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Bitcoin hit $125,000 yesterday and gold touched $4,000 today as the debasement trade goes mainstream. It's the flight to hard money as governments around the world decide to run it hot and attempt to grow their way out of debt by inflating it away. Ladies and gentlemen, the long-awaited crash is here. But it's not the market that's crashing, it's the money. Welcome to No Second Best, the show where conviction meets reality and reality points straight to Bitcoin. I'm your host, Hurley. Now, let's get into it.
Bitcoin hit a new all-time high yesterday, touching $125,000 before cooling off to around $120,000 today. This cool-off comes after an explosive start to October, where Bitcoin went up by $15,000 in a 7-day period. Gold, meanwhile, took the baton back, printing its own record high, just shy of $4,000 an ounce today. Together, Bitcoin and gold are defining what JP Morgan now calls the debasement trade, which is capital rotating into hard money as global deficits spiral and trust in fiat evaporates.
For years, Bitcoiners and gold bugs warned this would happen, that endless debt and monetary expansion would push investors into scarce assets. Now, Wall Street has finally joined the party. The story is simple. Trump says America can grow its way out of debt. But what that really means, as Goldman Sachs just pointed out, is debasement. We're entering an era of fiscal dominance. Governments everywhere are choosing inflation over austerity. They'll print, borrow, and spend until the system gives out. The world of 2010 to 2020 is gone. Every country is running it hot. Central banks are quietly giving up on 2% inflation targets. Nominal assets will rise. The debasement hedges, the best of which are Bitcoin and gold, will rise much, much higher.
Luke Groman charted it perfectly. In dollar terms, everything looks strong. The Nasdaq is up 165%, the S&P up 102%, and US home prices up 56%. But priced in real money, the illusion fades. In gold terms, the Nasdaq is up just 7%. The S&P is down 18%, and home prices are down 37%. In Bitcoin terms, the Nasdaq is down 78%. The S&P down 84%, and home prices down 87%. The assets didn't get more valuable. The measuring stick got weaker. That's why the biggest trade of this decade isn't stocks or bonds. It's sound money versus everything else. And the clear winner in this new monetary reality is Bitcoin.
Since 2020, US home prices have soared over 50% in dollar terms according to the Case-Shiller index. But when measured in Bitcoin, they've collapsed by 90%. This is clear proof that fiat inflation is distorting every traditional measure of wealth. Bitcoin isn't inflating. Everything else is deflating against it.
Even some of Wall Street's biggest names are starting to say the quiet part out loud. Here's billionaire hedge fund manager Ken Griffin at the future of global markets conference this week. "Let's just cut to the chase. Inflation is substantially above target and substantially above target in all forecasts for next year. I mean, it's part of the reason the dollar has depreciated by about 10% in the first half of this year. It's the single biggest decline in the US dollar in six months in 50 years. Gold is is at record highs. And the appreciation in other dollar substitutes, um, to use that word loosely, in in items like crypto, for example, is is is unbelievable. So, we're seeing substantial asset inflation away from the dollar as as people are looking for ways to effectively de-dollarize or de-risk their portfolios vis-à-vis US sovereign risk."
"Are you really seeing that?"
"No, just check the price of gold."
"Well, I mean, I don't have to look very hard. Life of its own. Yeah. What? It's a life of its own. Gold. No, but it's a life of its own. As as you see sovereigns around the world, as you see central banks around the world, as you see individual investors around the world go, you know what, I now view gold as a safe harbor asset in a way that the dollar used to be viewed. That's that's what's really concerning to me. And there's been plenty of published research in in recent weeks, months about foreign investors now when they buy US equities hedging the returns back to their local currency. So that again is a bifurcation of I I'm going to bet on American business, but I want to immunize some of my sovereign exposure to the United States."
What Griffin's describing isn't just inflation, it's de-dollarization. Investors and even central banks are starting to see gold and Bitcoin as the safe havens the dollar used to be. The US fiscal position is now the risk everyone's hedging. And this is the key. It's not bearish for the S&P. It's bearish for the dollar. Money is leaving the system it no longer trusts. And it's finding refuge in the only assets that can't be printed.
And as Matthew Pines puts it, the Fed isn't even driving anymore. Fiscal policy is. The system has moved beyond rate hikes and cuts. The only lever left is debasement. "We're in 2025, right? And a lot of things are different. Um, it's not just fiscal policy. We also have trade policy and statecraft policy. And so you have an environment where like the effect of tariff rate on China is like 54%. Right? And then you've got like almost every other country is facing a structurally higher tariff rate. You have still the backdrop of you know 6 to 7% of of GDP in deficits. And then you have uh an entire new like capex boom being driven by the private sector. Now in like hundreds of billions of dollars of you know per deal sizes for building you know massive data centers right which are very you know commodity resource intensive and so you have these massive distortions that all came at the same time while you have like what the Fed likes to have is like these smooth you know long and variable lag based kind of forecasts and fundamentally they just are kind of in the back back seat right it's not just they're in the sort of the passenger seat like all of these other um perturbations in the global macroeconomic environment are much more significant than a 25-50 basis point cut. And I think the most significant, you know, feature of the of the curve that matters politically is basically the long end for for mortgages, right? Ultimately, there's just like millions of Americans that are trapped in in their in their houses and feel that like they can't climb the ladder and you know, home prices are still sort of stuck stuck very high and yet they're to to sort of refinance would be prohibitive. And so there's just like a political pressure to bring down the long end while the government knows that they need to keep refinancing."
What Pines is describing isn't just a monetary shift. It's a technological one. The new growth story everyone's leaning on is AI. Trillions in new capex are being poured into data centers, chips, and automation, all under the same logic. Grow your way out of debt. But here's the catch. It's still debt-funded. The productivity revolution may be real, but it's being financed with the same printed money. The same printed money that's devaluing everything else. Which means AI won't stop the debasement. It'll only accelerate it.
And the market knows it. That's why capital is flooding towards sound money faster than ever. Yesterday alone, spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded $1.21 billion in net inflows, the second highest day on record. That's over 10,000 Bitcoin absorbed by institutions in 24 hours. BlackRock's IBIT fund is now approaching a hundred billion in assets, already the most profitable ETF in their entire lineup. Gold's ETF launch kicked off a decade-long bull run. Bitcoin's is still only in inning two. The signal couldn't be clearer. The institutional bid is here and it's not slowing down.
And there's another powerful dynamic unfolding right now. The Bitcoin-gold catch-up trade. As Joe Consorti pointed out on X, we're in the longest unbroken period of positive correlation between Bitcoin and gold in history, with Bitcoin lagging by roughly 100 days. If JP Morgan's volume-adjusted fair value models hold, that lag is about to close fast. Their fair value target puts Bitcoin around $165,000 before year-end, which is a simple reflection of Bitcoin catching up to gold's move in the debasement trade.
And the most obvious bullish case for Bitcoin is the simplest. It's just better than gold along every store of value attribute. It's more scarce. It's easier to move. It's impossible to counterfeit. And it's infinitely divisible. Yet, gold itself keeps rising in value now with a $27 trillion market cap. If gold is rallying this hard, imagine where Bitcoin, the superior form of the same thesis, goes next.
So, if you see what's coming, now is the time to get your strategy right. Institutions and family offices are already positioning for this shift. And that's where Swan Private comes in. The Swan Private team works with over 5,000 clients, helping them build generational wealth with concierge service, airtight custody, and inheritance planning. Learn more at swan.com/noscbest.
And finally, a quick shout-out to Marathon, the world's largest publicly traded Bitcoin miner, for supporting this show and for helping make Bitcoin the world's most decentralized and secure monetary network.
The so-called crash everyone's been waiting for, it's already here. But it's not the stock market that's collapsing. It's the money. US long bonds are down 37% in 5 years. Add another 30% loss in purchasing power from inflation. Meanwhile, everything scarce. Gold, Bitcoin, and productive equities keep climbing. What you're watching isn't a bull market. It's a flight from the dollar. Waiting in cash for the crash is like waiting in a burning building for the firetruck to arrive. Just get out of the building.
And if you still think any crypto play will work in this situation, take the advice of Charlie Lee, the creator of Litecoin. "My advice for myself would just to be I think this would be surprising to a lot of people but which is to be buy like buy Bitcoin store away don't sell anything and don't do anything else related to crypto and just sit on it and and be anonymous that would be my advice so don't follow in your footsteps correct like creating Litecoin did not really make me more money was a lot a headache. Yeah, it was. Yeah, just if you just buy buy Bitcoin, keep it away, stay anonymous, sit on it, don't sell anything, you'll be better off."
From billionaires like Ken Griffin to mega banks like JP Morgan and even to altcoin creators, everyone's converging on the same truth. The fiat system is being inflated to survive. And the only real hedge is the money that can't be printed. This isn't about price. It's about principles. It's about opting out of a system that punishes savers and rewards debt. The debasement trade has only just begun, and Bitcoin is poised to lead it.
So, what do you think? Are we watching the early stages of a global monetary reset? How high does Bitcoin run if this debasement trade becomes consensus? Drop your thoughts in the comments below. And don't forget to like this video, share it with a friend, and subscribe to the Swan Bitcoin channel for more signal every single day. Thanks for watching and remember, there is no second best.