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Bitcoin Is Honest Money. Prove Me Wrong.

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Essay · Money · Philosophy

Bitcoin Is Honest Money.
Prove Me Wrong.

By Axel Hoogland

Every serious objection to Bitcoin has already been thought through — and answered. This is a challenge to critics to find one that hasn’t.

2026  ·  A challenge to skeptics  ·  Not financial advice

“The root problem with conventional currency is all the trust that’s required to make it work.”

— Satoshi Nakamoto, 2009

What Is Honest Money?

Money, at its core, is a technology for storing and transferring value across time and space. For thousands of years humans have searched for a form of money that couldn’t be corrupted — that couldn’t be debased by kings, inflated away by central banks, or confiscated by governments with printing presses and good intentions.

Gold came closest. Fixed supply. Scarce. No one could create more by decree. But gold has real problems — it’s heavy, hard to divide, difficult to verify, and nearly impossible to transmit across borders without trusting intermediaries. The very institutions gold was meant to protect us from ended up holding it for us. And once they held it, they printed paper on top of it. And once they printed paper, they removed the gold backing entirely.

This is not conspiracy theory. This is history. It happened in 1971. The dollar has lost over 98% of its purchasing power since the Federal Reserve was created in 1913.

Bitcoin is the first monetary technology in human history that combines the scarcity of gold with the transmissibility of the internet — and does so without requiring trust in any institution, government, or person. That is what makes it honest money. The rules are in the code. The code is public. No one can change the supply schedule. No one can freeze your coins without your keys. No one can print more.

Fixed supply of 21 million coins. Predictable issuance schedule. Decentralized — no single point of control or failure. Permissionless — no one can deny you access. Censorship resistant — no one can stop a valid transaction. Verifiable — anyone can audit the entire system.

Bitcoin as Money: The State of Adoption Argument

Critics love to point out that Bitcoin fails the three classical tests of money: store of value, medium of exchange, and unit of account. They’re not entirely wrong — yet. But this critique completely ignores that every monetary technology in history went through an adoption curve where these properties emerged gradually.

The dollar wasn’t always trusted. Gold wasn’t always liquid. The internet wasn’t always fast. Pointing at Bitcoin’s current limitations as though they’re permanent is like critiquing the iPhone in 2007 for not having an app store.

The sequence of monetary adoption is predictable and Bitcoin is following it precisely:

Stage 1 — Collectible / Speculation

Early adopters buy it because they believe others will value it later. This is where Bitcoin spent most of its early years. It still has some of this character today but has largely moved beyond it.

Stage 2 — Store of Value

Institutions, sovereigns, and sophisticated investors hold it as a hedge against currency debasement. This is where Bitcoin is now. BlackRock’s ETF alone holds over $86 billion. Strategy holds over 762,000 coins — more than 3% of the entire supply. Nation states are building reserves.

Stage 3 — Medium of Exchange

As volatility dampens with deeper liquidity and wider adoption, transacting in Bitcoin becomes practical. Layer 2 solutions like Lightning Network are already enabling this. As the price stabilizes at higher levels, the incentive to spend rather than hold increases.

Stage 4 — Unit of Account

Prices denominated in satoshis. This is the final stage and the most distant — but not implausible in a world where Bitcoin has achieved reserve asset status globally.

21M Maximum Supply. Ever.
3-4M Estimated Lost Forever
762K Coins Held by Strategy
$170B US Spot ETF Assets

Bitcoin as Philosophy

Bitcoin is not just a financial instrument. It is a philosophical statement — arguably the most important one made in the field of money since Bretton Woods.

Distrust of institutions is not paranoia. The 2008 financial crisis demonstrated that the institutions entrusted with the monetary system could be catastrophically wrong, spectacularly rewarded for failure, and bailed out with money created from nothing. The genesis block was not subtle about this. Satoshi embedded a newspaper headline about bank bailouts directly into Bitcoin’s first block.

Sovereignty over your own wealth is a human right. The ability to hold value that cannot be confiscated, frozen, or inflated away without your consent is not a radical idea. It is the natural extension of property rights. Bitcoin makes that right technologically enforceable for the first time in history.

Scarcity is not the enemy of prosperity. The dominant monetary philosophy of the 20th century held that money supply should be managed. Bitcoin rejects this entirely. Its scarcity is not a bug but the central feature. Scarcity is what gives money its meaning as a store of value across time.

Rules over rulers. Perhaps the deepest philosophical claim Bitcoin makes is that mathematical rules enforced by cryptography are more trustworthy than any human institution. Not because humans are evil — but because humans are fallible, corruptible, and mortal. Code, once deployed and sufficiently decentralized, is not.

The Environmental Argument — Already Answered

Bitcoin uses an enormous amount of energy. This is true. What critics leave out is what kind of energy, and what Bitcoin does with it.

Bitcoin miners are uniquely flexible electricity consumers — they can be switched on and off instantly, making them ideal buyers of stranded and curtailed renewable energy that would otherwise be wasted. Wind farms and solar arrays frequently produce more power than grids can absorb. Bitcoin absorbs the excess, making previously uneconomic renewable projects viable.

More compellingly: Bitcoin miners are increasingly deployed to combust methane — the gas vented from oil wells and landfills that would otherwise enter the atmosphere directly. Methane is roughly 80 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2 over a 20-year period. Using it to mine Bitcoin converts it to CO2, dramatically reducing net emissions. This is not spin. It is chemistry and thermodynamics.

The environmental argument against Bitcoin is a legacy talking point that has not kept pace with how mining has actually evolved. The narrative persists not because it is accurate but because it is politically useful to those with incentives to undermine Bitcoin’s legitimacy.

The Objections — And Why They’ve Been Answered

What follows is an honest accounting of the most serious objections to Bitcoin, and the responses that Bitcoin thinkers have developed over 17 years of adversarial scrutiny. These are the actual strongest arguments — tested against people who have spent careers trying to find the fatal flaw.

Objection: Quantum Computing Will Break Bitcoin’s Cryptography

A sufficiently powerful quantum computer could theoretically derive private keys from public keys, compromising holdings.

Quantum computing is an existential threat to every cryptographic system on earth — every bank, every government database, every secure communication. Bitcoin is actually among the more adaptable systems since it can hard fork to quantum-resistant algorithms, which already exist and are being standardized. This objection proves too much — if quantum breaks Bitcoin, it breaks everything.
Objection: Transaction Fees Can’t Sustain Miner Security After Halvings

Block rewards halve every four years until ~2140. At zero issuance, miners must be compensated by fees alone. If fees are insufficient, hash rate drops and the network becomes vulnerable.

This objection ignores the difficulty adjustment — one of Bitcoin’s most elegant mechanisms. If hash rate drops, difficulty adjusts down, making mining profitable again at a new equilibrium. At $1 million per coin, even tiny fees in BTC terms are substantial in dollar terms. The security budget concern disappears at scale.
Objection: A Superior Competitor Will Replace Bitcoin

Technology has network effects that shift. Something better could emerge and Bitcoin could become MySpace.

This analogy fundamentally misunderstands monetary network effects. MySpace lost to Facebook because Facebook was more useful in ways users could immediately feel. Monetary network effects are far stickier — the value of money IS the network. Gold held its monetary premium for 5,000 years. Bitcoin may have crossed a similar threshold.
Objection: Governments Will Ban It

Sovereign monetary authorities will not permit a parallel monetary system to challenge their control.

China has “banned” Bitcoin multiple times. It still trades in China. Bans on information and mathematics don’t work. More importantly, the US regulatory posture has reversed dramatically. Spot ETFs are approved. SAB 121 has been rescinded. Institutional banks can now custody digital assets. The world’s largest capital market is opening, not closing.
Objection: Bitcoin Is Too Volatile To Be Money

Something that drops 70% in a year cannot function as a reliable store of value.

Volatility is a function of market depth and adoption, not an intrinsic property of Bitcoin. Every asset becomes less volatile as liquidity deepens. Gold was volatile when its market was thin. Bitcoin’s volatility has been declining measurably each cycle as institutional participation deepens. This objection describes the present state and projects it as permanent — a logical error.

The Real Challenge

After seventeen years of adversarial scrutiny by some of the sharpest minds in cryptography, economics, and computer science — every major objection to Bitcoin has been examined and answered.

The honest answer to “what could derail Bitcoin?” is the unknown unknown — the thing no one has thought of yet. That’s intellectually serious. That’s the right answer.

The challenge to skeptics is simple: find a serious objection that the Bitcoin community hasn’t already examined in depth and answered.

Even Fidelity — one of the world’s largest asset managers — has concluded that ignoring Bitcoin is no longer a prudent approach. The burden of proof has shifted. It is no longer on Bitcoin advocates to justify owning it — it is on skeptics to justify owning zero.

Most people who try to find a fatal flaw end up owning Bitcoin instead.

The Structural Buying Pressure Nobody Is Talking About

Beyond the philosophical and technical case, there is a mechanical reality forming in markets that deserves attention. Fidelity’s 2026 research finds that Bitcoin has delivered the highest risk-adjusted returns of any asset class over both five and ten year horizons — and that even a 1-3% allocation has historically produced meaningful portfolio improvements.

Companies like Strategy have pioneered a model where corporate balance sheets treat Bitcoin as a primary treasury reserve asset, funding ongoing purchases through equity and non-margin debt instruments. Strategy alone holds over 762,000 coins — more than 3.6% of the total supply — and has structured its balance sheet specifically to avoid any forced liquidation scenario. This is a one-way accumulation machine.

This is happening simultaneously with the halving-driven supply reduction — the programmatic 50% reduction in new Bitcoin issuance that occurs every four years. Less new supply entering the market. More institutional demand absorbing existing supply. ETFs holding billions on behalf of pension funds, endowments, and retail investors who will never touch a private key.

These forces compound. They do not reverse without a fundamental change in the thesis — and the thesis has only gotten stronger with time.

The Honest Remaining Risks

Intellectual honesty requires acknowledging what is genuinely uncertain.

The unknown unknown. Bitcoin could fail in ways no one has conceived. This is true of any system. It is taken seriously precisely because it cannot be dismissed — but also cannot be acted upon. You cannot hedge against what you cannot imagine.

A catastrophic BIP. The Bitcoin Improvement Proposal process is the mechanism by which protocol changes are proposed and adopted. Conservative governance makes bad changes unlikely — but not impossible. The community’s demonstrated ability to resist even well-intentioned changes (the block size wars) suggests this risk is managed, not eliminated.

Partial success. The most likely “disappointing” outcome is not failure but incomplete success — Bitcoin becomes a globally recognized store of value held by institutions and sovereigns, reaching prices that would have seemed absurd a decade ago, but never fully displacing fiat as the unit of account for everyday life. This would be an extraordinary outcome for holders while representing a partial failure of the original vision.

Conclusion: The Game Theory of Honest Money

You don’t have to believe Bitcoin will succeed to understand why it might.

A small number of people who deeply understand the monetary system, the history of currency debasement, and the technical properties of Bitcoin will continue to accumulate. Their accumulation drives price. Rising price attracts attention. Attention drives adoption. Adoption deepens liquidity. Deeper liquidity dampens volatility. Dampened volatility enables broader use as money. Broader use as money drives further adoption.

The masses don’t need to understand sound money theory for this to play out. They never do. They didn’t understand TCP/IP to use the internet. They didn’t understand double-entry bookkeeping to trust banks. They will not need to understand elliptic curve cryptography to hold Bitcoin.

History doesn’t require universal understanding to move in a direction. It requires enough people who understand to make it inevitable for everyone else.

The question is not whether Bitcoin is perfect. No monetary system is. The question is whether it is more honest than what we have — and whether honest money, once available, can ultimately lose to dishonest money in a world where information moves freely.

If you’ve found a flaw the Bitcoin community hasn’t already answered, the world is listening.

This essay represents the author’s analysis and philosophical perspective. It is not financial advice. Bitcoin is a volatile asset. Past performance does not guarantee future results. Do your own research. Hold your own keys.

By Axel Hoogland

MyWheelLife.com

Bitcoin Is Honest Money · 2026  ·  Not your keys · Not your coins

bitcoin_honest_money_wordpress (2).html

Bitcoin Maps and a Simple Observation

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I opened the Bitcoin map inside Cash App today.

Then I opened https://btcmap.org.

Both maps showed the same thing.

A large number of businesses.

Restaurants, shops, and local services spread across the city.

For a long time, the common assumption has been that Bitcoin is mostly held, not used.

But when you look at these maps, that assumption becomes harder to maintain.

These are not theoretical use cases.

They are physical businesses that have made the decision to accept Bitcoin as a form of payment.

What Happens When a Business Accepts Bitcoin

When a business enables Bitcoin payments, something else happens at the same time.

It gets listed.

On Cash App, it appears on the local Bitcoin map.
On BTC Map, it becomes part of a global directory.

In both cases, the business becomes easier to find.

A Different Type of Customer

Most marketing is broad.

Businesses advertise and hope the right customer eventually sees it.

These maps work differently.

Someone opening a Bitcoin map is already looking for a place to spend.

That is a narrower and more specific type of demand.

The business is not trying to attract attention.

It is being surfaced directly to someone who is already interested.

A Small but Growing Effect

Each individual business making this decision is not a major event.

But the pattern is noticeable.

A few businesses appear.
Then a cluster forms.
Then an area becomes dense.

That pattern shows up on both maps.

Larger Businesses Are Starting to Participate

This is not limited to small or experimental businesses.

Steak ‘n Shake now accepts Bitcoin.

That does not mean universal adoption is imminent.

But it does suggest that accepting Bitcoin is moving from the edge toward something more normal.

Why Early Adoption Matters

There is a practical advantage to being early.

When fewer businesses are listed:

  • Each one is more visible
  • Each one stands out more clearly

As more businesses adopt, that visibility becomes more diluted.

This is true for most discovery platforms.

A Simple Takeaway

Bitcoin adoption is often discussed in abstract terms.

But these maps show something more concrete.

Businesses are choosing to accept it.
And when they do, they become easier to find.

That is a small change at the individual level.

But repeated many times, it starts to look like a system forming.

Final Thought

You do not need to assume that Bitcoin will replace existing systems to notice what is happening.

You can simply open a map and observe:

Businesses are adopting it.

And the ones that do it earlier are easier to see.

$200K vs $1.2M: A SATA + STRC Thought Experiment on Reaching F.I.R.E.

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For years, the standard framework for retirement income has been the 4% rule.

The idea is simple: if you want $48,500 per year of spending, you would typically need roughly:

$48,500 × 25 = $1,212,500

In other words, about $1.2 million invested in a diversified portfolio to sustainably withdraw that income.

But recently I came across an interesting thought experiment involving two relatively new preferred securities.

Before diving into the math, it’s important to note that these securities ultimately sit within financial structures connected to Bitcoin, so they carry some exposure to the long-term success of Bitcoin itself. More on that later.

Two High-Yield Preferred Securities

Two securities caught my attention:

  • Strategy Series C Preferred (STRC) – currently yielding about 11.5%
  • Strive Asset Management Preferred (SATA) – currently yielding about 12.75%

Both are preferred securities issued by companies building financial products around Bitcoin treasury strategies.

An interesting feature is their dividend timing.

  • STRC has an ex-dividend date around the 15th of the month
  • SATA has an ex-dividend date around the 28th of the month

The actual cash payment arrives roughly 15 days later, but what matters for dividend eligibility is simply holding the shares on the ex-dividend date.

After that date passes, an investor can sell the shares and still receive the dividend.

The Rotation Idea

Because the ex-dividend dates occur at different times of the month, a strategy some investors discuss is rotating between the two securities:

  1. Hold STRC through its ex-dividend date (~15th)
  2. After the ex-date passes, sell and move into SATA
  3. Hold SATA through its ex-dividend date (~28th)
  4. Then rotate back to STRC and repeat

In theory, this rotation attempts to capture both dividend streams each month.

The Yield Math

Using approximate yields:

SATA: 12.75%
STRC: 11.5%

Combined:

12.75% + 11.5% = 24.25%

If an investor pays roughly 24% tax on the income:

24.25% × 0.76 ≈ 18.4% after tax

That’d give this investor $18,400 per a year income on $100k or $36,400 per a year on $200k.

The Early Retirement Thought Experiment

Suppose an early retired investor allocated $200,000 to this strategy.

At a 24.25% gross yield, the income would be:

$200,000 × 0.2425 = $48,500 per year

Under the traditional 4% rule, producing that same income would require:

$48,500 × 25 = $1,212,500

So the comparison looks like this:

StrategyCapital Required
Traditional 4% rule~$1.2 million
Preferred rotation idea~$200,000

That’s roughly a 6× difference in required capital.

Even More Interesting for Early Retirees

For some early retirees who structure their income carefully, qualified dividend income can fall within the 0% federal tax bracket.

In that scenario, the full 24.25% yield could theoretically flow through without federal income tax.

Using the same $200,000 example:

InvestmentYieldAnnual Income
$200,00024.25%$48,500

That level of income could cover a meaningful portion of living expenses for many households.

The Bitcoin Connection

It’s important to understand what ultimately sits underneath these securities.

Both STRC and SATA are part of financial structures built around companies holding significant amounts of Bitcoin on their balance sheets.

At the base of these preferred securities is therefore some degree of Bitcoin risk.

If Bitcoin were to fail as an asset class entirely, the underlying business models supporting these preferreds would likely fail as well.

However, if Bitcoin continues to grow and remain valuable over time, these structures should continue to function as designed.

It is also possible that as demand for these types of securities increases, the dividend yields could gradually decline. Markets tend to compress yields when large numbers of investors compete for the same income-producing assets.

So the yields discussed above should be viewed as the current state of the market, not necessarily a permanent condition.

Finally there is company risk. Strive (ASST) issues SATA and Strategy (MSTR) issues STRC. Either company could fail for some generic business reason and that woudl also be a risk, just like any business.

Final Thoughts

For decades, the 4% rule has been a useful guideline for thinking about retirement income.

But financial markets are constantly evolving, and new structures occasionally appear that change the math in interesting ways.

This rotation idea may or may not prove durable over the long run. But it highlights how emerging financial instruments—especially those tied to Bitcoin treasury strategies—are beginning to create entirely new types of income assets.

And sometimes, when you run the numbers, it’s worth pausing and asking:

Could the future of income investing look different than the past?

As of 3-16-2026 I started an account to do this specifically. I will share the results in a few months or at the end of the year to see how it’s gone and if anything has changed since I started this experiment.

All prices in the below table are per share. multiple the # shares x any price to get the total amount. I started with 10x $97.22 = $972.20 and a purchase of 10 shares of SATA.

Stock# sharesDate PurchasedDate SoldPurchase Price Sell Priceprice appreciationDividend DateDividend
SATA103-16-264-1-26$97.2297.89+$0.67

This article is for informational purposes only and should not be considered investment advice.

Calling MSTR a Ponzi Scheme Shows a Fundamental Misunderstanding of Finance

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Understanding Ponzi schemes, Bitcoin carry trades, and how new financial instruments are evolving

Recently there has been a wave of posts online claiming that MicroStrategy and securities like STRC are “Ponzi schemes.”

That claim misunderstands both what a Ponzi scheme actually is and how these instruments work.

Before labeling something a Ponzi scheme, it helps to start with a clear definition.

What Is a Ponzi Scheme?

A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment structure where:

  1. Investors are promised returns
  2. Those returns are not generated by real economic activity
  3. Early investors are paid using money from new investors
  4. The scheme collapses once new inflows stop

The defining characteristics are:

  • No real underlying asset
  • No productive activity generating returns
  • Fabricated account statements or hidden losses
  • Mathematical collapse once new money stops coming in

The most famous example is Bernie Madoff, who fabricated account balances while paying existing investors with money from new clients.

If there is no real asset and no real economic activity, you may be looking at a Ponzi scheme.

An Interesting Contrast: Social Security

Ironically, one of the closest structures many Americans participate in that resembles a Ponzi-style payment system is **Social Security Administration’s Social Security program.

Social Security works by:

  • taxing current workers
  • using those taxes to pay current retirees

There is no large invested pool backing the system. Instead, it relies on a continuous stream of new contributors to fund previous participants.

Government projections show the trust funds are expected to become depleted within the next decade, after which benefits would have to be reduced or taxes increased to maintain payouts.

This is not fraud — it is a demographic funding system created by law — but it illustrates an important point:

Money flowing from new participants to previous participants does not automatically make something a Ponzi scheme.

A Ponzi scheme specifically requires deception and fake returns.

Now let’s look at MicroStrategy.

What MicroStrategy Actually Does

MicroStrategy is a publicly traded company that:

  • issues equity and debt securities
  • uses the proceeds to purchase Bitcoin
  • holds that Bitcoin on its balance sheet

The underlying asset is Bitcoin, which is publicly verifiable on the blockchain.

Investors buying MicroStrategy securities know exactly what they are purchasing.

Nothing is hidden.
Nothing is fabricated.
The underlying asset exists and can be independently verified.

You may disagree with the strategy.

But it clearly does not meet the definition of a Ponzi scheme.

What STRC Actually Is

STRC is a preferred stock issued by MicroStrategy that pays a monthly dividend currently around 11.5% annually.

The capital raised from selling STRC is used to purchase additional Bitcoin.

Conceptually, the structure resembles a carry trade.

A Bitcoin Carry Trade

For decades global investors used the Yen carry trade.

The strategy worked like this:

  1. Borrow Japanese yen at extremely low interest rates
  2. Convert yen into higher-yielding assets (often U.S. dollars)
  3. Capture the yield difference

STRC works in a somewhat similar way — but with Bitcoin.

Instead of:

Yen → USD

The structure is effectively:

USD → Bitcoin

Investors provide capital and earn roughly 11.5% yield, while MicroStrategy accumulates Bitcoin.

What the Market Has Actually Shown

STRC began trading in July 2025.

Around August 2025, Bitcoin traded near $120,000.

Since then Bitcoin has experienced significant price volatility.

Yet STRC has generally continued trading near its $100 reference price.

That doesn’t prove the structure will work forever.

But it does show something important:

So far, the instrument has functioned roughly as designed.

Financial markets tend to expose broken structures quickly.

The Lindy Effect

There is a concept known as the Lindy effect.

The Lindy effect suggests:

The longer something survives, the longer it is likely to continue surviving.

We see this with technologies, institutions, and financial instruments.

Gold has survived thousands of years.
Stock markets have survived more than a century.
Bitcoin itself has now survived multiple boom-bust cycles.

Each month that STRC:

  • maintains its price near $100
  • pays its dividend
  • continues operating normally

…the probability that the structure works increases slightly.

What Are the Real Risks?

None of this means STRC or MicroStrategy are risk-free.

But the risks are often misunderstood.

The real risks are tail risks — low-probability but high-impact events.

For example:

1. Catastrophic failure of Bitcoin

If Bitcoin were somehow fundamentally broken — a critical cryptographic flaw, catastrophic protocol failure, or a coordinated global ban that destroyed liquidity — the entire thesis behind MicroStrategy’s balance sheet would be undermined.

2. Corporate catastrophe unrelated to Bitcoin

Another possibility would be some major event affecting the company itself:

  • fraud inside the company
  • regulatory disaster
  • management misconduct
  • or some unforeseen corporate collapse

These risks exist for every public company.

3. Extreme financial system disruption

In a severe financial crisis, credit markets can temporarily freeze. Any company that relies on capital markets — including MicroStrategy — could be affected.

Risk Is Not Fraud

The irony in many of these debates is that the word “Ponzi” often gets used as a general insult for anything people don’t understand.

Real Ponzi schemes involve deception, fake assets, and fabricated returns.

MicroStrategy and STRC involve transparent securities backed by a publicly verifiable asset.

Whether someone believes in Bitcoin or not, the structure is visible to everyone.

In fact, one of the broader trends of the past decade has been the opposite of a Ponzi scheme: systems where the underlying asset is more transparent than ever before.

Bitcoin’s supply is public.
Bitcoin’s transactions are public.
Bitcoin’s monetary policy is fixed.

Financial instruments like STRC are simply new ways that traditional capital markets are interacting with that asset.

You may think the strategy is aggressive.
You may think the trade will fail.

But the difference between risk and fraud still matters.

And confusing the two only makes it harder to understand what is actually happening in financial markets today.

The $2K Stimulus, the 50-Year Mortgage, and the Fiat Trap

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Why Americans Deserve Better — and Why Bitcoin May Be the Only Way Out

President Trump recently proposed a $2,000 payment to every American, excluding “high-income individuals.” The idea sounds generous, but it’s also a symptom of a much deeper disease: a government that spends money it doesn’t have—causing inflation in the process and actually hurting the very people who receive the payment.

The Math Behind the Madness

In 2024 alone, the U.S. government ran a $1.8 trillion deficit.
Let’s put that in perspective:

  • There are 128 million households in the United States.
  • There are 340 million individuals.

If we divided that $1.8 trillion evenly, that’s $14,000 per household or $5,294 per person.

So when politicians talk about sending you a one-time $2,000 check, remember — they’re already spending about 2.5 times that amount per person every single year.
If the government simply stopped wasting and borrowing, you’d already be thousands of dollars richer annually — without a single new program or “stimulus.”

That’s money our government already spent—above and beyond the taxes you and I pay. It wasn’t earned. It was created out of thin air by the Treasury and the Federal Reserve. Every time that happens, the dollars in your wallet become worth a little less. That’s why groceries, cars, and homes cost more every year, no matter how hard you work.

The Mirage of the 50-Year Mortgage

Now the U.S. housing authorities are exploring 50-year mortgages, following the path of Japan and even some European countries.
Japan went so far as to experiment with 100-year mortgages, often passed from parents to children. Did that make homes more affordable? No—it made them more expensive.

When you stretch the loan term, monthly payments drop slightly, but total debt rises massively. Sellers raise prices to match what buyers can “afford” on paper. The result: higher prices, higher leverage, and lifelong debt servitude.

The 50-year mortgage is not a solution. It’s an illusion. It’s another way to avoid facing the real issue: our monetary system rewards debt and punishes saving.

Where Does the Money Go?

When we spend $1.8 trillion more than we take in, where does it all go?

  • To foreign wars and endless “operations” that rarely make Americans safer.
  • To subsidies and bailouts for politically favored industries.
  • To bloated bureaucracies that exist to perpetuate themselves.
  • To interest payments on the national debt—now one of the largest single line items in the federal budget.

Meanwhile, our manufacturing jobs were shipped overseas, first to Mexico and China, now to Vietnam and India. Communities that once built real wealth are hollowed out. Young people drown in debt while imported goods fill our stores. The average American is left with higher prices, lower stability, and fewer ways to build lasting capital.

Why does this keep happening? It’s not just bad policy — it’s baked into the structure of the global financial system.
Because the U.S. dollar is the world’s reserve currency, foreign countries must hold dollars to trade internationally. That means America must constantly send dollars abroad — through trade deficits and offshored production — to supply the world with liquidity.

This is known as the Triffin Dilemma: to maintain the dollar’s global dominance, the U.S. has to export jobs, import goods, and print money. It’s a system that benefits global finance, not the American worker.

A Balanced Budget Is Not Just Accounting — It’s Freedom

If the U.S. government lived within its means, you’d instantly gain purchasing power. Prices would stabilize, wages would go further, and the value of your savings would stop eroding.
You wouldn’t need a $2,000 stimulus check—because your dollar would already be strong.

The truth is simple: either we live within our means voluntarily, or reality will force us to.

Now, to be fair, we probably can’t slash spending overnight without causing serious shock to the economy. But we don’t have to.
What if we simply froze federal spending at 2025 levels and let tax revenue grow naturally with the economy? Within a few short years, the budget would balance itself—no chaos, no default, just discipline.

That’s not austerity. That’s responsibility.
And it’s the only peaceful way to restore faith in the dollar while keeping it as the world’s reserve currency.
The other option—the one emerging whether Washington likes it or not—is Bitcoin.

Bitcoin and the End of Fiat Illusion

“I don’t believe we shall ever have a good money again before we take the thing out of the hands of government, that is, we can’t take it violently out of the hands of government, all we can do is by some sly roundabout way introduce something that they can’t stop.”
— F.A. Hayek

Some believe there’s only one peaceful way out of this cycle: a return to sound money—money that cannot be printed at will.

That’s what Bitcoin represents.
It’s not a speculative token or a tech fad—it’s a monetary rebellion against endless inflation, debt-based growth, and political manipulation of money. In a Bitcoin world, politicians can’t quietly steal your savings through inflation. They must tax you honestly or spend less.

That’s accountability.
That’s discipline.
That’s freedom.

Even some in government see this potential. Senator Cynthia Lummis has proposed that the United States create a strategic Bitcoin reserve, allowing America to hold a real, non-inflationary asset on its balance sheet.
That move alone could begin rebuilding trust in the U.S. financial system—and might be the only peaceful way out of this mess.

My Message to Congress

If you truly want to help Americans:

  • Stop using debt as a crutch for broken policy.
  • Reject gimmicks like 50-year mortgages that only inflate prices.
  • Commit to a balanced budget and an honest monetary system.
  • Bring back real production, not financial engineering.
  • End foreign interventions that waste our treasure and divide the world.
  • Support sound money legislation like Senator Lummis’ Bitcoin reserve proposal.

Let the American worker, saver, and builder rise again—on a foundation of real value, not printed promises.

My Message to Every American

Don’t wait for Washington to fix this.
I urge you to learn about the problems with fiat money—how inflation quietly steals your time, labor, and savings—and to understand why Bitcoin solves these problems at their root.

The path forward is clear: either reform the dollar through fiscal discipline, or transition to a world built on honest, decentralized money.
The choice is ours—but the clock is ticking.

Send This Letter to Your Representatives

If this message resonates with you, copy the following text and send it to your senators and congressperson. You can find their contact info at https://www.congress.gov/members.

Subject: Support Fiscal Responsibility and Sound Money

Dear Senator/Representative,

I’m writing to express my concern about the growing national debt, inflation, and the policies that continue to devalue the U.S. dollar. In 2024, the federal deficit was $1.8 trillion—equal to roughly $14,000 per household. Instead of one-time stimulus checks, we need a long-term commitment to balanced budgets and sound money.

Please support policies that:

  • Freeze federal spending at 2025 levels until tax revenue naturally balances the budget.
  • End inflationary monetary expansion that hurts working Americans.
  • Reject 50-year mortgages and other short-term “fixes” that only inflate asset prices.
  • Support legislation like Senator Cynthia Lummis’s proposal for a Bitcoin strategic reserve, ensuring the United States has a sound, non-inflationary store of value.

Fiscal responsibility and sound money aren’t partisan issues—they’re American values.

Sincerely,
[Your Name]
[Your City, State]

Spain’s Silver, Japan’s Bonds, America’s Deficits: Why Easy Money Kills Real Work And Hollows Out The Middle Class

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(inspired by this episode of Bitcoin for Millennials)

Big idea: Spain found a mountain of silver in Bolivia, spent like crazy, stopped building real industries—and the bill came due. The same thing is happening today, just with money printers instead of mines.

1) The mountain

In 1545, Spanish explorers struck the richest silver deposit in history: Cerro Rico, “the rich mountain,” in what’s now Bolivia.
A city called Potosí exploded out of the rock. At its height, it was larger than London or Paris.
For two centuries, roughly two-thirds of the world’s silver came from that one mountain. Spain looked unstoppable.

2) Easy money, hard problems

So much silver poured into Europe that prices began rising year after year.
For nearly a thousand years, prices in Europe had been flat. Then suddenly, everything—from bread to rent—started costing more.
Historians call it the Price Revolution.

Spain thought it was getting richer. In reality, its silver was just buying less and less.

3) The addiction loop

Spain borrowed against future silver shipments, funded endless wars, and built palaces to show off its power.
Sound familiar? Borrowing against your future is exactly what modern governments do when they run deficits every single year—financing today’s comfort with tomorrow’s labor and taxes.
And those “endless wars”? Spain fought them across Europe. The U.S. fights them across the globe. Different century, same playbook.

4) “Free” silver, “free” money

The silver was basically free to Spain—mined with forced labor that cost almost nothing.
That “free” flow of money metal fueled reckless spending and inflation.

Today, printing money is even freer. No mines, no ships, no workers—just a digital entry at the central bank.
But the result is the same: more money chasing the same goods, rising prices, and wealth concentrating in financial assets instead of productive work.

5) The wage spiral

When silver poured into Spain, mining and trade paid far more than farming or manufacturing.
Workers chased the high wages, and everyone else demanded raises to keep up.
That wage inflation pushed up local costs across the board.

It soon became cheaper to buy foreign goods than to make them at home.
English and Dutch craftsmen could undersell Spanish products even after shipping them across the sea.
Local factories and farms couldn’t compete. Spain’s economy drifted from production to consumption—spending instead of building.

You can see the same thing happening today.
Money printing and easy credit inflate salaries in finance, tech, and government while driving up housing, energy, and labor costs everywhere else.
Manufacturing can’t keep up, so we import the difference.
The result? A strong currency, cheap goods, and a shrinking middle class.

6) The next chapter — Japan

What if the next Spain isn’t America yet—but Japan?
As this interview with macro analyst Roberto Rios explains, Japan is further down the same path:
zero interest rates, quantitative easing, and government debt so large that the central bank must choose between saving its currency or saving its bond market.

For decades, Japan has printed money to prop up its financial system, even buying stocks outright to keep prices from falling.
That free liquidity created an illusion of stability—until inflation returned and the yen began collapsing.
Now Japan faces the impossible choice every over-leveraged empire eventually faces:
protect the currency and crash the system, or print the money and destroy the currency.

It’s the same dilemma America is approaching, just delayed by our global reserve-currency privilege.
The “free silver” of the 1500s became “free paper” in the 1900s and “free digital dollars” in the 2000s. The pattern never changed—only the technology did.

7) The simple lesson

Resources aren’t wealth. Printing money isn’t wealth. Making things is wealth.
When prosperity feels “free,” it’s usually borrowed from the future.

8) Today’s echo

Easy credit. Quantitative easing. Deficit spending.
Each promises painless prosperity—more liquidity, more growth, no trade-offs.
But it’s the same story Spain wrote 500 years ago: short-term abundance, long-term decay.

Spain’s “free” silver built an empire that rotted from within.
Japan’s “free” money is imploding quietly.
And America’s “free” dollar is next in line—just with better branding and digital ink instead of metal.

9) Bitcoin and the Dollar Endgame

What if Japan’s collapsing bond market isn’t just a regional crisis but a preview of America’s financial future?

In the Bitcoin for Millennials episode, host Bram talks with macro analyst Roberto Rios (“Peruvian Bool”), who has been tracking this “dollar endgame” for years.
While most people fixate on Bitcoin’s short-term price swings, Rios zooms out to the structural problem: every central bank is trapped between saving its currency or saving its bond market. Japan is simply the first to hit the wall.

He calls this dynamic financial gravity—the idea that once debt and money creation expand far enough, gravity pulls everything toward a neutral asset that can’t be printed.

Rios’s core argument:

  • The global monetary system has reached a point where debt can never shrink; it can only be monetized.
  • Central banks will print until confidence breaks.
  • When trust in both sides of the fiat balance sheet—bonds and currencies—collapses, capital will flee into something outside the system entirely.

That’s where Bitcoin enters the picture.

While central banks and institutions still view gold as the “neutral” reserve, Rios argues Bitcoin is the superior version of gold:

  • Fixed supply, instantly verifiable, infinitely divisible.
  • Borderless and digital—no vaults, shipping, or intermediaries.
  • Immune to political capture or forced demand (“fiat” in the literal let-there-be sense).

As he puts it, the Japanese bond crisis could actually trigger the biggest Bitcoin bull run ever.
Once Japan’s carry trade unwinds and the yen weakens further, global liquidity shocks will push central banks to print again—reviving the same inflation loop that began with Spain’s silver.
Each cycle of monetary rescue drives more people to seek an exit from the system itself.

From silver to paper to code:
Spain’s “free” silver created Europe’s first inflation.
Japan’s “free” money is collapsing under its own weight.
Bitcoin is the gravity well everything eventually falls into.

Tracking the “Political ETFs” — My Ongoing Experiment

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Members of Congress have long faced accusations of trading on insider information — buying and selling stocks in companies they help regulate.
It’s a bipartisan problem: Republicans and Democrats alike have profited from privileged access and timing the rest of the public could never match.

That’s not just bad optics — it’s corruption.
It undermines faith in both the markets and the integrity of government.

To highlight how deep this problem goes, I’ve started an experiment tracking three ETFs:

  • NANC — the Unusual Whales Subversive Democratic Trading ETF, built around stocks traded by Democratic lawmakers.
  • GOP — the Unusual Whales Subversive Republican Trading ETF, reflecting trades made by Republican lawmakers.
  • SPY — the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust, serving as a neutral market benchmark.

My goal isn’t to glorify these funds — it’s to show in real numbers how political trading compares to the broad market, and to call out why this system needs reform.

Policy Context

This issue connects directly to Senator Josh Hawley’s proposal to ban individual stock trading by members of Congress.
His bill wouldn’t ban investing altogether — lawmakers could still own broad mutual funds or ETFs, just not trade individual stocks that might be affected by their votes.

That distinction matters. It allows long-term wealth building without the appearance or reality of insider trading.
📎 Read Hawley’s bill here

Performance Snapshot (Feb 10 2023 → Oct 27 2025)

SymbolETF NameDescriptionStarting Price*Current PriceTotal Return
NANCUnusual Whales Subversive Democratic Trading ETFTracks stocks favored by Democratic members of Congress$24.69$46.15+86.9%
GOPUnusual Whales Subversive Republican Trading ETFTracks stocks favored by Republican members of Congress$24.96$37.20+49.0%
SPYSPDR S&P 500 ETF TrustBaseline for overall U.S. market$408$685+67.9%

*Starting prices from Google Finance (Feb 10 2023, ETF inception date). Current prices as of Oct 27 2025.

The Takeaway

Both “political ETFs” have gained since launch, but that doesn’t justify congressional trading.
When lawmakers can personally profit from decisions they influence, public trust erodes — no matter how well the market performs.

This experiment is my small way to expose how close politics and profit have become — and to advocate for a system where leadership means stewardship, not stock tips.

The Earmark Era: How Washington Rewards Spending, Not Stewardship — and Why the Federal Budget Keeps Breaking

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Earlier in 2024, I read a local article about Washington’s senior senator proudly announcing how much federal money she had brought home to the state. Her list ran dozens of pages — hundreds of millions in Congressionally Directed Spending, better known as earmarks.

She’s not alone. Nearly every senator submits earmark requests, which you can browse on the Senate Appropriations Committee’s official list. Each item sounds worthy enough: a wastewater upgrade, a community arts incubator, a “therapeutic court.” But taken together, these line items add up fast.

According to the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, Congress approved 8,098 earmark projects costing $14.6 billion in FY 2024—about the same as FY 2023—and still under one percent of total discretionary spending. In context, that’s roughly 0.2 percent of total federal outlays.

It’s easy to shrug and say, “So what? That’s peanuts in a $6.8 trillion budget.”
But the issue isn’t the size. It’s the signal.

The Round-Trip Problem

When money takes the round trip — federal tax → congressional politics → earmark → local grantee — it leaks. Every stop adds overhead, lobbying, and political friction.

If a project’s benefits are local, fund it locally. Save federal dollars for truly national needs—and make any remaining federal grants competitive and audited.

That’s not ideological; it’s basic hygiene. Less leakage, less pork, more accountability.

The GAO’s Quiet Crusade

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has spent over a decade documenting federal overlap, duplication, and inefficiency. Between 2011 and 2023, its recommendations produced about $667 billion in cumulative savings—roughly $51 billion a year.

That sounds impressive… until you set it beside annual deficits averaging $1.2 trillion over the same period. Even if every GAO fix were implemented perfectly, it would only offset a few cents of every deficit dollar. We celebrate small wins while ignoring the structural math.

The Trillions That Run on Autopilot

To understand that math, look at the 2024 federal budget as a whole (data from the Congressional Budget Office’s Budget and Economic Outlook: 2024–2034):

  • Total Outlays (FY 2024): ≈ $6.8 trillion
  • Total Revenues: ≈ $4.9 trillion
  • Mandatory Spending: ≈ $4.1 trillion (60%) — Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other entitlements
  • Discretionary Spending: ≈ $1.8 trillion (26%) — defense, education, housing, infrastructure, research
  • Net Interest: ≈ $0.9 trillion (13%) — the fastest-growing line item in the budget

Source: Congressional Budget Office, “Budget and Economic Outlook: 2024–2034.”

All the fights over earmarks, audits, and waste reports happen inside that discretionary slice, the part Congress actually votes on each year.
The other 70 percent runs on autopilot — driven by demographics, healthcare inflation, and debt.

So yes, we have a trillions problem, not a billions problem.
But pretending the billions don’t matter ensures the trillions never get fixed.

The Cultural Incentive to Spend

Politicians are rewarded for bringing money home. A senator who resists earmarks looks “ineffective.”
That same incentive—spend now, borrow later—is what prevents any real reform on the mandatory side.

If Congress can’t resist handing out $14 billion in earmarks to score headlines, how will it ever take on the hard reforms that actually matter?

The Real Problem

The problem isn’t that earmarks alone bankrupt the country — they don’t.
The problem is that they reveal a mindset: Washington still rewards politicians for spending, not stewardship.

Every senator gets praised for what they bring home, not for what they turn down.
That’s the same mindset that makes real entitlement reform politically impossible and deficit reduction unthinkable.

Earmarks aren’t bankrupting the U.S., but they show why the U.S. can’t stop bankrupting itself.

Until that incentive changes — in Congress, in media, and among voters — the numbers will keep getting bigger, and the excuses will too.

✅ Sources:

2024 Congressional Pig Book Summary
32nd “TheBook Washington Doesn’t WantYou to Read”
CITIZENS AGAINST GOVERNMENT WASTE

The Congressional Pig Book is CAGW’s annual compilation of earmarks in the appropriations bills and the database contains every earmark since it was first published in 1991. All items in the Congressional Pig Book meet at least one of CAGW’s seven criteria that were developed by CAGW and the Congressional Porkbusters Coalition:

  • Requested by only one chamber of Congress;
  • Not specifically authorized;
  • Not competitively awarded;
  • Not requested by the President;
  • Greatly exceeds the President’s budget request or the previous year’s funding;
  • Not the subject of congressional hearings; or,
  • Serves only a local or special interest.

The Politics of Envy: How Bernie Sanders Uses Billionaires to Distract from Washington’s Failures — and Keep People Angry

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Blaming billionaires is easy. Fixing bad policy, broken incentives, and decades of fiscal irresponsibility isn’t — so Bernie Sanders keeps the outrage machine running instead.

A lot of people — Bernie Sanders in particular — hate billionaires because they assume billionaires stole their wealth.
But that belief comes from misunderstanding how value is actually created.

💵 Creation vs. Printing

Bernie and the government “create money” by printing it — literally out of thin air — which steals purchasing power from everyone who already has dollars.
That’s not value creation. It’s value redistribution by dilution.

So when that’s your frame of reference, you start to believe that everyone who gets rich must have taken something from someone else. Because that’s how you create “money” in politics — you print it or tax it away.

But wealth in a free market isn’t created by decree. It’s created by building, coordinating, and innovating — by making something others voluntarily trade for.

📈 Value Creation Is Not Theft

Larry Ellison, for example. One day Oracle stock went up, and his net worth jumped by $100 billion. Bernie acts like Larry ran around stealing $100 billion from working people.
But that’s not what happened. That value didn’t exist before — it was created.

Wealth in the market represents new value built through skill, innovation, and coordination, not theft.
If you’re stranded on an island with a billion dollars, it’s worthless. You need resources, tools, and knowledge to turn that “money” into something useful.

The problem is, people who’ve never built or created real value assume no one else can either.
So they see wealth as theft instead of creation. That’s the confusion at the heart of modern politics.

⚠️ Bernie’s Game: Blame, Not Solutions

And that’s where Bernie Sanders comes in.
He isn’t actually helping working people by pointing to billionaires as evil — he’s manipulating them.

By giving people a villain to hate, he distracts from the real causes of economic pain — bad money, wasteful government, and decades of inflation that quietly rob savers and workers.
He rallies frustration around a scapegoat instead of a fix.

If Bernie genuinely wanted to help, he’d talk about restoring fiscal discipline, reducing waste, and making it easier for regular people to build wealth — not demonizing those who already have.
But he doesn’t. Because blaming billionaires is politically easy.
Fixing the system would mean questioning the very machine that gives him power.

So instead of solving problems, he feeds resentment — keeping people angry, divided, and dependent on him to express that anger.

🧮 The Fantasy of the “Billionaire Tax”

In a recent Time article titled “I’m a Millionaire. No One Needs More Than $30 Million”, the author argues that a Billionaire Income Tax could raise $557 billion over ten years and “jump-start a permanent safety net.”

That sounds impressive — until you look at the math.

The U.S. government currently runs a $2 trillion annual deficit.
That’s $20 trillion in overspending every decade.
So this “transformative” billionaire tax covers less than 3 % of the hole. It’s fiscal rounding error.

The problem isn’t a lack of billionaire money — it’s a lack of discipline and accountability.

🏛 The Real Problem Isn’t “Too Much Money” — It’s How It’s Used

The Time article goes on to argue that wealth beyond $30 million stops being about living well and becomes about wielding power — influencing elections, buying media outlets, and suppressing competition.

That part isn’t entirely wrong. Money can corrupt politics.
But the author’s solution — capping wealth — misses the point completely.

If the issue is that money manipulates the system, then the answer is to make the system harder to manipulate, not to confiscate wealth after the fact.

We should make elections harder to buy, not success harder to earn.
Reform campaign finance, close regulatory loopholes, stop insider lobbying — that’s how you stop abuse.

The same goes for the “buy, borrow, die” loophole that allows the ultra-wealthy to avoid realizing gains.
If that’s the concern, close the loopholes directly — don’t destroy the entire structure of value creation to fix a tax code glitch.

And even then, no system will ever be perfect.
Smart, ambitious people will always find new ways to optimize around the rules — that’s part of what makes them successful.
Every time you close one loophole, innovation and adaptation create another.
The goal shouldn’t be to eliminate advantage; it should be to keep the playing field open and the incentives productive.

And far from “locking others out,” large pools of wealth are what fund the next generation of builders.
People don’t lose the chance to innovate because billionaires exist — they lose it when regulation, bureaucracy, and bad policy make it impossible to start or scale.
Just look at Europe: it leads the world in regulation, but none of the world’s biggest or most dynamic companies are European.
They’ve made it harder to fail, but also impossible to truly win.
Capital isn’t a finite pie being hoarded; it’s the byproduct of trust, savings, and productive investment.
Destroy that, and you destroy the fuel for future innovation.

Blaming “too much money” is a lazy shortcut that lets broken institutions off the hook.

💥 What Happens If You Actually Take It

Let’s pretend we go full Bernie and seize every dollar of billionaire wealth in America — all $6 trillion of it.

Here’s what happens:

  1. That covers just three years of deficit spending at current rates. Then what? You’re out of billionaires, and the deficit keeps growing.
  2. Most of that wealth isn’t cash. It’s ownership stakes in companies — Tesla, Oracle, Amazon, Microsoft, etc.
  3. If the government forces liquidation, prices collapse. No one can buy trillions in stock without tanking the market.
    • Even a 50 % drop cuts the haul to $3 trillion — barely 18 months of deficits.
  4. Who buys the assets? The next-richest class. Inequality reshuffles briefly, then reforms.
  5. Meanwhile, innovation stalls. Investment dries up. Everyone gets poorer.

You can’t fund a government by destroying the productive capital that funds everything else.

⚙️ The Real Issue Isn’t Wealth, It’s Value

Wealth isn’t evil — it’s a signal that someone created something valuable enough for millions of people to trade their time or money for it.
That’s fundamentally different from printing dollars and calling it “stimulus.”

If we want a stronger, fairer economy, the solution isn’t confiscation — it’s creation.
Encourage building, innovation, and hard work, and you’ll raise living standards for everyone.
Punish them, and you’ll end up with equality through shared decline.

🧭 Final Thought

Bernie isn’t fighting for the working class. He’s fighting to stay relevant to it.
You don’t fix inequality by burning down the factory.
You fix it by letting more people build factories of their own.

What to Buy in 2025? My Thoughts on Global Investing

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Quick Take:
International markets are finally outperforming the U.S. in 2025, with VXUS up 25% versus the S&P 500’s 13%. But much of that gain is tied to a weakening dollar and global money printing — not just fundamentals. I also see potential in small-cap value stocks and India as a long-term growth story. – Not financial advice!

I was replying with a long comment to a YouTube video about investing, and it turned into something worth sharing here. I’ve cleaned it up a bit to make it flow like a proper post — but the ideas are the same: how I’m thinking about markets right now and where opportunities might lie.

When people ask me what to buy, I always start with one key principle:
focus on total return, not dividends.

Dividends are nice, but they’re just one piece of the puzzle. What really matters is total return — the combination of price growth plus dividends. That’s what grows your wealth over time.

International Markets Are Finally Waking Up

In November 2024 a friend told me what a dog his internationl stocks were and said he was going to sell them adn buy all S&P 500 I mentioned to him the idea of reversion to the mean While I was rewarded quickly, after years of underperformance, international markets have been on an absolute tear in 2025.

  • VXUS — the total international ETF (about 25% emerging markets) — is up roughly 25% year to date.
  • VWO, which tracks only emerging markets, is up around 21%.
  • Meanwhile, the S&P 500 (VOO) is up just 13% this year.

It’s been a long time since we’ve seen this kind of outperformance from non-U.S. stocks. But before we get too excited, it’s worth asking why.

Factors Driving International Resurgence

Several factors have driven the recent resurgence in international markets.
Concerns about the U.S. trade war and tariffs have pushed investor attention abroad, while a weaker U.S. dollar has amplified gains for dollar-based investors holding foreign assets.

The U.S. Dollar Index has declined roughly 9% this year, giving a lift to unhedged international equities.

That currency impact is easy to see when comparing VXUS to hedged strategies.
For example:

  • Xtrackers MSCI EAFE Hedged Equity ETF (DBEF) and
  • iShares Currency Hedged MSCI EAFE ETF (HEFA)

are both up about 11.4% this year — solid returns, but well below the 25% gains seen in unhedged funds like VXUS.

In other words, a large portion of the international rally is being driven by the decline in the U.S. dollar, not just by improving fundamentals abroad.

👉 You can read more about this dynamic in a recent ETF.com article here:
“VXUS Tops $100B as ETF Investors Embrace International Stocks”

Inflation, Money Printing, and “Bigger” Returns

I suspect that in the future, the stock market’s returns might look higher than historical averages — not necessarily because companies are more productive, but because money printing and inflation are inflating nominal returns.

Historically, the S&P 500 returned about 11% per year, with maybe 3% of that driven by inflation and monetary expansion.
If we enter a world where inflation runs closer to 7%, then even if the real return stays about the same (around 8%), the headline number could look like 15% annual returns.

Obviously, that’s not guaranteed — just a thought experiment. But it’s a good reminder that higher nominal returns don’t always mean higher real returns.

Be Greedy When Others Are Fearful

Warren Buffett’s old rule still applies:

“Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”

So what are investors fearful of right now?
Small-cap stocks.

  • VIOV (small-cap value ETF) is up only 2% this year.
  • VB (small-cap blend) is up around 6.5% year to date, and about 52% over the past 5 years.
  • The S&P 500, by comparison, is up 90% over that same period.

Historically, small caps have outperformed large caps over the long term — and markets tend to revert to the mean. That doesn’t mean small caps will outperform next year, but it might be time to start paying attention to them again.

A Closer Look at India

One specific market I’ve been watching is India, through the INDA ETF. I’ve personally allocated about 1% of my portfolio there. While it is actually -1% for the year that adds to it’s intregue! As I noted you want to consider buying the losers as they will likely revert to their mean higher returns.

I’ve traveled to India and work with suppliers there who produce castings and tubing. The country reminds me a lot of where China was a couple of decades ago — rapid growth, huge labor pool, and rising industrial capacity.

Here’s a quick comparison:

  • Average income in India: about $2,000 per year
  • Average income in China: about $15,000 per year

India also has another advantage — it’s a democracy, politically more aligned with the U.S., and open to global capital and trade. That combination of low base income (meaning huge growth potential) and political stability makes India a fascinating market to watch over the next decade.

Wrapping It Up

So, what should you buy?
That depends on your goals — but here are the themes I’m watching:

  • International markets, especially emerging economies
  • Small-cap value stocks that have been left behind
  • And long-term growth plays like India

Just remember — higher returns on paper may reflect inflation, not real productivity. Always think in terms of real value creation, not just nominal gains.

And, of course, this isn’t financial advice — just my perspective on how I’m thinking about global investing in 2025.

What do you think? Are you adding international exposure or doubling down on U.S. stocks?
Share your thoughts below — I love reading different perspectives on where people see opportunity.