November 5, 2025

Due to a confluence of events - World Series, Breeders’ Cup, Bitcoin Meltdown, Government Shutdown - November’s edition of IdleGuy.com has been delayed, but, it turns out to be a possibly fortuitous event.

Here’s how it’s going to go from here on out: IdleGuy.com is stuck at a 12-page format (13 including Sports Extra) because there’s only so much one man - Fearless Rick - can do. As much as I’d like it to, being fearless does not proffer upon one unlimited strength or creative capacity. One still needs to eat, and sleep, and spending hours in front of a computer screen is not exactly inducive to well-being. Shoulder and back aches have become all too common and annoying.

In order to alleviate the physical and mental strain of producing a monthly magazine in a timely fashion without assistance some pages will begin to appear more like blogs than set-in-stone articles, others, such as the Public Domian page, will be one-offs.

Because timeliness is essential, updates to pages will occur as events dictate, such as the weekly NFL and NCAA football picks, MLB Players of the Day and College Hoops Player of the Day and possibly, the Money and State of the World pages.

The 2020s have been an amazing era for change so far, and we’re only halfway through the decade, so the imperative becomes freshness, beyond the stoic, static, simplicity of a stand-alone monthly publication.

Going forward, expect more updates on a more frequent basis, turning th monthly format into more of an evolving daily or weekly concept. That said, let’s turn to the issues at hand.

It would be hard not to notice the rocky, tumultuous nature of financial markets the past few weeks. Since the government shutdown in the U.S., Wall Street has been, if anything, resilient, even to extremes in terms of bubble valuations. The finance titans put on quite a show through October, relying on the usual media scribblers and pundits to carry water for the stumbling, bumbling federal government.

At every opportunity, mundane actions were turned to positive developments, even if the narrative didn’t quite align with reality, as it seldom does when it comes to Wall Street, bankers, brokers, and speculators and their love of money. That now appears to be ending, the main catalyst coming from the finicky, fantastical place known as the crypto-universe.

Bitcoin, as the standard-bearer for all things crypto, managed to parlay the government shutdown into a rationale for a new all-time high on October 7, somewhere in the range of $125,310. There wasn’t much to the calculus other than the government shutdown offered a new, better rationale to own bitcoin, because, as the government has so often demonstrated, they can’t be relied upon to keep the lights on, and that may put the currency at risk, which, truth be told, is bitcoin’s main raison d’etre, it’s primary rationale for existence as an alternative to the once-mighty greenback.

Well, the empire, as it were, even in idle mode, didn’t much care for being upstaged, nor did the proponents backing real money, gold and silver, which made new highs shortly thereafter. Since then, bitcoin has been in complete disarray, that all-time high a fast-fading memory of what was or could have been. Just before 5:00 pm ET on Tuesday, November 4, bitcoin was struggling to hold $99,000, and, while gold and silver have also taken their licks, they are down to a much smaller degree than the OG of crypto-land.

Bitcoin, since the peak, is down nearly 21%, and that’s in less than a month. Liquidations, similar to margin calls on stocks, have taken their tolls. For comparison purposes, gold is down about 10%, silver, 13%, the being that gold and silver haven’t been hit with forced liquidations or margin calls. Bitcoiners lost their leveraged bets, big time.

What this sudden emptying of wallets suggests is a massive liquidity squeeze that may be in its early stages. When money is put to poor use, as in speculative, leveraged bets on a fictional, ephemeral currency or asset, it often goes poof, as many speculators and gamblers are finding out the hard way.

Money leaving the chat, so to speak, engenders fear in other speculative areas, and, so, that money too is eradicated, put to rest, out of circulation. Add to that, in terms of U.S. at least, the hundreds of thousands of federal employees going without pay, the suspension of SNAP benefits for November, with only a partial reprieve demanded by the courts from the Trump administration, and the amount of spendable cash out of circulation has been severely restrained.

Once stock market players get the memo, those big bets on Mag7 and other tech darlings begin to unwind as well. That’s what happened on Tuesday, with the NASDAQ shedding some 400 points.

This outflow of capital may be just the beginning of what the most profound economic thinkers have been predicting: the bursting of the mother of all bubbles, and, if that’s the case, hard times are ahead for everybody, not just stock and crypto speculators, but general employees, working class folks and everyone else up and down the income and wealth ladders.

All of which is why the theme of the IdleGuy.com November issue is “Hard Times.” One wishes it wouldn’t come to this, but it did seem to be kind of inevitable. Proceed with caution.

Your ad could be in the next issue of idleguy.com for as little as $6 per month. Contact Fearless Rick using the form on page 12 for more information.

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