Could Bitcoin Cause A Systemic Crash?

This week at QTR was a buffet of political fireworks, market warnings, and a few moments of uncomfortable honesty. Here’s what you missed while pretending to work.

First, President Trump did something no one in recent memory has dared: he federalized the policing of Washington, D.C. That meant 800 National Guard troops, FBI agents doing night patrols, and the city’s police department reporting directly to Attorney General Pam Bondi. The mission was simple — clean up the capital, both its crime problem and its tent cities.

Naturally, some people shrieked about federal overreach. But for anyone who’s walked through D.C. lately without blinders on, the real question is why it took this long to stop the nation’s capital from looking like the set of a dystopian Netflix horror series. Appearances matter — especially when your “front porch” is the White House.

The Art Of The D.C. Clean Up

Then came the topic of financial surveillance. Trump’s executive order banning banks from “debanking” customers over political beliefs is a nice gesture, but it’s also a Band-Aid on a bullet wound.

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The real issue is decades of BSA, AML, and KYC rules that quietly turned banks into unpaid informants. And thanks to inflation, thresholds that once made sense are now absurdly low.

Governments love it this way because the reporting net widens automatically without them lifting a finger. Today it’s casino jackpots, tomorrow it’s your grocery bill — and soon you’ll be explaining to a clerk why you need that suspiciously large quantity of Swiss cheese.

Surveillance By Inflation

Speaking of ticking time bombs, crypto just hit a milestone — and not necessarily a good one. With Bitcoin now allowed in 401(k) retirement plans and stablecoins buying up U.S. Treasuries, digital assets are woven tighter into the financial system than ever. That means when crypto tanks — and yes, it will at some point — the damage won’t be contained to bored day traders. It’ll spill into pensions, ETFs, and the broader economy. We’ve seen this movie before in dot-com stocks, in housing, in leveraged buyouts. The asset changes, but the ending doesn’t: someone says “it’s different this time,” and then the floor gives way.

Crypto Will Cause The Next Trillon Dollar Crash

I also dropped one of my most honest conversations in a while with Dan Ferris. We talked market cycles, complacency, and the fact that the system’s incentives are literally designed to mislead you. Not because everyone’s in on some Illuminati plot, but because the machinery of Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and D.C. runs on deception. Companies lie, analysts squint and nod, and the average investor swallows whatever’s fed to them because it’s wrapped in a nice PowerPoint deck. If you’ve ever thought the game was rigged, congratulations — you’re paying attention.

QTR With Dan Ferris: The Game Is Rigged & Everyone's Lying. Still.

My friend Harris Kupperman, meanwhile, published a scorched-earth investor letter where he admitted he’d lost his edge, drifted toward boring “institutional” thinking, and tied up capital in dead money. His solution? A hard reboot. He sold much of the portfolio, sat in cash, and vowed to get back to the gut-driven trades that built his track record in the first place. He’s questioning whether his signature “inflection investing” style still works in a market where algorithms chase the same signals instantly. His answer might be to buy great assets at their lowest point — before the inflection, before the herd arrives. It’s contrarian, it’s risky, and it’s classic Kuppy.

“I Drifted Too Far”: Kupperman’s Explosive Letter on Losing—and Regaining—His Edge

Finally, I looked at three companies I’m watching closely right now — plus a bonus name I might buy more of on a dip. These range from beaten-down blue chips that are pricing like they’re broken, to turnaround stories that could surprise, to platforms that have been written off but have a clear path to profitability. None of them are “get rich quick” plays, but all have the kind of asymmetry that’s worth paying attention to.

3 New Stocks That Have My Attention

It’s been a packed week, and every one of these stories has a through-line: the gap between appearance and reality is wide, whether you’re looking at the streets of D.C., the U.S. banking system, Bitcoin’s shiny new respectability, or your own portfolio. The trick — as always — is figuring out which illusions are about to break.

Here’s what else is new on the blog:

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