Mo Salah just announced he's leaving Liverpool and honestly, as a fan, it hurts.
But it got me thinking about his legacy because the greatest chapter in recent Liverpool history wasn't actually about Salah. It was the night they hosted Messi's Barcelona at Anfield, 3-0 down on aggregate, no Salah, written off by everyone including me.
Liverpool won 4-0 and went on to lift the Champions League.
What made it happen was Klopp, managing the belief in his plan and his players. That quality of leadership is rarer than people think.
It's exactly what I've been watching from the UAE this past month.
This country has taken sustained missile fire like no other and yet the DIFC never closed, Emirates never stopped flying, and colleagues I left behind in Dubai keep showing up.
One figure stood out for me as a resident: HE Reem Al Hashimy. While everything around her was loud and uncertain, she was the calm voice that cut through the noise, reassuring the country that whatever Iran did next, the UAE would be ready.
Exactly the voice a city needs when it's being tested.
I'm in Hong Kong right now and sitting here it strikes me that this city and Dubai tell a similar story of travel hubs you didn't think much about that somehow became home.
People gravitate to cities that rise in adversity.
And you see the same thing in markets.
The Middle East war has spiked energy prices, further pressuring an industry where BTC miners are losing close to $19,000 on every coin mined.
Bitdeer is liquidating its entire Bitcoin reserve, and Core Scientific is selling its treasury to fund an AI pivot.
From the outside that looks like an industry on its knees. From the inside these companies are redirecting the same infrastructure into AI and high performance computing at exactly the moment institutional demand for that compute is accelerating.
History is worth paying attention to here.
When miners exit and selling pressure fades, the network gets leaner. Bitcoin has delivered positive 90-day returns 65% of the time during periods of shrinking hashrate.
The China mining ban and the 2022 bear market both looked like a collapse from the outside but represented an internal reset.
Which brings me to tomorrow.
$14 billion in Bitcoin options expire on Deribit with a put/call ratio of 0.63.
Despite the war and the miners' pain, institutional flows have quietly positioned for upside, with traders banking premium and patiently waiting for the noise to settle.
The $75,000 strike has been the gravitational ceiling. Once this quarterly expiry clears, the market gets a cleaner run at expressing what it's actually been building toward all along.
Klopp didn't need the perfect hand that night at Anfield. Neither did HE Reem Al Hashimy.
The best leaders never do. And right now, neither does this market.
Thinking out loud from Hong Kong. Not financial advice. Do your own research.
@LiverpoolFC @Klopp @DubaiFuture @DeribitExchange
