October 2025 - Monthly Market Update
/Monthly Update || October 2025
“And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’ Then I said, ‘Here I am! Send me.’”
Opening Remarks
Greetings from Ikigai Asset Management¹. We welcome the opportunity to bring to you our eighty-fifth Monthly Update and hope these are helpful in better understanding some of what we’re doing and what we’re seeing. We have the privilege of deploying capital on behalf of our investors into a new technology and asset class that has tremendous potential to make the world a better place and create trillions of dollars of value in the process.
We believe we are obligated to be shepherds of this technology – to do our part to push crypto towards fulfilling its potential. We strive to be an objective, reasonable, well-intentioned voice of truth amongst a chorus of biased, fallacious, pernicious opportunists. It’s an honor that we take seriously.
To that end, on September 10th Charlie Kirk was martyred. It was the most public display of Christian martyrdom in human history.
On September 21st, a memorial service was held in honor of Charlie Kirk. It was the most public display of Jesus Christ and Christian ideals in human history.
This is not an exaggeration. Because while we have 2,000 years of Christian martyrdom and displays of Jesus Christ and Christian ideals, we only have about 15 years of social media. And social media amplified the martyrdom and then amplified the presentation of Christ to a greater degree than has ever occurred before. Stunningly powerful.
September Highlights
Multicoin, Galaxy and Jump Lead $1.65bn DAT with PIPE Into Ticker “FORD”; Kyle Samani Named Chairman; Buys $1.58bn SOL at $232/SOL
Pantera Capital Leads $500mm DAT with PIPE Into Ticker “HSDT”; Buys $175mm SOL at $231/SOL
ETH DAT BMNR Buys $3.7bn of ETH, All Other ETH DATs Combined Buy ~$800mm of ETH
MSTR Buys ~$850mm of BTC
Bo Hines Steps Down As Head of Presidential Crypto Working Group, Named As CEO of New US-Focused Tether Product “USAT”
Stripe and Paradigm Partner To Build Permissioned L1 Called Tempo
Tether Raising $20bn on $500bn Valuation
SEC and FINRA Have Contacted >200 DATs To Investigate Potential Insider Trading
NASDAQ Announces Increased Scrutiny and Shareholder Vote Requirements on DATs
Trump’s WLFI Project Freezes >$100mm of Justin Sun’s Tokens After Sun Transferred $9mm of WLFI
SEC To Create “Innovation Exemption” To Allow Crypto Companies To Launch Products Without Complying with Previous regulatory Requirements
SEC and CFTC Issue Joint Statement Announcing Planned Guidance On Launching Onshore Crypto Margin Products
CFTC To Allow Stablecoins To Be Used As Collateral in US Derivatives Markets
CFTC Grants Polymarket Approval To Operate in the US
Cloudflare Launches “NET Dollar” Stablecoin Project
CoinShares To Go Public Via “Vine Hill” SPAC
NASDAQ Invests $50mm in Gemini
NASDAQ Files To Allow Tokenization and Blockchain Listing of Stocks
SEC Issued No-Action Letter for DePIN Companies
Tom Lee’s BMNR Makes $20mm Investment in New Worldcoin DAT
X4Vivek’s Strive Capital and Bitcoin DAT Semler Scientific Announce All-Stock Merger
| Asset Class | Sep | Aug | Jul | Q2-25 | Q1-25 | YTD | 2024 | Q4-24 | Q3-24 | Q2-24 | Q1-24 | 2023 | 2022 | Instrument |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bitcoin | 5% | -6% | 8% | 30% | -12% | 22% | 121% | 48% | 1% | -12% | 69% | 155% | -64% | BTC |
| NASDAQ | 5% | 1% | 2% | 18% | -8% | 17% | 25% | 5% | 2% | 8% | 8% | 54% | -33% | QQQ |
| S&P 500 | 4% | 2% | 2% | 11% | -5% | 14% | 23% | 2% | 6% | 4% | 10% | 24% | -19% | SPX |
| Total World Equities | 3% | 3% | 2% | 10% | -1% | 17% | 14% | -2% | 6% | 2% | 7% | 19% | -20% | VT |
| Emerging Market Equity | 7% | 3% | 1% | 10% | 4% | 28% | 4% | -9% | 8% | 4% | 2% | 6% | -22% | EEM |
| Gold | 12% | 5% | -1% | 6% | 19% | 47% | 27% | 0% | 13% | 5% | 8% | 13% | -1% | GLD |
| High Yield | 0% | 1% | -1% | 3% | 0% | 3% | 2% | -2% | 4% | -1% | 0% | 5% | -15% | HYG |
| Emerging Market Debt | 1% | 1% | 0% | 2% | 2% | 7% | 0% | -5% | 6% | -1% | 1% | 5% | -22% | EMB |
| Bank Debt | 0% | 0% | 0% | 1% | -2% | -1% | -1% | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% | 3% | -7% | BKLN |
| Industrial Metals | 4% | 2% | -3% | 3% | 2% | 9% | 3% | -9% | 3% | 12% | -2% | -6% | -13% | DBB |
| USD | 0% | -2% | 3% | -7% | -4% | -10% | 7% | 8% | -5% | 1% | 3% | -2% | 8% | DXY |
| Volatility Index | 6% | -8% | -1% | -24% | 28% | -6% | 39% | 4% | 34% | -4% | 4% | -43% | 26% | VIX |
| Oil | -1% | -6% | 9% | -5% | 2% | -2% | 13% | 10% | -13% | 1% | 18% | -5% | 29% | USO |
SOURCE: TRADING VIEW. AS OF 9/30/25.
| Sep | Aug | Jul | Q2-25 | Q1-25 | YTD | 2024 | Q4-24 | Q3-24 | Q2-24 | Q1-24 | 2023 | 2022 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BTC | 5% | -6% | 8% | 30% | -12% | 22% | 121% | 48% | 1% | -12% | 69% | 155% | -64% |
| ETH | -6% | 19% | 49% | 36% | -45% | 24% | 46% | 28% | -24% | -6% | 60% | 91% | -67% |
| XRP | 3% | -8% | 35% | 7% | 0% | 37% | 238% | 240% | 29% | -24% | 2% | 81% | -59% |
| BCH* | 2% | -3% | 11% | 59% | -31% | 21% | 36% | 25% | -12% | -44% | 121% | 157% | -75% |
| EOS | -19% | -5% | -10% | -8% | -20% | -49% | -8% | 50% | -11% | -48% | 30% | -2% | -72% |
| BNB | 18% | 9% | 19% | 9% | -14% | 44% | 124% | 24% | -3% | -4% | 94% | 27% | -52% |
| XTZ | -7% | -7% | 44% | -18% | -49% | -48% | 28% | 82% | -11% | -43% | 40% | 39% | -84% |
| XLM | 2% | -12% | 69% | -10% | -20% | 9% | 157% | 237% | 8% | -35% | 9% | 81% | -73% |
| LTC | -2% | 3% | 24% | 4% | -19% | 4% | 42% | 54% | -11% | -28% | 44% | 4% | -52% |
| TRX | -2% | 5% | 16% | 17% | -6% | 31% | 136% | 63% | 25% | 1% | 14% | 98% | -28% |
| Aggregate Mkt Cap | 3% | 0% | 13% | 24% | -19% | 17% | 96% | 46% | -4% | -14% | 63% | 119% | -64% |
| Aggregate DeFi* | -3% | 11% | 31% | 20% | -19% | 35% | 50% | 52% | -15% | -21% | 47% | 132% | -77% |
| Aggr Alts Mkt Cap | 5% | 7% | 18% | 25% | -34% | 11% | 72% | 47% | -13% | -15% | 58% | 90% | -64% |
SOURCE: COINMARKETCAP AND COINGECKO. AS OF 9/30/25. BCH INCLUDES SV.
The Martyrdom of Charlie Kirk
On September 10th while addressing a large audience at Utah Valley University, Charlie Kirk was assassinated by 22-year-old Tyler Robinson. If you were not familiar with Charlie’s work, he was one of the most prominent conservative voices in America and the single most impactful conservative voice in America for reaching young people. He toured dozens of college campuses and held open, recorded Q&A sessions with anyone that wanted to come to the microphone and ask a question. There are hundreds of hours of footage of Charlie speaking extemporaneously to students across the nation. He was perhaps the single biggest reason for the large Republican shift in the 2024 election for males under 30.
Charlie was assassinated in equal parts for his political beliefs and his religious beliefs. It’s impossible to disentangle those two because for Charlie, the two were completely intertwined. He was a devout Christian and his Christian views served as the foundation for his conservative political views. When it comes to the intertwinement of Christianity and conservatism, Charlie was the strongest voice in the world. That’s not an exaggeration. If you put “strength of voice for Christ” on the X-axis and “strength of voice for conservatism” on the Y-axis, the Charlie Kirk dot was out there in a spot on the graph where no other dots were. And he was murdered because of it. Martyred for it.
The assassination was recorded by numerous phone cameras, and that footage was available on social media minutes after the shooting occurred. Across all platforms, those videos have at least hundreds of millions if not billions of impressions. The reaction to the assassination was the strongest I’ve seen to any unplanned event in my lifetime, short of 9/11. And the reaction was polarized.
In particular, there was a portion of the left that publicly celebrated the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Tens of thousands of accounts across social media platforms that were publicly celebrating the assassination were identified and compiled into a public database under the name “Charlie Kirk Data Foundation”. This database was taken down a few days after it was compiled and had >50,000 entries at that time.
Charlie talked. That was Charlie’s whole thing. Talking it out. Perhaps his most famous quote was, “when people stop talking, that’s when you get violence.” The radical left didn’t wait that long. The radical left murdered Charlie WHILE he was talking. And tens of thousands on the left publicly celebrated that murder. Then they mocked Charlie prayer vigils. Then they destroyed Charlie memorials. Then they mocked his widowed wife. Then they mocked his memorial service.
This was a shocking response. We’ll talk more later about the implications of this response from the left, but it was shocking to many millions of Americans. In some ways, the response to the assassination from the left was more outrageous than the assassination itself. The assassination was one crazy left-wing guy. The celebratory response was tens of thousands of people expressing disgusting vitriol. And so, it’s a valid question to ask why. Why did a vocal minority of the left respond this way?
The main overarching reason is that many left politicians and talking heads over the last number of years have created a permission structure for violence. A. Permission. Structure. For. Violence. This is utterly undeniable. If you define your opponent as evil, violence against your opponent isn’t wrong. If you define your opponent as a threat to democracy, violence against your opponent isn’t wrong. If you define your opponent as a nazi. A fascist. A dictator. The second coming of Hitler – violence against your opponent isn’t wrong. This has been a concerted effort on the left - to redefine the relationship with the right not as political debate, but as justified all-out war. Violence is no longer violence, it’s “defense”. It’s “liberation”. It’s “resistance”. It’s “the right thing to do”. The rhetoric very obviously causes unstable people to act violently. That’s literally THE POINT OF THE RHETORIC. Watch this seven-minute clip and then ask yourself - “what is the point of this concerted rhetoric?”
The point of the rhetoric is to incite violence. And we can see that it has been effective at doing just that. How is it that the radical left convinced themselves that Charlie was worthy of assassination and then that his assassination was worthy of celebration? The radical left claimed Charlie was a racist. A fascist. A misogynist. A homophobe. A transphobe. A xenophobe. To be crystal clear, none of those things are worthy of being murdered for. No one deserves to be murdered for holding those beliefs. It is a deeply broken moral compass to ever think otherwise. But also to be clear, Charlie was none of those things.
That is one of the main points I want to get across here today. Charlie Kirk was not a hateful person. Disagreement is not hate (when done respectfully). Charlie loved all people, and he did it the way the Bible teaches us to love. Blanket approval is not love. One more time – disagreement is not hate, and blanket approval is not love. Love is helping people get to things that are true, good and beautiful. And Charlie did that in an explicitly Biblical way. Charlie was able to disagree with a lifestyle without trying to stop a person from living it or hating them for it. You can certainly disagree with his views, as is your right. But that doesn’t mean Charlie was hateful. Or a nazi. Or a fascist.
If we consume any social media at all (which almost all of us do, some more than others), our social media algorithms impact our worldview. This is unavoidable. And some people may have a social media algorithm that is telling them that Charlie hated black people. And gays. And transgenders. And women. And people from other countries. That is not true. And if you’re reading this right now and you feel that way, I urge you to watch the following clips. You owe it to yourself.
There were some montage clips floating around showing some very short, out of context things Charlie said out of the many hundreds of hours of recorded footage of Charlie talking extemporaneously. Here is one of those clips. It’s three minutes long. You should watch it.
In a few instances, in my opinion, Charlie used some harsh wording. Maybe in those instances I would have used different wording. Maybe Charlie wished he had those moments back. Here’s a 39 second clip talking about Gaza. Not the best wording.
If there is a single thing to watch as a rebuttal to the claim that Charlie was a hateful person, it’s this hour long video from a black gay man. He goes point by point on all the things the left tried to twist and take out of context in the wake of Charlie’s assassination – gun rights. Empathy. Gays. Trans. Racism. Affirmative action. Critical Race Theory. Immigration. Abortion. The video goes point by point, with bookmarks. If you are reading this and you are of the view that Charlie was a hateful person, I urge you to watch this entire video.
If you don’t have time to watch that whole hour, below is a written rebuttal of some of the claims made against Charlie in the wake of his assassination –
Some people have claimed Charlie was homophobic. He was not. Watch this 4:40 video.
Some people have claimed Charlie was transphobic. He was not. Watch this 3 min video.
Some people have claimed Charlie was transphobic because he was against gender ideology. Watch this 2 min video posted by “Gays Against Groomers”.
Some people have claimed Charlie was hateful. He was not. Here’s a 3 min video from two black men talking about how he wasn’t hateful at all and that it was all propaganda. Here’s another 3 min video from a gay man talking about how he wasn’t hateful at all and that it was all propaganda.
Some people have claimed Charlie was hateful because he believed in absolute moral truths. Here’s a two min video about that.
Some people have claimed Charlie was racist because he was against DEI. He was against DEI. That does not make him racist. It makes him pro-meritocracy. Here is 3 mins of him talking about that idea. Here is another 1 min clip on that.
Here’s a 4 min video from a black man showing that Charlie can’t be racist because he doesn’t believe in race.
Here’s a 1 min clip from a black man that worked closely with Charlie Kirk talking about how not racist Charlie was.
Here’s a 2 min clip of progressive talking head Van Jones talking about the message Charlie sent to him the day before he was murdered.
Charlie knew the Bible really well. He could reference dozens of scriptures off the top of his head in conversation. Some might refer to Charlie’s intertwinement of conservatism and Christianity as Christian Nationalism and some might be against the idea of Christian Nationalism. Charlie never referred to himself as a Christian Nationalist. Here’s three minutes of him talking about that idea.
There are more clips. Dozens more. But hopefully by now you understand that Charlie Kirk was not hateful. And claims made to the contrary were propaganda from the left used to twist reality, discredit who Charlie was and what he stood for, and lessen the impact of his martyrdom. But there was an impact from his martyrdom. A big one.
The following two posts, taken together, I think were the two best things I read on the situation overall in terms of characterizing how tens/hundreds of millions of Americans were feeling in the immediate wake of Charlie’s assassination.
The first from Chad Prather has 2.7mm views –
“The reason you feel Charlie’s death so deeply is because grief doesn’t measure itself by proximity. It measures itself by meaning. You didn’t have to know him personally to feel the sting of his absence, because when a voice like his goes silent, something in the atmosphere shifts.
The reason it feels heavier than so many other tragedies is because your spirit recognizes that this is not just about a man, it is about a battle. Scripture says eternity is written on our hearts, and when someone who carried truth with boldness is suddenly gone, eternity aches within us. It’s like our souls know instinctively that the darkness celebrated, and that strikes us at the core.
The reason you can’t shake it is because psychologically, we don’t only attach ourselves to people…we attach ourselves to symbols. Charlie became a symbol of conviction in a time of compromise, courage in a time of fear. And when a symbol is struck down, it rattles something primal and eternal inside us.
That’s why even those who never met him feel it. There is a strange thread pulling at us, and it is not imagined. It is real. We are bound together by shared purpose, by shared longing for truth, by the Spirit of God Himself weaving us into a fabric that cannot be torn apart. This loss pulled at that fabric, and every one of us felt the tug.
So if you’ve wondered why this hits so hard, it’s because your soul knows. This is bigger than news. This is bigger than politics. This is about eternity, about truth, and about the weight of a man whose life carried both.”
The second from Robert Sterling has 25mm views. It is long but it is worth it –
“My liberal friends are completely oblivious about how radicalizing the last week has been for tens of millions of normal Americans. Zero clue.
I’m not talking about people who are “online”; I mean regular, everyday Americans. “Normies.” People who scroll through Facebook posts and Instagram reels from the Dutch Bros drive thru line. Political moderates who have water cooler chats about Mahomes touchdowns and Bon Jovi concerts, not Twitter threads or Rachel Maddow monologues.
Millions of them. Tens of millions. They’re logging on, they’re engaging, and they’re furious.
And I’ll be candid: They blame you guys. They blame the left.
Regardless of whether you believe it to be justified, they think you’re the bad guys here. And they are reacting accordingly.
I can already hear some of you racing toward the comments to start screeching in moral indignation, so I’m going to be blunt: Shut up and listen to what I’m telling you. Your movement will lose any semblance of relevance if you don’t develop some small measure of self-awareness, and—absent someone force-feeding you bitter medicine—you guys collectively lack the humility to do this on your own.
Here are the facts:
Fact 1. Tens of millions of Americans started the week seeing a 23-year-old blonde woman—a young woman in whom virtually every parent watching pictured their own daughter—stabbed in the neck by a career criminal. These people then found out the murderer had been released from jail 14 times over.
Fact 2. Two days later, tens of millions of Americans watched a video of Charlie Kirk get murdered speaking to college students. Millions of these people knew who Charlie was; millions of them didn’t. Upon seeing the video, however, these normal Americans from across the land and across the political spectrum agreed that he was the victim of a terrible, fundamentally unjustifiable crime, and their hearts broke in sympathy for his family. Good people who had never even heard the name Charlie Kirk before wept.
Fact 3. Immediately after seeing the footage of a peaceful young man get shot in the neck, these same people logged onto Facebook and Instagram (remember, we are talking about regular Americans, not perpetually online Twitter or Bluesky users) and saw some of their local nurses, school teachers, college administrators, and retail workers celebrating this horrific crime. Not just defending it, but cheering it.
These are all facts. You may not like the implications of these facts, and we can certainly debate the underlying causes thereof, but, indisputably, they are nevertheless factual statements.
Here’s what it means for you, the Democrats reading this:
These normal, middle-of-the-road, non-political citizens just become politically active. They realized that politics cares about them, even if they don’t particularly care about politics. After watching Iryna Zarutska and Charlie Kirk both bleed out from the neck, they think their lives and the physical safety of their families—the bedrock of human society, the foundation of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs—depend on political activation, whether they desire it or not.
These people are now sprinting—not jogging, not walking, but racing—to the right. Because they blame you guys for everything that just happened.
When they see footage of Decarlos Brown stabbing a Ukrainian refugee to death, they don’t see just one demon-possessed man. They picture every university administrator, HR bureaucrat, and DEI apparatchik that ever lectured them about systemic racism, the “carceral state,” or the need to release violent crime suspects without bail in the name of social justice.
They then think back to conversations they’ve had with their cop friends—their buddy from high school who quit the force after getting tired of being called a racist, their friend at the local YMCA who vents about having to release career criminals because Soros-funded prosecutors aren’t willing to file charges—and they realize everything the left has told them over the last five years has been utter bullshit.
And they blame you. Because, even if you count yourself as a moderate Democrat, your party supported the district attorneys, city council members, and mayors that let fictitious concerns about mental health and racial justice supersede very real concerns for their family’s safety.
When these Americans see blood erupt from the side of Charlie Kirk’s neck, they don’t see just a martyred political activist. They think of every extreme leftist they’ve ever met who (1) calls anyone to the right of Hillary Clinton a fascist and (2) constantly jokes—“jokes”—about punching Nazis and “bashing the fash.”
They realize that there really do exist people who wish to see them dead for their moderately conservative political beliefs, their Christian faith, and even the color of their skin. They ask themselves if the violence visited upon Charlie might one day show up on their own doorstep.
And they blame you. Because, even if you’re just a center-of-the-road liberal, you lacked the courage to police your own ranks. You let modern-day Maoist red guards run loose across every facet of society, and what started with social-media struggle sessions has now turned to 30-06 bullet holes.
When these Americans log onto social media and see their neighbors justifying, celebrating, glorifying murder, they realize that some who walk among them are soulless ghouls at best, literally demon-possessed at worst. These people—whether they faithfully attend church every Sunday or only attend with relatives once a year, on Christmas Eve—start talking about things like spiritual warfare. They implicitly understand that no normal human casually celebrates the mortal demise of a peaceful person
And they blame you. Because, even if you condemned Charlie Kirk’s murder, they probably haven’t seen you condemn those in your own movement who cheered it on. They view you as complicit in allowing heartless fellow travelers to celebrate death, and it repulses them.
For all of these situations, what has your response been? Nothing but bullshit.
In response to Iryna Zarutska bleeding out on the floor of a train, you post bullshit statistics about reductions in reported crime, when everyone who’s ever been to a major urban center in the last decade knows that actual crime has skyrocketed, only for victims not to waste their time reporting it to cops that don’t have the manpower to respond and prosecutors that seek to downgrade as many felonies as possible to misdemeanor citations.
In response to a 31-year-old man taking a bullet to the neck in front of his family, you post nothing but bullshit whataboutism.
> “What about January 6th?” (Honest answer: After you let Liz Cheney spend two years operating a star chamber in the House, combined with countless other failed attempts at “lawfare” against Trump, no one cares anymore.)
> “What about Mike Lee making a dumb joke on Twitter about some guy in a mask in Minnesota?” (No one outside of Utah, DC, or Twitter knows who Mike Lee even is.)
> “What about Paul Pelosi?” (That’s not comparable to Charlie Kirk getting shot, and we all know it. And, again, Paul who?)
> “What about regulations on assault rifles?” (That’s not going to get you very far when one of these killers used a knife and the other one used a common hunting rifle.)
In response to teachers, healthcare workers, and thousands of other liberals cheering on Charlie’s murder, it’s nothing but more bullshit and misdirection.
> “It’s not THAT many people celebrating!” (Yes, it is. Everyone has seen it on their Facebook and Instagram feeds.)
> “I thought you guys didn’t support cancel culture.” (We don’t cancel people over their opinions; we’re more than happy to see people lose their jobs—especially their taxpayer-funded jobs—for actively cheering on murder, though. If you can’t see the difference, that’s your own shortcoming.)
All bullshit. Not even smart bullshit, but stale, mid-grade, low-IQ bullshit. Ordinary Americans see right through it, and they don’t like how it smells.
You probably don’t like hearing this. But you need to hear it.
Because I’m right, and, as you reflect on this, you know I’m right. The ranks of my political movement gained millions of righteously angry new members this week. We have a mandate to ensure these crimes never happen again, and that’s exactly what we are now going to do.
If you want to keep a seat at the table as we do so, you’d better clean house and start policing your own.”
And so. It seems readily apparent to me that the left made a tremendous mistake with their celebration of the assassination of Charlie Kirk. This was a major, major misstep for that political party. The left has become the party of intolerance, hate and violence. The radical left is eating the “normal” left. The “normal” left, so far, has not had the ability to reign in the most radical parts of their party and it is eating the party alive. We’ll see how it shows up in the elections. The 2028 presidential election is a long way away. All kinds of things can happen between now and then. The mid-terms are not so far away. The campaign cycle for the mid-terms will start ramping up six months from now.
My guess is the impact of the martyrdom of Charlie Kirk and the left’s celebration of that martyrdom is going to show up in the mid-terms and again in 2028. Because -
1) There were some meaningful number of Democrat voters that watched Charlie’s neck get geysered and then watched thousands of their own party members publicly celebrate that murder and said – “enough”. And they will now vote for the Republican candidate going forward. Because they can’t bring themselves to vote for a party that acts this way.
2) There were some meaningful number of people that weren’t going to vote at all that watched Charlie’s neck get geysered and then watched thousands on the left publicly celebrate that murder and said – “enough”. And they will now go out and vote. And they will vote Republican. Because they can’t bring themselves to sit by idly and do nothing. And one thing they can do is vote against the party that acts this way.
3) There were some meaningful number of people that have voted Democrat and were going to vote Democrat again that watched Charlie’s neck get geysered and then watched thousands of their own party members publicly celebrate that murder and said – “enough”. And they will now just not vote at all. Because maybe they can’t bring themselves to vote MAGA, but they also can’t bring themselves to vote for a party that acts this way.
In America, many political races are close. The margins of victory are thin. So when you add up these three buckets, it could very well end up being enough to make the difference in multiple elections. And as for the presidential race in 2028 – immediately after I watched this 14 minute speech from JD Vance I said “Vance is going to win in 2028”. 2028 is a long way away and all kinds of things can happen, but my money is on Vance. And I think there’s a good chance it’s not going to be particularly close.
The current balance of power in the Senate is 53-47 for Republicans. The current balance of power in the House is 220-213 for Republicans. And of course Republicans control the White House. Republicans are highly likely to retain control of Senate when you just look at the details of the individual elections. The House will be much tighter. Historically, presidents lose an average of 20 House seats in their second-term midterms. And Republicans can only lose a couple seats and retain control. So the House is going to be very tight in the mid-terms.
There is a deep irony that Charlie’s organization was called Turning Point. Because there is a very real chance that we look back on this event as a real turning point in American politics. The martyrdom of Charlie Kirk and the left’s public mass celebration of that martyrdom could end up being the catalyst that dissolves the Democratic party in its current form. Going forward, the Democratic party may become increasingly unelectable. Because it’s becoming increasingly more difficult for logical, rational, normal, reasonably moral people to align themselves with the left.
Simultaneously, you galvanized the right. And not just like, run-of-the-mill political galvanization type stuff. THIS WAS THE MOST PUBLIC DISPLAY OF CHRISTIAN MARTYRDOM IN HUMAN HISTORY. There is a history to Christian martyrdom and there is so much power in that history that it will make you tremble. 2,000 years of history of Christians being killed for their belief in Jesus Christ. Going all the way back to the story of Stephen in Acts 6-7, where Stephen was stoned to death for criticizing Jewish religious authorities for rejecting Jesus as the Messiah. Scholars generally date this event to 34 or 35 AD.
And the following few centuries saw continued martyrdom and that martyrdom galvanized a movement. The Jesus movement. The same movement Charlie Kirk was a leader of. James, the son of Zebedee. James, the brother of Jesus. Peter. Paul. Iganatius. Polycarp. Justin Martyr. The Scillitan Martyrs. Perpetua. Felicity. Cyprian of Carthage. Origen. Dozens of others. And then you fast forward to Constantine and the Edict of Milan in 313 which legalized Christianity and in 380 you got the Edict of Thessalonica that named Nicene Christianity as the official state religion of the Roman Empire. And the rest, they say, is history. Christianity went on to be the single most positively impactful movement in human history. And it remains so today.
That is the weight behind the martyrdom of Charlie Kirk. Not something I would bet against.
Closing Remarks
I appreciate you taking the time to read this far. There may be some of you that disagree with any number of the points I just made. Perhaps you disagree vehemently and you’re kind of pissed right now. I just want to say I appreciate your disagreement and I’m certainly not trying to piss you off. And I’d welcome any response you might have. You can write back or if you want to get on the phone, I’m happy to. I’d welcome it. We need to keep talking. We must.
There were quite a few Bible verses that held particular weight for me after Charlie was shot. One of them I included in the beginning where the Howard Marks quote goes. Another is at the end where the Japanese proverb goes. This is the third one -
“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” - Ephesians 6:12
I sobbed when I saw the video of Charlie and heard a few hours later that Charlie had passed. I sobbed for a bunch of reasons. One of the main reasons I sobbed is because when I see the darkness, it strengthens my faith in the existence of the light. I have had other experiences like this in my life that were also very impactful to me. Darkness is the absence of light. So you cannot have darkness without light. We know the light exists because of how different it is than darkness. And so in that moment, I got a glimpse into the existence of God. And that’s going to break me down every single time.
I sobbed because I immediately realized I had just witnessed martyrdom in the name of Christ and I’ve read my history, so I know how stunningly powerful Christian martyrdom is. It has displayed power unlike anything we have ever seen on this Earth. Seriously. That’s not an exaggeration. And so just bearing witness to that power broke me.
We saw some of that power on display in the days that followed. Church attendance skyrocketed. Turning Point saw 50,000 new chapter applications. Downloads of prayer apps doubled. And then we got to the memorial service on the 21st. Which was a stunning display of Christian ideals. There were 200,000 people in attendance and over 100 million social media impressions. There were thousands of people on social media talking about how moved they were by the service. How deeply touched they were by the music. How floored they were by Erika’s public forgiveness of her husband’s murderer. Many of these people were not followers of Christ. And so it has been reported that thousands of people have already came to Christ through the martyrdom of Charlie Kirk.
One of the many times I got choked up in the days that followed Charlie’s assassination was when I watched this 15 second clip. It hit especially close to home because (as most of you reading this know) I have recently launched a blog and a podcast about God called Things Hidden. Things Hidden was three years in the making and I launched the first episode 3 months before Charlie was killed. It is not an exaggeration to say I have changed the trajectory of my life in the name of God. And seeking to do God will for my life. And trying to bring others closer to God. And trying to get closer to God myself in that process.
So Charlie’s death hit a bit close to home for me. My voice is some fraction of 1% of the size of Charlie’s. Right now a few hundred people watch each episode of Things Hidden. But at some point not so long ago, a few hundred people watched each episode of Charlie’s show.
And if there is one thing I want to be remembered for after I die, it’s what Charlie said in that clip. I want to be remembered for courage for my faith. That would be the most important thing. Thank you Charlie Kirk for showing us the way.
"The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
-John 1:5
Travis Kling
Founder & Chief Investment Officer
Ikigai Asset Management
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