Go to Coachella to celebrate your enslavement.
A few weeks ago we covered the partnership between DoorDash and Klarna that enables DoorDash users to finance fast food deliveries using Klarna's cutting edge "buy-now-pay-later" fintech advancements™. Sitting on your couch looking at the eighth of weed you just bought while your checking account is sitting at $3.34? Don't worry, you're in luck! Klarna is here to let you order Shake Shack on credit so you can get high AND enjoy that cheeseburger you're craving. Just make sure you pay them back within a month or you'll be on the hook for a double cheeseburger with a variable interest rate attached.
Here's an excerpt from our piece on the DoorDash <> Klarna collab:
The truth is, the Common Man in America is on the ropes. He has been bombarded by a centrally planned economy since 2008 that has led to an accelerating debasement of his purchasing power, he has been forced to compete with an influx of immigrants driving wages down, and he has watched as the forces of the federal government and the Federal Reserve have tilted the Game of Life in favor of wealthy asset owners for the better part of two decades.
At the time, I thought this was the most distilled version of the state modern day American consumerism."Fuck it, I need a burger now and I'll do what I need to get it at any cost." However, I think the headlines coming out of Coachella are even more depressing:
While buy-now-pay-later schemes make more financial sense for Coachella compared to Chipotle on paper, I can't help but recognize the sick irony of financing a three-day general admissions ticket to a music festival. Music festivals are cultural events that are attended by the youth with the expressed intent to rebel against the current paradigm and inspire a revolutionary spirit. The lore of remote music festivals that attract the world's greatest artistic talent in an attempt to enable the youth to escape the shackles of an oppressive mainstream is extremely potent in the United States.
Woodstock '69 is a textbook example of a cultural event that played a pivotal role in enabling the Boomers to draw a line in the sand and make a clean break from the culture set forth by the Silent Generation. "You're not the boss of me! I'm my own man! Now watch me smoke this joint!" And whether you agree with the consequences of the cultural revolution that occurred in the late 1960s and early 1970s in the United States, it is impossible to ignore the fact that it was very culturally impactful.
Fast forward to today and most music festivals are corporate value extraction mechanisms that attempt to co-opt art for profit. And the art isn't particularly inspiring. In fact, it is often a reflection of the high velocity trash economy it operates in. Full discographies filled with braggadocios lyrics that celebrate high time preference degeneracy and nihilism. Not all new music is this way, of course, but many of the headliners that people flock to see fall in the bucket that caters to the high velocity trash economy.
What's sad is that many of the people making pilgrimages to these events are (again) ironically doing so to escape the day-to-day stresses they endure while operating in a high time preference society. They are looking to escape the madness, but instead find themselves exacerbating it via BNPL loans they'll potentially struggle to pay back.
This is, yet another, blaring alarm bell attempting to warn you of the ills of Late Stage Fiat.
Michael Howell's eye-opening breakdown of our financial system reveals a fundamental shift that few notice but everyone should understand. In our conversation, he explained that 77% of all lending globally is now collateral-based, with three-quarters of financial market transactions involving debt refinancing rather than funding new capital expenditures. This transformation means our entire financial ecosystem has become dependent on having sufficient liquidity to roll over existing debt. When liquidity dries up, refinancing crises emerge.
"I would venture that every financial crisis we've experienced in the last 30 years has ultimately been a refinancing crisis. It's been the inability to roll over debt in some form."- Michael Howell
This collateral-dependent system operates like a high-stakes game of musical chairs. As long as liquidity flows, the refinancing dance continues. But when the music stops—when collateral values drop or liquidity tightens—the system freezes. What makes this particularly concerning is how interconnected these refinancing operations have become, creating vulnerabilities that aren't visible until crisis strikes. Understanding this fundamental shift helps explain why central banks respond so aggressively when markets seize up.
Check out the full podcast here for more on liquidity projections for 2025-26, China's monetary strategy, and how gold prices reflect Treasury debt growth - insights you won't hear anywhere else.
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The first months of the new administration have sparked an unprecedented push for cost- cutting and efficiency within the federal government—but DOGE Can't Fix The Dollar. Join us on April 16th to hear PhD economist Peter St. Onge explain how bitcoin brings true efficiency to governments while protecting your generational wealth. With macro uncertainty driving a dip in bitcoin prices, now is the time to understand the fundamentals driving the global shift to sound money.
Ten31, the largest bitcoin-focused investor, has deployed $150M across 30+ companies through three funds. I am a Managing Partner at Ten31 and am very proud of the work we are doing. Learn more at ten31.vc/invest.
Final thought...
Family is the one thing that is truly worth fighting for in this world. There's levels to that sentence.
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