Why Bitcoin’s Properties Matter in Uncertain Times
The Bitcoin Newsletter 36
Welcome to the 36th Edition of The Bitcoin Newsletter
Periods of uncertainty tend to reveal how systems function. Geopolitical conflict, fiscal pressure, and monetary expansion are not isolated events, they are part of a recurring cycle that has shaped financial systems throughout history.
In this 36th edition, I examine how these dynamics affect property, wealth preservation, and why Bitcoin’s design offers a different framework for navigating an increasingly uncertain world.
Best regards,
Leon
DEEP DIVE
Why Bitcoin’s Properties Matter in Uncertain Times
Uncertainty is not a mood. It is a shift in the structure of incentives. And when those incentives change at the geopolitical level, money does not remain untouched.
We are living through a phase in which conflict is no longer peripheral. Since February 24, 2022, when Russia entered Ukraine, interstate war returned to Europe in a way many believed had become unlikely.
At the same time, tensions in the Middle East, rising defense commitments in the Pacific, and even competition in space have intensified. Modern warfare is not only fought on land or sea; it extends into cyber infrastructure, satellite systems, industrial capacity, energy networks, and monetary architecture.
All of this has one constant: war is expensive.
Historically, states have funded war through taxation, borrowing, and ultimately monetary expansion. When prolonged conflict meets fiscal or political constraints, monetary expansion tends to become the recurring adjustment mechanism.
In earlier monetary regimes, however, this expansion faced natural limits. Gold convertibility imposed discipline, because excessive issuance would trigger an outflow of reserves. To work around these constraints, governments developed new financial instruments. England, in particular, pioneered the large-scale issuance of public debt—often in the form of war bonds—after the Glorious Revolution of 1688.
By borrowing from the public rather than immediately debasing the currency, states could finance wars on a scale previously impossible under strict metallic money. Today, however, those constraints no longer exist.
The decisive break occurred in 1971, when the United States suspended gold convertibility. Often framed as a technical monetary adjustment, it marked something far more significant: the removal of a binding constraint on the global reserve currency.
The geopolitical context mattered. During the Cold War, the United States competed with the Soviet Union, a system that operated without hard monetary discipline and could mobilize vast natural resources and state-directed capital for military purposes.
Maintaining convertibility into gold increasingly limited the ability of the United States to finance both domestic spending and geopolitical commitments (e.g. the Vietnam War) abroad.
Ending gold convertibility effectively removed that constraint. From that point forward, the leading global currency operated without a hard anchor. Monetary expansion could scale with fiscal and geopolitical necessity.
Since then, the modern monetary system has functioned under a quiet premise: large-scale geopolitical competition and strict monetary limits are difficult to reconcile. The result is a monetary regime in which inflation becomes structurally embedded.
Inflation is not an accident. It is the byproduct of political survival. This is not a moral argument. It is an institutional observation.
War, inflation, and the search for neutrality
When conflict expands, monetary expansion often follows. Defense budgets rise. Energy shocks occur. Industrial policy intensifies. Strategic autonomy becomes expensive.
Europe’s dependence on imported energy illustrates this dynamic. Resource-rich states possess structural advantages in prolonged conflict. Resource-poor states compensate through fiscal and monetary tools.
The United States, involved in multiple theaters and maintaining global security commitments, allocates vast capital toward defense and technological competition, including space-based systems.
Under such conditions, inflation is rarely a choice between good and bad policy. It becomes a mechanism of adjustment. In this environment, investors instinctively search for neutrality.
Gold has historically played this role. When central banks accumulate gold, it is rarely because they discovered a new growth story. It is usually a signal of declining trust in existing monetary arrangements.
Bitcoin belongs to the same family of instincts, but expressed digitally.
Gold is physical, institution-friendly, and politically legible. Bitcoin is digitally native, self-custodiable, and globally portable. Both respond to the same underlying tension: the desire to hold value outside expanding balance sheets.
When fiscal pressure rises, assets are re-evaluated
In more stable decades, investors optimize within the system. Taxes are parameters. Regulations are known. Property rights feel continuous. But when fiscal pressure rises: whether from demographics, debt servicing, energy constraints, or defense spending, the focus shifts. Governments move from expanding the base to extracting from the base.
The distinction between taxing flow and taxing stock becomes critical. Income taxes target what you produce. Taxes on wealth target what you own, whether or not it generates cash. When the state cannot sufficiently tax production, it begins to examine ownership itself.
Across Europe and the United States, discussions around wealth taxes, unrealized gains, exit taxation, and new forms of capital assessment resurface cyclically. The details vary by jurisdiction, but the underlying incentive is consistent: when budgets tighten, visible and immobile assets become administratively attractive.
A recent example comes from the Netherlands, where personal wealth (Box 3) is taxed based on assumed returns on assets such as savings, investments, and second homes rather than realized gains. As of 2026, the tax rate reaches 36% on these notional returns, with discussions underway to shift toward taxing actual unrealized gains starting in 2028.
These developments should be read as signals of changing fiscal incentives.
Why compare real estate and bitcoin?
Approximately two-thirds of global wealth is held in real estate. That is not accidental. Under inflationary monetary conditions, scarce assets absorb monetary premiums.
Real estate is productive, tangible, culturally legible. It is often a rational long-term investment. But it is also immobile. The German word “Immobilie” captures this literally: something that does not move. In peaceful and predictable environments, immobility is neutral. In stressed environments, it becomes a variable.
Real estate is owned through legal recognition. A land registry defines the claim. Courts enforce it. The state legitimizes it. In stable times, juristic ownership and effective possession align. In conflict, they can diverge.
Borders shift. Governments change. Emergency powers expand. Property can be taxed more aggressively, regulated differently, or, in extreme historical cases, confiscated or destroyed. Ownership may remain on paper while control disappears in practice.
This is not theoretical. History is full of examples where legal ownership survived in archives while the asset itself did not.
Here the philosophical distinction becomes important. Ludwig von Mises differentiated between “juristic ownership” (a normative legal claim) and “catallactic” or “sociological ownership” (factual control). In calm regimes, these overlap. Under stress, they may not.
Real estate depends on the continuity of institutions. Its enforceability is political. Bitcoin operates differently. One asset depends on the stability of the legal order that protects it; the other depends on the continued functioning of a distributed network.
Bitcoin as possession rather than property
When discussing bitcoin, it is important to be precise. Bitcoin is not property in the traditional physical sense. Digital “things” are information. Information can be copied. One does not “own” bitcoin as one owns land.
What one controls is a private key. In bitcoin, possession means control over that key. Whoever controls it can authorize transactions. If you lose it, no legal claim can restore access. There is no court of appeal embedded in the protocol.
This makes bitcoin a paradigm of digital self-sovereignty. It does not eliminate law. It does not prevent taxation in all circumstances. But it changes the locus of control. Possession becomes factual rather than normative.
In extreme conditions; war, capital controls, abrupt policy shifts, factual control can matter more than legal definition. Real estate cannot be memorized and carried across a border. Bitcoin can. Real estate is mapped and registered. Bitcoin is secured by mathematics and distributed consensus.
What changes when resilience matters
In predictable environments, portfolios are optimized for yield, tax efficiency, and marginal improvements in return. In uncertain environments, resilience becomes primary.
Resilience is not about maximizing short-term upside. It is about reducing dependence on assumptions that may shift quickly; assumptions about policy continuity, frictionless capital mobility, stable enforcement of property rights, and restrained monetary expansion.
As uncertainty increases, the value of certainty rises. Entropy, in a broad sense, increases over time. Systems become more complex. Conflicts emerge. Monetary regimes adapt. In such an environment, predictability itself becomes scarce.
Bitcoin introduces an unusual counterforce: supply certainty. The total supply is fixed. The issuance schedule is known. The monetary policy cannot be amended by political negotiation.
This does not prevent short-term volatility. But it does create a long-term anchor. When the unit itself is predictable, individuals can plan further into the future. Increasing purchasing power expands choices. And expanding choices increases sovereignty.
Conclusion
Bitcoin does not remove geopolitical risk. It does not prevent war. It does not eliminate volatility. It does, however, exist outside the discretionary expansion of the money supply. Its issuance schedule is fixed. Its supply is capped. Its settlement does not depend on any single jurisdiction.
It follows its own rhythm, halving cycles, adoption waves, market resets. It does not respond mechanically to every episode of money printing. But over long time horizons, it absorbs monetary expansion into a scarce, verifiable unit.
War and inflation are recurring features of the nation-state system. They can be managed, negotiated, and sometimes reduced, but rarely abolished entirely.
In such a world, the relevant question is not whether one “believes” in Bitcoin. The question is which assumptions your wealth depends on, and how many of those assumptions could change faster than your portfolio can adapt.
WORTH TO KNOW
Podcast and publications
Bitcoin Magazine: Who Needs Fixed Income When You Have Bitcoin?
My article “Who Needs Fixed Income When You Have Bitcoin?” was featured in the Financial Issue of Bitcoin Magazine. I explore the rise of bitcoin-native credit instruments; trying to understand why these tools are emerging, how they enable bitcoin-native capital formation, what risks and trade-offs come with integrating bitcoin into credit markets, and what structural opportunities they present. It’s a value-neutral analysis meant to inform. Available in the print edition at Bitcoin Magazine. READ
Recently I have refrained from participating in any podcast. Once I am fully done with the writing process of my book DIGITAL REAL ESTATE I will revert to the podcast cycle.
What Bitcoin Did Podcast: The Four-Year Cycle Remains Intact
Matthew Mezinskis argues that Bitcoin is trading near the lower end of its long-term trend and that the four-year cycle remains structurally intact despite repeated calls that it had broken. His broader point is that Bitcoin’s price behavior still follows durable historical patterns, even as macro narratives shift around it. WATCH
Michael Saylor: Digital Credit and the Bitcoin Capital Stack
In this keynote, Michael Saylor presents digital credit as a new category built on Bitcoin, designed to combine yield, durability, and programmability. STRC is framed as a core instrument in that stack, with potential applications across treasury strategy, tokens, ETFs, and future digital banking products. WATCH
How Issuers View Digital Credit with Metaplanet and Strive
In this panel, corporate issuers discuss digital credit as a new layer in Bitcoin-based capital markets, one that could reshape treasury strategy, funding, and product design. The conversation highlights how Bitcoin-backed preferred equity may open the door to broader institutional adoption and a new generation of yield products. WATCH
STRC as a Structural Bid for Bitcoin with Sam Callahan and Joe Consorti
Sam Callahan highlights STRC as a powerful new Bitcoin demand vehicle, absorbing supply through a yield-oriented structure that may appeal to both investors and corporate treasurers. The broader implication is that Bitcoin-linked credit products could become a meaningful bridge between traditional capital markets and Bitcoin accumulation. WATCH
Bitcoin as Both Risk-On and Risk-Off with Joe Burnett
Joe Burnett explores the idea that Bitcoin may be evolving beyond a pure high-beta asset, with markets increasingly pricing it as both a hedge against monetary debasement and an indirect beneficiary of risk-off demand for credible digital credit. If that shift continues, Bitcoin could occupy a far broader role in the global financial system. WATCH
The Price of Uncertainty is Rising with Sam Callahan and Joe Burnett
Uncertainty Strengthens Bitcoin’s Case; in this conversation, Joe Burnett and Sam Callahan argue that rising fiscal stress, monetary instability, and global uncertainty make the long-term case for Bitcoin stronger, not weaker. As confidence in bonds and fiat savings erodes, Bitcoin stands out as a scarce monetary asset built for a less predictable world. WATCH
Bitcoin, Strategy, and Digital Credit with Chaitanya Jain from Strategy
In this discussion, Chaitanya Jain breaks down Bitcoin, Strategy’s capital model, and the role of STRC within the emerging digital credit market. The conversation connects Bitcoin-backed corporate finance with the broader future of programmable yield and digital capital formation. WATCH
IDEAS OF INTEREST
SightBringer: How the German Elite is breaking: Blame the Workers or Fix the Machine? Germany’s Real Economic Fork: In an era of AI-driven abundance, models based purely on human productivity lose relevance. Scarce, neutral assets like Bitcoin may become key to absorbing and distributing long-term productivity gains. READ
AI Agents Need Native Money: As software begins to transact autonomously, digital assets may become the default payment layer for the machine economy. If AI agents need internet-native money, this market shifts from speculation to infrastructure. READ
AI Is Rewriting the Org Chart: Across corporate America, AI spending is no longer just an innovation line item. It is increasingly being funded by headcount reduction, as companies swap payroll for compute and redesign themselves around machine leverage. The deeper shift is not just technological but organizational: fewer people, flatter teams, and rising pressure for every remaining role to outperform what software can replace. READ, READ, READ
Private Credit’s Trust Break May Be Starting: What looked like stable income is increasingly being exposed as illiquid credit protected by slow marks and limited price discovery. If redemptions rise, financing tightens, and refinancing stress builds, private credit could move from a favored yield product into a phase of growing institutional distrust. WATCH, READ, READ
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Resources
Leon Wankum - Bitcoin vs. Real Estate: Which Is The Better Store Of Value In Times Of Conflict ? READ
Leon Wankum - Bitcoin Is A Possession, Not Property READ
Leon Wankum - Bitcoin: Self-Sovereignty and Liberty in the Digital Age READ
Dutch Tax and Customs Administration - Income in box 3 READ
Photo Credit: Battle scene from ancient Sumer.
Disclaimer: the content is for informational purposes only, you should not construe any such information or other material as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice. Make sure you do your own research before making any investment and be aware of your own risk tolerance. If you like to build on my thoughts, feel free, but please cite me as the source. 2026 - Leon Wankum.
Editing and content creation by Clemens Haidinger.
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Geopolitical and monetary stress cycles are exactly when Bitcoin's properties get stress-tested in real time rather than in theory. Censorship resistance and self-custody become not just ideological preferences but practical necessities for people in affected regions. The property rights angle is particularly relevant now — when traditional wealth preservation mechanisms face political risk, Bitcoin's design offers something structurally different.