The Passive Bid Has Already Come for Crypto

One of the most important trends underpinning markets today is the passive bid.

That’s simply the term for the fact that money comes into the market. If you’re participating in a 401(k) plan, you’re part of the passive bid. Each payday, the money that gets deducted from your paycheck goes into your investment funds.

In turn, that money moves down to individual stocks that get bought up. Payday after payday after payday.

In time, this trend could reverse. A rising unemployment rate. Higher withdrawals from retirees from stocks as they shift to bonds.

Until that shift changes, it’s a structural reason why stocks are the best game in town – and why investors should buy market pullbacks.

Today, the passive bid is also drawing capital to crypto. Just consider how Vanguard’s small-cap ETFs are regular buyers of Strategy:

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Vanguard’s Strategy holdings now top 8% of the company – and rising

Strategy – formerly MicroStrategy, until its market cap hit $100 billion – is best known today for aggressively buying bitcoin and holding it. Given that Strategy is in a number of funds, there’s already passive money flowing to shares today.

The money flowing to Strategy could soar even higher if the company is added to the S&P 500 later in the year.

For now, we prefer bitcoin to Strategy, given that shares trade at a premium to their bitcoin holdings. With positive crypto legislation on deck from Congress this week, however, expect both bitcoin and Strategy shares to add to their recent gains.

~ Andrew

This is Elon Musk’s Next Tech Disruption…

And it could turn the entire AI market upside down.

Click here to see the details and learn how to prepare.

P.S. We see cryptocurrencies as a key part of President Trump’s Great Reset plan. However, it’s more likely that stablecoins, rather than bitcoin, Ethereum or the like, will get the most attention in the coming months.

Stablecoins take a dollar, issue a token, and then the process is reversed at some point. But stablecoins also invest those dollars into U.S. Treasurys. With stablecoin demand increasing, it could become the lynchpin for refinancing America’s debt at a reasonable interest rate.

As always, your reader feedback is welcome: feedback@greyswanfraternity.com (We read all emails. Thanks in advance for your contribution.)

One of the most important trends underpinning markets today is the passive bid.

In turn, that money moves down to individual stocks that get bought up. Payday after payday after payday.

In time, this trend could reverse. A rising unemployment rate. Higher withdrawals from retirees from stocks as they shift to bonds.

Until that shift changes, it’s a structural reason why stocks are the best game in town – and why investors should buy market pullbacks.

Today, the passive bid is also drawing capital to crypto. Just consider how Vanguard’s small-cap ETFs are regular buyers of Strategy:

Turn Your Images On

Vanguard’s Strategy holdings now top 8% of the company – and rising

The money flowing to Strategy could soar even higher if the company is added to the S&P 500 later in the year.

~ Andrew

This is Elon Musk’s Next Tech Disruption…

And it could turn the entire AI market upside down.

Click here to see the details and learn how to prepare.

As always, your reader feedback is welcome: feedback@greyswanfraternity.com (We read all emails. Thanks in advance for your contribution.)

Our forecast will feel obvious in hindsight and controversial in advance — the hallmark of a Grey Swan.

Most analysts we speak to are thinking in terms of the history of Western conflict.

They expect full-frontal military engagement.

Beijing, from our modest perch, prefers resolution because resolution compounds its power. Why sacrifice the workshop of the world, when cajoling and bribery will do?

Taiwan will not fall.

It will merge.

Wars, technology races, and political upheavals — all of them rest on fiscal capacity.

In 2026, that capacity will tighten across the developed world simultaneously. Democracies will discover that generosity financed by debt carries conditions, whether voters approve of them or not.

Bond markets will not shout so much as clear their throats. Repeatedly.

Taken together, the seven Grey Swans of 2025 behaved less like isolated events and more like interlocking stories readers already recognize.

The year moved in phases. A sharp April selloff cleared leverage quickly. Policy shifted toward tax relief, lighter regulation, and renewed tolerance for liquidity. Innovations began to slowly dominate the marketplace conversation – from Dollar 2.0 digital assets to AI-powered applications in all manner of commercial enterprises, ranging from airline and hotel bookings to driverless taxis and robots.

Back in April, when we published what we called the Trump Great Reset Strategy, we described the grand realignment we believed President Trump and his acolytes were embarking on in three phases.

At the time, it read like a conceptual map. As the months passed, it began to feel like a set of operating instructions written in advance of turbulence.

As you can expect, any grandiose plan would get all kinds of blowback… but this year exhibited all manner of Trump Derangement Syndrome on top of the difficulty of steering a sclerotic empire clear of the rocky shores.

The “phases” were never about optimism or pessimism. They were about sequencing — how stress surfaces, how systems adapt, and what must hold before confidence can regenerate. And in the end, what do we do with our money?!