James Ruel

This could be the offramp the world needs. You can think of it as the best outcome for everyone, under the circumstances. (1) From MAGA’s perspective, if Trump declares victory here and moves on, the US won’t waste yet more blood and treasure in the Middle East. It won’t invade Iran. It also won’t take all the blame for the ongoing global supply chain crisis. It just pulls out and lets everyone work out the regional security equation for themselves. Trump can say he’s fulfilled both his campaign promises: stop Iran from getting a nuke, but also no endless Middle Eastern wars. (2) From Israel’s perspective, Iran has now been shown to be quite hostile to its neighbors, and its military has been substantially degraded. Stopping now is good. Otherwise there’s a danger of overreacting to Oct 7 as Americans overreacted to Sept 11. Israel can stand back and call it a win, because after a US pullout, Iran will have much less excuse for holding the Strait hostage. (3) From the Iranian diaspora’s perspective, it’s unfortunately clear that the current war isn’t going to result in liberalization. Further attacks would push Iran further into fundamentalism, making it even harder to eventually do a liberal reformation. (4) From the long-suffering Iranian people’s perspective, ending the war now would also save countless lives. Otherwise they’ll get hit by friendly fire and drafted by the regime to fight for fundamentalism. (5) Finally, from the world’s perspective, once the US declares victory and goes home, substantial diplomatic pressure will be applied to Iran to simply open the Strait of Hormuz and allow ships through. Iran’s leadership has shown, perhaps surprisingly, that they care about global public opinion…and they would be on the hook for the suffering of billions of people if the Strait remains blocked. TLDR: if Trump declares victory and leaves, Iran no longer has any excuse for blocking the Strait and holding the global economy hostage. Let the matter be worked out diplomatically with pressure from all the 100+ affected countries on Iran. America shouldn’t have to spend a single cent more, or send a single soldier more, to the Middle East.

$BTC is pressing right against Power Law support line. Will it hold like previous cycles?

The cover of Spors Illustrated 20 years ago today

Holy shit

OpenClaw gave me a feeling a chatbot never could. You think of something while out walking, text it from your phone, and by the time you get home something has been built and is waiting for you. That is when it hit me this is bigger than software. A digital economy of actions and transactions moving faster than ever has already started. The agentic economy is here, and digital employees are already working. My latest Substack: When Consumers Become Agents: The OpenClaw Gateway visserlabs.substack.com/p/when-consume…

He's back

@ResourceWars_ @grok who do you think the two remaining leaders are?

🚨IDF CONFIRMS DEATH OF ONE OF IRAN'S 3 REMAINING TOP LEADERS LARIJANI DEAD☠️ Despite the decentralized nature of Iran's military strategy, this reporter told by Iranian sources the theocratic regime is now down to 2 leaders with enough standing to lead country.

After much reflection, I have decided to resign from my position as Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, effective today. I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby. It has been an honor serving under @POTUS and @DNIGabbard and leading the professionals at NCTC. May God bless America.

@TheStormRedux @RiggsBTC @grok is this objectively accurate

Everyone should listen to this clip of Trump and really try to understand what he is accomplishing. “It’s a big chess game at a very high level. It’s very high level chess, the highest. And I’m dealing with very smart players. These are very smart people. They don’t get there…You know, when you deal with some of these people, you’re dealing with very high-level intellect, very high IQ people. These are not Jasmine Crockett and her group. These are smart people. These are really smart people. And violent people, ambitious people. And some very nice people. And some are very nice but violent.” This is the side of Trump that most people don’t understand. He is one of the most brilliant, if not the most, strategic minds we have ever seen. Every move he makes is calculated, well thought out, and at the highest level of risk on the world stage. But most importantly, he always ends up with a win. Show the man the respect he deserves 🇺🇸

@seth_fin @grok is this analysis accurate

Imagine a father who secures $100,000 in spot Bitcoin. He holds the asset until the valuation hits a massive $5,000,000. Liquidating the position directly triggers devastating taxes on $4,900,000 of pure profit. So he executes the perfect institutional maneuver instead. He locks the Bitcoin in a legal trust, takes out a collateralized loan against the stack, and lives off the borrowed liquidity. Because he never executed a sale, his tax liability remains at absolute zero. Upon his death, the heirs receive the Bitcoin with a brand new cost basis set exactly at $5,000,000. The government cannot legally touch a single cent of the accumulated gain. This is exactly how generational wealth is permanently secured.

Woke up and i see 200 followers The support is INSANE I CANT THANK YALL ENOUGH❤️💙

Good morning. The 20 millionth Bitcoin was mined yesterday. This means that 95% of all Bitcoin that will ever exist is now in circulation, and it will take 114 years to mine the remaining 5%. No other asset on earth works like this. Have a great day.

I wish david sacks had been alive to see this war he would have loved posting about it

@SPAULIE76 @KobeissiLetter @grok is this accurate

@KobeissiLetter Iran is making 500 drones or more per day they currently have over hundreds of thousands as opposed to the U.S. who has 4,000 missiles left and is struggling to keep up.

BREAKING: President Trump says the largest US Defense companies have agreed to quadruple production of weaponry to reach "the highest levels of quantity." Trump says the US has a "virtually unlimited supply" of medium and upper medium grade munitions to use in Iran.

Just a friendly reminder that the Bitcoin peak this cycle came exactly on time, literally to the day depending on how you measure it but definately to the week.

What did removing Saddam, Gaddafi, Assad get us? Chaos, civil war, genocide. The rule for regime change operations in the Middle East is that they don’t flip a country from bad-to-good. They flip a country from bad-to-worse.

Nah...you just have to convince them "gold is a useless pet rock" so they don't notice that since 1966 the DJIA is up 5,463% in USD terms but down 62% in gold terms over the same time frame. 👇🤯😉

Falling below $60k would cause major structural damage to Bitcoins monthly chart and open up a path that leads MUCH lower. A strong bounce is ESSENTIAL for the bulls here.

Every mean reversion model, from technical to onchain is trading within bottom formation levels, typically seen after the price capitulation event (which Dec 2018 and Jun 2022 were examples of). Both sell-offs in Nov and Feb are in the hall of fame of Realised Loss onchain. Not the biggest in relative terms, but by far the largest in USD terms, over $7.5 Billion over just those two days. We're in the bottom 20% of the most conservative, and bottom 5% of the most aggressive deviations from any sane anchor model. Either Bitcoin is dead, will no longer mean revert, and all your models are broken... ...Or you should be ignoring the bears, staying very humble, and quietly DCA stacking sats from here on. Price pain is largely behind us imho, however time pain likely remains. It will claim many who don't want to see the rest of the movie. We often experience retests of the lows, leaky price charts, powerful rallies...and then lower lows...often with a final capitulation event to book-end the time-pain chapter of the bear. In my view, even though this sounds horrific, it is unlikely we have anywhere near the aggressive rate of decline, nor depth of decline as has already occurred in Nov'25 and Feb'25. The hard part of the drawdown is most likely behind us. The difference between $17.6k in June 2022, and $15.6k in Dec 2022...was six months (the price delta is frankly irrelevant for any long-term investor). There is no rush, but these Bitcoin prices are temporary. How temporary we do not know, but it's tremendously oversold, and there are few statistics I am aware of that suggest otherwise. The bears will spend the next few months liquidating their trading accounts trying to short the bottom of a painful chopsolidation range. The bulls will do the same by getting too hopeful at the range highs. Investing is a game of picking great assets, accumulating at low prices, and then being patient as fuck. The 200-week MA is at $58.5k, a mere bees dick below the $60k low we already set. There are still folks out there who want to haggle over the missing 3%. The Realised Price is at $55k, which from first principles, should stop being visited over time, as it deviates due to unrealised profit in lost coins (a topic for another day). We've already cleared every excess leverage level down to $60k, no stop losses survived February's move. This is the time to stay humble, and stack sats. If you're not actively accumulating Bitcoin at this stage, then when? Don't fantasise over lump summing the exact bottom wick. You will be too scared to do it on the day. Buy the whole bottom. Dollar cost average for the next six months, and remove your emotions from the problem at hand. A final note; ignore the bears. They will perpetually revise their targets lower and lower, and get plenty of clicks for doing so. Humans love bear-porn because we're wired to avoid risk. This is literally what a de-risked setup looks like for Bitcoin. Ignore the bears, they lack ambition.

The western gold/oil ratio (GoR) had long been, in a word, bullshit. Once China could buy oil in CNY, it set up an arb: Short oil in USD, buy western gold at western GoR, take delivery, sell gold to Russia for oil at higher CNY GoR, use some oil to cover USD oil short, Lee balance of oil for free Wash/rinse/repeat until west is forced to allow gold to rise to weaken USD.