A Bet on Human Ingenuity
Friday April 10th, 2026 - Issue # 130
(Any views expressed below are the personal views of the author and should not form the basis for making investment decisions, nor be construed as a recommendation or advice to engage in investment transactions.)
Morning morning,
It’s been a couple of weeks since my last note and I apologize. It’s definitely not because there’s nothing going on…it’s quite the opposite. The world feels extremely volatile these days and every day there’s a new headline or two.
Gone are the days of casually jotting down ideas throughout the week, sitting down for a nice writing session late Thursday, then waking up early Friday to finish and hit publish. By the time Thursday rolls around now, the world has already changed twice.
We’ve got war escalation, major breakthroughs in AI, growing quantum anxiety, historic space launches, Epstein files back in the headlines, a potential $1.75 trillion IPO, and plenty more. Making investment decisions is getting harder. Making life decisions might be even harder. Complexity feels like it’s at all-time highs.
It really does feel like we’re living through the fourth turning. The powers that be are scrambling to retain control, while the algorithms do an excellent job keeping the masses distracted.
While we wait for the inevitable lethal doses of liquidity injections, let’s fade the noise and focus on bitcoin.
While it doesn’t appear Elon is mining asteroids any time soon, he certainly has ambitions to set up a base on the moon.
David Friedberg mentioned on the last all in podcast that he believes the moon could end up being the next industrial frontier for humanity. He says that if we can get to the moon then it has an abundance of material that we can mine, process and manufacture into goods, and the cost to ship back to Earth is 0. He says that it will cost less to move processed ore, precious metals from the moon to a specific point on earth than to ship it via any conventional method. Watch the entire clip above for his reasoning — really cool.
Apologies to all of my goldbug friends and readers. But it’s hard to think about bitcoin’s upside without thinking about gold’s downside. You can’t be too angry at me, you are clearly king, but beware, bitcoin is coming for the crown.
The upside in bitcoin is still completely misunderstood.
Not in the short term. Not in the “will it bounce next month” sense. I mean in the bigger picture, multi-year, monetary asset sense. Because if Bitcoin continues to work, keeps producing blocks, and eventually implements a quantum-proof solution, then I think the path toward replacing gold as the world’s primary non-sovereign store of value becomes much clearer.
And if that happens, the upside from here is still absolutely massive.
What’s interesting is that the argument is becoming less about Bitcoin and more about gold.
Gold’s long-term scarcity is not nearly as untouchable as people want to believe.
If you’re bullish on human ingenuity, on AI, on accelerating science, on robotics, on reusable rockets, on cheaper access to space, on humanity’s ability to solve hard engineering problems, then you should at least be open to the idea that gold’s scarcity premium is not eternal. Maybe not this year, maybe not in five years, maybe not even in ten. But on a long enough timeline, it becomes harder and harder to believe that humanity’s ultimate store of value will be a metal whose main edge is that it has historically been hard to find and expensive to extract.
That assumption starts to look weaker in a world where technological progress is compressing time.
Bitcoin is the opposite.
Bitcoin’s weakness is obvious. It is right there in front of you. Quantum is the final boss. It is real and it should be taken seriously. However, technical problems can be solved over time by smart people with strong incentives.
Like Morgan Stanley for instance who just launched their bitcoin ETF this week. Even in a bear market, it was their best day of trading for any ETF in history for the investment bank.
I think it’s safe to say that if needed, there is a line up of infinite resources from them, BlackRock, where IBIT is the company’s most profitable ETF, Strategy, Coinbase, and other companies with vast technical resources and infinitely sized war chests to go with their vested interest.
If needed…
Just yesterday, Bitcoin developer Avihu Levy introduces "Quantum-Safe Bitcoin Transactions Without Softforks”
Quantum-Safe Bitcoin Transactions Without Softforks
Unfortunately, I haven’t had the time to dig into this paper yet, and judging by the abstract displayed above, I don’t think it really matters. Way too technical for me. But from what I’ve been able to gather from reading all the tweets and coordinating with LLMs, it looks like in the event a cryptographically relevant quantum computer (CRQC) appeared, this paper shows a practical way to create safe Bitcoin transactions with no change to the Bitcoin protocol.
Also this week, a top Bitcoin dev and CTO of Lightning Labs, Olaoluwa Osuntokun conceptualized a clever “proof” (called a zk-STARK) that lets you prove “this is my bitcoin from my normal wallet seed” without ever showing your seed. In a real quantum emergency, Bitcoin could do a quick “emergency upgrade” that blocks the old vulnerable way of spending. It’s important because with this proof, you can safely move your coins to new quantum-safe addresses, even if your wallet is from 2012. It doesn’t solve everything, but it means Bitcoin doesn’t have to freeze or burn millions of BTC during a crisis.
While advances in quantum technology are moving fast, Bitcoin defenses are moving even faster.
Click above for an amazing in depth review of where things are and why Bitcoin is going to make it.
Or don’t! I mean, you can just trust that the devs are going to figure it out or whatever. But if you really did believe, with every bone in your body, that Bitcoin will remain decentralized and secure forever, then you either have as much bitcoin as you can possibly have, or you don’t have enough bitcoin.
Gold’s problem, on the other hand, cannot be patched. Gold looks great today, but I think its long-term future as humanity’s primary store of value is much more limited than most people realize. Its whole monetary case depends on scarcity holding up forever, and I’m not convinced that survives a world of accelerating technological progress.
That’s the trade.
Bitcoin does not need to be perfect today. It simply just needs to survive. It needs to keep producing blocks. It needs to adapt. It needs to remain credible long enough for the world to realize that a digitally native, fixed-supply bearer asset makes more sense than dragging bars of metal into the future and pretending that’s the final form of money.
And if Bitcoin does that, it will take gold’s mantle. Not overnight. Not in a straight line. But it’s inevitable.
The numbers here are still nuts.
Gold’s market cap is still over 23x larger than Bitcoin. So when people say bitcoin has already had its move, I honestly think they are missing the point. If bitcoin merely becomes a credible digital replacement for gold, you are still talking about a huge repricing from here. And that says nothing about the other potential use cases around collateral, settlement, and balance sheet adoption.
If you want to wait until quantum is fully solved then that is also an option. But you will be paying up for certainty — you won’t be buying BTC at $70k, or $126k…it will be much higher at that point. The possibility that Bitcoin makes it through this phase and comes out stronger on the other side is exactly why the upside still exists. That’s why I think it can make sense to have some exposure in your portfolio today, even if you’re concerned about the likelihood of Bitcoin’s future.
To me, the bet is very simple:
If humanity keeps advancing, gold’s long-term scarcity premium comes under pressure.
If humanity keeps advancing, Bitcoin’s technical vulnerabilities get solved.
Asymmetry.
Bitcoin has already taken its beating, down more than 50% from the highs to the local lows. I’m not going to speculate too confidently on whether the exact bottom is in, because nobody knows. However, this is probably a very reasonable window for people with no exposure, or not enough, to start accumulating.
That’s it for today folks. Have a fantastic weekend.