Disclaimer: This is not investment advice. It is a personal essay by a small business owner currently holding Bitcoin and Apple stock. You are entirely responsible for your own investments.
0. Prologue: The Matrix and the Lifeboat
The KOSPI crossed 5,500. A number hallucinated by the AI bubble. My portfolio (Bitcoin + Apple) is bleeding at -20%. But I sleep like a baby.
Because I have belief. The massive deficits of OpenAI, the overinvestment by Big Tech, and the liquidity earned by semiconductor and AI companies at the end of the supply chain cannot last forever. Even Google has reached a point where its free cash flow is nearing zero. However, welfare states are issuing government bonds as if this ‘corporate tax party’ will never end. Consequently, I believe that in the near future, bond yields will skyrocket and currency values will plummet. I didn’t buy Bitcoin+Apple stock to buy a cup of coffee. I bought it as a put option or hard money against the inevitable bankruptcy of the democratic matrix. This is why I have invested in assets that ensure value preservation, such as those with a capped supply (Bitcoin) or those that protect value through share buybacks (Apple stock).
Right now, the US stock market is correcting ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. Meanwhile, the Korean market is in an unprecedented boom. As the P/E ratios of US Big Tech peaked, the overflowing liquidity flooded into Korea’s AI and defense sectors.
But inside the AI industry, the pipes are leaking. Suspicions of circular trading. Redundant investments. Crippling depreciation costs. And absolutely no revenue model.
Here is the scenario I see:
The OpenAI bubble bursts → Liquidity crunch → Mass dumping of non-reserve sovereign bonds from reckless spenders like Korea and France → Governments must print debt or the system dies, but they cannot raise interest rates → Central banks accept inflation and run the money printers → The livelihoods of small business owners are obliterated.
In fact, OpenAI is just one of many triggers. It can be anything. Fundamentally, the problem is that the debt of welfare states in non-reserve currency countries is at an unsustainable level.
The US has the ultimate printing press. For them, even this crash will be a form of ‘creative destruction’—a healthy restructuring. But Korea and France are different. They are recklessly burning the incoming liquidity by issuing astronomical debt. Korea and France have unusually high populations of small business owners. As a writer studying the survival philosophy of these very people, this crisis feels deeply personal.
Let’s first look at the scam the politicians are running.
1. The God of Democracy is Dead
(1) The Sweet Promises of Democracy
Politicians grab the mic.
“Opportunities will be equal. Processes will be fair. Results will be just.” ,”We will build a nation you’ve never experienced.” ,”A 4.5-day workweek and universal basic income will secure your lives.”
When the applause dies down, someone asks,
“Who pays the bill?”
They smile and reply.
“The complete eradication of unearned income. We will punish the crypto bros and landlords. With punitive inheritance taxes and heavy levies on multiple homeowners, we will legally loot the vaults of the rich and distribute the wealth to you.”
The crowd cheers. The rich break a cold sweat. They call their accountants. They crunch the numbers. The math works out. Change to non-resident status, route through overseas shell companies. There are loopholes. Throw in investment tax cuts and employment subsidies, and they can breathe just fine. So, they decide to do nothing. Why? Running away is a hassle. Starting something new burns capital. Sitting still is profitable. The President is pleased.
“See? Bring me the statistics showing the rich haven’t fled.”
The statisticians shut their mouths. Corporations scatter like wet cats.
The ones bleeding out are someone else. The immigration seminar halls in Gangnam are standing-room only. These are the people who once rolled in the mud, working day and night to be the best, barely clawing their way to the ‘middle’. The anonymous, nothing-to-lose majority puts these strivers’ necks on the guillotine of the “law.”
“Invest your money and hire us for life, or we’ll squeeze your soul for property taxes.”
These strivers are trying to escape their highly democratic, welfare-drenched motherland. Someone asks them,
“Aren’t you afraid of living in a foreign land where you don’t speak the language and don’t even know your neighbor’s name?”
They reply.
“No one listens to my voice here anyway. Not knowing who lives next door—it’s the same in Seoul as it is over there.”
They are right. If society is a place where you can’t communicate and no one knows each other, they are physically in Korea, but they are no longer citizens. Even the beneficiaries of this democratic welfare occasionally doubt the setup.
“Is this system really okay? If I can’t reach the top, it’s more profitable to just lie on the bottom and eat the rations. There’s no reason to try hard.”
As anxiety spreads, the government injects the drug called “Technology.”
“Do not worry. AI will do 10 hours of work in 1 hour. We will tax the robots and feed you all.”
They vomit out projects plastered with the “AI” label: Sovereign AI, Physical AI, Mistral AI, Senior AI. They promise subsidies, government-led jobs, and knowledge data centers. It doesn’t matter if it’s just pouring concrete or creating fake jobs where seniors copy-paste a few lines of code in Excel. The public tilts their heads.
“Do you have proof?”
The President shows off 300,000 NVIDIA GPUs. Chaebol chairmen take the stage with mics. The public cheers.
“You had a plan all along. KOSPI 5500, let’s go.”
The National Assembly corners the corporations.
“Burn your treasury shares, or go to jail for breach of trust?”
If they don’t burn the stock, they violate their fiduciary duty to shareholders, they say. Corporations open their vaults with trembling hands. The stock market catches fire. The casting is complete.
The truly exceptional have already stayed to parasitize the system. Those who cannot be exceptional remain, waiting for their rations. But those who wanted to be exceptional are packing their bags right now.
Nassim Taleb said it best:
“The democratic politician who claims to fight for the poor routinely screams at his bodyguards and waiters. To them, the poor exist only as an abstract symbol.”
He is right. Democratic politicians do not believe in the autonomy of the masses. They do not govern for the masses. They govern only for themselves. They believe only they can represent the general will of the people and enlighten them.
They believe they are exceptional. But deep down, they harbor doubts about their own ‘legitimacy’. So, they elevate democracy to the realm of the divine. They build a sanctuary that no one can refute. Who dares to dissent at an altar prepared with the blood and sweat of the dead?
The father of democracy, Rousseau, was actually an elitist. Think about it. If he truly believed in the power of the masses, the state should have stopped at merely protecting property rights. As Frédéric Bastiat argued, the law should defend justice, not commit plunder. But Rousseau had little hope for the masses. To him, the masses were a mob. His desire to be a king remained intact. He simply substituted the ‘legitimacy’ he couldn’t inherit by birth with the ‘general will’.
(2) The Hopeless Kingdom of Mediocrity is Propped Up by Debt
In this kingdom, only democratic politicians are allowed to be exceptional. The rest are forced into mediocrity. Nietzsche doubted the promises of freedom, progress, and equality.
“We are by no means ‘liberal’; we are not working for ‘progress’; we don’t need to plug our ears to the marketplace’s sirens of the future: what they sing – ‘equal rights’, ‘free society’, ‘no more masters and no servants’ – has no allure for us. We hold it absolutely undesirable that a realm of justice and concord should be established on earth – From The Gay Science, Nietzsche. (because it would certainly be the realm of the most profound levelling down to mediocrity and chinoiserie).”
He saw that in such a society, the spirit striving for individual excellence is castrated. Thus, he urged individuals to sail out to the open sea to build their own kingdoms.
But there is one thing Nietzsche didn’t mention.
In this Kingdom of Mediocrity where everyone supposedly gets freedom, progress, and equality, who bears the responsibility? who pays the cost?
In the Kingdom of Mediocrity, it is the ‘individuals with an aristocratic spirit striving for excellence’ and ‘those who refuse to join the whining masses‘ who bear the responsibility and the costs. This excellence has nothing to do with ‘intelligence.’ It simply means the willingness to take risks—the resolve to achieve a better tomorrow solely through one’s own strength. But In a country like this, even Martin Luther would buy an indulgence and say,
“Whatever, I’m just going to lie down.”
To appease the voting masses, the government extracts capital from productive sectors and scatters it recklessly across unproductive ones. The healthcare welfare system, for instance, reveals how much tax revenue is squandered under the pretext of the ‘right to life.’ An out-of-control system lacking a self-correcting mechanism is inevitably headed for a brutal restructuring. Let’s take a tour.
[🇰🇷 South Korea’s K-Medical Salon]
Open the door of an average orthopedic clinic, and you can see exactly how this massive welfare state is being eaten alive from the inside. Two doctors in the consultation rooms. Twenty massage therapists in the manual therapy center down the hall.
Why are there so many massage therapists? It’s simple: physical therapy is covered by national health insurance! (LOL) As a result, those with plenty of time on their hands exchange friendly greetings with the therapists, chat about politics with the elderly person in the next bed, or just take a nap. This routine repeats every single day. There isn’t even a clock on the wall, and the smell of coffee fills the air. This is the ‘K-Medical Salon.’
Meanwhile, the actual doctor’s consultation goes like this: the moment you sit down, before you can even get settled, the doctor asks:
“You have private indemnity insurance, right?”
Nod your head, and the consultation is over in exactly 1 minute and 28 seconds. The receipt is packed tight with non-covered drugs, manual therapy, and extracorporeal shockwave therapy. It’s like a full-course tasting menu. The doctor doesn’t explain. He doesn’t have time. The patient doesn’t ask. With one tap of a claim button on a smartphone app, the out-of-pocket cost is absolute zero anyway.
If non-reimbursable treatments are covered by private insurance and physical therapy is billed to national health insurance, then who is actually footing the bill?
[🇫🇷 France’s Laid-back Opium Den]
A neighborhood clinic just outside Paris. It feels more like a sluggish post office than a medical facility. The doctor sees exactly twenty patients a day. Work any more than that, and half of it goes to taxes anyway. He clocks out sharply at 4 PM.
“Stressed out because of your boss lately?”
The doctor, with an indifferent expression, writes a prescription for a three-week paid sick leave (arrêt de maladie).
The disease code: Burnout. No tests required. With one signature, you can legally turn off your morning alarm. According to some unverified historian, even the aristocrats of ancient Rome didn’t rest as much as the French public. Believe it or not.
No need to pull out your wallet at the reception. Just swipe the green Carte Vitale (health insurance card). Total cost: 0 Euros. Who exactly is bleeding to pay for these three weeks of salary is none of my business.
You head to the pharmacy. French pharmacies are as glamorous as luxury beauty boutiques. A self-employed shop owner has squeezed out a few minutes of his lunch break to buy medicine. He keeps checking his watch. Business is dead, but the deadlines for VAT and pension contributions are right around the corner.
On the other side of the room, the young man holding his paid sick leave and a retiree with a bag full of free pills casually exchange bisous (cheek kisses). They debate their state-subsidized thermal spa retreats in the Alps for next month. I hear Lyon is nicer.
France’s public spending-to-GDP ratio is around 57%. Number one in the OECD. The French economy is slowly withering away, bled dry by its own romance.
| Category | 🇰🇷 South Korea | 🇫🇷 France |
| Core Nature of the System | The Speedrun Casino (Moral hazard colluding with private capital) | The Legal Opium Den (Romance and laziness funded by the state budget) |
| Scene on the Ground | “You have private insurance, right?” A 90-second consult followed by a factory of 20 massage therapists. | “Take three weeks off.” No-questions-asked paid sick leave and empty waiting rooms. |
| The Cost Illusion | The smartphone claim button. No cash leaves my wallet, making me an accomplice to overtreatment. | A single Carte Vitale. The illusion of a €0 bill. |
| The Real Victims | Office workers paying premiums with no time to even get physical therapy. | Innovative companies and youth fleeing the crushing taxes and regulations. |
| The Trigger of Ruin | Depletion of national health insurance funds and exploding deficits of private insurers. | Endless sovereign debt and capital exodus. |
(3) Are You Prepared to Sacrifice Everything for the Truth?
Nietzsche said:
“Because our ancestors were Christians who in their Christianity were mercilessly upright: for their faith they willingly sacrificed possessions, blood, position, and fatherland. We – do the same. But for what? For our unbelief? For every kind of unbelief? No, you know better than that, my friends! The hidden Yes in you is stronger than all Nos and Maybes that afflict you and your age like a disease; and you must sail the seas, you emigrants, you too are compelled to this by – a faith!”
Our ancestors sacrificed everything for God. But at some point, Nietzsche realized: God is dead. Instead, he chose to believe in the “hidden Yes” within himself. Yet, he knew the harsh reality.
“We children of the future – how could we be at home in this today! We are unfavourably disposed towards all ideals that might make one feel at home in this fragile, broken time of transition; as for its ‘realities’, we don’t believe they are lasting.”
The ice has already grown thin. The wind that brings the thaw is blowing. We, the homeless ones, are the very force that breaks the ice. I asked myself:
Can the state truly take responsibility for every individual’s suffering and even their death, simply because they are a ‘citizen’? That is something neither God nor Jesus could achieve. Ultimately, personal health must belong to the individual; it is only then that we can live truly healthier lives.
In this light, what the state should prepare for is not ‘well-being,’ but ‘well-dying.’ This is because well-dying is perhaps the only service that is undervalued and underproduced by the market, yet profoundly valuable. Instead, the welfare state is pouring taxes and debt into well-being—the most common service that the market is already capable of providing.
So, how must I prepare for this pre-ordained bankruptcy?
And so, I started stacking Bitcoin.
2. Why Are Democratic Stock Markets Booming?
As discussed, the exploitative nature of welfare states and their reckless fiscal expansion are structural flaws, creating countless triggers that could spark a massive sell-off of government bonds and cause interest rates to skyrocket. To prevent such a spike, central banks will eventually have no choice but to purchase government bonds and flood the market with liquidity.
Among these potential triggers, I believe the restructuring of OpenAI could be the primary catalyst. If the ‘AI bubble’ bursts due to its immense cash burn and failure to meet revenue targets, it could cripple the very tech sector that currently supports the state’s tax revenues and debt sustainability, forcing an immediate and desperate central bank intervention.
(1) Is OpenAI a Bubble?
The KOSPI crossed 5,700. Bitcoin is down 60% from its all-time high. South Korea, Germany, France. Their stock markets have all hit all-time highs. But the real economy is a corpse. High inflation, collapsing manufacturing competitiveness, a rotting higher-education system, and a mountain of debt. And zero independent monetary sovereignty. France uses the Euro, but it is completely addicted to fiscal deficits. How much longer the European Central Bank will keep buying their toxic bonds is anyone’s guess.
So why are the markets up? Global capital went rabid over EVs, ChatGPT, and “Physical AI” narratives, rushing straight into the US. The money flushed through the OpenAI-NVIDIA alliance poured into data centers and semiconductors, bleeding over into sovereign bond purchases. Liquidity was overflowing, and corporate taxes were excellent. South Korea issued the largest volume of national debt in its history.
Slap a “Physical AI Center” sign on the front, and they’ll probably use the money to build more empty buildings, bridges, and theaters. A room full of seniors copy-pasting data into Excel—that is the true face of “Sovereign AI.” We live in an era where government expertise is so abysmal that their fiscal efficiency is practically zero compared to the private market. Yet, they are still addicted to Keynesian policies.
Wouldn’t it be nice if everything went according to plan? At the dead center of this happy little ecosystem is the myth of OpenAI. Will it last? Let’s think about it.
I’ve been a long-time user of ChatGPT. I recently canceled my subscription, disgusted by the ethical censorship and degraded performance. ChatGPT is software. It doesn’t face traditional “chasm” issues. Anyone willing to pay for it has already signed up.
Living in Georgia, I’ve made some observations. When people translate to talk to me, they use the free version of ChatGPT. I have never seen a single person using the paid tier. In the non-Western world, competition isn’t fierce enough to justify paying for GPT. There’s simply no need. My approach is similar to Peter Lynch‘s to macroeconomics. If my prediction is right, here is what happens next:
- Global subscriber growth flatlines.
- Paid cancellations skyrocket.
- Aside from functions like translation, there will be no substantial improvement in productivity compared to cost.
- 6 billion people use it as a free toy, melting down expensive GPU chips in the process.
Pundits talk about “bundling” or “Enterprise AI” as OpenAI’s alternative revenue models. But GPT is a standalone model. Unlike Microsoft or Google, they don’t have a massive captive ecosystem to bundle it into. They lack the foundational infrastructure to force-feed it to users.
So they pivot to custom Enterprise AI? To do that, they have to stop being a free toy for 6 billion people. Because compute power is finite. But the moment they take away the free toy, their training data dries up, and they hand the market over to Meta and Google’s open-source models. It’s a total deadlock.
OpenAI has exactly two choices left. Go public on the NASDAQ. Or export their insolvency to the rest of the world.
(2) Virtual Breaking News: November 202X, OpenAI’s First Day on the NASDAQ
The opening bell rings. Robinhood apps crash worldwide. Korean retail investors, drunk on the sweet nectar of KOSPI 5,500, dump their Won for Dollars and dive in. Starting at an IPO price of $120, the stock instantly breaches $200. A TV anchor screams,
“The true dawn of the AGI era!”
People smash the buy button while asking each other,
“What exactly is AGI?” “I don’t know, just buy it.”
Behind the glowing order book, a tidal wave of shares from Microsoft and early VCs begins to dump on the market.
11:00 AM. Michael Burry drops a report. The title: The Illusion of Zero Marginal Cost: How OpenAI Burned $400 Billion.
“90% of global users are free-tier freeloaders in developing nations. Every time they hit ‘Enter’, servers vomit massive amounts of electricity. This is not a software company; it is the world’s most aggressively unprofitable electricity incinerator. With every keystroke, they are shoveling investors’ dollars straight into a coal furnace.”
The $200 stock shatters its IPO price and goes into freefall.
2:30 PM. NVIDIA hits -15% intraday. TSMC and SK Hynix crater in after-hours trading. The dollar pipeline for Asian export nations—the very pipeline they used to defend their currencies and fund their welfare states via AI hardware exports—is violently severed.
4:00 PM. The closing bell rings. Facing empty national vaults, non-reserve welfare states panic and fire up their money printers. They beg the US and European central banks for help. They are universally rejected.
3. The Blind Spots of This Scenario
Keynes said the market can remain irrational far longer than you can remain solvent. I know this. To be honest, the real issue is timing. The fiscal collapse of welfare states and the overinvestment by Big Tech are not new phenomena; they have been brewing for a long time. While I cannot predict the exact moment, there are several notable technical signals that warrant our attention. That is why I do not place 100% blind bets. I am watching three mechanical triggers.
(1) Trigger 1: The AI Bubble Signal
- The moment Big Tech uses the phrase “Capital/Investment Efficiency” during earnings calls.
- When they issue massive corporate bonds to build data centers, dragging Treasury yields up with them.
- When OpenAI starts complaining about free users, and their ad revenue proves ineffective.
According to the latest news, NVIDIA has scrapped its $100 billion data center investment plan for OpenAI, pivoting instead to a $30 billion equity stake. NVIDIA has already entered the “investment efficiency” phase. They smelled the rot. They pivoted to a strategy where they simply reap the rewards no matter who acquires or takes OpenAI public.
Check Indicators: Downward revisions in Big Tech CapEx guidance
(2) Trigger 2: The South Korean Government’s 10-year Treasury Bond yield 🇰🇷
Korea’s current potential growth rate is in the 1-2% range, with an inflation target of around 2%. Therefore, if the government bond yield comfortably exceeds 4.5%, the interest payments will surpass the maximum possible increase in tax revenue. In such a scenario, international capital would likely withdraw from the bond market, forcing the government to intervene. To lower yields through ‘financial repression,’ the government will have no choice but to print money and purchase its own bonds. Since the resulting KRW inflation cannot be exported, the prices of assets like Bitcoin and stocks will skyrocket. In South Korea, the Ministry of Economy and Finance and the Bank of Korea are effectively in lockstep, often operating under the guise of the so-called ‘F4 team.’ Consequently, as long as the government maintains its current trend of fiscal excess, it will remain difficult for them to carry out a market clearing through interest rate hikes.
Check Indicators: The South Korean Government’s 10-year Treasury Bond yield over 4.5%
(3) Trigger 3: U.S. 10-Year Treasury Yields
With U.S. national debt at staggering levels, the Treasury is incentivized to keep yields low. This creates a strong motivation to print money and purchase Treasuries at elevated prices. Until now, the dollar’s status as the global reserve currency allowed the U.S. to ‘export’ its inflation abroad, mitigating major domestic crises.
However, as the 10-year yield approaches 5%, the allure of risk-free assets rises, leading to higher discount rates across the board. Consequently, Big Tech companies—already suffering from poor free cash flow due to overinvestment—will inevitably face downward valuation adjustments.
Market liquidity will tighten in the short term. As capital moves in pursuit of high yields, bonds from non-reserve welfare states like France and South Korea, already burdened by debt, will be dumped onto the market at an even faster pace. Ultimately, to stabilize employment and the financial system, the U.S. will have no choice but to tolerate a higher inflation target of 2.5% to 3.0% and ramp up the money printer. This is because mass unemployment inflicts a far more fatal blow to the system than sticky, slow-burning inflation.”
Check Indicators: U.S. 10-Year Treasury Yields over 5%
(4) The Fatal Flaw: Deus Ex Machina
There is one variable that could prove my scenario completely wrong. OpenAI’s profitability miraculously turns around, or a savior appears to plug their massive deficit. A limitless bet from Middle Eastern oil money. Or the Pentagon nationalizing them with defense funds.
Alternatively, there is a scenario where non-reserve currency, debt-laden welfare states implement interest rate hikes and fiscal austerity to induce a large-scale market clearing. However, I believe this is highly unrealistic.
If that miracle happens, the crash is postponed beyond 2030. The market will continue to boom. If that happens, I hope the overflowing liquidity flows right into my Apple stock. Apple will do just fine. They have plenty of catalysts: foldables, on-device AI, and their 20th-anniversary editions. 🍏
In conclusion, both OpenAI and welfare states are burdened with unsustainable levels of debt. Meanwhile, countries like South Korea and France remain dependent on the liquidity flowing from the United States, maintaining their regimes by inflating debt and throwing a party in the asset markets. The current skyrocketing of asset prices is nothing more than a ‘final flare.’ It may have arrived a bit early, but I will wait and see. I will close by quoting the ‘Madman’ from Nietzsche.
“Finally he threw his lantern on the ground so that it broke into pieces and went out. ‘I come too early’, he then said; ‘my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder need time; the light of the stars needs time; deeds need time, even after they are done, in order to be seen and heard. This deed is still more remote to them than the remotest stars – and yet they have done it themselves.’”
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