I have believed for more than a decade that the U.S. Dollar Index, DXY, is in a structural decline that is likely to continue. I also think we may now be approaching a much more significant leg lower, and that has major implications for Bitcoin. If that view is right, the next five to seven years could be a materially more bullish environment for Bitcoin than anything it has experienced in its history.
This chart goes back to the late 1960s. What makes it so compelling to me is not just the technical picture of lower highs and lower lows that has developed over roughly 45 years, but that the technical picture is supported by the fundamentals behind it.
I spent much of my career thinking about those fundamentals, including while managing the U.S. Treasury portfolio at CalPERS. That was before I became a Bitcoiner, but the work directly contributed to it. The trajectory of federal debt and deficits, the risks embedded in long-duration Treasuries, and the policy incentives created by an increasingly indebted sovereign all pointed me toward the same conclusion: the dollar was in structural decline. More than a decade later, that thesis has remained remarkably unchanged.
The debt burden is dramatically larger today, fiscal deficits remain enormous, and policymakers continue to face the same basic tradeoffs. They can accept the pain through materially higher real rates and tighter financial conditions, or they can try to manage that pain through lower real rates, maintaining market liquidity, nominal growth, and some degree of currency depreciation. There is no painless path. The question is simply where the adjustment gets absorbed.
That matters enormously for Bitcoin. Each of Bitcoin’s major bull runs has coincided with meaningful dollar weakness. DXY fell from roughly 103 to 88 during the 2017 run, declined from around 103 toward 89 during the 2020-2021 cycle, and then weakened from roughly 108 during the 2025 move that helped take Bitcoin to new all-time highs before the current 2026 bear market.
Those were meaningful moves, but they were still relatively modest compared with the major dollar declines of the last 45 years. The breakdown beginning in the mid-1980s lasted for years, as did the decline from the early 2000s into the Global Financial Crisis. My base case is that we are approaching another multi-year move lower in the dollar, potentially over the next three to seven years, with a real possibility that DXY eventually challenges the 2008 lows around 70.
If that happens, Bitcoin would be entering a macro environment it has never experienced before. Its previous bull markets have benefited from periods of dollar weakness, but never from a true secular breakdown in the dollar of the kind this chart suggests is possible.
Today is an interesting day to post this chart because the Treasury announced that it is at least doubling liquidity-support buyback operations in 10-to-30-year Treasuries. That comes as long-term Treasury yields have been under significant pressure, and the dollar has moved sharply lower today.
To me, this is simply another data point in a thesis that has been playing out largely as I expected for more than a decade. The fiscal constraints are greater, the debt load is larger, and the policy incentives are becoming more obvious. None of that weakens the original thesis. It strengthens my conviction in it.
That is also why I think people are not bullish enough on Bitcoin over the next five to seven years. Most Bitcoin forecasts are based on what Bitcoin has already done, but Bitcoin has never had the tailwind of a genuine secular dollar breakdown. We are used to saying that past results are not indicative of future performance because the future may be worse than the past. In this case, I think the asymmetry may run the other way.
It is also why I am so focused on amplifying Bitcoin exposure, and why I joked yesterday about feeling under-amplified. If this 45-year dollar structure finally breaks to the downside, the macro backdrop for Bitcoin could be materially more powerful than anything it has experienced before.
TLDR: YOU ARE NOT BULLISH ENOUGH.