The ARMA Bill Would Make Bitcoin a Tier 1 Reserve Asset, Funded by Revaluing Gold

Rep. Nick Begich (R-AK) and Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME) introduced the American Reserve Modernization Act of 2026 (ARMA) on Wednesday. The bill launched with 16 announced cosponsors, but last-minute additions brought the total to 21. The bill would authorize the U.S. Treasury to acquire up to 200,000 bitcoin per year for five years, targeting a reserve of 1 million BTC. It is a rebranding and expansion of the original BITCOIN Act co-introduced last year by Begich and Senator Cynthia Lummis, and would codify Trump's March 2025 executive order establishing a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve into permanent law that cannot be reversed by a future president.

The bill classifies bitcoin as a "Tier 1" strategic reserve asset, putting it on the same legal footing as gold. A separate digital asset stockpile would hold other federally owned crypto. All acquisitions must be budget-neutral. The funding mechanism is revaluing Federal Reserve gold certificates from their current statutory price of $42.22 per ounce, set in 1973, to current market prices. That gap generates hundreds of billions in accounting gains without new taxpayer debt. At today's gold price of $4,528 per ounce, the revaluation would unlock over $1.17 trillion in paper gains on the government's 8,133 metric tons of gold.

The bill also ends the practice of auctioning off seized bitcoin. All future seizures would be transferred directly to the Strategic Reserve instead of being liquidated by the U.S. Marshals Service. Existing government holdings would be consolidated into a single audited ledger. Bitcoin in the reserve would be held for a minimum of 20 years, with the only exception being sales to reduce the national debt, which topped $39 trillion on Wednesday.

The federal custody standards are worth reading closely: geographic distribution of private keys across air-gapped facilities, multi-signature governance requiring authorization from the Treasury, the Fed, and an independent third agency, and investment in "quantum-resistant cryptographic upgrades." This is the most technically detailed bitcoin custody language ever written into a Congressional bill. As Brian Morgenstern told us last year, the planning for this has been accelerating behind the scenes for months.

The gold certificate revaluation is the quiet revolution here. The U.S. government has been carrying gold on its books at $42.22 an ounce for over 50 years while the market price has surged past $4,500. That's a 107x gap between the accounting fiction and reality. ARMA would close it and use the difference to buy an asset that can't be debased. Whether it passes is one question. That it exists with bipartisan support and 21 cosponsors on day one is the signal.

Nvidia Posts $81.6 Billion Quarter as Jensen Declares "Demand Has Gone Parabolic"

Why it matters: Every dollar Nvidia prints in revenue is a dollar of electricity demand that didn't exist two years ago.

Nvidia reported 85% year-over-year revenue growth to $81.6 billion, guided $91 billion for next quarter (vs. $87.4 billion consensus), and posted 75% gross margins. Data center revenue alone hit $75.2 billion, up 90%+ year-over-year. Jensen Huang said "Agentic AI has arrived." The stock slipped 1% post-market because $81.6 billion is now the expectation, not the surprise. Blackwell systems are ramping across hyperscalers, sovereign customers, and AI clouds. Every one of those GPUs needs power. As we covered yesterday, the energy demand story is the real story underneath all of this.

OpenAI to File for Record-Breaking $60 Billion IPO, Targeting $1 Trillion Valuation

Why it matters: The company that kicked off the AI boom is about to test whether public markets will pay venture prices.

Deutsche Bank reports that OpenAI is preparing a confidential IPO filing as soon as this week, targeting a September listing. The $60 billion raise would be more than double Saudi Aramco's record $25.6 billion IPO. At a $1 trillion valuation, OpenAI would be the 14th largest company on Earth, just behind Berkshire Hathaway, despite having never turned a profit and reportedly hitting $30 billion in annualized revenue this month. For context, Berkshire made $370 billion in revenue and $67 billion in profit last year. The AI valuation bubble is about to meet the public market's demand for actual earnings.

Oil Drops 5.6% on Hormuz "Resolution" Hopes, but Iran Is Building Permanent Toll Infrastructure

Why it matters: Markets are pricing in peace while Iran builds a toll booth for the world's most important oil chokepoint.

Brent crude fell 5.6% to $105/barrel after 2-3 tankers crossed the Strait of Hormuz and Trump said talks with Iran are "in the final stages." But Deutsche Bank's oil desk cautions that actual Gulf export volumes haven't increased. Meanwhile, Iran's new "Persian Gulf Strait Authority" has published an official map claiming 22,000 square kilometers of military oversight, and countries like China and South Korea are now negotiating passage directly with Tehran. Ships are paying $150,000+ for transit. Secretary Rubio said "a toll collection system in the Strait of Hormuz will make a diplomatic deal impossible." ING notes the market is "overly sensitive to Iran headlines" and that "we've been in this situation multiple times before, which ultimately led to disappointment."

BofA Survey: More Than Half of Fund Managers Think Fed Hike Conditions Are Already Met

Why it matters: The market is no longer debating IF the Fed hikes, but WHEN.

Bank of America's latest FX and Rates Sentiment Survey shows 52% of fund managers believe the Fed has either already met the conditions for a rate hike or will do so if core inflation keeps climbing, regardless of labor market conditions. The April FOMC minutes revealed a "majority" of officials thought "some policy firming would likely become appropriate if inflation were to continue to run persistently above 2%." BofA sees core PCE at 3.1% by year-end. This is the backdrop against which ARMA would have the Treasury buying 200,000 BTC per year. An asset with a fixed supply facing a central bank that may be about to tighten further is either the worst timing or the most prescient hedge in history.

Deutsche Bank: AI's Productivity Promise vs. the Decade's Structural Headwinds

Why it matters: The defining question of the next five years is whether AI can outrun sovereign debt gravity.

Deutsche Bank's new "Megatrends" research uses an AI-powered model tracking nearly 100 data points across 70 years and concludes that the world faces overlapping headwinds not seen since the 1970s oil crises. The central tension for developed economies through 2030: Can AI-driven productivity growth outweigh the drag of ballooning sovereign deficits? BofA's parallel research on AI productivity finds the technology is boosting specific tasks by 40-55% but the economy-wide effect is only +0.1% per year so far. The productivity takeoff is coming, but not immediately. In the meantime, the deficits compound. Bitcoin thrives in exactly this gap between the promise and the reality.

Japan CPI Prints 4-Year Low While Bond Yields Hit 29-Year Highs

Why it matters: Japan's bond market is telling you something the inflation data isn't.

Japan's April core CPI came in at +1.4% year-over-year, a four-year low that undershot every economist estimate. But Q1 GDP beat at 2.1% annualized, and 10-year JGB yields are sitting at 29-year highs. The BOJ now faces genuinely mixed signals heading into its June 15-16 meeting. Inflation is undershooting, growth is overshooting, and the bond market is screaming about fiscal sustainability regardless. The global sovereign debt reckoning that we've been tracking isn't just a U.S. problem. Japan's 260% debt-to-GDP ratio means even modest yield moves create enormous fiscal strain. When bonds and inflation diverge this sharply, it means the market is pricing in something worse than the data suggests.

Verify Your Bitcoin's Quantum Exposure This Weekend

Glassnode just showed that 4.12M BTC are quantum-exposed, mostly from address reuse. Check yours.

Glassnode's latest research found that 20% of all bitcoin sits in quantum-exposed addresses, and the main culprit is user behavior, not the protocol. Address reuse and partial spending leave public keys visible on-chain. The fix: stop reusing addresses. If your wallet defaults to generating a new receive address each time (Sparrow, Electrum, most modern wallets do this), you're already practicing good hygiene. If you're using an older setup or a custodian that reuses addresses, download Sparrow Wallet and sweep your coins to fresh addresses this weekend. Quantum computing is years away from being a real threat, but good key management is free right now.