Bad Timing for Optionality
Still, doing what needs to be done
Welcome to I’m No Economist
I’m No Economist is my long arc in the open - a personal fund, a worldview, and a record of how I turn culture into capital and capital back into culture. Take no advice from me.
_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg){kind=link}
Previously on I’m No Economist
In case you missed it, I’m No Economist last free letter was sent at the end of year 2025. On the letter I explained why and how it would be in the future. This is the future I mentioned then.
The reason is simple: price is a filter. It keeps this project small, serious, and sovereign. Going forward, you’ll receive portfolio disclosures, Bitcoin positioning, and the worldview that ties it together - the same loop I’ve been building quietly for years.
If you want to learn more about I’m No Economist’s ethos and one-man-band private wealth manager thesis, read the last free letter here.
Bad Timing for Optionality
I’ve been working on having more optionality lately, which is ironic, because the whole plan for has been to accumulate Bitcoin and don’t get clever about trying to find the asset with the biggest, fastest return. But Bitcoin is sitting more than 50% below its all-time high right now. I could be buying at that discount. Instead, I’m buying runway.
I won’t get into the specifics of why, because some of it isn’t mine to put in a newsletter. Health issues in the family. A financial environment that keeps giving me new reasons not to trust it, etc, etc. Whatever the exact reason, the effect is the same: I need my family and I covered against whatever comes, for as long as I can manage it.
The word I keep landing on - as you already know - is incoercible. If getting there means pausing the long-term plan - a few months, longer if it takes longer - to get as far out of dependency on fiat money as I reasonably can, that’s fine. That’s the plan working, not the plan failing.
What Am I Doing Here
I’ve also been thinking a lot about what to do with my time, and about becoming someone who actually has his own place in the world. The Brazilian philosopher Mário Ferreira dos Santos put this better than I can, but paraphrased: don’t let yourself be filled into a position someone else already created.
Looking ahead, I don’t see myself joining a cause with a role some institution decided could be filled by anyone holding a similar set of marketable skills to mine. I’m leaning toward building my own work instead - or, more honestly, toward a prayer: what am I doing here? And please let me know as soon as You can, so I can get on with fulfilling Your desires.
In the meantime, I fill my days doing what I can for the people who depend on me being well, and for whoever comes after me - so they get to choose what to do with their days instead of being stuck to someone else’s plan.
Put simply, in the meantime, I try. Money-wise, right now, that means one thing: extending my family’s living-cost runway.
Two Things I’m Watching While I Build the War Chest
Brazil’s long bonds are getting harder to place cleanly. Real yields on the Tesouro IPCA+ have pushed up near 8% as the market prices in doubt about the fiscal trajectory more than confidence in a rate-cutting cycle.
And the banks I use for that fixed income seem to agree. Nubank sent an FGC caution message to its entire client base by accident this quarter — an internal glitch, corrected fast, but it landed.
BTG Pactual sent something similar: a plain-language explainer on how deposit insurance actually works, from an institution that doesn’t usually feel the need to remind you of that.
And Bitcoin’s drawdown isn’t finished playing out - though I don’t think it’s really about Bitcoin. More on that below.
What Happened to Bitcoin in June
I wanted to write about it because I think people are telling themselves the wrong story about this tough Bitcoin low.