世界債務津波とビットコインの勝利
Hello everyone, my name is Adam Livingston. I am the Bitcoin wizard and I have a fun one for you today. Today we’re going to look at three facts that matter. Number one, that global debt has never been larger. Worldwide sovereign liabilities are now topping 324 trillion. Bonds markets are showing early signs of stress and Bitcoin offers the ultimate hedge against that stress. We are on the precipice of a massive, incredibly large sovereign debt crisis and Bitcoin is the way out. So, we’re going to dive deep into the numbers behind the debt problem, the mechanics that turn it into a crisis, and the reasons that Bitcoin attracts capital when confidence in fiat systems erode. So, this slide here sets the quantitative baseline for the entire conversation. So, let’s work through each figure carefully. Number one, we have $324 trillion of global debt, which is worldwide sovereign, household, corporate, and financial sector liabilities. They reached this level in the first quarter of 2025, an increase of about seven and a half trillion dollars in just three months. So the pace of this accumulation of debt is faster than the global GDP growth, which means the debt ratio continues to rise even when the economy is expanding. So the debt to GDP ratio is 325%. A ratio above a 300% is generally considered a warning zone by the IMF and BIS because the servicing costs of the debt start to crowd out productive investment. Most large economies including the United States, Japan, and the Euro area are already above that threshold. So there is little fiscal room to absorb future shocks. And there is a $26 trillion maturity wall through the end of 2025. So, governments must refinance $7 trillion in emerging market bonds and $19 trillion in developed market bonds before December 2025. Rolling that volume in a higher rate environment puts upward pressure on yields and can trigger liquidity stress if dealer balance sheets cannot absorb the supply. Using the United States as an example, they’re projected to pay $952 billion in interest for the fiscal year 2025, which is roughly 3% of the entire US GDP. That’s larger than defense spending, just a heads up. And this problem is not exclusive to the US. Similar dynamics exist elsewhere. In France, several investment grade corporates now borrow more cheaply than their own government does, which is a sign that investors are beginning to question sovereign risk. So the global debt stock is not only large, it is rolling over at faster speeds and higher rates. This combination tightens the fiscal space. It increases rollover risk and it sets the stage for alternative assets like Bitcoin to capture flow once confidence in traditional sovereign paper starts to erode. So let’s break down point by point how a country moves from manageable deficits to a full-blown debt spiral. Number one, the country has rising deficits. the structural spending. Think pensions, healthcare, defense, energy subsidies. They keep growing faster than the government brings in with tax revenue. And then that leads to number two, higher yields. The investors notice that widening gap and they start to demand a premium. So then yields move up across the curve, often starting at the long end where buyers can walk away first. And then number three is compounding interest. So as maturing bonds are rolled at higher coupons, interest costs climb as a share of the budget. So then governments issue new debt to pay the larger coupons which adds more principle increasing next year’s interest bill again. And then with that comes a confidence loss quite obviously. Ratings agencies cut their outlooks and foreign reserves leak as the investors start to diversify. So domestic banks which hold a large share of sovereign paper, they see mark-to-market losses and they tighten their credit. So then the economy slows and that shrinks the tax base. Then number five, we see currency pressure. So then capital starts to seek safety in foreign assets, weakening the local currency. A weaker currency raises import prices. It lifts inflation and pushes yields even higher because the bond holders want protection against faster price growth. So the bottom line is that each stage of the sovereign debt spiral feeds the next. The deficits push the yields higher. The higher yields raise the interest costs. The interest costs erode confidence. And confidence shocks weaken the currency. So this loop can continue until the policymakers choose between painful austerity, outright default or inflation that erodess the real value of the debt. So when you totally understand this sequence, you can then understand why Bitcoin attracts capital when these feedback loops begin to accelerate. So a sovereign debt problem rarely stays inside of the bonds market because government paper is the core collateral of all of modern finance and the price volatility of that government’s paper ripples through every layer of the system. So here is how that transmission works. So number one, sovereign bonds are universal collateral. roughly $13 trillion of repurchase agreement, which is repo funding, and an even larger derivatives market post high-grade sovereigns as margin. And then when bond prices fall, clearing houses and prime brokers raise their haircuts. Higher haircuts means that borrowers must post cash or sell assets, which tightens liquidity across markets. Number two is basis trade crowding. So hedge funds, they have about $650 billion in long cash treasury/short futures positions, which is financed almost entirely in overnight repo. The BIS 2025 financial stability review warns that a 2 percentage point jump in haircuts could force funds to unwind as much as 1/3 of those trades within days, which would drain liquidity just when governments are issuing record supply. So, insurance companies, pension funds, and money market funds now hold more than 45% of outstanding sovereign debt. When the yields spike, these investors face marktomarket losses and redemption pressure, forcing additional sales and reinforcing the move. And then you see a realworld stress signal. And we saw this mechanism in action during the fourth quarter 2024 euro repo spike where we saw record bond issuance meet limited dealer balance sheet capacity. 1day repo rates surged above 7% a level that briefly froze corporate bond trading. So you might be asking what is the takeaway to all of this? Well, the system is not just highly indebted. It is highly levered on top of that debt. So even a modest shock to sovereign and bond prices can cascade through hedge fund leverage, collateral calls, and non-bank redemptions, which pretty much turns a fiscal problem into a full spectrum liquidity crisis. So remember the last slide? If you understand how this kind of all works together to help Bitcoin, then you throw this leverage on top of it, then you can start to see why Bitcoin’s lack of counterparty exposure can attract capital when all of these cascades begin. So before we talk about full-scale debt crises, let’s review two recent stress events that show how problems emerge and spread. Number one is the US regional bank panic that happened in March 2023. What happened was four midsize banks with $900 trillion in assets failed over 11 days. The trigger was valuation losses on longdated treasuries that were marked below cost when depositors rushed for the exits. And you might be asking, why does that matter? Because treasuries, remember, are normally treated as risk-free collateral. Yet, their price drop wiped out a sizable chunk of the bank’s capital. So, this episode proved that collateral can lose value quickly when rates rise, which just exposes all of the hidden vulnerabilities in our traditional banking system, and it forces the Fed to create an emergency lending facility. And then the French spread inversion happened this year. What happened? Well, the bond yields for cashrich French corporates such as L’Oreal, Airbus, and LVMH both fell below the yield on French government bonds. So, what happened? the investors decided that these private companies were a safer creditor than the sovereign country itself. So when corporate paper trades inside sovereign yields, it signals early doubts about the state’s fiscal position and accelerates funding pressure. So I got some key lessons for you to carry forward here. The Bitcoin wizard is going to teach you some stuff today, kids. All right. Number one, collateral quality is fluid. Even assets that are traditionally branded safe create capital shortfalls when the market prices shift. Number two, investor trust in these things can migrate very quickly. Capital moves to whoever maintains stronger balance sheet discipline, whether that is a blue chip firm or a digital assets with no issuer at all. And this is why MSTR has been the best performing equity since the Bitcoin standard era. Just saying. And then number three, the small tremors. They preview larger shocks because each event showed how market confidence can pivot in a mere matter of days, which kind of hints at the speed at which a sovereign debt spiral could unfold. So keep these points in mind as I move to the next section to examine Bitcoin’s performance when confidence in traditional collateral weakens. Bitcoin rides the chaos, folks. It just does. Why? Because there’s a hard cap supply. Maximum issuance is fixed at 21 million coins. No central bank or legislature can expand this number so holders avoid the delilution that comes with deficit financing or quantitative easing in fiat currencies. There is no sovereign liability at all because there is no issuer and there is no coupon because Bitcoin is a bearer asset settled on its own network. Default risk is structurally zero. There is no balance sheet that can deteriorate. And we’ve seen some incredible crisis performance data. During the March 2023 banking panic, Bitcoin rose 32.9% in that week that four US banks failed. And that was while the KBW bank index fell. We’ve seen peer-reviewed studies showing that Bitcoin returns are positively correlated with upside surprises in CPI, giving investors the hedge against the policydriven currency debasement. And we’re starting to just see crazy institutional demands. Remember the spot ETFs got approved. We’re seeing all these Bitcoin treasury companies popping up. All of this has driven the price action past 100,000 per coin and we’re just getting started even as global equity volatility is picking up. So the main takeaway here is that when confidence in government paper weakens, which it will always weaken because it’s designed to weaken, whether from debt expansion, which is inevitable, whether it’s from banking stress, which is inevitable, or inflation surprises, which are also inevitable, which means the capital will rotate into the assets that cannot be diluted. Bitcoin’s design characteristics meet this requirement directly, which is why it has historically captured inflows during episodes of financial instability. So, this slide outlines three realistic paths the global debt situation could follow and what each means for Bitcoin. Number one, if we see a baseline drift, you know, the debt path as debt to GDP keeps edging higher by 2035, interest rates level off around 4% of GDP, you might see a policy response where the central banks will cap yields with targeted bond buying. They might accept mild, persistent inflation to make the math work. And with Bitcoin, we would see slow but steady monetization. and the investors would treat Bitcoin like digital gold, an insurance asset that gradually captures a larger share of global savings. But if we start to see a bit of a disorderly debt spiral, you know, we take a debt path of where the bond markets push back and the sovereign yields jump 300 basis points and ratings downgrades pile up. The policy response might be emergency quantitative easing returns, capital controls surfacing in some regions and selective defaults or restructurings becoming likely. This is where we would start to see demand for Bitcoin spike because people will look for an exit from capital controls and inflation risk. Price appreciation in Bitcoin would then be strong, but the volatility would probably be higher because the inflows would start arriving in waves. And then number three would be a total fiscal reset. The debt path would be the political consensus forms for spending cuts and tax increases. I know that sounds a bit unrealistic, doesn’t it? Then you’d see primary surpluses appear and that would stabilize the debt ratio. It would be so nice to see credible austerity restoring confidence yields drifting lower without heavy central bank support. I know it sounds totally unrealistic, but hey, you got to save yourself somehow. And the Bitcoin context here is that price action would flatten as systemic stress subsides. Yet, Bitcoin would always restore its store value for those skeptical that fiscal discipline would hold over the long run. And I think you have a right to be skeptical about that. So whether the adjustment is slow, chaotic, or disciplined, Bitcoin’s role differs, yes, but in every scenario, it remains a portfolio tool for hedging the sovereign debt risk. If you believe that the printers are going to print, Bitcoin is where to park your capital. But remember, this is not financial advice. This is financial entertainment. Now, because I am a Bitcoin maximalist and I believe that Bitcoin is the riskoff asset, it could be risky depending on your time horizon. Bitcoin will always have regulatory swings. You there there could be regulatory swings as to how Bitcoin is treated by these sovereign governments. Bitcoin is volatile. So if you have the time horizon of a little ant, well, you could buy high, sell low, and you’d be screwed. And that just relates to the point here about the correlation regimes in shortterm moves. So think in risk sell-offs, Bitcoin will sometimes trade with equities because investors just start raising cash everywhere. But the long-term trend, folks, over multi-year windows, correlations to major asset classes actually remain low, which supports the case for why you got to buy Bitcoin. So, I guess what I’m going to say here is that you need to separate tactical trading decisions in your head from the long-term strategic thesis. Avoid conflating a oneweek equity beta with a long run store of value. Okay, so let’s close with the five core points that you should remember. Number one, debt metrics are flashing red. Global sovereign debt and interest expense metrics are at record highs even before the next recession. This limits policy flexibility. Number two, remember debt spirals are self-reinforcing. Higher yields raise interest costs which enlarge deficits which push the yields higher again. And once that loop starts, it is hard to stop without austerity or inflation. And we’re all living through that now. Have you seen the price of ground beef? And number three, leverage. Remember the leverage amplifies the risk. Repo, derivatives, basis trades. They sit on top of sovereign bonds. So a small move in yields can turn into a full liquidity crunch when margin calls hit. Number four, Bitcoin has performed during crises. Historical data show Bitcoin often gains when traditional collateral weakens or banking stress appears thanks to its fixed supply and absence of default risk. Bitcoin is the riskoff asset. If you remember one thing from this presentation, that’s what it is. And then number five, market chaos creates opportunity. The more unstable the bonds market becomes, the more attractive Bitcoin’s non-state hardcap design looks to capital seeking refuge. So record debt, structural deficits, and systemic leverage are all converging, folks. Understanding Bitcoin’s role as the ultimate hedge against all of these pressures is no longer optional. It is a necessary part of your modern portfolio strategy. Unless you want to just lose, which who wants to lose? Come on, let’s be real. So, to sum it all up, folks, in short, the math of sovereign balance sheets is moving in one direction while Bitcoin’s code keeps moving in no direction. You do not have to be a futurist to see the gap widening. You just have to decide whether your capital will sit on the wrong side of the divide. A hardcapped issuerless asset with a global permissionless settlement is no longer a fringe experiment, folks. It is a rational response to a financial system that is running out of easy options. Adding Bitcoin to the toolkit is therefore a less speculative punt and a more exercise in basic risk management. The earlier that you act against this tsunami coming, the smaller your allocation needs to be to achieve genuine protection and the larger your upside if the debt spiral accelerates. And if you agree with me, the debt spiral is inevitable. Thank you so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed this content. My name is Adam Livingston. I am the Bitcoin Wizard. Please like this video and subscribe to the channel. Share this with your friends and family who need to understand the orange glory of Bitcoin and I will see you in the next one. Have a terrific day. Class dismissed.
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🚨 The Coming Debt Tsunami – And How Bitcoin Will Win 🚨
Global sovereign debt is headed for the stratosphere while leverage stacks higher than a Jenga tower. In this video, Adam Livingston (your favorite Bitcoin Wizard) breaks down why the fuse is burning and how a 21-million-unit digital asset is positioned to ride the explosion.
What you’ll learn:
• The shocking scale of 2025’s $324 trillion global debt mountain
• How self-reinforcing debt spirals push yields, deficits, and currencies into a doom loop
• The hidden leverage in repo markets, basis trades, and non-bank balance sheets
• Real-world tremors: the 2023 US bank panic and France’s corporate-over-sovereign yield inversion
• Three scenarios for the decade ahead—from slow drift to disorderly spiral
• Why Bitcoin’s fixed supply and issuer-free design make it the ultimate financial life raft
• Key risks: regulation, volatility, and short-term correlation traps
Why this matters:
Debt metrics keep flashing red, policy options are narrowing, and every liquidity crunch moves faster than the last. Understanding Bitcoin’s role as a hedge is no longer optional, it is prudent risk management.
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Disclaimers:
This video is for educational purposes only. Nothing here is financial advice. Always do your own research before investing.
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