Geopolitics, AI, and Monetary Change

The Last Trade: Jackson, Michael, and Brian break down the US military operation in the Middle East, $120 oil, bitcoin's resilience as a wartime asset, the 20M BTC supply milestone, Kraken's Fed master account, private credit cracking, and the IRS's new crypto audit form.

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The Last Trade: a weekly, bitcoin-native podcast covering the intersection of bitcoin, tech, & finance on a macro scale. Hosted by Jackson Mikalic, Michael Tanguma, & Brian Cubellis. Join us as we dive into what bitcoin means for how individuals & institutions save, invest, & propagate their purchasing power through time. It's not just another asset… in the digital age, it's The Last Trade that investors will ever need to make.

🎙️ About This Episode

Oil spiked to $120, gold is trapped in the desert, private credit gates are closing, and the IRS just rolled out a new form designed to catalog every bitcoin holder's exchange history. Meanwhile, Bitcoin is up 7% since the conflict started and 20 million BTC have now been mined with only 1 million left to go.

The crew goes deep on how drone warfare is reshaping geopolitical power dynamics, why Bitcoin's portability advantage over gold has never been more obvious, the Kraken-NASDAQ tokenized equity partnership and Kraken's historic Fed master account, the private credit unraveling from Cliffwater to Blue Owl to BlackRock, and why sellers may finally be exhausted around these levels. Plus a new segment — Signal or Noise — and a reminder from Daniel Batten on why thinking from first principles has never been more important.

🧠 Chapters

00:00 — Intro & New Format

01:30 — The Middle East Conflict

04:07 — Drone Warfare & $120 Oil

07:36 — Bitcoin Up 7% During a War

12:01 — Gold Trapped, Bitcoin Isn't

16:40 — Privacy, Chamath & the Open Ledger

19:46 — 20 Million BTC Mined

25:03 — Signal or Noise: Kraken & Tokenized Trading

29:58 — Private Credit Is Cracking

37:35 — The IRS Crypto Audit Form

53:50 — The Last Takes

1:03:24 — Outro & Disclaimer

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