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50-year mortgages and $36 cheeseburgers

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by Coinbits
Friday, Nov 14, 2025 - 23:12

Bill Maher is confused. Despite record stock markets, he can't understand why Americans struggle to afford $36 cheeseburgers while others "eat fries at Steak 'n Shake." His mistake? Blaming "the economy" when the real culprit is inflation. A direct result of decades of bipartisan monetary recklessness.

Now comes Trump's solution: 50-year mortgages. On the surface, lower monthly payments sound appealing. In reality, borrowers will pay more than twice the principal in interest, build almost no equity for years, and remain perpetually underwater.

When the next recession hits and these mortgages implode, the Federal Reserve will once again ride to the rescue with more money printing, more bailouts, and more inflation.

This is peak fiat: solving problems created by monetary debasement with schemes that require even more debasement.

The system works as it always has since the invention of fiat: it concentrates wealth upward while crushing purchasing power for everyone else. If you don't like it, bitcoin is the only escape hatch, with a fixed supply immune to political manipulation. The more they print, the more bitcoin rises in price, happily absorbing excess liquidity like a sponge, and there’s nothing they can do to stop it.

Swiss bank Sygnum partners with Debifi to launch bitcoin-backed loans without full custody surrender

Sygnum Bank and bitcoin lending startup Debifi are developing MultiSYG, a loan platform launching in H1 2026 that allows borrowers to maintain shared control of their bitcoin collateral through 3-of-5 multi-signature escrow wallets. The platform targets institutions and high-net-worth individuals seeking bank-grade loan terms without sacrificing verification rights or risking rehypothecation.

Bitcoin lending evolves beyond custodial trust models

After the spectacular failures of BlockFi and Celsius proved that "not your keys, not your coins" applies to lenders too, MultiSYG represents the market's evolution toward sovereign collateral structures. By combining cryptographic proof with regulatory oversight, bitcoin-backed lending is finally aligning with bitcoin's core principles of verification over trust.

Czech National Bank becomes first central bank to hold bitcoin

The Czech National Bank created a $1 million test portfolio consisting primarily of bitcoin, marking the first time a central bank has added bitcoin to its balance sheet. Governor Aleš Michl, who proposed the move in January despite derision from ECB President Christine Lagarde, stated the pilot aims to "test decentralised bitcoin from the central bank's perspective and to evaluate its potential role in diversifying our reserves."

Central banks acknowledging bitcoin's monetary properties?

When even central banks – the institutions most threatened by bitcoin's existence – start acquiring it for reserve diversification, the paradigm shift becomes undeniable. The Czech Republic's willingness to defy ECB criticism and experiment with bitcoin demonstrates that smaller nations understand what larger ones still resist: in a world of coordinated currency debasement, mathematical scarcity beats political promises.

SoFi becomes first U.S. national bank to offer direct bitcoin purchases, bringing bitcoin to 12.6 million customers

SoFi Technologies launched its bitcoin and crypto platform allowing customers to buy, sell, and hold bitcoin directly within their bank accounts, making it the first nationally chartered U.S. bank to offer retail bitcoin services. The rollout begins this week with phased access expanding to all 12.6 million members by year-end, following regulatory clarity from the OCC and FDIC that permits banks to provide bitcoin custody and trading under the same oversight as traditional banking products.

Bitcoin is a competitive necessity, not an optional feature

SoFi's move signals that U.S. banks finally understand what bitcoin-only financial firms have known for years: customers demand direct bitcoin access, and banks that don't provide it will lose deposits to those that do.

China accuses U.S. of seizing 127,000 bitcoins in state-sponsored hack, escalating bitcoin diplomacy tensions

China's National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center accused the U.S. government of orchestrating the theft and seizure of 127,000 bitcoins, worth $13 billion, originally hacked from Chinese mining pool LuBian in 2020. CVERC claims the operation involved a "state-level hacking organization," while the U.S. maintains the seizure was legitimate law enforcement action targeting proceeds from Chen Zhi's alleged fraud scheme.

Nation-states battle over bitcoin because they know it matters

When the world's two largest economies publicly accuse each other of stealing billions in bitcoin, they're inadvertently making a strong case for its value. They know that, with their fiat printers, they could print $13 billion whenever they want. But they know bitcoin is irreplaceable and absolutely scarce; when it’s gone, it’s gone.

BITCOIN ADOPTION CONTINUES

Emory University doubled its bitcoin holdings to $52 million and added $79 million in gold, in a shift by endowment managers toward hard assets.

Cash App turned on bitcoin payments for 58 million users who can now pay in bitcoin using USD balance, while Square rolled out bitcoin acceptance for 4 million merchants with no fees until 2027.

Amboss and Voltage partnered to launch an enterprise Lightning payment stack that turns bitcoin payment processing into a yield-generating revenue source.

Taiwan will issue a bitcoin reserve assessment report by year-end, weighing whether to hold seized bitcoin as a strategic reserve following the U.S. model.

Robinhood is considering adding bitcoin to its corporate treasury as its bitcoin and crypto revenues surged 339% year-over-year to $268 million in Q3.

North America's largest bitcoin ATM operator Bitcoin Depot enters Hong Kong, its first Asian market, targeting top-five status in the region.

Trump family-backed American Bitcoin Corp. now holds 4,004 bitcoins, adding 139 since October through mining and strategic purchases.

HOW BITCOIN WORKS

Learn one key idea about bitcoin each week. This week:

How finance died, and how bitcoin can restore it

Benjamin Franklin observed, "It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to lose it." Modern finance has lost both.

Equities once represented credible claims on productive enterprises. Shareholders funded businesses, monitored performance, and withdrew capital from failures. This discipline built the industrial age. Today, passive index funds create permanent demand regardless of performance. Zombie companies – unprofitable firms that should fail in a free market – survive on cheap debt and algorithmic buying. Nearly 20% of large U.S. companies are zombies, kept alive by a system that rewards size over soundness. Reputation without credibility, as Jonathan Kirkwood writes in his excellent essay "Credible Finance," ends in ruin.

Government bonds face the same crisis. Bonds once represented societies' most credible promises: fixed obligations backed by productive economies and restrained governments. That credibility is gone. The U.S. added $17 trillion in debt since 2009 while real wages stagnated. Japan's debt exceeds 200% of GDP. Moody's recently downgraded U.S. credit. Politicians promise fiscal discipline while delivering trillion-dollar deficits. The social contract – “pay your taxes, and we'll manage resources responsibly” – is broken. When governments break promises, bonds become speculation on political will rather than proof of economic strength.

As Kirkwood explains, "When paper claims multiply faster than proof, speculation hollows out trust." Finance drifted from proof to promise.

Bitcoin restores the alignment. Its supply is fixed by mathematics, not manipulated by committees. Ownership is provable through cryptographic proof, not trust in intermediaries. No entity can print more bitcoin to bail out failures or fund deficit spending. "In bitcoin," Kirkwood notes, "reputation only follows credibility: it cannot precede it."

Where legacy finance rewards convenient narratives, bitcoin demands proof-of-work. Where bonds and equities rest on political promises, bitcoin rests on mathematical certainty. This is credible finance rebuilt from first principles – proof over promise, scarcity over abundance, mathematics over men.

COIN CHECK

On a $400,000 mortgage with a 50-year fixed-rate at 5% annual interest, about how much would you pay in interest over the full life of the loan (on top of repaying the $400,000 principal)?

A. $200,000
B. $400,000
C. $690,000
D. $1,100,000

Check your answer at the end of the page.

FROM THE MEME POOL

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ANSWER

C) You’ll pay about ~$690,000 in interest on a $400,000 loan!

A 50-year mortgage at 5% sounds like “cheap monthly payments,” but time is the killer. With a $400,000 loan at 5% over 50 years, the monthly payment is about $1,817. Over 600 months you pay roughly $1,089,000 total. Subtract the $400,000 principal, and that’s about $690,000 in interest – more than 1.7× the original cost of the house. Stretching a “reasonable” 5% rate over 50 years quietly lets the bank harvest an enormous share of your lifetime earnings.

Now flip the sign on compounding, and apply bitcoin’s return profile: Historically, bitcoin’s long-run compounded annual growth rate has been roughly ~28%. If you started with just $10,000 and it compounded at 28% annually for 50 years you’d have about $2.3 billion.

 

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