Bitcoin’s arrival on the world stage in 2008 wasn’t exactly met with mass fanfare. If anything, the average person was apathetic to the idea of this new thing calling itself digital currency. This was hardly surprising. In 2008, humanity was still living in the wake of a massive global economic downturn. One day, you might exit a major department store, only for the same store to suddenly go into administration, before being replaced the next day by a new cash for gold store.
This was a time of mass job losses and city planners fixing faux images of busy bakeries and bookshops over derelict real storefronts. This was also a time when the masses were bombarded daily with confusing financial spin and complete gibberish to explain why the world was in financial ruin.
Politicians were loath to admit that they could print money if they wanted. After all, what point is there in austerity or paying taxes if the government can conjure cash out of thin air? The mainstream media, therefore, took to calling such money printing “quantitative easing.” At the same time, they made quantitative easing sound like a good thing, despite knowing full well that printing cash only ever heralds a higher cost of living.
Politicians like the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, also regularly came out with absurd policy ideas, such as encouraging the UK National Health Service to use iPads instead of paper to save money by reducing stationery costs. Meanwhile, relying on food banks to meet basic nutritional needs became normal for millions.
During and after this time, it was quietly inferred that the general public was to blame for the state of the world economy. Apparently, we had all overspent on our collective credit cards. Only much later would mainstream documentaries and movies like The Big Short explain simply that the world’s biggest banks had set the global economy up to fail on purpose by inflating a giant U.S. housing market bubble.
Later, of course, the same banks that caused the 2008 crisis were saved from collapse by government bailouts given on the basis that they were “too big to fail.” In reality, though, the 2008 economic downturn was nothing but the biggest transfer of wealth from the public to the private sector in recorded human history. Moreover, this transfer really did take place fraudulently. After all, banks had knowingly caused the collapse of the U.S. housing market, knowing that when this happened, governments would step in to bail them out with however much taxpayer cash they wanted.
Understanding that the 2008 financial crisis was orchestrated is important, as humanity is on the verge of another such orchestrated financial calamity.
How Bitcoin Went From Zero to Hero
In the years following 2008, especially those between 2009 and 2017, some people did start to take interest in Bitcoin. The reason was simple. By 2015, this curious thing that banks and governments derided as mere “air money” was trading at over $1,000 per coin. Mere cursory research into the economic mechanics of Bitcoin was also enough to convince many people that future returns on investments were all but guaranteed.
Bitcoin has a finite supply. Most Bitcoin is already in circulation, and the amount of new Bitcoin entering circulation diminishes by 50% every four years. As Bitcoin scarcity increases, so, therefore, does the dollar value of Bitcoin. The past also proved that Bitcoin was working exactly as per this design. Investing $1,000 in Bitcoin in 2015 could, therefore, conceivably see people make easy 100% or even 1,000% returns in just a few years. And many people did.
I have stated repeatedly that cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin only have value if people believe them to have value, and in the run-up to 2020, belief in Bitcoin became contagious. In fact, we are now at a point where Bitcoin is considered a mainstay in modern finance.
How Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general work is still a mystery to most people. However, Bitcoin has effectively gone mainstream. When financial advisors suggest incorporating a little Bitcoin into retirement funds, most people subsequently say yes without thinking. Bitcoin is that thing, after all, that made a lot of people very rich, that many people wish they hadn’t been so cautious about a few years ago.
Presently, belief in Bitcoin is so strong that major companies, institutions, and even governments are incorporating Bitcoin into financial portfolios and strategic reserves. Stablecoin cryptocurrencies like Tether (USDT) are even praised by the likes of Donald Trump as helping strengthen the U.S. dollar and overall U.S. national security. This is thanks to Tether Limited, the company behind Tether, being one of the world’s biggest buyers of U.S. Treasury bonds.
Is Donald Trump This Generation’s Shoeshine Boy?
Is the crypto party about to end? As a famous story in Wall Street circles goes, at the height of America’s 1920s economic boom, the stockbroker Joseph Kennedy Sr. (the father of JFK) was walking up Wall Street. On his way, Kennedy Sr. decided to have his shoes polished by a local shoeshine boy. To his amusement, while the shoeshine boy Kennedy chose was working, he also began listing his own top stock picks for the day.
While amused at first, Kennedy Sr. quickly realized that if even the shoeshine boys on the street knew what stocks were booming, it was probably time to get out of the market. This Kennedy Sr. did, just days before the stock market was wiped out in what ultimately became the start of the Great Depression.
Might Donald Trump be our generation’s crypto shoeshine boy?
As a businessman, Donald Trump must surely be able to weigh risk when investing in or promoting any asset. This being the case, he must surely be aware that Tether Limited, the company behind the stablecoin Tether, constantly resists being independently audited. He must also be aware that Tether was a longtime business partner of the disgraced crypto money launderer Sam Bankman-Fried and that Tether itself is masterminded by a cabal of shadowy figures with various discredited credentials and backstories.
To be aware of such risks is important, as while Tether might help strengthen the U.S. dollar at present, a Tether collapse could do the polar opposite. Tether after all, currenly holds more U.S. Treasury bonds than whole countries like Germany and South Korea. Moreover, according to a 2025 Bank for International Settlements (BIS) paper, “Stablecoins and Safe Asset Prices,” by Rashad Ahmed and Iñaki Aldasoro, a run on or collapse of Tether could destabilize the entire U.S. bond market.
In their paper, Ahmed and Aldasoro give a conservative estimate that a Tether collapse might result in a fire sale of short-dated U.S. securities. This is where holders of short-term bonds expect them to fall in value and attempt to sell everything they hold as quickly as possible. However, both researchers make clear that nothing like a Tether collapse has ever occurred previously. A worst-case scenario could, therefore, see a parabolic run on U.S. securities. This would be where a fire sale might escalate into a complete loss of confidence in the U.S. bond market, resulting in longer-term bonds being dumped by investors.
As U.S. Treasuries are used to service the United States’ $37 trillion national debt, a parabolic run on such securities would have a significant adverse impact on the real-world economy. Let us remember also that if Tether fails, there will be a near-instant catastrophic correction of the price of Bitcoin. Donald Trump’s total confidence in Tether is, therefore, perplexing.
Choose Your Crypto Catastrophe
At present, companies behind stablecoins like Tether buy millions of dollars’ worth of U.S. Treasury bonds each month. In fact, Tether alone is the world’s 18th largest holder of U.S. securities. However, there is evidence that Tether has for a long time been creating billions of dollars of the Tether stablecoin every month with the sole aim of artificially inflating the price of Bitcoin. If this is true, or if it is proven that Tether cannot back all Tether coins in circulation with real liquidity, Tether will collapse. If it does, confidence in U.S. Treasuries will tank also.
Overnight, the 18th biggest buyer of U.S. securities will vanish. Confidence in U.S. securities will subsequently evaporate, as market pundits point out that Tether was obviously a scam that the U.S. was more than foolhardy ever getting into bed with. A devaluing of the U.S. dollar will follow, with this happening in tandem with massive devaluing of all cryptocurrencies and all stocks in companies with exposure to the cryptocurrency market.
In the blink of an eye, every investor and financial guru who was ever hostile toward the idea of cryptocurrency will be televised. As it becomes known that the true price of Bitcoin has been greatly exaggerated thanks to unchecked Tether printing, each will laud what is fast becoming a complete global financial collapse as always being inevitable. Crypto millionaires will have their net worth obliterated and to insulate their own currencies from total loss of confidence in cryptocurrency, several countries will rush to pass laws prohibiting unregulated cryptocurrency completely.
As all of this is happening, Western countries with slower legislative processes will be thrown into financial chaos.
While cryptocurrency traders and investors rush to liquidate what is left of their assets, real-world runs on real-world banks will start. It will then only be a matter of time before banks start limiting withdrawals to prevent complete collapse.
In short, a collapse of Tether will not just wipe out nearly $200 billion of wealth on the cryptocurrency market. Rather, the collapse of Tether will create a domino effect that will rock regular financial markets to their core. As independent cryptocurrency analysts at Chain Mind have also recently stated, “Tether isn’t collapsing today, but the risk is real. It will happen suddenly—when it happens.”
The Ghost in the Machine
Is a Tether collapse inevitable? Would such a collapse really destabilize conventional financial markets? Until Tether Limited agrees to a full and transparent audit, the simple fact is that the risk is very real. However, it is not just Tether that hangs over cryptocurrency like an ever-present sword of Damocles.
As I have repeatedly made clear at The Crypto Con, the basic fungibility and security of all forms of cryptocurrency have been undermined from day one. This is thanks to the easily verifiable existence of hardware-based backdoors that exist in all modern Intel and ARM computer processors.
As the cybersecurity and ethical hacking website Hackaday.com puts it simply, “The idea of the NSA putting hardware in every computer sounds absurd until you realize it actually happened.”
Of course, Intel and the NSA deny that hardware-based subsystems in all modern Intel CPUs since 2008, (which computer users can’t access or turn off), are actually backdoors. However, the simple fact is that if the NSA or a similarly powerful agency wanted to be able to spy on or take control of any computer anywhere at any time, Intel’s Management Engine is how they would do it.
The fact also remains that hardware subsystems like the Intel Management Engine are not conspiracy, conjecture, or hearsay. They exist, and they have been built into every computational device more powerful than a pocket calculator since mid-2008.
How the existence of these backdoors impacts cryptocurrency is simple. Their very existence means that there is a backdoor in any device on which cryptocurrency might ever be stored. Such backdoors also have the ability to bypass any level of encryption and any security measures you might put in place to protect your cryptocurrency portfolio. The ability to use subsystems like the Intel Management Engine to take control of entire computers and networks also poses a threat to cryptocurrency.
In the case of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto himself warned us how Bitcoin will always be susceptible to a 51% attack. This is where Bitcoin miners decide to unite, or a hacker uses a botnet to take control of over 51% of all Bitcoin mining hardware.
If a 51% attack were ever to be successful, whatever entity ends up controlling 51% of the Bitcoin mining network will instantly have the ability to start invalidating transactions, emptying wallets, and even start changing the basic protocols that govern how Bitcoin works. Neither would it matter if you hold your Bitcoin on a non-Internet-connected device like a cryptocurrency hardware wallet. If instigators of a 51% attack want your wallet balance, all they have to do is reverse the last transaction that saw you deposit your Bitcoin on your hardware wallet in the first place.
To many involved with cryptocurrency, the idea of a 51% attack being successful against a decentralized cryptocurrency like Bitcoin often seems absurd. However, as of summer 2025, successful 51% attacks on cryptocurrency networks have begun to take place in the wild.
In mid-2025, Qubic, a new AI-powered blockchain, used a novel strategy to stage a successful 51% attack against the privacy coin Monero.
Over a relatively short period, Qubic was successful in incentivizing miners of several other cryptocurrencies to switch to mining Monero. Eventually, this gave Qubic 51% control over the entire Monero network. Gaining 51% control of Monero subsequently gave Qubic the power to begin double-spending Monero wallet balances. (This is where the same Monero coins can be used twice when being traded for other currencies.)
Qubic could have also begun invalidating past, present, and future transactions, thereby invalidating the use of Monero completely. The only reason this didn’t happen was because Qubic wasn’t acting maliciously. As part of what is referred to as an “ethical hack,” Qubic only gained 51% control over Monero to prove that such an attack was possible.
With regard to the Intel Management Engine and similar subsystems embedded in ARM computer architecture, it can be argued that it is only a matter of time before a rogue hacker, nation-state, or rogue three-letter government agency takes advantage of such subsystems to stage such a 51% attack against a major target like Bitcoin. It is also the case that some hackers and cybersecurity researchers like Mark Ermolov and Maxim Goryachy have been finding ways to compromise the Intel Management Engine since 2017.
As Hackaday.com has reported, it is only a matter of time until a zero-day exploit in the Intel Management Engine is discovered, which could conceivably compromise or cripple every computer on the market since 2007.
Crypto Zero Day
Regardless of how a catastrophic collapse of the cryptocurrency market happens, the simple fact is that it will happen.
Either Tether will be exposed as having fraudulently inflated the Bitcoin price for the past decade, resulting in Bitcoin correcting to near zero, or a nation-state or hacking group will compromise the security of a major cryptocurrency like Bitcoin itself. Both of these scenarios are inevitable. The only question is, which will happen first?
Which ever scenario crosses the crypto finish line first, the consequences will be catastrophic, even for anyone not involved in the cryptocurrency space. On a global scale, the crypto collapse will be the start of an unprecedented financial domino effect. The collapse of the crypto economy won’t, after all, be like the collapse of banks or a few “too big to fail” mortgage lenders. Rather, trillions of dollars’ worth of global liquidity that has been pumped into Bitcoin and other digital assets over the past decade will blink out of existence, literally in the blink of an eye.
Like during the last global financial crisis, the mainstream media will refrain from explaining in layman’s terms why the real-world economy is being dealt such a devastating blow by the collapse of the world’s top cryptocurrencies. Today, it is easy to see how the U.S. government’s encouragement of cryptocurrency projects like Tether to buy U.S. government bonds is a massive financial misnomer. However, the media won’t mention such obvious political blunders as markets implode. Instead, the media will blame the demise of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin on obscure hacking groups and malicious foreign state actors.
Likely, there will be talk of “Russian digital fingerprints” being found on compromised cryptocurrency exchanges. Radical right and left-wing groups will also be floated as possible culprits. The finger will likely also be pointed at the mainstream media’s favorite cyber crooks, those being supposedly savant teenagers hacking for fun out of dingy suburban basements.
Regardless of who is eventually blamed for toppling Bitcoin, the media will also remind global populations that they were told from the beginning that investing in cryptocurrency was risky. This will be how The Powers That Be give the world a big, “we told you so.”
As the dust settles, there will be news of suicides, murders, and attacks on the likes of crypto influencers and crypto company CEOs. The world will also be told that what is happening isn’t like any kind of boom-and-bust cycle the economy has seen previously. Rather, this time, the global economy really is irreparably broken—so broken that the only solution is a mass financial reset.
The Great Reset Was the Game All Along
Is it just a coincidence that Bitcoin came on the scene just as the NSA’s Signals Intelligence department (SIGINT) was aiming to have backdoors into all consumer encryption technologies by 2013? Is it also just a coincidence that Bitcoin came into being just as Intel, AMD, and all other computer processor manufacturers began building dedicated hardware backdoors into all modern CPUs?
Was it also just an oversight that saw the CIA completely ignore Bitcoin when it was being used as the only funding source for WikiLeaks in 2010, despite the fact that they could have destroyed the cryptocurrency completely if they had chosen to?
“I make this appeal to WikiLeaks not to try to use Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a small beta community in its infancy. You would not stand to get more than pocket change, and the heat you would bring would likely destroy us at this stage.”
– The penultimate last ever message left by Satoshi Nakamoto, 2010.
Is it all coincidence? Or was there an agenda all along to create the cryptocurrency bubble that we have today, before this bubble is popped in order to usher in a new global financial paradigm?
It might be easy to dismiss such musings as conspiracy. However, anyone who is familiar with the World Economic Forum (WEF) will be aware that they and contemporaries like the World Bank and think tanks like Davos have been promoting the idea of a global financial reset for at least the past decade.
The vision of these groups? Primarily, they want to eliminate physical cash from the global economy completely. Doing so, they argue, will eliminate fraud, money laundering, tax avoidance, and the funding of terrorist groups.
In place of cash, the WEF wants to see currency go completely digital, just not in the form of digital currencies like Bitcoin. Rather, the long-term vision of the WEF is to see cash and currency as we know it completely replaced by Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs)—completely digital versions of the central bank-issued currencies that we use today.
For the most part, using CBDCs will be no different from how most people already use modern money. Employers will deposit wages electronically into bank accounts, just as they already do. People will then spend their wages via direct debits, card payments, and mobile apps, just as they do today. There just won’t be an option to withdraw cash as physical cash.
To many people, this won’t seem like a great inconvenience at first. However, unlike the currencies we use today, CBDCs will be programmable. Banks and governments will, therefore, be able to dictate how and where people spend money.
Programmable CBDCs Are the Antithesis of True Freedom & Democracy
At face value, programmable currency might sound like a good thing. Finally, it will be easy to prevent minors from purchasing age-restricted items like cigarettes and alcohol. It will also be easy to prohibit people who shouldn’t be able to purchase things like firearms. However, there is also a very clear and present danger posed by such forms of currency.
In mid 2025, millions of UK netizens began protesting new online safety laws that require people to verify their identity before viewing sensitive content online by using Virtual Private Networks (VPNs). These allow people to appear as if they are surfing the web from other countries like the United States, where there are no such invasive restrictions or identity checks.
Embarrassed by how easy their new online safety laws are to circumvent, the UK government subsequently began looking at ways to ban VPNs. However, as VPNs are used in several legitimate business contexts, this was to prove impossible.
Sadly, in a world where everyone uses central bank digital currencies, restricting the use of VPNs will be altogether easy. Central banks will simply prohibit the purchase of VPN subscriptions until individuals or businesses can provide a legitimate reason why they require a VPN service.
Because CBDCs will be linked directly to user identities, governments will also be able to deduct fines and taxes directly from bank balances. Governments will also be able to restrict travel by disallowing fuel sales and air, rail, and bus ticket sales to individuals suspected of crimes, being in debt, or people they might suspect might plan to attend upcoming protests.
To stimulate a lagging economy, banks and governments may even decide to put expiration dates on CBDCs. These would make saving money impossible by seeing CBDC monthly allowances or wages expire unless all funds are spent within a set timeframe.
To many, all of this might sound like a conspiracy. However, the EU wants to introduce just such central bank digital currencies by 2030 at the latest.
The Day After the Crypto Collapse
Whether the cryptocurrency market fails due to the popping of the current Bitcoin bubble or an alleged cyber attack, the simple fact is that it will fail at some point. The bubble is already inflated, and the technical infrastructure to facilitate a devastating cyberattack is already in place.
When the crypto market does fail, world governments will appear powerless to act. However, as the world descends into chaos, world leaders will eventually take to stages to announce a bold and innovative solution to the current crisis. Likely, this will be one that sees banks recapitalize by using what consumer deposits are left, before entire world currencies are reissued to depositors in the form of CBDCs.
Special television broadcasts, online resources, and community presentations will teach people how to use the new digital currency being made available. At the same time, banks and governments will go to lengths to reassure the public that balances in their new digital wallets are much more secure than past iterations of digital currency like Bitcoin.
Bitcoin, the powers that be will trumpet, failed because it was decentralized and not governed by any central authority. This was why, if you ever lost access to your Bitcoin balance, it was gone for good. CBDC balances, on the other hand, will be recoverable if people ever lose access to their bank- or government-issued digital wallets.
The narrative which is used to create the new age of Centralized Bank Digital Currencies, will be a simple one of, yesterdays cryptocurrency was bad and we told you so from the begining because it wasn’t centrally managed and overseen like ours, but the technology was sound. We are just going to use it the right way.”
Likely, populaces will even welcome the world’s new forms of digital currency. It will only be later as traditions of putting cash in Christmas and Birthday cards are remembered, and simple things like paying for groceries during power outages become things of the past, when people begin to realize the nature of the new digital prison they live in. This and that the whole point of bygone cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, was to condition them to eventually accept their new prison of air in the first place.