France's 10-year has passed 5%, the highest since 2002. Tom Luongo's read, from before the move: Lagarde is sitting on the German 10-year to hold the entire European bond sector together, and she has reached her point. "She cannot let it go any higher." @TFL1728

Banks fought stablecoin yield for a reason. Mel Mattison's first job out of college was selling payroll at ADP, and the first thing they taught him: we make money on the float. The industry depends on holding your money and not paying you interest. @MelMattison1

Home builder sentiment just hit a 14-year low. Melody Wright on why builders would rather not sell at all than cut prices: one 10% haircut means revaluing the whole subdivision, and that hits their lending facilities. "No one wants to mark to market." @m3_melody

"The debasement hedge works everywhere." @EricBalchunas on why: people will never vote to cut their own benefits, and it is hard to tax them, so money printing is the easy button for any government. Inflation is the silent tax, and that is the pitch for Bitcoin.

Every credit in the market trades off a 10-year and a 30-year above 5%. Parker Lewis on why that is the story behind Oracle bonds: debt taken out cheap has to refinance at massively higher rates, and that destroys the economics of the business. @parkeralewis

The AI trade is not AI. Mel Mattison on this week's selloff: compute demand keeps climbing, but companies want to own the data, the chips and the stack. That is bad news for OpenAI and Anthropic, and Oracle's OpenAI premium is already gone. @MelMattison1

Jordi Visser on debt-funded AI build-outs: in AI time, a 50-year mortgage is a 250-year one. Borrowing to build is a bet that nothing better arrives within 18 months, and he expects a lot of data center build-outs never to be finished. @jvisserlabs

Russia just banned transfers to self-custody wallets, but kept licensed trading open. Francis Pouliot on the pattern: "You can't just ban Bitcoin." So states let the institutions in, and leave self-custody and privacy out. @francispouliot_ on TFTC episode 768.

People blame greedy corporations for rising prices. Jeremy Ryan Slate says it's the dollar in your pocket: every time new money is printed, it gets divided up and worth less. @JeremyRyanSlate

Mortgage rates just broke 7%. Melody Wright (@m3_melody) in August: "The Fed's not in charge. The bond market is." She puts the 30-year average since 1971 at 7.7%. The trouble is everyone who has to refinance. TFTC episode 787.

The 10-year is above 5%. Peruvian Bull (@peruvian_bull) in May: Social Security and Medicare, defense, and interest are each near $1 trillion, against a $1.9 trillion deficit. Balancing it means two of the three have to go. TFTC episode 747.

A new paper proposes private, Zcash-style payments on Bitcoin. Keonne Rodriguez of Samourai Wallet on why privacy was never optional: "If you have a censorship resistant form of digital cash, it needs to be private or it won't be censorship resistant." TFTC episode 692.

Oracle's credit default swaps just hit a record high. In February Marty Bent called Oracle's CDS the one chart that gave him pause. @Gary_Brode went further: if OpenAI can't pay for Oracle's data centers, it can't pay NVIDIA for the next chips either. TFTC episode 715.

The AI buildout runs on debt. Where does it end up? Nick Nemeth (@NickNemo17): a lot of it on the insurers, and a lot of it off balance sheet. With 90% margins on memory and 75% at NVIDIA, the technology has to be better than amazing to clear the hurdle. TFTC episode 792.

July 30: "Yields have got to rise." Michael Howell of CrossBorder Capital (@crossbordercap): with nominal growth near 6-7%, a 10-year yield 200+ basis points below it could not last. This week the 10-year hit 5.1%, a 19-year high. TFTC episode 776.

Bitcoin's quantum problem is two problems. Jonas Nick (@n1ckler): what to do in an emergency if the curve breaks now, and how Bitcoin works long term. Hash-based signatures are the emergency option he thinks could reach consensus relatively easily. TFTC episode 700.

One data point is all it takes. @jvisserlabs on what flips AI from boom to "bubble": power that can't be built in time, a flat line in Anthropic's growth curve, DRAM prices peaking, one slow quarter of CPU demand. Then the worry turns to the debt. The bubble case went mainstream this week. TFTC episode 753.

A rate hike cannot fix an oil shock. Joe Consorti (@JoeConsorti): this is push inflation - input costs rising from the Strait of Hormuz, not too much spending. The Fed can't fix that with rates. A hike only destroys demand, leads to recession, and then to more stimulus. The 10-year just hit 5.1%, with oil back above $103. TFTC episode 750.

Bessent asked to be judged by the 10-year yield. It just hit 5% for the first time since 2007. @LukeGromen, back in May: the three arrows became zero for three. Inflation ripping, the 10-year near five-year highs. Fail, fail, fail, fail. TFTC episode 748.

How does a first-lien loan go to zero? @dgt10011 on private credit: public bank loans recover about 30 cents on the dollar. When a private loan recovers nothing, the problem is not the collateral. It's the underwriting. What were you doing? Apollo just gated its private credit fund again. TFTC episode 729.