# Pius Sprenger Shorted Subprime. Now He Sees It Again.

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-bitcoin-matrix-2537137/pius-sprenger-shorted-subprime-now-he-sees-it-again
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-bitcoin-matrix-2537137/pius-sprenger-shorted-subprime-now-he-sees-it-again.md
Podcast: [The Bitcoin Matrix](https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-bitcoin-matrix-2537137)
Published: 2026-05-04T09:00:29+00:00
Episode link: https://fountain.fm/episode/jHSa5VeXDP6fhSbmgwaI
Audio file: https://feeds.fountain.fm/paBeJqepFBns3bT2OAtC/items/orHhuh83jZ8GmSCnR9ok/files/AUDIO---DEFAULT---ba73cb8a-1f3d-49ea-b190-61effdb380e1.m4a
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-bitcoin-matrix-2537137/episodes/pius-sprenger-shorted-subprime-now-he-sees-it-again
Duration seconds: 7746

## Resource

Pius Sprenger has a PhD in mathematics and spent twenty-five years on Wall Street. He was hired to Deutsche Bank in 2004 and ended up on Greg Lippmann's derivatives desk — the desk Ryan Gosling's character runs in The Big Short . In February 2007 he co-built the ABX index with Goldman Sachs and Bear Stearns. He held his short position for nearly three years while senior management told him he was wrong. He was right. He left Wall Street in 2020. Today he is a founding member of the Scientific Bitcoin Institute alongside Giovanni Santostasi and Steven Perino — peer-reviewed researchers applying the power law to Bitcoin's growth. Their math says $1M per Bitcoin in 8–9 years. $7–8M in 17 years. Falsifiable. Scientific. Not a guess. And he is sounding the alarm again. Wall Street is now packaging Bitcoin into structured products the way it packaged subprime in 2007. Pius has seen this movie. He has the receipts. If you've heard "$1M Bitcoin" and dismissed it as hyperbole — this is the conversation to send to whoever you're trying to convince. We discuss: The Bitcoin Power Law explained — adoption to the power of 3, network value to the power of 2 — and why the math gives you $1M in 8–9 years What it actually felt like to short subprime from inside Deutsche Bank for three years while conference rooms full of PhDs laughed him out The pattern Pius sees in Wall Street's Bitcoin entry — Strategy, STRC, the ETFs — and what negative price convexity means for the paper market One week in East Germany in 1985 — the Stasi, the whispering — and what a former Deutsche Bank trader recognizes in Western banking surveillance today Subscribe so you never miss an episode. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🎙️ GUEST ━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Pius Sprenger @PiusSprenger → https://x.com/PiusSprenger Scientific Bitcoin Instit…

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