Gold hasn't even touched its daily level uptrend support and finance accounts on X are already calling for a top

I have been writing my price thesis on gold for 2 years now, and since my call in December 2023 gold's price is up ≈125%. In the last day or 2025 my call is that this uptrend will continue.

Regarding local tops, it's worth noting that gold has been in one for over 2 months now.

Additionally, closes below a seemingly arbitrary 4H support line drawn on a chart does not imply any significant top or trend reversal. Gold can go down to $3900 and still be in an uptrend!

TA & charting is supportive, as it gives you hints about what the market is doing, but on its own it can't provide you with a high-confidence prediction of the future.

If you lack the foundation on the basis of the price action of an asset, you'll find it much more challenging to distinguish a dip from a longer-term trend reversal. I've written several articles explaining why gold's price will keep going up, in terms of currency debasement, refinancing cycles, global liquidity and geopolitical pressures. You can access those threads/articles on my website free or cost. They'll provide you with a solid basis for understanding gold, where its price headed and why.

The same X accounts that were telling you to buy the Bitcoin dip on October 1st 2025, are now telling you to sell Silver on December 31st 2025

Since October 1st:
➖Bitcoin down ≈40%
➖Silver up ≈80%

Their silver top calls will age as well, as the Bitcoin dip calls earlier this year 😄

The markets gave you an early 2026 present in the form of a systemic commodity price correction - and it's up to you to take it or not

Happy 2026 🥳

Uranium, nuclear energy, electrical grid, lithium and copper have been added to my list

Electrification will continue to increase, and that requires not only the production of electricity, but also the setup of all of the electrical infrastructure. AI runs on electricity, data centers need electricity and strong demand for electric lithium-battery powered vehicles (EVs) is here to stay for at least another decade.

You can invest in them using your favorite broker - there's plenty of ETFs, ETCs and equities.

For Uranium and nuclear energy - there are several ETFs that give you exposure to producers, distributors and infrastructure (e.g. nuclear plant maintenance).

Electrical grid investments can be done by acquiring equity in companies that expand and maintain it.

Not recommending any particular investment instruments, but the attached image provides you with a starter list.

Gold hasn't even touched its daily support line from October 2025

In fact, gold price could fall under $4300 and still be above that support (green line on the chart).

This discounts all theories suggesting a long-term top at current price levels. Gold's price action clearly suggests the continuation of the uptrend into 2026.

This dip is a buying opportunity

Silver didn't even break its 4 hour trend support on the pullback and many are already calling that it has topped for the cycle 😂

M2 Money Supply Is A Bad Measure of Global Liquidity

If you're using M2/M3 as a measure of global liquidity, you're under accounting for at least half of "global money supply".

Here's some USD-centric data:

➖ U.S. M2 supply: ≈$23T
➖ U.S. Money Market Funds: ≈$8T
➖ U.S. Repo Markets: ≈$13T

These are USD/U.S. focused figures, so they don't account for global liquidity per se (e.g. PBoC's balance sheet is larger than Fed's), but they do show how M2 falls short of being an accurate proxy for the measure of global monetary/currency supply.

I've written several articles on global liquidity and how to measure it. You can read them free of cost in the threads section of my website.

Silver is up ≈193% in 2025, but it only takes a ≈16% pullback for large finance accounts on X to suggest it has topped 😄

No, it's not the top for Silver yet and it's not hitting $50 this week

The current pullback in the price of silver & silver miners is a buying opportunity

Today's gold, silver and their miners sell-off is a buying opportunity

Treat it as an early new year's gift for 2026 🥳

China Is Hoarding Commodities

While the U.S. is pumping a crypto & AI bubble, China is pumping their commodity reserves.

Not only PRC is limiting silver exports, but they're also lowering the cost of commodity-related imports.

The net result will be more positive commodity import/export ratio, i.e. more physical commodities within China, which will be used for strategic and industrial needs (China is the world's number one producer).

It also means that there will be less commodities available outside of PRC, and since the global demand won't decrease - that's further positive price pressure on the commodity sector.

I have been writing about gold, silver and other commodities for over 2 years. The same bullish narrative remains valid. These geopolitical developments provide further confirmation.

Laptop as a Meshtastic LoRa Node Using ESP32, BLE and Python

Meshtastic exposes a BLE interface and comes with a nice Python library. So I connected to the ESP32 with a LoRA module over bluetooth, and was able to send and receive messages from a Python script running on a laptop.

Essentially, the laptop uses the microcontroller as a proxy for the sub-GHz antenna (EU_868/≈868 MHz in Europe), enabling it to send and receive LoRa messages via Meshtastic's firmware. So effectively Bluetooth Low Energy is used as a proxy protocol for LoRa.

There were two nodes in the mesh - one connected to the laptop and another to a smartphone. Both nodes had the same channel name, Pre-Shared Key (PSK) and ordering (channel id) setup. The laptop node was using Python to connect to the mesh via BLE and exchange messages. The smartphone was connected to the other node, and the official Meshtastic app was used to send and receive messages.

The setup is as follows:

💻 Laptop (Python)
⇅ BLE
📡 Node A (ESP32 + LoRa)
≈≈≈ 868 MHz LoRa mesh ≈≈≈
📡 Node B (ESP32 + LoRa)
⇅ BLE
📱 Phone (Meshtastic app)

So you don't really need to program the ESP32 to make it a "smart" LoRa node. You can program all of the logic on your usual dev machine, and use BLE as a proxy for LoRa packets over Meshtastic. This is a great approach for iterative development, prototyping, proof of concepts and even final products. Of course, you can also put the smart node code on a Raspberry Pi, Arduino or even the microcontroller itself.

Added Semantic Categorization Via Embeddings To Articles/Threads On My Website

You can now filter my articles by topic at https://illya.sh/threads/topics/

Qwen3-Embedding-0.6B is used to vectorize and embed all of the articles/threads, which are then tagged/categorized based on natural language tags for the category.
This allows me to define a new category by defining a new Python class with the topic/category name, description, URL path, and the query sting to embed and query against the thread embeddings. From there, all of the content is generated statically.

Everything runs 100% locally/offline. Model weights are pre-downloaded once - that's the most time-consuming part.

The motivation for implementing this has to with the content's volume. I have written over 180 articles/threads, but until now there was no categorization. So if you wanted to read an article on a particular topic, you'd either have to google it, ask an LLM or go through the list manually yourself. Now, there is an index with topics, which help navigating the content semantically.

Navigate to https://t.co/bXb1JWKD4d, select a topic, and you will be presented paginated list of all threads/articles matching that topic.

A few months ago I wrote about LoRA meshes

So I got a pair of ESP32 devices with a LoRA radio module. They already came pre-flashed with Meshtastic

Took minutes to setup the mesh and send/receive messages.

In my tests, the range was Impressive for such a small device at ≈$10

Central Banks were more influenced by farming than you probably think

Historically interest, collateral, liquidity, inflation and monetary policies were shaped by the needs, risks and patterns of agricultural economies

A Primer On Strategy/MSTR Business, Financials, Liquidity and Solvency

There's a lot of misinformation how Strategy/MicroStrategy operates, its business model and what MSTR can and can't do.

This served as a motivation for me to write 4 short, primer-style articles on MSTR:

1️⃣ MSTR’s business model, describing how the company operates as a "Bitcoin treasury" and what does it mean for its solvency. You can read it here: https://illya.sh/threads/microstrategy-is-dependent-on-refinancing-capacity-not

2️⃣ Why MicroStrategy can’t replay its debt using equity/stock. You can read it here: https://illya.sh/threads/microstrategy-cant-repay-its-debt-in-equity-stock

3️⃣ How Strategy pays for its interest, which currently accounts to ≈$40M/year. You can read it here: https://illya.sh/threads/how-microstrategy-pays-interest-on-its-debt
 
4️⃣ How Strategy's marketing is misleading regarding MSTR’s risk, liquidity and solvency. You can read it here: https://illya.sh/threads/strategy-invents-financial-metrics-and-everybody-applauds

I suggest reading them in the same order as above, but they're self-isolated. It's a short read, and together they will give you a good understanding on how Strategy operates (its business model), what are its main risks, what MSTR can and cannot do regarding debt repayments, and why you probably shouldn’t trust their marketing campaigns, including the statements made by Michael Saylor on X and various podcasts/videos where he appears.

How the 1916 Fed Act Made Treasuries Prime Collateral

Before 1916, the Fed would only lend to banks against "eligible paper", which included self-liquidating commercial loans and agricultural loans.

The Federal Reserve Act 1916 amendment expanded the Fed's legal power to allow for lending to commercial banks against U.S. Treasuries (government bonds).

This effectively turned U.S. government debt into collateral backing Fed's liabilities. This paved the way for the U.S. Treasuries to become the most used form of collateral in short-term wholesale debt markets (e.g. repo/repurchase agreements) today.

1 oz of Gold: Production Cost and Miner Profit

1 oz of gold costs ≈$1500 to mine (AISC), ≈10$ to transport and refine and another ≈$400 in various other expenses.

In total, that sums to about ≈$1910 to get 1 ounce of gold from the ground to bullion gold bar.

Currently, gold trades at ≈$4100/oz (when you're reading this it's probably much higher 😄). This means there is about $4100-$1910=$2190 of margin on each ounce of refined gold. Almost all of this margin on the sale of an ounce of gold is pocketed by gold miners.

Let's compute the profit per ounce of gold from the perspective of a miner. Gold miners generally sell gold to refineries at a fixed haircut over the spot price. This haircut is generally very small, ≈$10 which accounts mainly for refining and treatment costs. So with the numbers above (also see attached image), gold miners are making a profit of $4100-$(1500+400+10)=$2190 (the same number we computed above).

The larger the premium/gap of gold's spot price over its production costs, the larger is the profit for the miners. As the cost of labor and industrial production increases due to global monetary debasement, so will gold production costs. The same monetary debasement, combined with strong demand for gold will push its price further up.

In the next 2-3 years, I expect gold price to increase by a larger proportion than gold mining costs, as gold is under several positive price pressure points (central banks, USD alternatives, monetary debasement, etc). Thus, the margin over mining costs should remain high, leading to a sustained high profit per ounce of gold for miners.

This is why gold mining stocks are currently a great investment. The same is true for other miners, such as silver.

1 oz of Bullion Gold Costs ≈$1910 to Produce

Gold's current spot price is ≈$4100. There's a ≈$2190 price gap between what gold costs to buy and what it costs to mine & refine.

The majority of that $2190 profit per 1 ounce of gold goes to the miners. Gold refiners earn just a few dollars per ounce in profit.

This is why mining stocks are currently such a good investment idea.

Updated OpenGraph Images On Thoughts & Threads At My Website

Before the OG image was always a "screenshot" of the starting text. Now, if the post or article has an attached image (most of them do), it gets used instead.

Here's an example:
https://illya.sh/threads/how-microstrategy-pays-interest-on-its-debt

Strategy Invents Financial Metrics And Everybody Applauds 👏

MSTR's own website states that their reports do not reflect the financial reality:

"None of BTC Rating, BTC Credit, or BTC Risk are measures of financial results or liquidity, or key performance indicators."

Strategy's software business also operates at a ≈$60M loss, but on their website and socials they decide to ignore a part of expenses and market it as profit. So they create their own non-standard accounting and credit metrics and advertise those.

Strategy has a consistent pattern of misrepresenting their financials to look more favorable in their public marketing campaigns. A lot of it is in the form of Michael Saylor's videos, podcast appearances and posts on X. A lot seem to think that just because someone says something in a video or a social media post it must be true.

Words can be deceiving, numbers not so much.

In Net Terms, Bitcoin is a Geopolitical Liability, Not an Asset

This is because Bitcoin is vulnerable to attacks targeting its consensus and network availability. A sufficiently resourceful adversary can yield the Bitcoin network inoperable and/or untrustable

A nation state adversary can take the Bitcoin network down, at least a significant portion of it. And it doesn't require them having access to quantum computers or compromising the underlying cryptographic primitives in other manner.

This is why sovereign strategic Bitcoin reserves, including BTC as a Central Bank reserve asset is not a good idea, at least in the current state and design of the Bitcoin protocol.

How MicroStrategy Pays Interest On Its Debt?

The short answer is that MSTR finances its debt service via a mixture of:

➖ Software business cashflow
➖ Existing reserves & short-term investments
➖ Capital market instruments, such as issuing new equity or debt
➖ Asset liquidation (Bitcoin sales)

MSTR's annual coupon payments sum up to ≈$34.6M/year. Currently, virtually all of MSTR's financial debt is in convertible bonds/senior notes. Those bonds come with small coupons, so relatively small interest payments.

More specifically, here is how MicroStrategy's/Strategy's outstanding outstanding convertible bond maturity, principal, coupon rate and total yearly interest look like:

2028 | $1.01B @ 0.625% | $6.3M
2029 | $3.0B @ 0% | $0M
2030A | $0.8B @ 0.625% | $5M
2030B | $2.0B @ 0% | $0M
2031 | $0.604B @ 0.875% | $5.3M
2032 | $0.8B @ 2.25% | $18M

(Format: <year> | <principal> @ <coupon> | <anual interest>)

If you sum up the interest payments you’ll get ≈$34.6M/year in total.

The yearly revenue of MSTR's software services business is almost ≈$500M/year. However, their software portion of the business actually operates at ≈60M/year loss, when using U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP).

Strategy advertises their software portion of the business as being in profit, but they "manipulate" those numbers a little. This "manipulation" involves MSTR not counting stock-based compensation as expenses.

So when you hear Strategy advertising profit from their software business - they're not using a legally recognized and standardized measure of profit (in the U.S. it's GAAP). So they take the GAAP software profit and then add some things back at their discretion (i.e. they don't count some expenses), thus turning a negative profit (loss) into a positive one.

This means that while their software business revenue can help them with having liquidity for interest payments - it doesn't cover those costs (since they operate at loss, it actually increases the total cost!).

Thus, Strategy finances their interest rate payments with a mixture of:

➖ Existing reserves & short-term investments
➖ Capital market instruments, such as issuing new equity or debt (main source)
➖ Asset liquidation

The software revenue provides significant cashflow (compared to interest rate costs), so it can help with having cash readily available to make an interest payment (liquidity), but it doesn't effectively cover them, thus requiring financing from other sources.

Strategy (MSTR) pays interest on its debt via a mixture of capital markets, software business cashflow, existing reserves & investments and Bitcoin sales.

MSTR's annual coupon payments are not that high - ≈$40M/year. The convertible bonds that they issue come with small coupons (e.g. 0%, 0.625%, %0.875, 2.25%)

Given MSTR's software business revenue of ≈$500M/year, but it actually operates at a ≈$60M loss after expenses are accounted for.

So effectively, strategy pays interest expenses from the same corporate funds bucket that they rase to purchase Bitcoin in capital markets.

Europe's Gold Imports and Exports Explained

Europe has gold mines in Finland, Sweden, Türkiye and Romania among others.

Together they account for <2% of world output (≈70 tones of gold/year). Europe is heavily dependent on gold imports, with >90% of the gold for its needs being imported.

Switzerland is the world's largest gold refining and transit hub, with at least ≈50% of all of the newly minted gold passing through Swiss refineries. Refining and re-exporting is by far the largest driver of European gold imports.

Europe imports ≈3900 tones of gold per year, but only keeps 10% of it.

MicroStrategy Can't Repay Its Debt In Equity/Stock

Most of MicroStrategy's debt is in the form of convertible bonds, meaning that by default the principal and the coupons get repaid the cash.

The "convertible" part means the bondholder can choose to convert the bond into shares/equity instead, and then MSTR chooses how settle the conversion of the bond's value in cash, equity or mix.

So MSTR cannot force the debt settlement/repayment in stock/equity - that's simply an option that the bondholders/investors have.

The repayment can always be in cash assuming that MSTR is solvent, as most of the debt is unsecured, meaning that there is no specific collateral pledged against that debt. In case of insolvency, unsecured debt holders are treated as general creditors of the company, and are repaid out of the remaining assets only after secured debt holders are repaid, but before equity holders.

MicroStrategy Is Dependent On Refinancing Capacity, Not Bitcoin Price

MSTR won't have to sell Bitcoin if BTC price goes down, they'll have to sell Bitcoin if they're unable to acquire funding along the maturity of their debt wall.

MicroStrategy is essentially a leveraged trade on Bitcoin, based on the following cycle:

1️⃣ Acquire funding via debt or equity
2️⃣ Buy Bitcoin
3️⃣ Repeat

This cycle works for as long as MSTR is able to obtain funding. Once funding becomes unavailable (i.e. market isn't willing to lend at favorable interest rates), funding must come from asset liquidation (i.e. the sale of Bitcoin).

The availability of funding is mostly dependent on Bitcoin's price. As long as Bitcoin price and trend is favorable around the dates when the debt wall matures - MSTR should be able to continue their leveraged trade. MSTR share price vs Bitcoin NAV is also important. If MSTR trades a premium over Bitcoin's NAV it allows Microstrategy to short their own equity and long Bitcoin.

However, an unfavorable Bitcoin price action environment (e.g. during a bear market) that coincides with debt repayment obligations may trigger the unwinding of this leveraged position, forcing MSTR to sell Bitcoin, thus putting further downwards price pressure on Bitcoin, which lowers Microstrategy's equity even more, which makes lender even less likely to lend. The end result is an even more degraded funding capacity, which at the limit leads to bankruptcy.

Debt starts maturing from 2028 (≈$1B), but the most significant portion of ≈70%/$5.8B matures in 2029-2030. This is where the price of Bitcoin is of great importance for Microstrategy's solvency.

So don't expect Microstrategy to have pressure to sell significant amounts of Bitcoin before at least 2027, even if the Bitcoin price stays low.