• 🧠Quote(s) of the week:
• 🧡Bitcoin news🧡
• 💸Traditional Finance / Macro:
• 🏦Banks:
• 🌎Macro/Geopolitics:
• 🎁If you have made it this far, I would like to give you a little gift:

§🧠Quote(s) of the week:

‘Good morning. Reject centralized control. Buy Bitcoin, refuse CBDCs, and vote for less government, not more. Have a great day.’ - James Lavish

‘Throughout history, all fiat currencies eventually face the same pressures. When debt grows faster than income and money needs to be created to fill the gap, the value of that money changes. This isn’t a prediction—it’s a pattern that has repeated many times. Understanding how these systems work helps you think more clearly about what comes next.’ - Ray Dalio

§🧡Bitcoin news🧡

Photos hosted by Azzamo ( https://azzamo.net/)

On the 13th of April:

➡️Standard Chartered’s head of digital assets says Bitcoin will hit $500,000 by 2030—near-term target: $100,000 by the end of 2026. If Bitcoin matches gold’s market cap, that’s $1.6 million per coin. -Bitcoin Archive

➡️Map of Businesses Accepting Payment in Bitcoin. - Documenting Bitcoin

https://cdn.azzamo.media/509606a402742225cb8470a7a0eb2921e9fbe9df0ac4ae476d3616cc23484829

On the 14th of April:

➡️Daniel Batten: 2017-2021: “Bitcoin is bad for the environment.” 2023: “Well … it’s nuanced.” 2025: “Bitcoin mining is beneficial to the environment.” 2026: “Without Bitcoin mining, renewable energy transition and methane mitigation at scale is not possible.”

On the 15th of April:

➡️’The world is drowning in debt, and the IMF just put a date on it. Global government debt is set to hit 100% of GDP by 2029, two years earlier than expected. The two biggest drivers are the US and China. More debt means more money for printing. Spending more money on printing drives inflation. And Inflation means every dollar you hold today buys less tomorrow. This is exactly the environment Bitcoin was built for. Fixed supply, no central bank. No government can print more of it.

https://cdn.azzamo.media/6c880b244733bac40c64f68fa4fa2a05553c9828682313cfe81e8a87fc580cd3

While every currency in the world is quietly being devalued, Bitcoin’s supply remains the same. 21 million: That number does not change regardless of how much debt the world adds.’ - Bitcoin Archive

➡️Pakistan has lifted its 8-year ban on Bitcoin. The State Bank will now allow banks to provide services to licensed virtual asset providers. - TFTC

➡️Bitcoin is about to get trillions of dollars in new inflows. Americans aged 60 and older hold $110 trillion in wealth. Most of it will eventually be passed down to younger generations. 45% of that younger generation already owns Bitcoin and crypto. So when they receive this wealth, their first investment will be in Bitcoin. Grayscale estimates that even a 2% flow of that into Bitcoin and crypto brings $2.2 trillion in net new demand. Bitcoin’s entire market cap today is $1.5 trillion. We are witnessing the most bullish structural setup Bitcoin has ever had. And it has not even started yet.

Bitcoin News: BITCOIN COMMUNITY PUSHES BACK AGAINST PROPOSAL TO FREEZE SATOSHI’S COINS

➡️Bitcoin developers have proposed BIP 361 to freeze early wallets with potential quantum vulnerabilities, including Satoshi-era addresses from 2010–11. These wallets hold over 4M BTC and are seen as long-term risk targets if quantum computing advances. The proposal has sparked major pushback. Critics argue that forcing migration at the consensus layer is too heavy-handed, breaking from Bitcoin’s tradition of voluntary upgrades driven by wallet defaults and incentives. They also note the quantum threat remains theoretical, with attack economics unlikely to target most users. Opponents warn that setting deadlines and invalidating legacy signatures could introduce unnecessary disruption and a dangerous precedent for protocol-level fund restrictions.

https://cdn.azzamo.media/710a9f67dc1bcfae536305a86716c1bf8450b84949ce7aca18c65d90c7401acd

Adam Back calls for an optional quantum-safe upgrade, rejecting the BIP-361 plan to freeze vulnerable coins.

On the 16th of April:

➡️Bitcoin Archive: BITCOIN HAS WON OVER WALLSTREET In just 6 months, BofA recommended ETFs, Morgan Stanley launched its own Bitcoin ETF, and Goldman Sachs filed for one. This is how adoption accelerates.

https://cdn.azzamo.media/f823ba5c1bb0c5c8e40f4e5ad4090e28ae53fa4100c047016c348c55dfaf5aed

➡️’Security researcher uncovers large-scale counterfeit Ledger Nano S Plus operation distributing compromised devices across multiple platforms.

A fake unit purchased from a Chinese marketplace contained modified hardware using an ESP32 chip instead of Ledger’s secure element, with seeds and PINs stored in plain text and sent to attacker-controlled servers.

The device ran fake firmware labeled “Nano S+ V2.1” and supported ~20 blockchains, draining any wallet initialized on it. The seller also provided a malicious version of Ledger Live, built with React Native, signed with a debug certificate, and designed to intercept transactions and exfiltrate sensitive data to multiple command-and-control servers. The campaign spans five attack vectors: compromised hardware, Android APKs, Windows EXE files, macOS DMG installers, and iOS apps distributed via TestFlight to bypass App Store review.

Experts warn that “genuine check” features can be bypassed if hardware is compromised at the source, making third-party marketplace purchases especially dangerous.

Please buy hardware wallets only from official sources, avoid devices with pre-generated seeds, and do not enter recovery phrases into companion apps.

A full report has been submitted to Ledger’s security team, with further technical details expected after internal review.’ - Bitcoin News

➡️“BITCOIN’S MARKET IS BIGGER THAN GOLD” — BITWISE CIO. Matt Hougan says Bitcoin’s total addressable market exceeds that of gold at $34 trillion. Since the Iran conflict started, BTC is up 12%. Gold -10%. S&P -1%. Bitcoin is less than 4% of the store-of-value market. At 17%, it’s $1 million per coin. - Bitcoin Archive

➡️Distribution Map of Computers Running Bitcoin Nodes:

https://cdn.azzamo.media/e0f38e449a17530948ec5662fc07201c5d0db8dc643688c922f4f6e8a0f87290

On the 17th of April:

➡️Former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson called on U.S. authorities to prepare a back-up plan to avert a potential collapse in demand for Treasuries

Source: https://archive.ph/DvnFP Henry Paulson Suggests U.S. Make a Break-Glass Treasuries Plan - Bloomberg

‘The man who helped the U.S. economy recover from the 2008 financial crisis is now warning of something far worse. Former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson says a U.S. debt crisis is coming. He says when the Fed becomes the only buyer of Treasuries and yields keep rising, the system breaks. Unlike 2008, the government won’t have the fiscal resources to bail itself out this time. $39 trillion in U.S. government debt, rising yields making it more expensive to service. The only option left is printing more money to pay off old debt with new debt. Every dollar printed devalues the ones already in your pocket. Bitcoin has a fixed supply of 21 million. No one can print more, no central bank can debase it, no government can inflate it away to cover its own spending. When the people who managed the last crisis are warning about the next one, one should pay attention to what sits outside the system entirely: BITCOIN.’- Bitcoin Archive

Oh, and by the way, there is never going to be a Treasury market crisis. Ultimately, the Fed can always buy it all and set rates to whatever it wants. However, there can be an FX crisis.

➡️CitiBank: Combining Bitcoin and gold in a portfolio produces superior returns compared to traditional bond-equity mixes.

➡️$1.5 MILLION PER BITCOIN BY 2030 ARK Invest’s Cathie Wood said Bitcoin hasn’t “even begun” because major banks were still sleeping last year. “Since the SEC has given the green light…our prediction has doubled, and the timeline has moved up.” - Bitcoin Archive

➡️$9 Trillion Charles Schwab CEO says the platform has already rolled out Bitcoin trading internally, with employees actively trading. Customer access is set to launch in the coming weeks. Bitcoin is going mainstream. - Bitcoin Archive

➡️The Strait of Hormuz is open, Bitcoin is ripping to $80,000, the clarity act is passing next month, the bottom is in, and you’re not bullish enough. $170,000 by the end of the year (JP Morgan said so). - The Bitcoin Therapist

➡️Bitcoin surges above $77,000 for the first time since February 3rd. Asset owners continue to win in this market. - TKL

➡️94% OF THE WORLD’S MILLIONAIRES cannot own a whole Bitcoin. There are 50 million millionaires globally, but only 21 million Bitcoins will ever exist. You only need 0.24 Bitcoin to be in the top 1% of all Bitcoin holders globally. - Bitcoin Archive

➡️ U.S. Congresswoman Sheri Biggs purchases up to $250,000 in Bitcoin ETFs. Joe Consorti: “There’s pretty clear insider trading going on in Washington right now. I’ve seen this movie enough times to know what happens next. Congress knows the CLARITY Act is nearing the finish line, and they’re loading up their bags. And you’re bearish?”

ON the 18th of April:

➡️2.43M BITCOIN LEFT ON EXCHANGES (7-YEAR LOW) Bitcoin is being bought at its fastest pace in 10 years, with 30-day outflows of $3.4B+. Whales accumulated 270K Bitcoin in 30 days, while setting a record by buying 32K Bitcoin in a single day. - Bitcoin Archive

➡️U.S. government-linked wallets moved 8.2 BTC, worth about $628,000, from funds seized in the 2016 Bitfinex hack to Coinbase Prime, according to Arkham Intelligence.

➡️The world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock, has been buying Bitcoin for 8 straight days. IBIT bought $284 million worth of Bitcoin yesterday. Total purchases now stand at $1.34 billion in just 8 days. Relentless accumulation.

➡️TFTC: A country of 7 million people now commands roughly 3% of the global Bitcoin hashrate. Paraguay’s mining story is one of the most underreported developments in the industry. Miners consume an estimated 600 megawatts of electricity there, roughly 25% of the country’s share of the Itaipú Dam. Electricity costs as low as $0.033 per kilowatt-hour make it one of the cheapest places to mine on Earth.

For decades, Paraguay had been selling its surplus Itaipú power to Brazil for around $10 per megawatt-hour. Bitcoin miners showed up offering $40. By 2024, there were 45 licensed operations with another 20 applicants proposing 2,000 megawatts of additional capacity.

But the boom attracted a massive illegal mining problem. Operations were stealing electricity through fraudulent grid connections on an industrial scale. In 2023, authorities shut down 43 illicit networks that together consumed 90 megawatts. Paraguay responded by updating its penal code to impose 10-year prison sentences for electricity theft tied to mining. In March 2026, the government flipped the script. Rather than just cracking down, Paraguay launched a state-led mining operation, deploying nearly 30,000 seized rigs at government facilities. The national electricity authority now owns and manages the infrastructure directly, turning confiscated hardware and surplus power into sovereign revenue. HivedigitalTech operates 300 megawatts across two Paraguayan sites, mining over 12 Bitcoin per day and commanding roughly 3% of the global network. The company says it’s on pace to become the largest payer in the country, measured in U.S. dollars, each month. Paraguay had more power than it could use and a dam that’s been waiting for a better buyer since 1984. Bitcoin showed up with the best offer anyone had made in 40 years.

https://cdn.azzamo.media/10c4484c070c5df212aba82bc4a7e8c4746566c5e6c33c81f602ccc3fb9a2294

➡️Bitcoin is chaos insurance. Bitcoin has outperformed every major asset or index in each crisis. 7 out of 7 times. No other asset comes close.

https://cdn.azzamo.media/1126e965f1e7db29a9312e49c3a1c42e0d32ec327793374de5d8e7da422b488e

➡️Checkmate: Folks fantasize over buying the final wick of a bear. What they should do is DCA the bottom fifth of the market cycle. You’re buying every time there is an 80%+ chance it’s the bottom. Every Bitcoin price below $70k is/was that ‘bottom-fifth’ zone. Keep it simple.’

https://cdn.azzamo.media/89b52b29c2ce50a971524b5322c1e484c123a3b78bcb453ab5ad87339d0a8298

➡️MORGAN STANLEY’S BITCOIN WALLET IS PUBLIC Morgan Stanley’s (now holding 1,348+ Bitcoin) now has a PUBLIC Bitcoin wallet that you can track in real-time. - Arkham

On the 19th of April:

➡️Bitcoin ETFs just pulled in $996M in weekly net inflows, the strongest showing since mid-January and a clear reversal from March’s outflow-heavy environment. The move was driven by a late-week surge, including a $663.9M single-day inflow, as institutional capital rotated back into risk assets amid easing macro tensions and a weakening dollar. Total ETF assets have now surpassed $100B, signaling that institutional demand for Bitcoin exposure is re-accelerating after a choppy start to the year. - Bitcoin News

➡️BlackRock’s IBIT holders paid over $240 million in fees last year for exposure to an asset they could hold directly. Yikes, you are paying a management fee for brokerage convenience and balance-sheet services. That may be worth it to some of you, but it is still a cost for exposure to an asset that can be held directly.

➡️This chart is wild. The Bitcoin ETF launched by the largest asset manager in the world vs one man dedicated to buying as much Bitcoin as humanly possible. Saylor is closing the gap. - Luke Martin

https://cdn.azzamo.media/84137268208519b4fb5e2dd8e246b91569728b8184382dc8ce7aab1800e329e9

On the 20th of April:

➡️PALANTIR CO-FOUNDER: “There’s one buyer that will be important in Bitcoin…AI Agents.” Joe Lonsdale, a Palantir co-founder, predicted last year that AI Agents could be among the biggest users of Bitcoin & crypto. NOW: AI Agents make up 19% of all on-chain activity. - Bitcoin Archive

➡️Sen. Rand Paul: “We bring in $5 trillion. We spend $7 trillion. We borrow the difference. The Fed prints money to cover it. That’s Inflation. And Inflation is making you poorer.”

I have a solution: Bitcoin!

➡️$12 TRILLION CHARLES SCHWAB now recommends up to 7% of assets in aggressive portfolios allocated to Bitcoin. That would be $854 BILLION BTC if applied to their total Assets Under Management (AUM). - Bitcoin Archive

§💸Traditional Finance / Macro:

On the 17th of April:

👉🏽Intel shares officially recover all losses from the 2000 dot-com bubble burst.

👉🏽$760,000,000 worth of oil shorts were reportedly placed 20 minutes before President Trump announced the Strait of Hormuz was open. Fascinating, don’t ya think?! Nothing to see here, just another day of whale insider trading while the average investor gets his portfolio blown up.

§🏦Banks:

👉🏽No news

§🌎Macro/Geopolitics:

“But the curse of every ancient civilization was that its men, in the end, became unable to fight. Materialism, luxury, safety, even sometimes an almost modern sentimentality, weakened the fiber of each civilized race in turn; each became in the end a nation of pacifists, and then each was trodden under foot by some ruder people that had kept that virile fighting power the lack of which makes all other virtues useless and sometimes even harmful.” -Teddy Roosevelt

On the 13th of April:

👉🏽‘The EU is blackmailing Hungary’s new prime minister by giving him 27 conditions HE MUST ACCEPT to unlock over €30 billion in frozen funding. These conditions include abandoning the Orbán-era policies on LGBTQ rights, immigration, and foreign policy, particularly regarding Ukraine. Failure to comply could result in the permanent loss of further EU funds. There you have it. The EU is putting a price on your country’s independence and sovereignty. If you take the money, you’ve sold your soul to the devil.’ - Gabriel

https://cdn.azzamo.media/088173a478573fd75e4fce060ac17be02299fc8270ce6eaee296c49e483a0157

On top of that, Von der Leyen: ‘Ursula DECLARES the European Union will move away from Unanimous Voting. “We need to use the momentum of the Hungarian elections to push for qualified majority voting!” Smaller states have lost their voting power in the European Union!’ So totalitarianism is now called qualified majority voting.

On the 14th of April:

👉🏽Ursula’s brilliant energy “solution”: Don’t use it. “The cheapest energy is the one you don’t use.” So Europe’s grand strategy is… Don’t produce. Don’t grow. Don’t compete.

On the 15th of April:

👉🏽Germany’s share of Global GDP expected to fall to 4% by 2030, the lowest level in AT LEAST half a century.

👉🏽The Netherlands: The Dutch Tax Authority has found files that were never investigated in the childcare benefits scandal. Source: NU.nl

Renske Leijten: “You put 64 million documents in a vault. Then a major scandal happens, followed by enormous amounts of investigation — really enormous. And nobody says, ‘Wait, there’s still another vault!’ Nobody? Either that is unbelievable, or — if true — it is terrifying that so many people stayed silent. The biggest mistake that can be made now is letting the same organizations investigate this that already knew about it, or failed to find it during earlier searches. And yes, the culture of silence within the Tax Authority must be finally broken.”

Pieter Omtzigt: “This is unheard of and appears to point to a major cover-up that many people knew about. If this was even withheld during a parliamentary inquiry, we have a serious problem. Now you understand why we did not receive crucial information and had to fight for years. And how parents could be crushed and destroyed by the system. 64 million documents containing information about nearly all the scandals!

Meanwhile, the Dutch Tax Administration was investigated by the National Criminal Investigation Department, the House of Representatives, the Dutch Data Protection Authority, the Ombudsman, and internal supervisory bodies. All institutions that are supposed to bring the truth to light. Yet this digital mountain remained neatly out of sight. That takes skill. Compare that to the ordinary citizen. Miss a single receipt, submit one form too late, or forget one attachment, and you experience the full force of the government. There is no room for nuance. No leniency. No understanding of human error. Rules are rules—unless those rules become inconvenient for the institution enforcing them.

And then they wonder why citizens no longer trust the state. Because the foundation of trust in government is simple: The government must take responsibility seriously — and when that responsibility is violated, there must be accountability and consequences.

The real scandal is not just that safe, but the system around it. A system in which information can disappear whenever it is convenient, where oversight turns out to be blind, and where citizens are held to account down to the last detail. At the same time, institutions get away with major errors without any noticeable consequences.

Families lost homes, jobs, health, and their future. The government mainly lost documents. Until now, that is. I am fuming about this—the freaking audacity by our government.

We are still waiting for the next discovery: responsibility. It appears to have been missing for years.

The foundation of trust in government is simple: The government must take responsibility seriously — and when that responsibility is violated, there must be accountability and consequences.

On the 16th of April:

👉🏽This is such a bizarre, and at the same time, obvious chart. If you think money printing is an issue in the United States, have a look at China. Its money supply, measured in dollars, is more than twice that of the United States. The implications are as straightforward as triggering. How do you think China gets its 5% annual GDP growth? Productivity gains? Hard work? Most of that comes from debt-financed growth. Are you wondering if China will buy more gold to try to get rid of the U.S. dollar? The single option it has is to buy loads more, only to keep up with the unprecedented money printing. If China wants to increase trust in the Yuan, gold purchases must actually outpace money printing. Our economic system, whether in the U.S., the Eurozone, or China, runs on debt financed by new money printed out of thin air. There is nothing illogical about that. The chart tells it all. - Jeroen Blokland

https://cdn.azzamo.media/24cf7c0405bc702ba193ad3c355604bbd0ff19d81baa2ebb8482b21cfcacc589

👉🏽Spain was the European country that bought the most fuel from Russia in March: 355 million euros.

👉🏽It’s amazing that this even needs to be said in 2026, but the collapse of communism was a good thing:

https://cdn.azzamo.media/06ffffe6459a73edab3399f9b74c43509102e86d4ee618f55e8f5e336a8ddb61

👉🏽It looks like Hungary played the EU. Magyar was an ally of Orbán up until 2024 before becoming the “opposition.” Since winning, he’s rejected the EU and said Orbán was “too lenient” on immigration.

To sum it up:

• Works for Orbán’s party until 2024
• Leaves and becomes the opposition
• Gets funded by anti-Orbán EU leftists

Wins the election

• Says the border is “not strong enough.”
• Rejects 90% of EU demands
• Prioritizes rights for ethnic Hungarians

Orbán may now run against Ursula for the Presidency of the European Commission.

Personally, I think Orbán was a master political operator, and Hungary’s hard line on migration remains popular across Europe. But turning a real internal rebellion and electoral defeat into a secret victory requires ignoring the scandals, the spying, the concessions, and Magyar’s own words/actions. It’s fun meme fodder, but not reality. Hungary’s voters got the change they voted for—reforms plus continued border control. Whether that delivers remains to be seen, but it wasn’t a puppet show.

If true, Hungary played chess, not checkers. 5D chess.

👉🏽The EU’s new Age Verification app was hacked with little to no effort. When you set it up, the app asks you to create a PIN. But that PIN isn’t actually tied to the identity data it’s supposed to protect. An attacker can delete a couple of entries from a file on the phone, restart the app, pick a new PIN, and the app happily hands over the original user’s verified identity credentials as if nothing happened. It gets worse. The app’s “too many attempts” lockout is just a counter in a text file. Reset it to 0 and keep guessing. The biometric check (face/fingerprint) is a simple on/off switch in the same file. Flip it off, and the app skips it entirely.

A digital passport “for the children” quickly becomes a passport for everyone. Because otherwise, people could log in using someone else’s credentials — your uncle’s, your neighbor’s, anyone’s. That is how temporary exceptions become universal obligations. Stop and think about that.

On the 17th of April:

👉🏽Maarten van den Berg: Zoom out. Current energy prices are largely made up of taxes and excise duties. As a result, the government is directly shaping today’s energy price pressure — and is therefore also responsible for the consequences. The fact that nothing changes points to an effectively degrowth and leveling agenda. Life keeps getting more expensive, effective demand declines, and economic growth slows. This is how the Netherlands risks sliding into recession — as a direct result of government policy. The fact that a so-called “pro-business” party like the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy supports this should be a clear warning sign for everyone. We have a minority government in which the VVD (22 seats), together with opposition parties (PVV, Groep Markuszower, BBB, JA21, FvD, SGP, 50PLUS, CU = 54 seats), could put an end to the excessive tax burden on energy tomorrow. Energy is the engine of prosperity.

https://cdn.azzamo.media/1b939239618d24310540c4022ac75ba13ecc55ff2c6b139885055ee625232e75

👉🏽Oil crashes 10% the moment Iran declares the Strait of Hormuz open.

• WTI drops $9.69 to $83.49, a 10.40% freefall in minutes
• The move came directly after Iranian FM Araghchi’s announcement
• Oil had been trading above $87 just minutes before. Markets had been pricing in a prolonged blockade.
• That trade just unwound fast Source: TKL

👉🏽That’s eye-opening. Britain is really falling apart. Brits have jobs that don’t improve their standard of living anymore, and 3,000 new welfare recipients are added every day. But increasing taxes even more or introducing a wealth tax will lead to even more entrepreneurs leaving. - Michael A. Arouet

https://cdn.azzamo.media/b652d73bfb4eac64de3daa4ef11f8e8ab947bad929df0f8320100c9ddb6b1d14

👉🏽Mario Nawfal: America is now the undisputed energy superpower of the world:

https://cdn.azzamo.media/621d24be2a31ab9cf9d4ab6e661d625764d666a7f04f1fb90e6ccd2ae305016a

Oil: 24 million barrels per day (more than Saudi Arabia + Russia combined), Natural Gas: 119 billion cubic feet per day (more than Russia + Iran + China combined). If the Strait of Hormuz gets shut down for a long time, it might sting America, but it would devastate Europe and Asia. Europe talks a big game about “green energy” and independence, yet it still relies heavily on Middle East oil and gas. Meanwhile, the U.S. sits on massive domestic production and strategic leverage. This is raw power in 2026. America doesn’t just have energy independence; it has energy dominance. The world runs on oil and gas, and right now, America controls the tap.’ Source: Benny Johnson’

More context: ’The U.S. is an absolute energy monster

• Sitting on 46 billion barrels of proved crude reserves (60% still locked in tight rock)
• Permian Basin alone pumps 6.6 million barrels/day, more than every OPEC country except Saudi Arabia
• Total U.S. crude: 13.6M barrels/day, the world’s #1 producer, beating Russia (9.1M) and Saudi Arabia (9.3M)
• Natural gas? Not even close, record 43.2 trillion cubic feet in 2025, about 25% of global supply. The U.S. out-produces every petrostate on the planet.’ - Imtiaz Mahmood

👉🏽WallStreetMav: Step 1) Tell white people to stop having children because of global warming and overpopulation. Step 2) Bring in millions of non-white immigrants into white countries because they aren’t having children. This has been one of the most evil schemes in history.

https://cdn.azzamo.media/7c1ead946f7431d6b73ae92ab006d28f411543f91cc72187eae6368ecd6aa6ed

And this is something we are seeing in most Western/European countries.

One more stat: 2003 vs 2024 … in 21 years, Dublin, Ireland, has become one of the more dangerous cities in Europe.

👉🏽More than 50% of households receive more from the state than they pay in direct and indirect taxes combined. Meanwhile, the top 10% of taxpayers fund more than half of the government’s total net spending. Those “broadest shoulders” are carrying quite a lot. - Bart Burggraaf

https://cdn.azzamo.media/d7901aeaa71358b24643409ad11b9064ffac4d52f785a34fa0c0b95928fa4e6b

Anyway, the Netherlands has:

• One of the most redistributive tax-transfer systems in the OECD
• very progressive labor taxation
• large inter-household redistribution

👉🏽The Netherlands: Sybrand Buma is set to succeed Thom de Graaf as vice president of the Raad van State. One former party leader replacing another at one of the most influential institutions in the Dutch constitutional system.

If the Dutch Council of State is truly independent, why do we repeatedly see politically connected appointments at the very top? Sybrand Buma, succeeding Thom de Graaf as vice president of the Raad van State, once again fuels that discussion. Of course, having political experience is not automatically the same as being politically controlled. Supporters argue that former politicians bring institutional knowledge and constitutional expertise. But critics point to something else: the Netherlands increasingly appears to operate through a relatively small administrative and political elite, in which the same networks continuously rotate into top positions in government, advisory councils, supervisory bodies, and semi-public institutions. That creates at least the appearance of political intertwining. For example, right-wing politicians are consistently overlooked for these kinds of appointments. That may be legally independent on paper. But culturally and institutionally, many people no longer experience it that way. And that perception problem matters in a democracy.

👉🏽There is a lot of talk about the poorest U.S. state, Mississippi, having a higher GDP per capita than the UK (France & Italy as well). It wasn’t always like this. While the U.S. still follows free markets and innovation, Europe has throttled itself with regulations and overtaxation. -Michael A. Arouet

👉🏽Good to see ESG plummeting in popularity!

https://cdn.azzamo.media/3a1bab7dff8309cc7202babe7b9557738a812fdc1e94bf0679549218acfe1889

Nobody cares about the “climate change” hoax anymore; the slogans have worn out, the professional protestors have lost funding, and defected to other causes.

👉🏽Stanford paid 35,000 people to quit Facebook and Instagram for 6 weeks. Depression dropped. Anxiety dropped. Happiness went up. Women under 25 on Instagram saw the biggest gains. That was 6 weeks.

https://cdn.azzamo.media/35299f850cdd5977a8a890faccd75335771a5647225f9d0528bf429f0e2e28c1

JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) ran a study on 4,260 people who quit nicotine. Same result — anxiety down, depression down, mental health improved. The thing you think is calming you down is the thing causing the anxiety. Both studies say the same thing. Please remove the dependency and restore your baseline.

👉🏽A former U.S. Treasury Secretary suggested U.S. authorities prepare a back-up plan in case of a collapse in demand for Treasuries. This is the same guy who served during the Great Financial Crisis. Nothing to see here…

Henry Paulson recently warned that the U.S. should prepare a “break-the-glass” emergency plan for a potential stress scenario in Treasury markets, where demand for U.S. debt could weaken significantly.

His core concern is a stress dynamic in which private buyers step back from Treasury auctions, forcing the Federal Reserve to absorb a growing share of issuance. In that situation, falling bond prices and rising yields would sharply increase government borrowing costs, potentially accelerating a feedback loop: higher interest rates → higher deficits → more borrowing → even higher debt levels. Key fiscal context supports why this concern is being discussed:

• Debt-to-GDP is ~124% and rising
• Annual deficits are near ~6% of GDP
• Federal debt is ~$37T and projected to exceed $50T within the next decade
• Interest costs are already above $1T annually and rising toward major budget categories
• The 10-year yield has moved from near-zero in 2020 to ~4%+ today

Paulson’s argument is not that a crisis is imminent, but that fiscal space has meaningfully eroded since 2008, limiting policymakers’ ability to respond effectively if markets become unstable. He also emphasizes that Congress typically delays action until pressure becomes immediate — by which point policy tools are more constrained. His prescription includes entitlement reform, tax base broadening, and pre-emptive contingency planning rather than reactive crisis management. Historically, developed-market debt stress has occurred before (e.g., the UK gilt crisis in 2022), showing that sovereign debt markets are not immune to rapid repricing, even in advanced economies. The U.S. differs significantly due to its reserve currency status and deeper capital markets, but those factors reduce the probability more than they eliminate risk. The underlying risk scenarios generally fall into three categories: Gradual fiscal deterioration with rising yields over time Event-driven shocks triggering sudden Treasury market stress.

Politically driven crises (e.g., debt ceiling dysfunction) are causing loss of confidence. None of these implies an imminent collapse, but they reflect increasing sensitivity in a system with higher debt, higher rates, and larger refinancing needs. From a portfolio perspective, the implication is not alarm but resilience: shorter-duration exposure in fixed income, some Inflation hedges, a preference for cash-generating equities, and broader geographic diversification to reduce concentration in U.S. fiscal risk. The central takeaway is structural, not predictive: the U.S. is not facing a crisis today, but the margin for error is smaller than in previous cycles — and adjustment is likely to be driven by markets before politics.

👉🏽The Wall Street Journal correspondent Bojan Pancevski (@bopanc) has investigated the Nord Stream attack and arrives at the following conclusions: The act was carefully planned and prepared for months by Ukrainian special forces. The then Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Zaluzhnyi was, of course, aware. He also informed Zelensky. Zelensky agreed When the CIA learned of the operation in the summer and warned Ukraine, Zelensky wanted to stop the operation. After the attack, about which Zelensky says he found out “on television,” he immediately directed propaganda toward Russia as the perpetrator. German investigators would have fully solved the attack and identified seven Ukrainians, one of whom is detained in Hamburg. For the Ukrainians, this is incomprehensible, because the operation took place in international waters and therefore Germany has nothing to do with it.

Ukraine blows up our Nord Stream, Zelensky knew about it, blames the Russians, and later receives a freedom prize while the king and prime minister stand applauding. Fools are leading our country.

On the 18th of April:

👉🏽25 years ago, the U.S. and Germany had similar labor productivity. Germany was a global industrial powerhouse. Then Germany followed the left-green path of overregulation, bureaucracy, energy madness, and redistribution, and became the sick man of Europe. Don’t be like Germany.

https://cdn.azzamo.media/61dc162de2ee590a4907d172eac9845d90164291d0c5fb74b85a673be7d7819e

👉🏽“Number of employees in the public sector.” (from the Dutch Council of State (Raad van State), Fiscal Spring Report 2026 on budgetary supervision)

https://cdn.azzamo.media/31b04566d97440e9af8c600504ac735ecbd64fa5a1e80a1552fa26fff3c4192d

👉🏽Mario Nawfal: ’China spent $1.5T building a global empire, and half its oil still sails through a war zone. For 20 years, Beijing deployed capital everywhere with a purpose:

• $1.558T invested worldwide
• U.S., Australia, Brazil for resources and stability
• Middle East and Africa for energy access
• Europe for markets and infrastructure

A system designed to lock down supply chains at every point. And yet, with Hormuz on fire, roughly 50% of China’s crude imports still run through that single choke point. So why does the gap exist?

Pipelines take decades to build. Overland routes from Russia and Central Asia help fill the gap, but nowhere near enough. Electrification and EVs help in the long term, but today’s refiners still need crude, and crude still moves by sea.

That’s the real exposure:

• Hormuz instability hits Chinese refiners directly
• Shipping and insurance costs are already spiking
• Strategic reserves buy time, roughly 120 days, but it’s not a solution.

Beijing is moving fast to close the gap: accelerating Russian pipeline capacity, building out Central Asian routes, burning coal as a back-up, and pushing EV adoption harder than any country on Earth. But fast isn’t fast enough when a war is happening right now. China built a global reach. The Strait of Hormuz still runs the show.’

Ergo: the CCP spent $1.5T building a global empire - yet 50% of its oil still runs through a single war-zone chokepoint. So ask the obvious question: coincidence—or part of the CCP’s series of unrestricted warfare plans to destroy America? One straight. Global consequences.

👉🏽An RBC report released Tuesday confirmed that new investment in Canada has completely collapsed during the Liberals’ tenure in power. “Between 2015 and 2024, more than $1 trillion of investment exited Canada — the largest capital exodus in Canadian history.” GDP per capita growth, the best indicator we have of standard of living, has been less than one per cent over the last decade, by far the lowest of any period since the Great Depression. Another $1 trillion in corporate capital is sitting idle, as the RBC report terms “burdensome regulatory, permitting and project delivery barriers.” In other words, the Liberals introduced regulations on top of regulations and endless processes, in the name of fighting climate change, thus choking off investment. Source: National Post - Carson Jerema: How Justin Trudeau cost Canada $1-trillion | National Post

👉🏽It’s official: We are now witnessing the largest energy supply disruption in modern history. Since the start of the Iran War on February 28th, more than 500 million ​barrels of crude and condensate have been removed from the global market. In other words, global supply has now lost ~$50 billion ​worth of crude oil production since the Iran war began nearly 50 days ago. This is the same amount of fuel it takes to run the world’s international shipping industry for 4 months. The world has never seen anything like this before. - TKL

On the 19th of April:

👉🏽‘Dutch education spending has increased by more than 33% since 2020, averaging nearly 7.5% per year, while educational performance is declining.’ - Lex Hoogduin

More spending (and more people) does not automatically mean greater fundamental efficiency. Money and efficiency do not inherently go hand in hand—not in business, and certainly not in government. Higher budgets can just as easily lead to greater waste, misaligned incentives, and increased bureaucracy. In companies, this is also visible: without clear accountability and competitive pressure, the incentive to operate efficiently tends to disappear. However, there is at least a market mechanism that corrects this over time. In government, that corrective mechanism is often absent.

👉🏽TKL: ‘Europe is in a full-blown energy crisis. In fact, Europe’s energy crisis has gotten so bad that the European Commission is now recommending Europeans to work from home. They are also recommending using public transportation to cut fossil fuel use. Meanwhile, new IEA data shows that Europe has just 6 weeks’ worth of jet fuel remaining as the Iran War shortage worsens. As a result, many flights are expected to be canceled on non-essential routes. Between the Russia-Ukraine War and the Strait of Hormuz closure, Europe’s vulnerability to energy supply shocks has been exposed. We expect another wave of Inflation in Europe.’

On the 20th of April:

👉🏽China’s dream of overtaking the U.S. economy is falling like a meteor, fast and in flames. In 2021, they were at 78% of US GDP… now down to 64%, and the gap just doubled. Real estate crisis crushing everything: endless property crash, wiped-out savings, stalled construction, turning the whole economy into quicksand. Source: @terenceshen

https://cdn.azzamo.media/78fc207f756ab33b043b34995a04a8b91472e09f8f742b0fe27929908c55ea8e

👉🏽Strange, isn’t it? Dutch CO₂ emissions rise significantly due to electricity exports — and according to the Dutch Emissions Authority, “the system is designed that way.” And technically, that is correct. However, the Dutch Climate Act does not properly account for this effect. Yet when Dutch CO₂ emissions rise due to exports, policymakers suddenly panic. A remarkably inconsistent way of measuring and interpreting emissions.’ - Martien Visser

https://cdn.azzamo.media/91b93c1ec4c89e793ad6658d851ba7c5325c0eb0ade93379b099f8fbc0e14277

In my view, the entire CO₂ narrative has increasingly turned into a moral panic driven by bureaucrats and pseudo-scientists. More on that next week, when the first reports start coming in showing that many of the old doom scenarios may not have been quite as “doom” as originally presented. Those same scenarios were used to push through policies such as the Green Deal and numerous other legislative proposals. To explain this in simple terms with a concrete example: In some regions of the Netherlands, we supposedly cannot build new housing or expand infrastructure because of “nitrogen and emissions problems” — while at the same time our CO₂ emissions are partly increased because we export energy abroad. Remarkable mechanisms, aren’t they?

👉🏽Michael A. Arouet: Energy is prosperity. Energy policies cause the demise of German and British industries. You cannot have well-paid jobs, economic growth, and high energy prices. Want to help the climate? Invest in nuclear. It’s not one or the other. Why do Greens hate nuclear so much?

https://cdn.azzamo.media/b99debf48798f0e6126da84ecba90020083a23fac45b1f70dc1296336f38b4ff

Every week in Germany: 3,600 Germans with higher education emigrate, 3,100 new unemployed, 460 insolvencies. Germany needs structural reforms, fewer regulations, and lower taxes, but the left in government demand higher taxes and more debt instead. Will they ever get it?

👉🏽Europe is running out of people. The EU’s population is projected to collapse by 50+ million this century as birth rates hit record lows. • Fertility is ~1.4–1.6 children per woman, far below replacement • Deaths outnumber births in many countries. This is exactly the civilizational demographic collapse Elon Musk has warned about for years. Low Birth Rate = Decline of Civilization. Humanity is dying.

And no, for fuck sake, immigration isn’t a solution… fix the money, fix the world, and have more babies.

The first duty of any government is not to solve the world’s problems. It is to secure the future of its own people. Taxpayer money should first strengthen families, children, education, housing, and long-term stability at home. We are still using the 1991 rules to claim that China, for example, is still a developed country. If major economies such as China or India continue to present themselves as developing countries, that should not become a permanent claim on Western taxpayers.

Western Europe has spent decades asking its own population to pay more, carry more, and receive less.

That has consequences. When families are financially weakened, fertility and confidence decline, and social stability erodes. Now connect that to our social welfare system. A financial pyramid scheme depends on the growth of contributions at the bottom: declining birth rates, lower wages due to globalization, and fraud. , and abuse make the numbers worse. Mass migrations may temporarily prop up that system, yet make total collapse inevitable. Other countries are responsible for solving their own structural issues. Our responsibility is to rebuild strength at home.

👉🏽Spain hands out passports on a massive scale: 2.5 million naturalizations on the way. Schengen is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain if EU member states continue issuing passports on a massive scale. Spain alone has seen millions of citizenship requests and naturalisations in recent years under various schemes, including the so-called “grandchildren law.” And that matters far beyond Spain itself. Because within the Schengen Area, a passport issued by one member state effectively grants access to the entire zone. At that point, national migration restrictions elsewhere increasingly become little more than mopping up after the tap remains open. That does not automatically mean every naturalization is wrong or illegitimate — many cases involve descendants of Spaniards abroad — but it does raise a fundamental question: Can you maintain open internal borders while individual member states pursue radically different migration and citizenship policies?

👉🏽Zohran Mamdani is now claiming that billionaires shouldn’t exist because it’s “so much money in a moment of such inequality.” His parents are multimillionaires, btw.

👉🏽The Netherlands: And suddenly, the mainstream media discovers nuclear energy in 2026, as if the Dutch public had been living at kindergarten level all this time. Of course, that is not what happened. Nuclear energy was deliberately sidelined for decades by activist organizations such as Greenpeace, supported by politically aligned parties and figures such as Diederik Samsom, the Labor Party, and GroenLinks. For years, nuclear power was framed as taboo, dangerous, or morally unacceptable, while Europe simultaneously made itself structurally dependent on expensive imports, unstable energy policy, and increasingly fragile grids. Now that energy prices, grid congestion, and industrial decline are impossible to ignore, the conversation suddenly changes. Remarkable timing.

👉🏽The cabinet allocates millions for new housing construction and loosens rent regulations. More civil servants. How do they determine this? And the rent law should not be “relaxed” — it should be abolished altogether.

’We are adding roughly 40,000 civil servants at a cost of around €3 billion PER YEAR, while sectors that actually generate prosperity receive symbolic one-off subsidies. “The fishing sector receives €25 million to become less dependent on fossil fuels, and farmers receive the same amount to reduce fertilizer and energy use.” I’m genuinely banging my head against my desk. What a group of amateurs. Meanwhile, personnel costs of the Dutch central government are growing explosively relative to both the economy and population growth. The graphs say it all.

https://cdn.azzamo.media/df483919b741f52d49a3727f7767863c90a08ff500f0e760497963afb642050c

2008 = 100. Hold on tight. While GDP and population rose gradually, government personnel costs exploded upward after 2020. That raises a fundamental question: How much of this growing bureaucracy is actually creating productive value for society — and how much is simply managing, regulating, monitoring, subsidizing, and administering the consequences of earlier policy failures? At some point, an economy collapses under too much administrative weight.’ - Maarten van den Berg Sources: • Dutch Ministry of the Interior (JBR reports) • Statistics Netherlands national accounts and population data

👉🏽It’s official: The world is now experiencing its biggest energy crisis in history, with 600 MILLION barrels of oil supply lost. U.S. gas prices are up 47% since December, and Inflation is nearing 4%, on a path similar to the 1970s. - TKL

👉🏽In table 4 of the Spring Memorandum, give a fairly clear picture of what this cabinet intends to do over the coming years.

https://cdn.azzamo.media/31f6b8f42e9bc07009b5af4050f7507c84f4227f03c967f92d0294aa7f3465fa

The coalition plans to spend roughly €20 billion on the war in Ukraine over the next four years. On top of that, there are the projected costs of the asylum system, estimated at around €60 billion. That brings the total to roughly €80 billion. And ordinary citizens will ultimately pay the bill. Money that could otherwise have gone toward healthcare, education, lowering taxes, or strengthening social security is increasingly being absorbed by structural geopolitical and migration-related spending commitments. And it does not stop there. Starting next year, taxpayers will also continue carrying the long-term costs associated with the roughly €50 billion in pandemic support funds and related financing burdens. These are enormous amounts of money. Spread across the tax-paying population, we are talking about many thousands of euros per working Dutch citizen. And the most remarkable part? Much of this is increasingly presented as financially inevitable or politically untouchable.

👉🏽‘Green Deal’ ‘Immigration’ ‘Inflation by overspending governments.’

’I am European. Sixteen years ago, the economies of the EU and the United States were roughly the same size. Today, the U.S. economy is about 50% larger than the combined EU economy. That is the harsh reality behind Europe’s ongoing economic self-destruction. First, let’s look at the numbers: • U.S. GDP: $25.5 trillion • EU GDP: $16.6 trillion But in 2008, they were nearly equal. So what the hell happened over the last 16 years? It’s simple: Europe prioritized security and regulation over growth. The United States prioritized innovation over regulation. The result? The United States created 9 companies worth over $1 trillion each (9 of the 10 most valuable companies in the world). Europe? Zero. Not a single one. But it goes beyond the numbers… European talent is leaving en masse. Most European entrepreneurs eventually choose one of two paths: • The United States, where salaries are dramatically higher (tech jobs exceeding $350,000 annually) • Southeast Asia, where the cost of living is lower, and startups are easier to build

Why?

Because Europe makes it nearly impossible to scale at home. Take Berlin’s startup ecosystem as an example:

Entrepreneurs are often viewed with suspicion. “Founder” is treated almost like a synonym for “exploiter.” I have personally seen local meetings where tech founders were labeled “capitalist parasites.” Meanwhile, in places like Silicon Valley and New York: Founders are celebrated. Risk-taking is rewarded. Failure is seen as experience, not shame. And to make matters worse…

European citizens are drowning in bureaucracy: • Labor laws that make hiring and firing extremely difficult • Taxes that suffocate SMEs • Compliance costs that kill innovation

Starting a business in France can take weeks. In the United States? Around four days.

Even Emmanuel Macron admits it. Comparing Europe with the U.S. and Chinese markets, Macron warned: “The EU could disappear; we are at a crucial moment. Our previous model is outdated: we regulate too much and invest too little. If we continue with our traditional agenda over the next two or three years, we will be pushed out of the market.” Europe’s anti-innovation mindset is damaging the continent.

For example, when Elon Musk built Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg, protests erupted: “No to techno-colonialism!”

Tesla nearly canceled the project because of regulatory obstacles and local opposition. And this happens daily to smaller companies as well. Europe’s regulatory culture has created a destructive economic spiral: • Talent leaves • Companies avoid investing • Innovation dies • Economic growth stagnates • More regulation follows

That is why memes like “Europoors” exist. The numbers are brutal: • 90% of EU tech talent would move to the U.S. if offered the right opportunity • Salaries in Europe’s tech sector are roughly 50% lower than in the U.S. • Startup funding in the U.S. is about five times higher

And Europe’s few tech success stories? Most eventually move toward the United States: • Spotify (now heavily centered in New York) • Klarna (major U.S. expansion) • Arm Holdings (acquired by Nvidia, attempt / U.S.-centric capital markets influence)

The conclusion is obvious: While Europe debates the ethics of AI… America builds it. While Europe regulates crypto… America scales it. While Europe protects old industries… America creates new ones.

What’s the solution? In my opinion, Europe must: Radically reduce regulation Reward risk-taking Support entrepreneurs Lower taxes on innovation But will Europe actually do that? As a European, unfortunately, I doubt it. The addiction to regulation runs too deep. The anti-business mentality is too culturally entrenched. As a French entrepreneur once told me: “I love Europe, but I cannot build my future here. The system won’t allow it.”

That is why America keeps winning. Not because Americans are inherently smarter. But because their system rewards people who build. Europe has increasingly become a museum: • Excellent at preserving the past • Terrible at building the future Unless Europe drastically cuts regulation and rediscovers the willingness to take risks, the gap will only continue to widen.

And as a Spaniard, that genuinely pains me. I love Europe… It has a rich history and culture. It’s incredible food. It’s diverse from country to country. The fact that a two-hour flight can bring you into an entirely different language, culture, and world. I am deeply rooted here. But beneath that beauty lies a shared structural problem: Almost every European country increasingly shares the same anti-entrepreneurial mindset. Whether you are in Berlin, Paris, or Stockholm… The system feels designed to slow builders down. And that forces an entire generation of Europeans into an impossible choice: Do we stay in a culture we love, but where we struggle to build a future? Or do we leave everything behind in search of opportunity elsewhere? The question is no longer whether Europe is falling behind. It already is. Europe is drifting toward irrelevance. And honestly, that is one of the reasons I am considering leaving the continent myself. The real question is: Will Europe change course before it is too late? - CR Sanchez

§🎁If you have made it this far, I would like to give you a little gift:

What Bitcoin Did - Can Bitcoin Save The West? | American HODL & Peter McCormack “There’s a reality here that you guys are all asleep to… we are the only alternative path.” American HODL & Peter McCormack join the show to break down the growing divide across the West, the collapse of trust in institutions, and whether the current political system is already failing. We’re moving from a high-trust to a low-trust society, where incentives are broken, democracy is increasingly unstable, and the middle ground between left and right is disappearing. As countries like the UK decline economically and culturally, the risk isn’t just stagnation, it’s escalation. They discuss whether this leads to conflict or some form of authoritarianism, why freedom is so difficult to sell politically, and whether Bitcoin can realistically serve as an alternative system. They also discuss the collapse of the middle class, AI-driven disruption, the role of media in accelerating division, and whether Bitcoin arrives in time or becomes a hedge against what comes next.“

Click here: https://youtu.be/y14I87e6XII

Credit: I have used multiple sources!

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