Alex Falcon

How the U.S. “saved” Japan — and themselves in the process The Japanese yen recently fell to a 40-year low — nearly 164 to the dollar. And for the first time since 1998, the U.S. stepped in itself to support the yen’s exchange rate. But why would America even save someone else’s currency? Because Japan is the largest foreign holder of U.S. government debt, with roughly $1.14 trillion in U.S. Treasuries. And that’s a real trap. Because of the crisis, Japan spent $73 billion in the spring to support the yen. But it still fell. The question became: where do you get even more dollars? — Exactly, by dumping those same Treasuries. But if they start doing that, yields on U.S. debt will shoot up. In other words, Japan’s problems suddenly become America’s problems. And that’s when the U.S. came up with a workaround: Japan was given the ability to borrow the dollars it needed against its U.S. Treasuries — instead of selling them on the market. And the U.S. itself, to support the yen, sold its euro reserves instead of dollars. So they strengthened the yen without weakening the dollar. Formally, the U.S. was saving Japan and its currency. In reality, it was saving its own debt market, and with it, the stability of the entire dollar system. When you owe the world trillions, a crisis for your creditor automatically becomes a crisis for you. And saving them is the only way to save yourself.

Miners found a new business Things have taken an interesting turn for mining investors. Their investments got a second life — just not in the way anyone expected. In short: Over the past year, many miners have stopped mining Bitcoin. With the crypto market correction and rising electricity costs, it's simply not as profitable as it used to be. But at the same time, many of them are now making about 2x more money. And the reason is the same thing that's been reshaping everything else: artificial intelligence. As it turns out, mining farm owners already had the most valuable assets: large amounts of power capacity, land, cooling infrastructure, and existing grid connections. And power is exactly what AI companies are desperately short on right now. That's why former Bitcoin mining facilities are being converted into data centers and leased to tech companies under 10–20-year contracts. For comparison, a small facility can generate: 📈 $4K–7K per month from Bitcoin mining; 📈 $8K–16K per month after switching to AI infrastructure. That's also why it's not just mining farms that are becoming more valuable — older industrial buildings and warehouses with high-capacity electrical connections are seeing demand surge as well.

Take on too much risk — and lose Here's a story from the world of finance that the entire market is talking about right now. Two years ago, 22-year-old wunderkind and former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner (pictured) launched his first investment fund. Some very big names believed in him and invested around $400 million. And that's despite the fact that he'd never managed money before. So what did Leopold do? He went all in on a single scenario: that the development of AI would create enormous demand for chips, memory, electricity, and data centers. And that bet paid off. Big time: by 2026, the fund had grown to around $30 billion, with an unbelievable return of over 700%. “A new genius has been born on Wall Street.” That's what everyone was saying. But then July 2026 came. Stocks of AI-related companies suddenly started falling. The fund's key holdings dropped 35% or more during July alone. How much the fund lost overall is still unknown. At the same time, half of its remaining assets consist of a stake in the private company Anthropic, which can't simply be sold quickly. And the fund could have survived this. But it wasn't investing only its investors' money — it had also borrowed enormous sums from banks. For every dollar of its own capital, it had up to four borrowed dollars. Now the banks are demanding their money back, and the fund is being forced to sell its assets right into the downturn. According to CNBC, the fund is closing out its entire public portfolio. In other words, it's selling all of its publicly traded stocks under pressure from its brokers. Tough luck for the guy. But for the rest of us, it's another lesson in how you can achieve enormous success, even correctly identify the biggest trend of the decade, and still lose if you take on too much risk and lose control of the situation.

Long-Term investing strategy When the crypto market is falling, buying feels scary. When it's going up, it feels like you've already missed your chance. As a result, most people either buy based on emotion or keep waiting for the perfect entry point — and end up doing nothing at all. But there's a simple way to avoid this problem: invest a fixed amount of money at regular intervals. This strategy is called DCA (Dollar-Cost Averaging). You simply choose the asset, the amount you want to invest, and how often you want to buy. For example: $50 worth of Bitcoin every week. When Bitcoin is cheaper, your $50 buys more. When it's more expensive, it buys less. Over time, your average purchase price naturally evens out, and over the course of a few years, it often ends up being better than the average market participant's. Bybit even has a built-in Auto-Invest bot designed specifically for this strategy. You set it up once — choose your currency, the coin, the investment amount, and the schedule. After that, your purchases happen automatically, whether it's every day or once a month. The key is to choose a coin you genuinely believe in for the long term.

How social media is being banned around the world Just a couple of years ago, only one country wanted to ban social media for children. Now it's 25. Australia has banned social media for anyone under 16. The UK is introducing its ban starting in 2027, with France, Spain, and Turkey following. The justification is the same everywhere: protecting children. It's also a message that tends to resonate with the public, making these laws much easier to pass. Infinite scroll, autoplay, push notifications — all of these are now increasingly being treated as addictive design features. In other words, social media is starting to be regulated much like cigarettes or gambling. The problem is, bans by themselves don't actually work. The only way to reliably keep kids off these platforms is to verify everyone's age — using government ID, banking information, or biometrics. In other words, if governments want to keep teenagers off apps like TikTok, they also have to eliminate anonymity for adults. That's exactly what many of these countries are now discussing. The UK has already started putting this into practice. So the global trend looks like this: phase out online anonymity under the banner of protecting children. Want to use the internet? Be prepared to submit your personal information and verify your identity.

The World’s No. 1 Elite sports are a world where the cost of a mistake isn’t measured in points — it’s measured in reputation, careers, and years of hard work. And while team sports let you share the responsibility, tennis is different — out there on the court, it’s just you against your opponent, the crowd, and your own emotions. Today on my podcast, I’m joined by Aryna Sabalenka — a person who knows exactly what that feels like. The World No. 1, a four-time Grand Slam champion — two Australian Open titles and two US Open titles — the winner of 21 WTA singles titles. One of the highest-paid tennis players in the world, with more than $42 million in career prize money, and this season she set another record by earning nearly $5 million for winning the US Open. In this episode, we talked about what it’s really like to be the best in the world without losing yourself. How to deal with emotional overload, hate, and the kind of perfectionism that can destroy even the greatest careers. And why mental health and having the right team around you become the deciding factors — not only in sports, but in life. We also discussed what really lies behind the records, the titles, and the millions in prize money: fear, exhaustion, learning from mistakes, or the self-awareness it takes to stay at the top. This episode is about the mindset of a champion. About the inner system that helps you stay at the top when everyone else burns out under the pressure. Watch the full episode here: https://youtu.be/AKZz6KNw4lM 🤘❤️‍🔥 Don’t forget to hit Like and share the episode with friends.

Four-time Grand Slam champion. Winner of 21 WTA titles. Former World No. 1 and one of the highest-earning players in tennis history, with more than $42 million in career prize money. She accomplished what no woman had done in 11 years — successfully defended the Australian Open title. Aryna Sabalenka. Coming soon.

You do realize AI is already making decisions for you, right? A lot of people still think, “I don't use AI. All that ChatGPT stuff is a whole different world that has nothing to do with me.” But if you dig just a little deeper, you'll realize AI is already built into almost every part of our lives: • Money. At many of the world's largest banks, AI evaluates loan applications. It looks at your spending patterns, transfers, and even how you use the banking app. • Work. Algorithms rank millions of résumés and decide which candidates recruiters see first. You might get rejected without a single person ever reviewing your application — because the system never showed it to anyone. • Shopping. Marketplaces don't necessarily show you the best products. They show you the ones you're most likely to buy. And those are just a few examples. The crazy part is that all of this has happened in just the last few years, which means we're still only at the very beginning of the AI era. The next step is AI agents that don't just give advice or analyze information — they actually take action. For example, they'll find the right product, wait for it to go on sale, and buy it for you. Google has already started rolling out that kind of infrastructure. So at the very least, we're headed toward a fascinating future — one where the very nature of the internet could fundamentally change.

Strategy finally sold Bitcoin For years, Strategy has been buying Bitcoin with money raised from investors, promising them regular payouts. Roughly speaking, it's similar to bonds: you lend money to the company, and in return you receive a fixed payment in U.S. dollars every quarter. This week, one of those payments came due, but the company didn't have enough cash on hand. For the first time, it sold part of its Bitcoin holdings — 3,588 BTC, for about $216 million. Technically, that's just 0.4% of its total Bitcoin holdings, which isn't much. However, the company's payment obligations continue to grow. And if the company ultimately changes its approach and begins selling off its Bitcoin holdings, it could easily become the trigger for a deep correction in the crypto market. For context, a sale of $200 million was enough to trigger a 2.5% decline. At the moment, the company still holds about $53 billion worth of Bitcoin on its balance sheet.

The ceasefire is starting to crack The U.S.-Iran deal is falling apart before our eyes. According to media reports, Iran first attacked three commercial ships near the Strait of Hormuz. Then the U.S. responded by striking more than 80 Iranian targets, including air defense systems, radar installations, and patrol boats. Now Iran has retaliated with strikes on U.S. bases in Bahrain and Kuwait. At the same time, the U.S. revoked its authorization for Iranian oil sales — the very authorization it had granted just a week ago. Technically, the ceasefire is still in place — the negotiations are continuing. In reality, both sides are exchanging strikes, and the conflict is once again beginning to pull neighboring Gulf countries into the fighting. The oil market has already reacted: Brent crude rose more than 3% to $76.50 a barrel. Just a week ago, however, the market was pricing in hopes of a deal, and oil had fallen to its lowest levels. Once again, we've seen that conflicts like these are easy to start and nearly impossible to end. The world has developed a chronic problem at the most sensitive point of global trade — and every one of us will end up paying for it through higher fuel costs, more expensive logistics, and rising prices at the grocery store.

World-Class Pull Most people lose momentum just a couple of months after their first success. In the world of content, it happens even faster: today you're at the top, tomorrow you've been forgotten. Only a handful of people manage to stay at the top and turn a spike of attention into long-term success. Today, one of those people is joining me — Vladimir Shmondenko. To millions, he's Anatoly the janitor, but behind that character is an athlete with a 305 kg (672 lb) deadlift and a creator who has built a disciplined system for producing content. We sat down again after two years to understand how he didn't just "stay relevant," but managed to maintain both his scale and his pace. Today, Vova is known all over the world. His videos consistently generate hundreds of millions of views, his content gets recognized by the biggest names in the industry, and people on the level of Joe Rogan and Arnold Schwarzenegger follow his media. In the podcast, we talked about how not to lose your mind when you become world-famous and how not to lose your hunger for results, how to get rid of the small-town mentality that holds you back from growing, and what creators should do at a time when AI starts creating digital clones of them that compete with the original. This is a conversation about why the scale of your success is always secondary to discipline and the willingness to be just the right kind of obsessed with what you do. Watch the episode here: https://youtu.be/eVLL7Mc0wf4 🤘❤️‍🔥 Don't forget to hit Like and share the episode with friends.

Soon on the podcast — Vladimir Shmondenko, better known around the world as Anatoly. A guy from a small village who went from lifting homemade weights to building an audience of over 20 million followers and billions of views. We talked about his journey, discipline, motivation, life abroad, and what it really takes to become one of the most recognizable figures in the global fitness community. Tune in to hear the story behind one of the biggest names in fitness today!🤘❤️‍🔥

The world’s largest funds are changing their strategy Every year, Invesco publishes one of the most important surveys in the global economy. They sit down with dozens of the world’s largest institutional funds and central banks and ask one simple question: what are you actually planning to do? Together, they manage $29 trillion in assets. That’s more than the annual GDP of the United States. In practice, these are the institutions that determine what happens in global markets. And this time, they surprised a lot of economists: • 80% of them named energy infrastructure as their top priority for the years ahead: almost all are investing in power generation, electricity grids, LNG, and nuclear energy. • Another 33% plan to significantly increase their gold holdings. More importantly, they want to store that gold within their own countries rather than with U.S. custodians. Several central banks are already building alternative asset storage systems outside the United States. • At the same time, the share of central banks expecting the U.S. dollar’s global role to weaken has risen from 12% to 29% in just two years. Nearly a threefold increase. The most important part: in the past, the main question for these funds was how to generate higher returns. Today, in the current environment, it’s how to preserve what they have. They’ve stopped building portfolios for a stable world and started building them for a world where conflicts, sanctions, and crises are simply part of the new normal. The same logic applies to individual investors. Gold through allocated or bank-backed ownership programs, real assets, and diversification are more relevant today than ever.

What actually protected wealth past crises A lot of people ask the same question: where should you move your money when the economy becomes unstable? Some believe in gold, others trust the U.S. dollar, and some put their faith in Bitcoin. The reality is, there’s no universal answer. Every crisis is different, and what works in one may fail in the next. A recent example: during the 2008 financial crisis, U.S. dollars and U.S. Treasury bonds were among the safest places to be. But in 2022, Treasury bonds fell right alongside stocks. A lot can change in just a few years. But there’s one thing that almost every crisis has in common 👇 During periods of extreme uncertainty, almost everything tends to fall. In March 2020, gold dropped about 15%, while Bitcoin plunged roughly 50%. Investors sold whatever they could to raise cash. That leads to a few practical rules: 1️⃣ Keep part of your portfolio liquid. Real estate can protect against inflation, but you can’t sell a property overnight. You need assets you can access quickly — not only to cover unexpected expenses, but also to buy quality investments after prices have dropped and the recovery begins. 2️⃣ Diversify across more than just asset classes. Diversify across countries and markets too. U.S. stocks, international markets, crypto, gold — each behaves differently during a crisis. And most importantly, remember this: the biggest problem during a crisis usually isn’t choosing the wrong investment. It’s being forced to sell the right one at the worst possible time. That’s why keeping part of your money in cash or different currencies across multiple accounts is an important part of any resilient strategy.

Is the financial machine starting to crack? I’ve already written about Saylor’s experiment — how he’s building a financial structure around Bitcoin while taking on more and more obligations. This week, the story took a new turn. One of the largest firms specializing in investor class actions, Rosen Law Firm, has launched an investigation into Strategy. Five instruments are immediately under scrutiny: MSTR, STRC, STRF, STRK, and STRD. The suspicion is that the company may have been spreading misleading information about its business. A rough patch has begun: 1️⃣ First, STRC dropped below $76 with a $100 par value. 2️⃣ Then CryptoQuant analysts said Strategy should pause its Bitcoin purchases. 3️⃣ Now, the lawyers have stepped in too. All this noise is putting pressure on Bitcoin right now. Strategy remains the largest corporate buyer of BTC, and as long as questions hang over it — the market stays on edge. But if the company fends off the legal pressure, STRC returns to par, and the model proves resilient — this could become one of the key drivers of the next rally.

The boldest experiment in crypto Michael Saylor, the founder of Strategy, the world's largest corporate holder of Bitcoin, has come up with something unique. Instead of simply buying Bitcoin with the company's own money, he's building an entire financial machine that attracts outside capital and channels it into BTC purchases. One of these instruments is STRC. Investors provide capital to the company and receive regular payouts of around 11.5% annually. The company then uses that capital to buy Bitcoin. But there's a catch. ⚙️ How it’s supposed to work STRC — an instrument Saylor designed with the help of AI — is intended to keep its price hovering around $100. If the price falls, the company raises the yield to attract more buyers. The price is supposed to recover. Think of it as an automatic stabilizer. ❓ Why this is interesting Right now, STRC is trading at roughly $83, despite its $100 target value. The yield has already been increased, but the market isn't responding the way the model was designed to. This is the first real stress test of the entire structure. If the mechanism fails to stabilize the price, the company will either have to keep increasing payouts to investors or buy less Bitcoin. Saylor is essentially testing one question: can financial instruments be built around a single asset indefinitely?

Paradigm shift The global financial system is outdated. We can send a message to the other side of the planet in a fraction of a second, yet moving money from one country to another still takes days and comes with hefty fees. Today, I’m joined by Ben Zhou — billionaire, founder and CEO of Bybit, and one of the people building the infrastructure for a new era. Under his leadership, the company has grown into a global powerhouse serving 81 million users across 243 countries, with more than $19 billion in daily trading volume. Today, Bybit is the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency exchange. In this episode, we break down how blockchain technology is becoming the backbone of the new economy and why stablecoins are already processing more transaction volume than Visa and Mastercard. We also discuss what lies ahead for traditional banks — whether they can adapt or whether they’ll fade away like pagers in the age of smartphones. We talk about how artificial intelligence will transform the way we interact with money over the next five years, and why access to financial tools should be as simple as sending a sticker in a messaging app. This conversation is for anyone who wants to understand how the world of tomorrow will work — and isn’t interested in holding on to outdated rules that no longer make sense. Watch the full episode here: https://youtu.be/QqNy-R70Eok 🤘❤️‍🔥 Don’t forget to like the video and share it with your friends.

Soon on my podcast: the Founder and CEO of Bybit, the world’s second-largest crypto exchange, serving 81 million users across 243 countries with over $19 billion in daily trading volume. We talked not only about crypto and scaling a global business, but also about the true cost of leadership: making tough decisions, navigating crises, and laying off thousands of employees to keep a company alive. A conversation about why real-world business is very different from what’s taught in an MBA program. Stay tuned!🤘❤️‍🔥

Bitcoin vs China 🇹🇼 Taiwan has accumulated $602 billion in foreign exchange reserves. But there's one serious problem: 80% of that amount is held in U.S. dollars. That's why the country is now officially discussing the idea of converting part of those reserves into Bitcoin. The reason: Taiwan effectively does not control its money. And it's unclear what could happen to those assets if China ultimately attacks the island and Taiwan faces a major crisis. 🔐 A new philosophy of reserves In the past, countries held their reserves in gold and U.S. dollars. But after several nations discovered that their money could be frozen at a critical moment, attitudes toward reserve assets began to change. And Bitcoin is different: it isn't held in another country's bank, it doesn't need to be physically transported, and it can't be blocked by a single political decision.

Cats replaced kids 🐱 The global pet products and services market is worth $273 billion in 2025. By 2034, it's projected to reach nearly $500 billion. That’s already on the scale of the pharmaceutical industry. The reason is simple: young people are getting married later, having children later — or not having them at all. But the need for care and emotional connection hasn’t gone anywhere. A pet fills that gap: it provides a sense of family, but without the cost and responsibilities that come with raising a child. As a result, in China, there are already more pets in urban households than children under the age of 4. 🏥 Pets are being treated like people The fastest-growing segment isn’t pet food — it’s healthcare. Oncology, cardiology, MRIs, insurance, weight-loss medications. Pharmaceutical companies are already testing an Ozempic-like drug for cats and dogs, as roughly 60% of pets in the U.S. are overweight. 💡 Why businesses love it A pet is the perfect monetization asset. It needs to be fed every day. It gets sick. Owners spend emotionally, not rationally. And most importantly, people will cut back on spending for themselves before they cut back on spending for their pets. In China, pet food sales have increased sixfold over the past 10 years — even against the backdrop of an economic slowdown.