I think it's more likely my Bitcoin 5-year price model breaks to the downside than to the upside.
I wrote about Controlled Opposition Assets (to Bitcoin as MoE) - https://controlplanecapital.com/p/controlled-opposition-assets-to-bitcoin
TL;DR: To de-fang Bitcoin-as-money, the Controllers oversupply substitutes that feel “hard”, “digital”, “innovative”, or “yieldy” - but live in supervised pipes.
This includes:
1. Gold (esp. via ETFs/vaulted products)
2. Spot Bitcoin ETFs / futures ETPs / broker wrappers / treasury companies
3. Stablecoins & tokenized Treasuries (USD rails)
4. ETH + L2/”Web3 compute” with compliance defaults
5. AI mega-caps & the power stack (chips, hyperscalers, data centers)
6. Meme-coins/alt-L1 manias on KYC venues
7. CBDCs & digital-ID money (the end-state substitute)
Obviously, Gold is the most credible Controlled Opposition asset (https://controlplanecapital.com/p/why-gold-has-been-allowed-to-run?r=6i2zjv).
Gold can satisfy the public’s “store-of-value” impulse without granting a parallel, censorship-resistant payments rail; it trades in surveilled, gate-kept markets (London OTC/COMEX, custodian oligopolies).
So it seems that Bitcoin's MoE threat freed Gold from the relentless price suppression and now Bitcoin is the suppressed, paperized asset.
Gold soaks hedge demand from retail/institutions who prefer ETF/IRA-friendly exposure over key management. That’s deliberate crowding-out of Bitcoin as Medium of Exchange.
Gold stabilizes optics & balance sheets and siphons dissent — perfect for a regime moving to identity-bound, programmable money.
When I wrote my price prediction model, I assumed: if Bitcoin's price suppression is too obvious, people are just going to take self-custody.
Bitcoin is much easier to take self-custody of than gold, so the Controllers are incentivized to supply a channel where "Bitcoin is never cheap enough to trigger a self-custody revolt, never euphoric enough to create escape velocity".
This is still my base case, however, I now did more research on whether Bitcoin being cheap would trigger a self-custody revolt at scale and I don't think it's a given.
Why “cheap” Bitcoin won’t trigger a self-custody revolt (at scale)
- Learned convenience: Keys are work; ETF app is zero-friction. Habit beats ideology.
- Narrative laundering: “Institutional-grade custody is safer for your family” → social proof wins.
- Selective pain: If price cheapens gradually and wrappers promote yield/covered-call income, paper holders feel clever, not robbed.
- Perimeter nudges: App-stores, banks, and payroll rails steer away from non-KYC wallets. Most will not route around their entire digital lives to self-custody.
- Absence of a galvanizing villain: Unless a visible confiscation happens, the default is apathy + inertia.
So price weakness alone is insufficient. Revolts need salient betrayal + turnkey migration UX. We’ll likely get neither.
The price corridor could shift down 20-30% and still look "managed".
Result: modal EOY targets compress (e.g., $190k → $140–160k in Year 5), realized vol declines, and the Sharpe looks fine - just lower trend.
The down-shift tells one can watch are:
- Paperization Ratio (PR) > 35–40%, trending up.
- Perp premiums disappear on rallies; basis rich but spot lags.
- ETF net creations slow while NAV discounts recur on stress.
- Retail search/flows migrate to stables (“yield” beats “digital gold” in social data). Regulated stables on T-bill rails can offer sticky 3–5% realish yields + embedded refunds/rebates; they'd become the everyday MoE and savings default.
The Bitcoin as SoV-only campaign while pumping Controlled Opposition assets (mostly Gold, AI stocks) is exactly what crushes Bitcoin's volatility to the upside over time.
When ETFs/notes/treasuries + futures grow to, say, 35–45% of circulating supply; basis and options overwrite become the profit center for the largest intermediaries.
So tops are sold harder and floors defended less because wrapper sponsors maximize carry, not price.
The trend of the Paperization ratio is the thing to watch. If it goes up, the plebs are losing. If it goes down, the plebs are winning.
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