad range of character types. Basically when I exclude types of readers, I want it to be a conscious decision rather than "huh, I hadn't considered that."

Most people I see who talk about robots quickly replacing humans out in the field (eg not white collar work, not assembly line work, but blue collar work out in the world) haven’t had any experience with what those jobs actually entail.

The latest manufacturing purchasing manager's index report shows higher prices and lower activity/employment in the US manufacturing sector.

July

A sampling of business survey results shows ongoing issues with tariffs: “Fairly flat quarter over quarter, but with us being in the safety and security sector (and with U.S. Customs and Border Protection as a customer), the recent bill that passed should result in an increase in business in the coming months.” [Computer & Electronic Products] “Sales continue at unprecedented growth, driven by data-center construction. Customers and the sales team continue to demand lower pricing, which drives down gross margins in face of input price increases, primarily from aluminum imports.” [Chemical Products] “These tariff wars are beginning to wear us out. It’s been very difficult to forecast what we will pay in duties and calculate any cost savings we’ve had this year. Also, tariffs have disrupted our customs import bond. There is zero clarity about the future, and it’s been a difficult few months trying to figure out where everything is going to land and the impact on our business. So far, tremendous and unexpected costs have been incurred.” [Apparel, Leather & Allied Products] “Currently, higher interest rates still depress the construction industry for new construction projects. Tariff policies are uncertain, which slows down (1) our investment in new projects, (2) component sourcing for new products, (3) blanket orders and (4) replenishment of large inventory quantities. Instead, we’re working to shift suppliers to lower political risk countries or develop domestic sources. We are impacted by the higher tariffs on costs of raw materials and components both sourced domestically and from overseas, and we expect expenses will be higher in the third and fourth quarters as we consume the inventory received with new and higher tariffs or update costs from domestic sources in the second quarter.” [Machinery] “Sales softening more than usual during the summer. Negotiations with non-U.S. manufacturers are strained as we are reluctant to issue POs for deliveries three or more months into the future with prices that include current tariffs.” [Fabricated Metal Products] “In the health-care world we continue with ‘business as normal,’ but we are increasingly searching and assessing geopolitical risk mitigation options.” [Miscellaneous Manufacturing] “Tariffs are causing complete uncertainty around sourcing strategies. A sit-and-wait game for now.” [Electrical Equipment, Appliances & Components] “Sales are about on par with 2024, but nowhere near budget forecast. Tariff concerns seem to be growing as the year progresses.” [Nonmetallic Mineral Products] “Business is steady, with solid bookings and backlog. Still uncertainty about tariffs and associated inflation.” [Furniture & Related Products] “Energy capacity, specifically in the grid operated by PJM Interconnection, continues to be one of the major concerns for business continuity and growth in this region. The procurement of power and rising natural gas prices in this region due to past green energy policies, coupled with future projected allocations for artificial intelligence data centers, adds additional stress to the PJM system.” [Primary Metals] “Cautiously stable. Tariff impacts are still being monitored. Some increases have been implemented while monitoring other products.” [Transportation Equipment]

Strategy had their earnings call today and I was one of the analysts able to participate in the Q&A with the executive team. Although most people are focused on bull market stuff, I decided to aim my question more toward bear market scenarios and stress testing. Here's the transcript for that portion if you're interested: ________ Lyn Alden, Research Analyst: So, thank you for the opportunity. So, Strategy navigated the 2022 bear market successfully. And so my question is going to relate to stress testing as it relates to these mid-term BTC ratings. Given that Strategy’s credit products are backed more by assets and capital access than operating cash flows, are there certain bitcoin bear market assumptions or thresholds, either such as in terms of drawdown magnitudes or lengths of time where capital markets might become inconducive for new capital issuance, that you’re planning for as you design these forward leverage ratios, and for your overall capital structure? Thank you. Michael Saylor, Executive Chairman, Strategy: You know, I think that if we if we equitize the convertible bonds and we go to all preferreds, you can imagine, for example, you have a $100 billion of Bitcoin. You have $50 billion of preferred in an extreme like, the extreme case of 50% leverage case. And if that $50 billion was a debt liability coming due in three years, that would be a lot of risk. And if it was a debt liability coming due in twenty five years, it’d be less risk, but it’ll still be something. But if it’s an if it’s actually equity, if if it’s $50 billion preferred equity, it never comes due. And so now you have a different kind of risk. In that particular case, Bitcoin can draw down 80%, and you’re fine. It can draw down 90%. So I actually think if you look at our our structure, as we migrate to preferreds, we end up with this clock, you know, very, very robust antifragile capital structure where the principal never comes due. And then you have to ask the question, well, where is the liability? And the liability is in the dividend. You notice when Andrew showed the the liabilities, he showed you three tranches. He showed you the interest liability, the cumulative liabilities, and the noncumulative liabilities. That’s because the interest has gotta be paid or you’re in default. The cumulative doesn’t have to be paid, but if you don’t if you suspended, it accumulates, so it’s still a liability. And then the noncumulative, you could suspend it, and it isn’t a liability. So when you add all that up, you know, you you imagine that you’ve got $50,000,000,000 and you have even if you had a 10% dividend, that means you’re down to $5 billion. So on a $100 billion of assets, you’ve got $5,000,000,000 of dividend liabilities, but some of them are more collapsible than others of them. But so you say to yourself, well, what happens if Bitcoin falls 95%? You’d still make you’d still meet those liabilities most likely. You you might in you know, you might in a 95% drawdown, you might suspend something. But you can see, you know, for the most part, no one really contemplates, you know, more than the 80% extreme craze case of the crypto well, I guess the crypto winter is, like, 75% or something. You would know. $66,000 to 16,000, I guess, was, like, the peak to trough. Call it 80%. I think that our structure is is smooth, and we wouldn’t miss a single dividend payment on an 80% drawdown. On a 90% to 95% drawdown, in theory, you might suspend something for a little bit of time, but you would eventually get back current on it. So, you know, so I think in terms of robustness, it’s it’s pretty robust. And if you compare it to the fragility of a credit conventional bank, you know, we’re think about the leverage we’ve got in order to generate our earnings. We’ve got maybe 1.2 leverage. Typical banks got ten, twenty x leverage to get their earnings. So this model is is orders of magnitude less less risky than a conventional banking model. Phong, Andrew, do you guys have anything to add on that? Phong Le, President & Chief Executive Officer, Strategy: I can add, Lyn. We we we we’ve had the benefit of being a Bitcoin treasury company for five years. We went through a crypto winter in 2022 with a much more fragile debt structure and capital structure. We had a Silvergate margin loan, that was Bitcoin backed. We had a secured note that had onerous, you know, clauses, and and and so, we learned a lot from that. You know? And and at that point in time, our most pristine debt were our convertible notes. And now I think we’re much more prepared for a Bitcoin drawdown because over time, we won’t have we already don’t have, secured notes. We don’t have a margin loan. Over time, we may not have convertible notes. And to Mike’s point, we we will be relying on perpetual preferred notes that don’t ever, come due. So, I think we learned a lot, during this period of time, and and we hope to to share that with everybody out there. Lyn Alden, Research Analyst: Thank you. Michael Saylor, Executive Chairman, Strategy: And, of course, the point is we did survive the 80% drawdown with a much weaker capital structure. So, so this capital structure is is bulletproof compared to that one. So, so I think we’re good to 90%. And if it goes below 90%, then we’ll shuffle a few things around. It’ll be colorful.