Bitcoiners often argue that BTC should thrive when the global financial system starts to look unstable. But Luke Gromen says that this time, BTC simply was not behaving the way he thought it should, and that was enough for him to slash a position he described as “irresponsibly large.”
In a new interview with Danny Knowles, Gromen said he sold most of his bitcoin around the $95,000 to $96,000 range after a series of warning signs started to stack up.
He said that at first, he was concerned that BTC simply was “not acting the way it should.” He pointed to M2 money supply trends and said BTC was not responding the way he expected, then highlighted another unusual development, which is that bitcoin had gone essentially unchanged against gold over a five-year stretch, something he said had never happened before.
Gromen also noted bitcoin has a habit of breaking old patterns as it matures, just as it did in 2022 when it fell below a prior cycle high. But he said broader market conditions began to reinforce his unease. What he was seeing in Japan’s bond market — yields rising while the yen fell — looked to him like emerging-market behavior, not the kind of backdrop that ends well for risk assets.
In his view, anything less than extremely loose policy, even negative interest rates, still amounts to tight financial conditions because of mounting risks from AI-driven job losses, cracks in private credit, and persistent stress in Japanese bond markets. Until policymakers respond with overwhelming force, Gromen says he still sees a risk-off world, not one where bitcoin suddenly races to $120,000.
Says Gromen:
I need to see more aggressive, nuclear printing if you will. We literally have completely put on the back burner this whole AI thing for the last two weeks and I think if this Iran war is over, which they’ve managed to paper over concerns with…
[Last week] here in the US we had 92,000 jobs lost. And you’re seeing job openings in sort of every sector where you’d expect AI to curtail job openings. You’re seeing job openings in freefall in finance, you’re seeing them fall in tech, you’re seeing them drop in services. And just keep hearing more and more and seeing more and more signs in that world that this is accelerating at an exponential rate, and if that’s the case, then our debt-based system consumer credit is going to be a giant smoking crater, because of AI.
He said bitcoin was not acting the way he expected, while multiple warning signs — including weakness versus gold, bond-market stress, and technical breakdowns — pushed him to cut exposure.
He said BTC was not reacting to M2 money supply the way he expected and had gone roughly flat against gold over five years, which he viewed as unusual.
He said he would need to see much more aggressive money creation and easier financial conditions before becoming more constructive on bitcoin again.
Yes. His comments suggest the issue is timing and macro conditions, not a total rejection of bitcoin’s longer-term thesis.
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