Each chapter is one bet: how the world was, what someone wagered, how they placed it, how it settled — and the half that lost.
Five lines record what happened. The sixth records what people believed at the time — and where it diverges from the other five, that gap is itself the history.
The narrative and the cycle are not two separate things. Infrastructure always gets built while nobody is watching; bubbles always burst while everybody is.
BTC month-end close · log scale · data from Bitstamp, cross-checked against Binance BTCUSDT over 109 months (max deviation 1.8%) · as of 2026-08-27
Figures are month-end closes, so the peaks here sit below the intraday highs — 2017 reads $13,880, not the 19,800 usually quoted.
The 2022 chain reaction was not seven separate events. It was one path travelling along credit exposure, and the size of each exposure set the order.
brings down Three Arrows Capital · Exposure to Terra left the fund insolvent. This was the first link in the 2022 chain reaction.
depends on Celsius · Held credit exposure to the fund. The size of each exposure set the order in which they failed.
makes possible FTX · Provided funding to an already distressed institution partway through the chain reaction.
depends on Alameda Research · The financial link between the two existed for a long time without being publicly visible. This is the hidden line that chapter 7B is about.