Bitcoin & Crude Oil.
How Speculators Feast on America’s Carcass.
Market speculation into commodities like Bitcoin and Crude oil pose dangerous risks during the best of times. Heading into a recession, the stakes are even higher. The temptation to participate during volatile periods is a psychological phenomenon that takes hold among casual investors who rarely realize when they’re part of an institutional con. When leveraged institutions are in desperate need of liquidity they’ll stop at nothing to game the system. In this episode, Max offers a cautionary tale of speculative behavior in the crude oil markets during the financial crisis that very few people even know about. He then connects it to the dangers posed to investors who dabble in digital currencies like Bitcoin, especially under a pro-crypto Trump administration.

Show Notes
Resources
- Forbes: ‘Worse Than 2008’—Bitcoin Price Braced As Billionaire Ray Dalio Warns Of ‘Monetary Order Breakdown’
- Forbes: ‘Big Catalyst’—Serious Fed Warning Spurs Huge BlackRock Bitcoin Price Prediction
- NPR: What to know about Trump’s ’crypto strategic reserve’ plan
- Yahoo Finance: Donald Trump’s 29-year-old crypto guru lays out the president’s plans for regulating crypto and rolling back a Biden-era crackdown
- Pillsbury Law: Trump 2.0: A New Era for the Regulation of Cryptocurrency and Digital Assets
- SDLC Corp: Stablecoins: Characteristics, How They Work, Functionality, and Use Cases
- Bitpanda Academy: Meme Coins: Definition & Characteristics
- St. Edward’s University: What Are the Exchange Coins
- The Digital Chamber: Why is Bitcoin a Commodity?
- Investopedia: Is Crypto a Commodity? What It Means, Examples
Book Love
- Dan Dicker: Oil’s Endless Bid: Taming the Unreliable Price of Oil to Secure Our Economy
- Emily Lambert: The Futures: The Rise of the Speculator and the Origins of the World’s Biggest Markets
- Peter Maass: Crude World
- Leah McGrath Goodman: The Asylum: Inside the Rise and Ruin of the Global Oil Market
UNFTR Episode Resources
UNFTR Quick Links