The Commoner

Wednesday, September 23, 2026

Sup, freaks.

I'm writing to you from the Bitcoin Policy Institute's Freedom Tech DC summit after speaking about power and energy. The broadcast is below for you freaks who want to tune in. Before we get there, Howard Marks put out a memo yesterday that is worth spending some time with, particularly alongside the inflation figures I shared last night.

WHAT TO EXPECT IN THIS NEWSLETTER

• Marty's Bent: Treasury buybacks, debt repayment and the purchasing power lost along the way.
• The BPI livestream and $1.71 billion of bitcoin ETF inflows over two sessions.
• Stronger U.S. manufacturing, a Coldcard recovery update and fresh Hormuz oil-flow estimates.
• A quick Signal privacy check and the latest bitcoin data snapshot.

Marty's Bent

They Can Refinance the Debt. You Still Pay.

The scale of the theft that has been enabled by currency debasement is hard to wrap your head around. I shared some inflation history yesterday, and it is worth sitting with what those numbers actually mean for the people who worked to earn the money. Using the Minneapolis Fed's historical consumer-price series, prices in 2025 were roughly 23 times their 1940 level. A dollar held as cash over that period lost about 96% of its purchasing power. The dollar is still there. Most of what it could buy is gone.

Money saved represents work that has already been done. Someone gave up hours of their life to earn it with the intention of spending it on something in the future. When that money buys less, the work doesn't get credited back to them. They have to go out and work more to make up the difference. We've built an economy in which people are expected to become competent investors simply to preserve the fruits of their labor, and then act as if there's something wrong with the people who would prefer to save their money and get on with their lives. If you're fortunate enough to own assets that appreciate, you have a way to defend yourself. If you're trying to get enough money together to buy those assets in the first place, good luck.

Howard Marks is asking why Washington is trying to make its borrowing cheaper while it keeps spending beyond its means. In his latest memo, he looks at Treasury's bond buybacks. Last month, Treasury announced that it would raise the maximum size of certain long-dated buyback operations from $2 billion to at least $4 billion per operation. Treasury is buying back existing debt, using cash from new borrowing or other resources, to improve liquidity. This is a different operation from the Fed creating reserves to purchase bonds. It can make those bonds easier to trade, but the spending commitments are still there. If Treasury replaces longer-term debt with shorter-term borrowing, it has to come back and borrow again sooner. An awful lot of effort spent managing the consequences of spending money we don't have.

Marks doesn't think the US is likely to run out of dollars to pay its creditors. The government issues the currency it borrows in, and the rest of the world still has an enormous appetite for dollar assets. He also acknowledges that the sustained inflation he feared after the 2008 rescue didn't materialize. But imagine saving for something for years and finding that you still can't afford it. Washington making every payment on time doesn't give you those years back. This is why I don't need a failed Treasury auction to be concerned about what is happening to people's savings.

More energy, more factories and better tools would help people produce more with their time. Marks includes productivity growth in his proposed remedy, along with spending restraint and higher tax revenues. I want to see that growth, but Washington can spend the proceeds too. The person doing the work still needs somewhere to save what they earn. That's why I save in bitcoin. Its price can move violently, but Washington can't increase its supply to pay for another spending promise.

SIGNAL

Tune in to Freedom Tech DC

Your Uncle Marty is at the Bitcoin Policy Institute's Freedom Tech DC summit today and just got done speaking about power and energy. It's good to have that conversation alongside bitcoin, free speech and compute. None of these tools run on good intentions. Someone has to build the power plants, connect the machines and make it possible for people outside the largest companies to use them. I'd like to see a lot more Americans able to mine bitcoin, run their own models and build businesses without asking a handful of gatekeepers for access. You can follow along with BPI's Day 2 broadcast here.

$1.71 billion into bitcoin ETFs in two sessions

The bitcoin ETFs have had a busy start to the week. Our flow tracker shows roughly $999 million of net inflows on Monday and $715 million on Tuesday, bringing the two-session total to $1.71 billion. Across the last four trading days, net inflows were $2.31 billion. That puts September at roughly $2.03 billion through Tuesday. For all of the time spent debating whether institutions are interested in bitcoin, these buyers are putting real money into the products. I'd prefer that more people learn to hold their own keys, but the demand coming through the ETFs is worth keeping an eye on. Those coins have to come from somewhere.

Factories are reporting more orders, output and hiring

Liz Ann Sonders flagged an encouraging manufacturing report this morning. The S&P Global flash manufacturing PMI rose to 57.0 in September from 53.9 in August, further above the survey's 50 no-change mark. Factories reported stronger output, new orders and hiring, with domestic demand doing the work while export orders continued to fall. For a longer view, S&P says the improvement in activity across manufacturing and services together is the strongest since early 2015 once the post-lockdown surge is excluded. More orders mean someone has to make the goods, which is why I want to see hiring rise with them. Rising input costs and supply bottlenecks are still getting in the way. More energy and more capacity would help these businesses turn that demand into goods people can actually buy.

An update on the Coldcard recovery effort

Alex Thorn has an update on the Coldcard investigation we discussed with him earlier. He attributes a 52.37 bitcoin transfer to the recovery effort involving Crypto Recovery Trust. The September 21 transaction is confirmed onchain and includes a message pointing to the trust's website. Roughly 3.01 bitcoin in that total still has an unestablished origin. I want to see the victims get their savings back; we haven't verified repayments yet. Never give anyone your recovery words, including someone claiming to help recover stolen funds.

TankerTrackers estimates 10.35 million barrels a day through Hormuz

Here's an update worth reading alongside my conversation with John Arnold on Monday. TankerTrackers estimates that 10.35 million barrels of crude a day are moving through Hormuz. The 13 million figure in its post includes 2.65 million barrels from ports outside the strait. Monday's discussion included a broader liquids estimate, so I'm keeping those numbers separate. What interests me is the amount of oil still finding its way to market despite the disruption. People have very strong incentives to figure out how to move it, and that activity deserves attention alongside every headline about the conflict. For the manufacturers above and everyone paying to transport their goods, there's a lot riding on affordable fuel getting to the people who need it.

⚡ FREEDOM TECH CORNER

DATA SNAPSHOT

As of September 23, 2026, 2:37 p.m. ET. MVRV and realized price are daily observations dated September 22 UTC.

Sources: CoinGecko for price, rolling 24-hour change and market cap; mempool.space for network estimates; Alternative.me for daily sentiment; Bitcoin Lab for MVRV and realized price. MVRV compares market capitalization with realized capitalization. Realized price is realized capitalization, which values coins at the prices when they last moved, divided by circulating supply.

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See you tomorrow,

Marty

Marty Bent · TFTC · Nostr

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