Bitcoin Held Up Through A $6 Billion Hack

In this episode, Nik covers the worst single day of 2026 for stocks, with the Nasdaq down 6.5% and the S&P down 4.6%, and asks whether the midterm results caused it or whether something larger is going on. He shows the Nasdaq slicing through its 200 day moving average and a trend line stretching back to 2022, and why the S&P losing 7630 and its own four year line matters. Nik argues that credit cycles are mostly apolitical and that this has been building for weeks, points to the OpenAI raise getting cut and Anthropic’s IPO odds falling, and explains what a 55 basis point drop in treasury yields is telling him. The Bitcoin Layer and its guests do not provide investment advice.

In this episode, Nik lays out three money market metrics he watches as a former repo and treasury bill trader, and why they suggest the Fed may be closer to another round of QE than anyone wants to admit. He starts with SOFR creeping back above IORB, a spread now at its widest since tax day, and the month end and year end dates he is watching next. He then covers why more than $7 trillion in T-bills has to be funded by a cash market that cannot grow to meet it, and why bank reserves at 9% of GDP sit near the levels that preceded the 2019 repo crisis. The Bitcoin Layer and its guests do not provide investment advice.

In this episode, Nik welcomes Mark Goodwin, journalist at Unlimited Hangout and former editor in chief of Bitcoin Magazine, for a conversation on prediction markets and the Genius Act. Mark explains why prediction markets aren’t the trustless systems people assume, how the oracle problem means someone still has to decide the outcome, and why the assumption that markets always reveal truth breaks down when someone has reason to lose money on purpose. He and Nik also cover why the Genius Act creates structural demand for treasuries, how stablecoins extend dollar access across the global south, and Nik’s own realization while writing his stablecoins as statecraft paper. The Bitcoin Layer and its guests do not provide investment advice.

In this episode, Nik covers bitcoin’s reaction to the Binance hack, in which $6.3 billion was taken from the exchange’s hot wallet. He explains why a 5% drawdown is far milder than he would have guessed for news of that size, why this is different from the FTX collapse, and how the hacker used DeFi collateral to move stablecoins before issuers could freeze them. Nik then turns to the levels he is watching below $82,700, why gold losing its trend line opens up $3,400, and why a bearish divergence in the Nasdaq suggests more downside. He closes on month end funding and why the calendar matters here. The Bitcoin Layer and its guests do not provide investment advice.

In this episode, Nik covers the Fed’s decision to hold and the reaction that surprised him more than the decision itself: Bloomberg’s anchors in full meltdown over how Kevin Warsh is communicating. He walks through their three complaints, the dissents, Warsh declining to explain why the Fed didn’t hike, and the suggestion that Williams and Jefferson are really setting policy. Nik explains why he thinks the hold was justified given how much conditions tightened after September, and why Warsh believes higher rates will slow the AI buildout. He closes on bitcoin’s four price drivers and why a steepening yield curve could relieve some pressure. The Bitcoin Layer and its guests do not provide investment advice.

In this episode, Nik welcomes Peruvian Bull, also known as Roberto Rios, author of the Dollar Endgame, for a deep look at Japan. They trace the story from the 1980s bubble and the Plaza Accord through the lost decades, the move to zero rates, and the yield curve control era that made the yen the world’s funding currency. Roberto explains how the carry trade grew into something the Bank of Japan can no longer tame, why recent interventions cost $91 billion and included the US Treasury and Federal Reserve for the first time since 1998, and why Japan now has to choose between letting the currency fall or letting JGB yields rip. The Bitcoin Layer and its guests do not provide investment advice.

In this episode, Nik covers three funding headlines that landed within days of each other: Anthropic filing for an IPO, SpaceX going to the bond market for $40 billion, and Meta raising $95 billion in equity. He explains why so much issuance at once signals the funding window is narrowing, why a turning credit cycle starves everything on the fringe, and why stock valuations and earnings growth are already rolling over. The Bitcoin Layer and its guests do not provide investment advice.

In this episode, Nik welcomes back Dr. Giovanni Santostasi and Dr. Stephen Perrenod of the Scientific Bitcoin Institute, joining from Lugano, to explain the bitcoin power law. Giovanni walks through why bitcoin’s price plotted against time produces a straight line on a log log chart, and why an R squared of 0.97 means only 3% of the price history falls outside it. Stephen explains the two power laws underneath it, adoption growing as the cube of time, the same rate as the internet and as viruses, and value growing with the square of users. They also cover their peer reviewed paper and why the math suggests bitcoin is empirically a peer to peer network. The Bitcoin Layer and its guests do not provide investment advice.

In this episode, Nik welcomes back Matt Dines to talk through where we are in the credit cycle and why he thinks we are in the late innings. Matt walks through the names he watches widening every day, from Oracle and CoreWeave to JetBlue bonds trading at 61 cents on the dollar, and explains why record high yield deals from SoftBank and Paramount Skydance mean companies are issuing with a gun to their head rather than by choice. He argues that a QE response would be the wrong prescription, because the disease is tight resource markets rather than a purely financial problem. Nik and Matt close on what a default wave would mean for bitcoin. The Bitcoin Layer and its guests do not provide investment advice.

In this episode, Demian explains TBL’s analysis of why bitcoin is holding up even as liquidity hit its lowest point of the cycle. He covers how the TBL Liquidity Index works, what a red dot actually signals, and why bitcoin’s own supply and demand have shifted in its favor as the sellers ran out and more than 70% of supply moved into profit. He closes on the three things that would need to ease for liquidity to turn. The Bitcoin Layer and its guests do not provide investment advice.