The Bitcoin Layer

byThe Bitcoin Layer

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The Bitcoin Layer is a premium markets research provider, covering bitcoin through a global macro lens | Research, Analysis, & Education Featuring Nik Bhatia, author of the #1 Amazon bestseller Layered Money and USC Marshall School of Business professor. Subscribe to our research publication and YouTube channel to learn about global macroeconomics, bitcoin, Lightning Network, the monetary and financial system, the Federal Reserve, interest rates, and geopolitics. Most importantly, develop a framework for understanding global markets—connect the dots between economic and financial concepts to see the bigger picture. Look no further for your bitcoin and macro education!

Episodes(40 episodes)

Global Macro Update: The Real Reason Bitcoin Just Ripped

In this Global Macro Update, Nik covers the financial war he sees playing out across treasuries and currencies, and why bitcoin popped above $67,000 on the back of it. He walks through the trend lines he is watching, and why the zone between $70,000 and $82,000 is the work bitcoin has to do before a technical bull market emerges. Nik explains why he calls Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent the Secretary of Volatility, where he thinks Bessent's lines in the sand sit on the dollar and the ten-year yield, and how the new buyback program functions as a form of yield curve control. He...

Published: Aug 19, 2026Duration: 23m 25s

Bitcoin Just Went Vertical (Is The Bear Over?)

In this episode, Nik covers bitcoin's 22% week and a run that took price to just shy of $80,000. He walks through the multi-year trend line connecting the FTX lows to the start of the ETF bull market, why bitcoin generates most of its returns in short concentrated bursts, and the bullish divergence that showed up before this move. Nik explains why he thinks the real driver was not the Treasury buyback but the yen intervention and the developing US-Japan monetary alliance, and why Kevin Warsh lowering front-end rates is the only lever left. He closes on gold's run to $5,500 and the...

Published: Aug 12, 2026Duration: 22m 33s

Russia Is Now Legalizing Bitcoin for Trade with Joe Consorti

In this episode, Demian welcomes back Joe Consorti for a conversation on the Clarity Act and what it means for bitcoin. Joe explains the bill's three buckets, how it would separate commodities from securities and put bitcoin under the CFTC, and why he sees that as a win for investor protections rather than price. He covers why the bill has stalled in the Senate over ethics concerns, why he thinks that fight is now ideological, and why the stablecoin rails it would create make it bullish long term. Joe also covers Russia legalizing bitcoin for cross-border settlement, the jobs revisions...

Published: Aug 11, 2026Duration: 34m 42s

Self Custody Is Not Dead with Stacie Waleyko

In this episode, Demian welcomes back Stacie Waleyko, a bitcoin developer with the Bitcoin Dev Project, on the Coldcard entropy vulnerability and the ongoing theft of funds. Stacie explains how hardware wallets are supposed to source randomness, why affected devices fell back to a weaker software path, and why anyone with funds from a post-2021 Coldcard should move them now. She covers the suspicion that attackers used an open weight model to grind through the reduced key space, how a licensing switch removed the Trezor library that had worked, and why she now points people toward multi-vendor multisig. They also...

Published: Aug 7, 2026Duration: 23m 8s

Why Jack Mallers Walked Away From Twenty One

In this episode, Nik welcomes Jack Mallers, founder and CEO of Strike, for a conversation on his exit from Twenty One. Jack describes the guilt and humility of stepping away from a company whose vision he says did not work, and where Strike sits between an operating company like Coinbase and a conviction vehicle like Strategy. He shares his reaction to the Coldcard vulnerability, which he calls a horror because the victims did everything right, and why he still does not think self-custody is dead. Jack also covers the red team of AI agents now testing Strike's code, and why...

Published: Aug 5, 2026Duration: 39m 47s

Tracing the Stolen Coldcard Bitcoin w/ Galaxy's Alex Thorn

In this episode, Nik welcomes back Alex Thorn of Galaxy Research on the Coldcard key generation vulnerability and the theft that followed. Alex explains how a March 17, 2021 firmware change left the devices silently defaulting to a much weaker random number generator, a bug that went unfound for five years, and why the victims are self-custody holders who never leaked a key or made a mistake. He walks through Galaxy's on-chain tracing across three confirmed waves totaling roughly 1,350 bitcoin, or about $88 million, why the stolen coins are sitting inert, how cheap compute and open source AI models made the exploit trivial...

Published: Aug 3, 2026Duration: 43m 34s

Coldcard Wallet Hack: What Happened and What to Do Now

In this episode, Nik and TBL's Demian Schatt cover a breaking security situation: a seed-generation vulnerability in Coldcard hardware wallets that has exposed some bitcoiners to theft, with reports of wallets being swept over the last twenty-four hours. Nik, speaking as a researcher rather than a cryptographer, explains how bitcoin seed phrases are generated, why the entropy behind a seed is what keeps it safe, and how Coldcard's default seed generation left certain users vulnerable while those who added dice-roll entropy or a passphrase are better protected. He explains why bitcoin ETF holders are not affected and why he has...

Published: Jul 31, 2026Duration: 25m 40s

Kevin Warsh Just Blew Up How the Fed Works

In this Global Macro Update, Nik covers today's FOMC decision and Kevin Warsh's press conference, where the new Fed chair reaffirmed the 2% inflation target as a firm goal and made clear he is steering the Fed away from forward guidance. Nik explains why Warsh took credit for the recent rise in Treasury yields, calling it healthy price discovery, and why Warsh now says the Fed will look to the Treasury market for signal rather than telling markets what it will do. He also covers the yield curve steepening on the day, the Nasdaq correction and Korea's stock market crash, and...

Published: Jul 29, 2026Duration: 33m 25s

The Great Unwinding Wall Street Isn’t Pricing In with Matt Dines

In this episode, Nik welcomes back Matt Dines to lay out his thesis that the global order built after World War Two is being reset. Matt walks through the signals he is watching: the Kuwaiti pipeline deal with Blackstone, KKR, and Brookfield that reroutes energy toward Europe, the US-China rare earths truce and its expiring clock, and the chokepoints from Hormuz to the Red Sea. He connects rising real yields, a flattening curve, and dollar strength to that same reconfiguration, then turns to the Paramount and Warner Brothers fight over Oracle bonds and why he believes the November elections will...

Published: Jul 28, 2026Duration: 1h 10m 10s

The $45,000 Bitcoin Everyone Fears Is Getting Less Likely

In this episode, Nik walks through the latest bitcoin research from Johan Bergman, head of bitcoin research at The Bitcoin Layer, using the charts inside TBL Pulse. He explains Johan's state grid, which plots bitcoin on valuation and trend, and why the framework currently places bitcoin in disbelief territory, a zone where, together with capitulation, bitcoin has spent roughly 40% of its life. Nik covers why bulls bracing for $45,000 are facing data that makes it less likely, and why the 200-day moving average near $73,000 stands as the final boss of the downtrend. He closes on why not retesting the realized price...

Published: Jul 22, 2026Duration: 51m 20s

Global Macro Update: The Dollar Shortage Pushing Asia Towards Crisis

In this Global Macro Update, Nik returns from teaching his summer bitcoin and AI course at USC to a market waking up after the World Cup lull. He makes the case for a global dollar shortage behind the dollar's continued strength, with stress surfacing across Asia: India's push to pull in overseas dollars, a sharp correction in Korea's KOSPI, and the Japanese yen at its weakest level since 1990. He then turns to the pressure building in hyperscaler and AI corporate bonds, Apple overtaking Nvidia as the world's largest company, and SpaceX slipping below its IPO valuation. Cooling CPI and PPI...

Published: Jul 17, 2026Duration: 1h 5m 59s

Michael Saylor Sold the Bitcoin Bottom

In this episode, Nik welcomes CoinDesk analyst James Van Straten to discuss why he believes bitcoin's bear market may be nearing its end. James walks through ETF flows that have held firm despite months of outflows, the rotation of capital out of AI and semiconductor names like NVIDIA, and where that money could head next. The conversation turns to Michael Saylor's decision to sell bitcoin near the lows, the role hedge funds played in pressuring Strategy through STRC, and on-chain data showing roughly 330,000 bitcoin accumulated between the high fifties and low sixties since February. James and Nik also examine this...

Published: Jul 10, 2026Duration: 39m 52s

This is the Most Bitcoin I Have Ever Bought

In this global macro update, Nik asks whether bitcoin has finally bottomed after tagging 58k and reclaiming 60,000. He walks through the bullish divergences forming on bitcoin's daily and weekly charts, why a grinding-higher dollar has been weighing on liquidity and bitcoin all year, and why he now sees Asia, particularly yen and Korean won weakness, as the most likely spot for trouble. Nik also covers new Fed chair Kevin Warsh and his read that Warsh is playing junior to Scott Bessent on taming volatility, the state of Michael Saylor's STRC dividend and MSTR, and what TBL liquidity is signaling now ...

Published: Jul 2, 2026Duration: 19m 44s

I Built a $1 Million System in 11 Days With No Coding with Peter McCormack

In this episode, Nik welcomes Peter McCormack, host of the Peter McCormack Show, for a conversation on how he is using AI in his own business. Peter, who has no coding background, walks through the full podcast-management system he built with Claude in 11 days, work he says would once have taken a 14-person team over a year and cost around a million pounds. He covers how he got started, how he learned to prompt, and why he now thinks of himself as a software engineer. Peter and Nik also discuss why this is the printing-press moment for software, how AI...

Published: Jul 1, 2026Duration: 43m 40s

Inside SpaceX's $60 Billion Bet on Cursor with Charlie Hu

In this episode, Nik welcomes Charlie Hu, founder of Coco AI and a bitcoiner since 2012, for a wide-ranging conversation on where AI is heading. Charlie shares takeaways from the Super AI conference in Singapore, walks through SpaceX's $60 billion acquisition of Cursor and what it signals about AI capital and exits, and gives his read on the US government's suspension of Anthropic's Fable and Mythos models. He then lays out his core thesis: that AI is ultimately a process of converting energy into intelligence, which reframes data centers, the US-China race, and even SpaceX's valuation as an energy story. Drawing on...

Published: Jun 26, 2026Duration: 48m 30s

What Bitcoin Twitter Is Signaling About the Market Bottom w/ Michael Sullivan

In this episode, Nik welcomes Michael Sullivan, a bitcoin researcher who analyzes market sentiment through language. Michael explains how he runs natural language models across thousands of tweets, cohorting bitcoiners into newer retail accounts versus longer-term holders, to measure moods like anger, conviction, optimism, and apathy over time. He covers why bitcoin is in one of the most prolonged anger regimes on record, why Michael Saylor has become the main target of that disapproval, and how the current mix of low engagement, fading excitement, and apathy resembles the conditions you tend to see near a market bottom. Nik and Michael...

Published: Jun 23, 2026Duration: 31m 31s

I Woke Up Homeless With $75 When the Banks Took Everything | with Tony Yazbek

In this episode, Nik welcomes Tony Yazbek, co-founder of The Bitcoin Way, for a conversation on why owning bitcoin yourself is the whole point. Tony argues that bitcoin is money rather than an investment, and that anything wrapped in legacy finance, from ETFs to exchange balances, is not the same as holding it directly. He recounts surviving Lebanon's 2019 banking collapse, when he woke up homeless with about $75 after the banks confiscated everyone's savings, and how it shaped his conviction. Tony and Nik also dig into what self-sovereignty does for people, how to think about hardware and air-gapped storage, the volatility...

Published: Jun 18, 2026Duration: 34m 24s

The Iran War and the Fight for Energy Dominance with Tanvi Ratna

In this episode, Nik welcomes back Tanvi Ratna, geoeconomic strategist and Fox News columnist, for a conversation on why the Iran conflict is far bigger than the Middle East. Tanvi lays out her thesis that Iran is the node in a global re-architecture of the world order, and walks through how the war is realigning Europe, reshaping NATO as European commanders take over operational theaters, and squeezing Russia out of Latin America, the Middle East, and its energy markets. She explains the Saudi-Israel question still blocking a regional deal, the corridor wars around Hormuz and the Balkans, and how US...

Published: Jun 16, 2026Duration: 56m 15s

SpaceX Goes Public Tomorrow: Inside the $45 Billion Data Center with John Tinsman

In this episode, Nik welcomes John Tinsman, founder and portfolio manager at AOT Invest, for a conversation on why the AI buildout looks like a revolution rather than a bubble. The Bitcoin Layer and its guests do not provide investment advice.

Published: Jun 11, 2026Duration: 44m 13s

AI Is Breaking the Power Grid, and Bitcoin Is the Fix

In this episode, Nik welcomes back Daniel Batten, bitcoin researcher and longtime voice on bitcoin's role in energy, for a conversation on the collision between AI, the power grid, and bitcoin mining. The Bitcoin Layer and its guests do not provide investment advice.

Published: Jun 9, 2026Duration: 37m 29s