저자: RebelCapitalist · 외국인
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비트코인 하락으로 마이클 베리가 '죽음의 나선(death spiral)'을 경고했다는 내용을 다룬다. 기업·은행의 부채가 달러 표시인데 자산을 비트코인 등 변동성 자산으로 보유하면 만기·통화 불일치로 투매가 연쇄 발생할 수 있다는 논리다. 베리 기고 인용: 비트코인이 7만 달러 아래로 10% 더 떨어지면 MicroStrategy가 약 40억 달러 손실을 보고 자본시장이 막힐 수 있으며, 6만 달러에서는 MSTR가 실존적 위기에 처하고 채굴기업 5만 대가 파산할 수 있다고 주장. 금·은 선물도 급락 중이라 언급. 진행자는 본인이 수학적으로 검증하지 않았다고 명시.
다듬은 글
Hello fellow Rebel Capitals. Hope you're well. So Bitcoin down today and some are questioning if this could lead to a quote-unquote death spiral. And the person I'm referring to specifically is Michael Burry. And I wanted to go over this not just to be bearish or bullish on Bitcoin or MicroStrategy or any of that, but it really shows you and I think it's a good lesson for the global monetary system.
And I'll show you exactly what I'm referring to. At the end of the video we'll go ahead and try to connect the dots for you. But let's go over to CNBC first and foremost. Let me do the screen share. And see what's going on with the price if you haven't been paying attention. So Bitcoin down 73. It took a dip though where it was trading at a 72 handle.
Let's Let me show what I'm referring to. So let's go to a five-day chart. Oh, come on. There we go. And so right here, this was yesterday. It dips down and just I think it actually got below 73 just for a couple minutes. Then it comes back up, but then today it is kind of like keeps testing and testing and testing.
That's never really a good sign when the when you look at the technicals. Today looks like it was trading down you know, almost at a 71 handle. And then we kind of bounced back, but now it's it's trading back down. So Michael Burry just the other day came out with a Substack post. Now, I subscribe to Michael Burry's Substack post.
So I wanted to share some of the ideas with you. Now, it's a it's a paid for Substack. So I'm not going to just out of respect to him, I'm not going to go through the article because it's behind the paywall. But I I do want to share just some of the highlights and just a couple paragraphs there. I don't think that would be a big issue.
And then I want to expand on that because we have to start asking the question that Michael Burry is asking, and that's can this lead to a death spiral or what the probabilities are that this does lead to a death spiral. And a lot of people when you say that, they go, "Oh, no, you're crazy. This is just doom and gloom.
You're fear-mongering. This is never going to happen. Yada yada yada." And I the the argument there requires you to omit the liability side of the balance sheet. Now, if you guys aren't following that, I'll I'll explain as we go through the video. But, that's really the the premise here. That's the point I'm trying to make.
And that's the overarching point for this video. It's whenever you're doing an analysis, whether it's on a specific company, whether it's uh Bitcoin, gold, uh you know, corporations taking this under their balance sheet, banks taking on their this onto their balance sheet, um the global monetary system, where you have to include in that analysis, and I would argue that your starting point has to be the fact, and it is a fact.
It's just we don't have to like it, but it is what it is, that the vast majority of corporations out there, that obviously the vast majority of banks, the liability side of their balance sheet is denominated in what? You guys know the answer to this. It's dollars. It's US dollars. So, if you take on assets onto your balance sheet that are not denominated in dollars or that that can fluctuate uh as far as the price, and you don't match up maturity, you're going to run into some big problems because what you're doing there is you're taking on shorter-term liabilities and longer-term assets.
So, as an example, every single Bitcoiner out there, if they're being honest, would say, "Okay, Bitcoin has in the past gone in these cycles." And a lot of times those cycles can last a year, it can last 2 years, or whatever it is. And so, their argument isn't necessarily that Bitcoin's going straight up, but their argument is that over a long period of time, so they're playing the 5-year game.
Or, you know, MicroStrategy always says that it's playing the 10-year time horizon. Okay, that's fine and dandy, but unfortunately, the liability side of your balance sheet is not playing a 10-year time horizon. The liability side of the balance sheet, if you're a bank as an example, you have demand deposits.
Okay, that's a problem. Because those can be as short-term as, well, right now. If you want to take those deposits and move them somewhere else. Or, if you're MicroStrategy, you have liabilities in the form of dividend payments, of debt payments. Uh those aren't Those don't have a 10-year time horizon.
So, that that's why it's when you're looking at the asset side of the balance sheet strictly, which is what most people do, because what most people do is they just invest their savings, where there's really not an offsetting liability. Right? If you think in terms of the way you invest, well, what you do is you probably take a percentage of your paycheck, and you say, "Okay, I've got 10% left over at the end of the month.
I'm going to go ahead and invest that. And I'm going to invest that in S&P 500, I'm going to invest that in gold, silver, Bitcoin, what have you." But you see, there's not an offsetting liability to that. Where if you are, especially a bank, as the way banks work, there's going to going to offsetting liability.
And that offsetting liability is going to be denominated in dollars. So, if you have something that fluctuates relative to those dollars, you're going at some point in time, you're likely going to have a big, big, big problem. And this is why banks prefer Treasuries. And this is why banks have to do a maturity match, not only an FX match, but a maturity match with the hopefully with the asset side of their balance sheet and the liability side of their balance sheet.
See, so as an example, if you have a time deposit of 2 years, well, that's easy. That's a a USD liability. You could just match that up by buying a 2-year Treasury. Okay, now you're hedged. You got no risk there. Assuming that the 2-year Treasury is paying you more than you're paying on uh that 2-year liability.
Right? You're just pocketing the spread. So, what Michael Berry gets at, and let's get into the article now here. Uh where is it? Here it is. So, like I said, this is behind the paywall, so I don't want to show you the whole thing out of respect to his subscribers and respect to him. But I I think it's fine if I just read a couple paragraphs here.
And this also plays into what I've been talking about on these videos over the last couple days. And you guys, I'm sure, have heard me say multiple times that this big crash in precious metals, and I know we got to rebound this volatility, but that huge crash that we had on Friday, I don't think that was a result of Trump just selecting someone for a Fed chair that was slightly more hawkish than all the other massive doves.
And the reason I said that is because the 2-year Treasury yield went down substantially, about four basis points on Friday. It is true, precious metals crashed, dollar went up, but if the market, if that if the catalyst would have been a more hawkish Fed chair or the potential of a more hawkish Fed chair, you likely would not have seen the two-year Treasury go down by four or five basis points.
So, I thought it it may have had something to do with more cockroaches. Because if you guys have been watching the channel, you know that last Friday we had the first bank go bust of 2026. And although it was a small bank, granted, it's just the market being risk on risk on risk on where are their skis.
And just that subtle reminder that there is substantial risk out there gets all these leverage positions to think about selling and then you just get this snowball effect. So, I'm not saying that this bank had everything to do with the the big crash that we had on Friday, but I thought it had more to do or likely had more to do than just Trump's selection for Fed chair.
And I thought it was interesting when I just read this article today, the Substack from Michael Burry, and he actually references that uh that bank that went bust on January 30th. So, check this out. On January 30th, regulators shut down a small bank, Metropolitan Capital Bank and Trust. This is the first bank failure of 2026.
Some are looking into whether it was caught up in the dash for cash and forced collateral liquidations described above. If so, it would be the first traditional bank failure linked, if only indirectly, to crypto collateral death spiral. So, he's not saying here that that this could have been Well, actually, you know, maybe indirectly he is.
So, so let's kind of think this through. Let let's play it out in terms of how he is presenting it in his Substack. So, you've got the dollar liabilities that I was talking about, okay? And that's the corporation, bank, etc. And then you've got them taking on all of this Bitcoin. Because Michael Saylor is telling them to, it's the it seems like free money, right?
When Bitcoin only goes up in price. So, then what's happening? You've got all these corporations, and then the price crashes, or it goes down substantially, let's say 40, 50% of Bitcoin, and now all of these entities, these financial institutions or corporations that have those shorter-term dollar liabilities are in a bind.
To put it To put it mildly. And so they're in let's just say this dash for cash. So, what they're forced to do is go ahead and sell anything on their balance sheet that has a bid, or a decent bid, in order to meet those dollar liabilities. Right? So, what do they do? Well, they're going to sell Bitcoin.
They're going to sell potentially gold. They're going to potentially sell silver. Or they're going to sell literally whatever else is on there that they can catch a bid, and again, meet that short-term dollar-based liability. See, so that's what he's really talking about here. Is he's talking about first and foremost, the price of Bitcoin goes down.
You have short-term liabilities. That forces the corporation that have been that have been taking Bitcoin onto their balance sheet to go ahead and potentially sell that Bitcoin, right? To meet those liabilities, dollar-based. And what does that do to the price of Bitcoin? It puts further downward pressure on the price, which puts further pressure on other financial institutions' balance sheets that have taken Bitcoin on as an asset.
You see? So, then they have to sell. That brings the price down even further. That's the death spiral that he's referring to. But the main point, let's just revisit it here, that I'd like to impress upon you today is the fact that if this happens or if this is happening, it's happening because there's an FX mismatch.
Meaning that your liabilities are denominated in dollars and the asset side of your balance sheet is something else. Right? It might be denominated in dollars, but it can fluctuate massively. Whereas a loan, whether it's to the government or into the private sector, whatever, for 2 years is going to be matched up with First World, it's going to be denominated in dollars.
That's going to be matched up with a 2-year 1-year, whatever it is, liability that's denominated in dollars. You see, so you don't have any of that risk. You don't have the risk of this let's say death spiral. And a lot of you might be saying, "Well, George, how did Silicon Valley Bank and all those others go bust?" Well, what you're looking at is they effed up.
All right? They effed up and they had longer-term liabilities and they didn't match that up with longer-term uh they had longer, excuse me, they had longer-term assets and they didn't match them up longer-term liabilities. They matched them up with short-term liabilities. And even though they're both denominated in dollars, the net result is the exact same.
It's the exact same thing. You see? [snorts] So, this and then what he he goes on to talk about how uh the drop in Bitcoin could it would if if Bitcoin drops, then gold and silver catches a cold. He's trying to use that same analogy as the United States, if the United States coughs, the world economy catches a cold or something like that.
So, if Bitcoin coughs, gold and silver catch a cold. I think that's how he presented it. So, that's how he was kind of tying these things together. But, let's keep going here. Sickening scenarios have now come within reach. If Bitcoin falls another 10% under 70,000, and keep in mind right now it's roughly 73.
MicroStrategy will be over $4 in the red. Now, the reason is because their average cost to acquire the Bitcoin would be, let's say, 74,000, roughly. Or it's, you know, 76,000. It would be higher than where the current price is. Okay, $4 billion in the red and would find capital markets essentially closed.
So, why is this important? Because if MicroStrategy, and this is a big if here, but if MicroStrategy's cut off to capital markets, then how do they pay their dividend on the preferreds? How how do they Even if they don't have any interest payments on their debt or whatever. How how how do they handle those dollar liabilities?
Because remember, their liabilities are not denominated in Bitcoin, are they? Liabilities are denominated in dollars. Again, it goes back to this point I'm trying to make, right? And and the overarching point is that when you look at the global economy, when you look at these mega corporations, when you look at these banks in the eurodollar system, what what are their liabilities denominated in?
Mostly dollars. Why is that? Because the dollars were lent into existence. The dollars were lent into existence, most of them. So, the fact that they exist means that there's an offsetting dollar denominated liability, which always, at a certain point, puts in a bid. Puts in a bid for those dollars.
See, let's get back to the uh to the article here. Okay, so if those Oh, I guess that's the point I was making there. Is if Michael Saylor is cut off from the capital markets, he's got a big problem because sure Oh, I don't even know if his underlying business makes any money, but let's assume it makes 20 million a year or something like that in profit.
Okay, I I would guess that at a certain point that tap runs dry. Meaning that your dividend payments or whatever is going out is going to be more than 20 million dollars. And I would point directly to these preferred shares that he has where the dividend adjusts. Right? So, your par value is 9 uh 100, excuse me.
So, if it starts going down to like 97, they increase the dividend to bring that price back up. I think that's STRC. Okay, well, what you're doing the more people sell off due to you being a credit risk, the more your liability your dollar liabilities increase. So, my goodness, that's a death spiral within a death spiral, right?
Let's keep going. So, they say institutions would be down 15 to 20% on their Bitcoin holdings. Risk managers would get more aggressive, meaning they they'd have to start selling. As I write this Sunday evening, gold futures are down 6% silver is down 17%. These moves, if sustained, could result in Bitcoin breaking 70,000.
Because again, it it's it's the whole you know, Bitcoin dropping, the other assets dropping, having to sell those assets because you don't want to take the risk because all your liabilities are not denominated in Bitcoin. They ain't denominated in gold. They're not denominated in silver. They're denominated in dollars.
With Bitcoin at 60,000, according his math, and to be fully clear here, I've not done the math on this, so I'm just regurgitating what he's saying here. MicroStrategy would face an existential crisis. MicroStrategy owns about 70% of all Bitcoin held by publicly public companies, governments, and ETFs combined at 50,000 miners would go bankrupt and be forced to sell their Bitcoin reserves.
Which would do what to the price of Bitcoin? Most likely put Well, it would definitely put downward pressure on the price. Now, would the price go down? Well, it depends on, you know, who's buying the dip. Tokenized metals futures would collapse into a black hole with no buyer. Physical metals may break from the trend on safe haven demand, or Bitcoin can bounce off that liberation day low, and we live in the charade a while longer.
So, I I mean, there's a lot to be said here. Uh There's a lot to be said for this, but I think that if you could take one thing away from this video, it would be when you're looking at the global monetary system, when you're looking at how the financial plumbing works, when you're looking at the probabilities with all of these assets, you have to consider not just the asset side of the balance sheet, but you have to consider the liabilities side of the balance sheet.
And that takes a different type of thinking because most retail investors have an an asset, and they don't have an offsetting liability. And at the end of the day, that offsetting liability, it makes all the difference in the world. Okay, guys, enjoy the rest of your afternoon. As always, make sure you are standing up for freedom, liberty, free market capitalism. We'll see you in the next video.
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