Vietnam Freezes 86 Million Bank Accounts While Durant's Lost Keys Outperform Wall Street

Welcome to this week’s Roundup!

This week we’re covering 👇

• Vietnam closes 86M bank accounts forcing biometric scans for basic transactions

• NBA star Kevin Durant's forgotten password becomes his best investment

• Forbes predicts Bitcoin ‘death spiral’ from overleveraged treasury companies

Let's jump in!

1️⃣ Vietnam Just Made Bitcoin's Case Better Than Any White Paper Ever Could

Vietnam closed 86 million bank accounts this month for users failing biometric verification (i.e. scanning their retina’s or providing fingerprints). The remaining 113 million accounts now require facial recognition for transactions over $379.

September 30th is the compliance deadline. Miss it, and lose total access. Welcome to financial surveillance 2025.

One foreign contractor (Reddit post below) discovered he literally needed to fly back to Vietnam just to prevent HSBC from freezing his funds. No video call. No remote solution. Just board a plane or lose your money forever.

"Does that sound crazy to anyone else in 2025?" he posted on Reddit. The answer should be a resounding “yes”, but Vietnam isn't alone.

Lebanon trapped depositors' savings in it’s 2019 foreign crisis. Turkey restricted foreign currency in 2018. Cyprus confiscated deposits above €100,000 in 2013. See a pattern forming here?

Vietnam claims it's fighting fraud after AI scammers stole $39 million. But 86 million frozen accounts isn't security - it's control. Every transaction is meticulously tracked. Every face scanned. Every movement monitored.

Why this matters? Capital controls remain one of the unhedged tail risks in many emerging market allocations and while governments perfect financial surveillance, Bitcoin remains permissionless. No facial scans or flight requirements and no "asking permission to access your own money.

Every frozen account becomes another orange pill moment. Vietnam just created 86 million potential Bitcoiners.

2️⃣ Kevin Durant Lost His Bitcoin Keys and Made 178x Returns

NBA superstar Kevin Durant has just figured out the ultimate HODL strategy. He bought Bitcoin in 2016 but lost access to his Coinbase login credentials. Nine years later, and that mistake has turned $10,000 into ~$1.8 million.

Durant started buying after Golden State Warriors teammates wouldn't stop talking Bitcoin at a dinner. He bought in when BTC was trading at ~$650 per coin.

Today at $116,000, his “forced” diamond hands delivered 17,800% gains - outperforming Renaissance Tech's legendary Medallion Fund by doing literally nothing.

His agent Rich Kleiman revealed at CNBC's ‘Game Plan’ conference that they still can't access the account. "We've never sold anything, and his Bitcoin is just through the roof. It's only benefited us”. CEO of Coinbase Brian Armstrong recently mentioned this was rectified and he now has full access.

The irony is perfect. Wall Street's best hedge funds struggle to consistently compound their capital at 20% per annum. Meanwhile, an NBA player who literally couldn’t sell, has outperformed hedge fund managers and advanced trading algorithm.

This accidental strategy proves what Bitcoin veterans know: the best traders are dead traders (or in Kevin Durant's case, ‘locked-out’ traders).

The lesson here? Stop overthinking and just buy Bitcoin. Lose your password (temporarily that is) and you’ll thank yourself in ten years. Sometimes the best investment strategy is having no way to execute a bad strategy.

3️⃣ Forbes Warns of Bitcoin Treasury "Death Spiral" But Can't Time It

Forbes is sounding alarms about Bitcoin treasury companies triggering a "death spiral". The poster child is Nakamoto (NAKA), which collapsed 96% from peak and now trades at 0.7x NAV(down from 75x just months ago).

Their ‘death spiral’ theory? Bitcoin’s price drops, resulting in treasury stocks crashing, which in turn forces liquidations that push Bitcoin’s price even lower.

So is there any merit to this hypothesis? Well, not really because:

1. NAKA is an equity play and thus not directly correlated with Bitcoin (we’ve seen the stock collapse and Bitcoin’s price was largely unaffected). Many treasury companies also use equity financing (rather than debt), providing a natural cushion against forced liquidations.

2. Even if the theory was correct, trying to time it is a fools errand (what if Bitcoin rallies to $250,000 first and then "collapses" back to $150k - you’d still be better off by buying today’s levels).

What's really happening? The market is placing a value on the individuals leading these treasury companies. The spread between successful treasury companies (MSTR @ a 1.3x NAV) and failures (NAKA @ 0.7x NAV) is governance, not Bitcoin itself.

As such, calling for Bitcoin's “death spiral” because treasury companies may blow up in the future is like predicting the internet's demise because Pets.com went bankrupt.

Smart money ignores the noise and stacks sats, while journalists just predict doom and gloom.

🎯 The Final Word

This week’s stories further strengthened Bitcoin’s value proposition. Vietnam locks out 86 million people from their own money. Durant locks himself out and makes 178x. Forbes predicts death spirals while missing the bigger picture.

The pattern is clear: Bitcoin offers a way out when governments tighten control, and accidental HODLers as Bitcoin’s price continues to outperform in the long run.

P.S. - Durant couldn’t access his Bitcoin and made 178x.

Be more like Kevin Durant and get started buying Bitcoin today with industry-low fees here (for iOS) or here (for Android).

⚡ Lightning Round

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