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What happens to Bitcoin if the stock market crashes because AI companies have taken on too much debt? Michael Barry, the investor who saw the 2008 crisis coming, believes it can happen. He named the five companies that concern him: Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Oracle. I'm Renzo from Informe Crypto and I've been analyzing financial markets for over 14 years .
And these five companies are taking on record-breaking debt, and the market has started charging them higher interest rates for lending to them. I need to look to see if the American stock market is still holding up or if it's getting tired. Let's get to it. Michael Berry became famous for betting against mortgages before 2008.
He no longer manages a fund, writes a paid newsletter, and from there he has spent months warning against artificial intelligence and speaking with money at stake. In August he said he had opened a short position against Oracle, one of the five. What Barry looks at is what's not in the balance sheets.
We are going to look at what is available: the money these companies borrow and what the market charges them for lending it. And first of all, these five companies are the core of the American stock market. Technology accounts for about a third of its main index, and Bitcoin moves in tandem with the stock market.
If you follow us, you already know this. What's new is where the blow might come from this time. From within, from the very companies that support that index. For years these companies paid for their investments with their earnings and still had enough left over to buy back their own shares. In 2026, several of them will no longer have enough.
Alphabet. Google's parent company spent more than it earned in the second quarter for the first time since going public in 2004. Oracle spent $ 5.4 billion more than it earned in its last quarter, and three of the five did not repurchase a single share of their own stock in the entire first half of the year.
So they've gone out to borrow, and they're doing it big by selling bonds, which are promissory notes. The company receives the money today and agrees to return it with interest on a fixed date. Goldman Sachs estimates that in 2027 the big cloud companies will issue around $420 billion in bonds, 60% more than it estimates for 2026 and with very long maturities.
Meta has debt that it will not finish repaying until 2066, and in February Alphabet sold a 100- year bond, the first from a technology company since 1997. It will repay it in 126 years. This is where things get interesting. The market continues to lend to them, but charges them more. When Meta asked for 25 billion in April, they received offers for 96 billion.
The previous time for 30 billion it had been 125,000. The extra interest they have to offer to place a new bond has gone in the typical operation from about 0.2 percentage points in 2025 to 12 in 2026. And at the end of July, of the 91 bonds in this group sold in 2026 that could be compared, 78 were worth less than on the day they were issued.
Oracle is the one that notices it the most. In July, the S&P agency left it one step away from the so-called Junk Bond, the category of companies with the highest risk of defaulting. That same month, the insurance that investors buy in case Oracle does not repay what it owes, reached its highest price since the 2008 crisis and on September 18, according to the Financial Times, the loans with which a data center that Oracle is going to rent in New Mexico is being built were offered at between 89 and 91 cents on the dollar.
At this point, the banks that issued them had not managed to place them with other investors, but the market is still there. In August, Alphabet asked for $ 25 billion and received offers for about $115 billion. However, he had to offer an extra high interest rate to place them. And according to Reiders, as of September 22, companies linked to artificial intelligence were still paying a significantly higher surcharge than other large companies with good ratings.
Therefore, if you own Bitcoin, there is one piece of information worth keeping an eye on besides the price of these shares. How much do they charge them for lending? Because that's where you can see if the money that supports the American stock market is becoming more expensive. So, regarding the same five companies, there are two groups of investors who say the opposite.
Those who lend to them are charging more and more. Those who buy their shares remain in, and very, very much in. One of the two is better at reading what's coming, and whoever has Bitcoin needs to know which one. What can happen from here has four paths, and each one has someone who defends it with a name and surname.
The first is that the market will swallow it all. Goldman Sachs' chief credit strategist estimated in early August that the US bond market alone has room for about $ 510 billion more and that she is not worried about a lack of funds. And a JP Morgan portfolio manager said on August 24 that anxiety about the September bond issuance avalanche might be overblown.
If they are right, the companies that support the American stock market will continue to be financed without any scares. And this is the pattern. If the American stock market ends up paying dearly for the debt of these companies, Bitcoin usually pays even more. If the market absorbs it without shocks, Bitcoin usually receives it amplified upwards.
The second is that those who lend money will get tired of it. A Pimco credit strategist has seen a gap open up between how some of their bonds are performing in dollars and in euros due to excess dollar debt. And according to Riders, as of September 22, some broadcasts had already attracted less demand than usual.
Along that path, money gradually becomes more expensive for the companies that support the stock market, and the stock market feels it from within. It is important to distinguish here that a surcharge that increases because the risk increases is the market doing its job. What weighs on the stock market, and therefore on Bitcoin, is a surcharge that rises more than the risk justifies.
The third is that companies will slow down their investment. In Bank of America's September survey of fund managers , 79% do not expect cuts in 2026, but 42% point to that spending as the most likely source of a credit crash. There are two sides to this. An orderly braking relieves those who lend. A sudden scare about whether artificial intelligence makes money is more like January 27, 2025, when the appearance of the Chinese model Deep Search sent the Nasdaq 3.1% down in one day and now up 13.8%.
In that case, the stock exchange pays first, and Bitcoin, which moves with it and more than it, notices it behind. Therefore, if you own Bitcoin, what these companies say at the end of October when they present their results and announce how much they plan to invest is worth paying attention to. The fourth, the accident.
Berry sums it up as a possible collapse like the one in 1987. Arthur Hay, co-founder of BidMex, sees it as a credit crisis like the one in 2008, which would end in a bailout. FIT, the rating agency, published a scenario in September in which the American stock market falls by around 35% in 6 months, warning that this is not its central scenario.
And the chairman of the Financial Stability Board warned in a letter to G20 finance ministers, published on August 31, that money lent in the markets, coupled with high valuations, such concentration and cross-investment between artificial intelligence and cloud giants, could amplify a correction. Along that path, the stock market falls sharply and Bitcoin usually falls even more.
In the middle of the 4, an analysis published on the European Central Bank blog on August 17. A correction is likely, even though current valuations are rational. And these paths will be sorted out by two things: the results from Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon and Meta, which are expected at the end of October and the October managers' survey.
And here I'm interested in your reading. I have my side and you'll hear it soon, but I want to know which side you're on. Will the market swallow this debt without batting an eye, or is Barry right again? Leave your opinion in the comments; I read them all. And if you're finding this helpful, please like and subscribe to the channel, and don't forget to click the bell icon, it helps us a lot.
To know which of the four paths matters, one thing must be understood first . What happens to the American stock market when the market charges for lending changes? Because it works in both directions and has a limit. Think about the car insurance surcharge. What matters is whether they raise it more than your history justifies.
The same applies to credit. When credit becomes more expensive than justified by the real risk of default, the stock market falls and the economy slows down in the following months. It's measured using data from the 1970s. And when the American stock market pays for that price increase, Bitcoin pays for it even more.
And when credit is cheap, the opposite happens. The stock market is rising and companies are asking for more money, but with a limit. When risk is priced too cheaply for too long, what follows is increased cost and a slowdown. What happens when credit is cheap? It depends on how long it's been cheap.
And it doesn't happen overnight . The excess of today begins to be noticeable in the activity about 2 years later. For someone who owns Bitcoin, that separates two very similar situations. Cheap credit that has just become cheaper, which pushes the stock market and Bitcoin along with it, and credit that has been cheap for too long, which is precisely when it's worth looking more carefully.
There is one more piece of information that complicates the bullish story. Companies that expand their balance sheets more rapidly tend to perform worse on the stock market in the following 12 months, including large companies. And where are we? What the market overcharges companies, above what their risk of default justifies, remained below its usual level in the official financial stability report of May 2026.
And the large fund managers in Bank of America's August survey had not been so heavily invested in equities since November 2021, with only 3.5% of their money uninvested. In September they released some funds, that cushion rose to 3.9%. That combination is the one that deserves your attention. Those who lend at higher rates, those who buy shares at very high interest rates.
If the former are right, the ones who would notice it most are the stock markets that those managers have full and Bitcoin behind them, usually stronger. Now Berry looks beneath all of this. According to their calculations, these five have nearly $1.2 trillion in signed leases that have not yet started and more than $1.5 trillion in committed purchases.
And their argument is about deadlines. A data center is typically leased for between 13 and 20 years, and the chips inside can change their power and cooling requirements in just 12 to 18 months. He sums it up like this. When the music stops, those off-balance-sheet commitments quickly turn into real debt.
An example of what is left out of the balance sheet. In October 2025, Meta raised approximately 30 billion through a separate company linked to the Blue Ow fund. And that debt does not appear on their balance sheet. And Berry isn't the only one looking at him. According to Muoodies, by the end of 2025, the signed but not yet started leases of the 5 amounted to 113% of their debt.
With everything in front of them, the market charges them more, yes, but it continues to lend to them. As of September 22, 2026, none of the five had failed to place a bond. The situation in New Mexico is different. The data center has its money, and those who have been left stuck are the banks that lent it to them.
Even a BlackRock executive who acknowledges that some of these companies pay as if they had a worse rating, explains that surcharge as being due to supply and demand, not out of fear that they won't pay. We remain bullish on the American stock market. This is more noise than anything else, and the market will eventually absorb it.
We see the surcharge increasing as normal; it's the trend. The limit lies elsewhere, and that's what would make us change our minds: if one of these companies fails to place its bonds, if it fails to find financing, because as long as it finds it, all we see is noise. And if you have Bitcoin, we advise you to pay attention to the news about artificial intelligence and how it is financed, because artificial intelligence leads and drives the American stock market .
And the American stock market is dragging Bitcoin down with it. And not just Bitcoin, but the rest of the cryptocurrencies as well. In practice, every time one of these five [musicians] asks for money, look at three things. How much are they offering compared to last time? If one day there are n't enough orders, that's the limit we're talking about.
How much extra interest do they have to offer to place it? And the price of Oracle's default insurance was the tightest of the five. None of the three tell you when or how much. They tell you if the market is still comfortable or getting tired. What these five are being charged is a barometer of the American stock market.
Therefore, these three things tell you if the stock market will hold up. What it doesn't tell you is how Bitcoin is internally if its own foundation is already in place. We put that to the test with a Wall Street investor with over 25 years of experience who argues that Bitcoin is already hitting bottom.
The sign he considers most revealing is explained in this video that I'm showing you now . He leaves knowing whether that signal holds true and what would have to happen for him to believe it. And you have this right here in the video I'm leaving on your screen. So click now. Ah.
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