News Block: Bitcoin's Best Week in 2+ Years, Treasury Buybacks Explained, and Druckenmiller's WSJ Op-Ed Challenges Bessent

**Natalie Brunell** (0:00)
Welcome to the Coin Stories News Block, powered exclusively by Ledn. All right, so Bitcoin just had its best week in more than two years, up more than 20% from the mid 60,000s, all the way past $80,000, the first time it crossed that level since May, and now it's back in the high 70s. So what happened? Well, a bunch of things hit all at once. The biggest is the Treasury surprised markets by saying it would double some of its bond buybacks. Washington also gave crypto a solid boost with the president personally rallying industry leaders at the White House last week. Billions in bearish bets got wiped out, and when short sellers get squeezed, they're forced to buy. So that pushes the price even higher. And then the ETFs came roaring back, nearly $2 billion in a week, including the biggest single day of buying since May. And most of that day went straight into BlackRock's iBit fund. Now Bitcoin, of course, still isn't back to the highs. It's below where it started the year and well below the all time high that was above $126,000. Some analysts told CNBC they expect one more flush before this bear market is really over. But remember, right before this rally, Fidelity said Bitcoin's volatility was lower than 98.5% of all days in its history. They described the market as a coiled spring and well, it finally moved. I asked my followers if this was a bull trap or a new bull run, and a lot of people seem torn. The numbers seem to be 50-50. September is actually the worst month historically for Bitcoin's price, so we will have to wait and see. Ledn just introduced their lowest rates ever. The larger the loan, the lower the rate on all new loans, refinances and renewals. Your Bitcoin stays custody, never lent out, and you can repay any time with zero penalties. Get a quarter percentage point off your first loan at ledn.io/natalie. Okay, so what are these Treasury buybacks that everyone keeps talking about? Because honestly, this is the story underneath everything moving the markets right now. Let's start with the basics. Investors have been demanding more interest in return for lending money to the US government for 30 years. The 30-year Treasury yield hit 5.34%, the highest since 2007 And that's when Treasury Secretary Bessent stepped in and announced that the government will at least double its bond buybacks. Okay, so what are these bond buybacks in the first place? Government bonds get resold all the time, like any asset. But almost all the trading happens in the newest ones. The older long-term bonds mostly sit untouched for decades inside pension funds and big portfolios. So when somebody needs to sell one fast, there are fewer buyers. And in a stressed market, that's where trouble can really start. So the Treasury steps in as a guaranteed buyer. It buys those old bonds back and basically tears them up. That's what retiring a bond means. But the government, as you know, has no spare money. It runs massive deficits and borrows every week just to pay the bills. So the money for these buybacks is borrowed as well. But they're not issuing new 30-year bonds to pay them. Most of Washington's new borrowing lately is short-term due back in weeks or months, which markets are happily absorbing because it's practically as good as cash. So add it all up. The hard-to-sell long-term debt shrinks. The easy short-term debt grows, and the total debt keeps rising. So long-term rates get a bit of a relief, but the pressure doesn't disappear. It just gets kicked down the road because all that short-term debt has to be re-borrowed over and over at whatever rates come next. And here's where this gets interesting. Janet Yellen launched the buyback program in 2024 while her Treasury leaned heavily on short-term borrowing. And Bessent was one of the loudest critics of that strategy. He accused her of essentially using Treasury issuance to juice the economy before the election. Stephen Myron, who later became Trump's top economist and briefly served at the Fed, co-wrote a research paper warning that Washington had started using its borrowing decisions to steer the economy. And he predicted that once one party did it, every future administration would too. And that aged pretty perfectly. Two years later, Bessent didn't shut the program down. He's basically doubling it. Fortune now calls him the most interventionist Treasury Secretary in decades. And the relief didn't even last. Within days, long-term yields were climbing again. And the government is already about $1.8 trillion in the whole just 10 months into this fiscal year. Our deficits are exploding. And so this is the part I keep coming back to.