The Real Crypto Cycle: What Happens When Global Liquidity Peaks | Michael Howell

Bankless

Tech News, Technology, News

4.7 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 24 November 2025

⏱️ 83 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Global liquidity veteran Michael Howell joins to map out the “master variable” driving asset prices: a 65-month global liquidity and debt refinancing cycle that underpins booms, busts, and the recent “everything bubble.” He breaks down the coming debt maturity wall, rising repo stress, the shift from Fed QE to “Treasury QE,” and a new capital war between a US dollar stablecoin system and China’s gold-backed strategy. Plus, what all of this means for Bitcoin, gold, equities, and how to position as the current cycle rolls over. ------ 📣SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE: SPOTIFY24 https://bankless.cc/spotify-premium ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🔵COINBASE | ETH & BTC BACKED LOANS https://bankless.cc/coinbase-borrow 🪙FRAXNET | MINT, REDEEM, & EARN https://bankless.cc/fraxnet 🦄UNISWAP | SWAP ON UNICHAIN https://bankless.cc/unichain 🛞MANTLE | MODULAR L2 NETWORK https://bankless.cc/Mantle 💤EIGHT SLEEP | IMPROVE YOUR SLEEP https://bankless.cc/eight-sleep 💠BIT DIGITAL ($BTBT) | ETH TREASURY https://bankless.cc/bit-digital We’re being compensated by Bit Digital (NASDAQ BTBT) for this segment promoting their company and BTBT. The compensation is paid in cash as a one time payment. You can find additional information about Bit Digital and BTBT on their Investor page at https://bit-digital.com/investors ------ TIMESTAMPS 0:00 Intro 0:45 Global Liquidity: Theory of Everything? 14:49 Will it Go Up Forever? 24:50 Where Are We in The Cycle? 34:23 Asset Allocation 47:14 Can The Monetary Regime Break? 58:55 China Gold vs US Tech 1:04:29 Crypto & Gold 1:08:03 4-Year Cycles 1:12:40 AI Bubble 1:15:14 Global Liquidity Limitations 1:18:39 Next 3-6 Months 1:20:24 Assets to Hold 1:21:25 Closing & Disclaimers ------ RESOURCES CrossBorder Capital https://x.com/crossbordercap CrossBorder Capital Website https://crossbordercapital.com Capital Wars Substack https://capitalwars.substack.com/ ------ Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures⁠

Transcript

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0:00.0	What you can see right now is that we're transitioning, unfortunately, out of a period that
0:05.7	I've labeled the Everything bubble. And that Everything Bubble is basically illustrating the fact
0:11.7	that liquidity has been abundant relative to debt. Now, what has gone on? Well, the first thing
0:18.4	has happened is that every crisis that we've seen pretty much since the GFC
0:22.1	has been addressed by policymakers throwing liquidity back into markets, the celebrated
0:27.9	QE trade, okay, that has been going on, and maybe we're about to restart that.
0:36.5	Michael Howell, welcome Bankless. It's an honor to have you, sir.
0:39.7	Well, it's great to be here. A lot of things going on in markets right now. I think we need to keep abreast of them.
0:45.4	We do. And I think that I want to keep abreast of global liquidity and looking at that through this lens.
0:52.7	So your life's work has really been
0:54.6	mapping money to flows, global liquidity flows. You help investors track global liquidity.
0:59.9	I feel like I'm an investor and many bankless listeners might be in a similar position as
1:04.9	myself that kind of understands global liquidity but doesn't fully understand it. And I see a lot of noise
1:13.4	out there, people talking about, well, you know, Fed said this and therefore this, or they'll look
1:18.6	at charts of M2 and say, this is bullish or this is bearish. And I'm really looking for
1:25.3	signal, you know, in this episode and in our conversation,
1:28.7	because I think you can provide it on global liquidity because you position global
1:33.6	liquidity as a master variable that really drive cycles and crises and asset prices and
1:40.6	certainly a lot that's happening in crypto.
1:43.6	So can you talk about this?
1:45.2	Maybe we can get into the 101 conversation.
1:48.3	Is your basic position that global liquidity acts as almost a theory of everything?
	...

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