Constructing subprime short positions

Pius Sprenger has a PhD in mathematics and spent twenty-five years on Wall Street. He was hired to Deutsche Bank in 2004 and ended up on Greg Lippmann's derivatives desk — the desk Ryan Gosling's character runs in The Big Short. In February 2007 he co-built the ABX index with Goldman Sachs and Bear Stearns. He held his short position for nearly three years while senior management told him he was wrong.

He was right.

He left Wall Street in 2020. Today he is a founding member of the Scientific Bitcoin Institute alongside Giovanni Santostasi and Steven Perino — peer-reviewed researchers applying the power law to Bitcoin's growth. Their math says $1M per Bitcoin in 8–9 years. $7–8M in 17 years. Falsifiable. Scientific. Not a guess.

And he is sounding the alarm again. Wall Street is now packaging Bitcoin into structured products the way it packaged subprime in 2007. Pius has seen this movie. He has the receipts.

If you've heard "$1M Bitcoin" and dismissed it as hyperbole — this is the conversation to send to whoever you're trying to convince.

We discuss:

• The Bitcoin Power Law explained — adoption to the power of 3, network value to the power of 2 — and why the math gives you $1M in 8–9 years
• What it actually felt like to short subprime from inside Deutsche Bank for three years while conference rooms full of PhDs laughed him out
• The pattern Pius sees in Wall Street's Bitcoin entry — Strategy, STRC, the ETFs — and what negative price convexity means for the paper market
• One week in East Germany in 1985 — the Stasi, the whispering — and what a former Deutsche Bank trader recognizes in Western banking surveillance today

Subscribe so you never miss an episode.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🎙️ GUEST ━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Pius Sprenger @PiusSprenger → https://x.com/PiusSprenger

Scientific Bitcoin Institute → https://x.com/ScientificBTC

━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 💰 SPONSORS & DISCOUNTS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━

🔑 Stamp Seed — Between 3-6 million Bitcoin are lost forever. Most of it paper. Hammer your seed words into solid titanium — fire-resistant to 3,000°F. 15% OFF stampseed.com | code MATRIX

🐟 Firefish — Non-custodial Bitcoin-backed loans. Your keys stay in multisig. $100M+ in volume. 10,000+ users. Don't sell your Bitcoin. Live off it. firefish.io/?ref=MATRIX | code MATRIX

🟠 Club Orange — The location-based social network built for the Bitcoin community. Find Bitcoiners, meetups, and merchants near you. Download in the App Store or Google Play. cluborange.org/matrix-podcast

🏕️ Camp Nakamoto — Bitcoin summer camp. Private island. Lake Winnipesaukee, NH. June 18-21. I'll be speaking there. 15% OFF campnakamoto.com | code MATRIX

🔐 Unchained — 90,000+ BTC secured in collaborative multisig since 2016. Bitcoin-only. Never lent out a sat. IRAs, loans, inheritance planning. 10% OFF unchained.com/matrix | code MATRIX10

💎 River — Buy Bitcoin the right way. Up to $100 FREE Bitcoin. river.com/matrix

🛡️ Meanwhile — The world's first Bitcoin life insurance policy. Premiums and payouts in Bitcoin. meanwhile.bm | code YTPFYD

🤝 Want to sponsor the show? thebitcoinmatrix.com/sponsors

━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🙏 SUPPORT THE SHOW ━━━━━━━━━━━━━

⚡ Strike → BitcoinMatrix@strike.me

💵 PayPal → paypal.biz/BitcoinMatrix

💚 Cash App → cash.app/$BitcoinMatrix

💜 Venmo → venmo.com/u/bitcoinmatrix

📬 PO Box → The Bitcoin Matrix, P.O. Box 18056, Sarasota, FL 34231

━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📱 FOLLOW ━━━━━━━━━━━━━

🌐 Website → TheBitcoinMatrix.com

🐦 Cedric on X → x.com/cedyoungelman

🐦 Show on X → x.com/_bitcoinmatrix

🟣 Nostr → npub12tq9jxmt707gd5vnce3tqllpm67ktr0mqskcvy58qqa4d074pz9s4ukdcs

━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ⚠️ DISCLAIMER ━━━━━━━━━━━━━

The Bitcoin Matrix Podcast is for entertainment and educational purposes only. Nothing discussed constitutes financial, legal, or investment advice. Past performance does not guarantee future results. Always do your own research. The views expressed are the host's and guests' own opinions and do not constitute any offer, solicitation, or guarantee of any kind. The viewer assumes all responsibility for any actions taken based on this content.