🏦 Citadel’s Ken Griffin: “BTC is part of the debasement trade”

Not only is bitcoin smashing records, but it’s breaking patterns.

For a second time in 24 hours, BTC broke to retest all-time highs before cooling off and settling at $124,000. But this rally isn’t simply crypto euphoria. It’s all part of what Ken Griffin, the founder of Citadel, refers to as the “debasement trade”, a global move into hard assets such as gold, silver and Bitcoin as faith in fiat currency wavers.

The backdrop?

A U.S. government going into partial shutdown, a widening deficit and a declining dollar all driving flows out of traditional safe havens. The dollar index is off nearly 10 percent since January, while gold has hit a record $4,000 an ounce. Even the forgotten cousin, silver, is up 3% this week.

Griffin says the US economy is now “oversupplied with fiat” and that it is operating on stimulus intended for a recession. Through this flood of liquidity pouring in, everything is going up — S&P 500, gold and BTC — at the same time.

Bitcoin takes the lead

This time, Bitcoin is not alone.

It’s moving with equities which is an indication that institutional money also treats BTC as part of the same macro bucket as gold.

• BTC +4% this week, +33% YTD

• $3.2B flowed into Bitcoin ETFs last week. The second-highest inflow since launch

• BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust notched record $49.8B in open interest

• Options traders placing bets on $140K strikes before year’s end

Prices may be lurching between $123K–$127K but liquidations are tame: only $283M in the past 24 hours compared to the $2B blowouts witnessed during previous rallies.

⚖️ Why it matters

For the first time ever bitcoin, gold and S&P 500 are hitting highs at once, with a government shutdown underway.

It is a sign of something far more profound than a bull run in crypto: a crisis of faith in fiat itself.

Should Bitcoin hold above $120K while a U.S. shutdown continues (Polymarket odds: shutdown ends after Oct 15), that “digital gold” narrative might just solidify into macro consensus.

Even Citadel, which is among Wall Street’s most traditional of powerhouses understand that.

👉 Bottom line:

This isn’t just another “Uptober.”

It is the moment when Bitcoin graduates from being a speculative investment as it takes on its most important use case: protecting people’s wealth in regions where it can erode away rapidly.

The debasement trade is firmly digital now.

Zcash just pulled a Lazarus.

Once left for dead on the 2017 pile, ZEC ran up 240% in September, and its mindshare jumped 804%, per Messari.

The rally represents the return of privacy coins on fears of surveillance and a rout in self-custody crackdowns, as well as the return of “financial privacy” narratives.

We signaled this trend in a previous edition, when early indications began to show privacy narratives heating up.

💡Zcash’s resurrection is more than just a price narrative. It’s a feeling, or inspiration, rather and a reminder that the issue of privacy could also become the next big crypto narrative if outside forces continue pushing.

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