I just read about what is happening with Blue Owl Capital and honestly, some analysts are drawing quite alarming parallels with what happened nearly two decades ago.

This week they announced they needed to sell $1.4 billion in loans to generate liquidity in one of their private credit funds. Shares dropped 14% in a few days and are now more than 50% below last year. But what's interesting is that this is not just a Blue Owl problem. Blackstone, Apollo Global, and Ares Management also suffered significant declines.

The parallel many experts are mentioning is with August 2007, when two Bear Stearns hedge funds collapsed due to losses in subprime mortgage securities. Then BNP Paribas froze withdrawals in its funds. That was the beginning of everything that followed. Markets froze, liquidity vanished, and what seemed like an isolated incident turned into the 2008 crisis we know.

Mohamed El-Erian, the former Pimco CEO, posed it this way: is this a "canary in the coal mine" moment similar to August 2007? He pointed out systemic risks from the phenomenon of excessive AI investment, but clarified that we don’t seem to be close to the magnitude of the 2008 crisis.

So, what does all this mean for Bitcoin? Here’s where it gets interesting. In the short term, stress in private credit could negatively impact risk assets, including BTC. But central banks’ responses could be completely different.

Look at what happened in 2020. When the COVID crisis hit, Bitcoin fell nearly 70% from mid-February to mid-March. But then, when the Fed injected trillions of dollars into the economy, BTC rose from less than $4,000 to over $65,000 in about a year. The 2007-2008 pattern was similar: initial stress in credit markets, market denial, banking contagion, and then massive central bank intervention.

If Blue Owl turns out to be the "first domino" as suggested by George Noble, then the sequence could repeat, only with private credit replacing subprime mortgages as the trigger.

What’s fascinating is that Bitcoin was born precisely from the 2008 crisis. Satoshi Nakamoto created the first cryptocurrency during that global financial crisis, partly because he was disillusioned with governments and central banks that created trillions of dollars with just a few clicks. The goal was to create a digital currency that enabled direct payments without financial intermediaries or government intervention.

In fact, in the Genesis Block of January 3, 2009, Satoshi embedded the London Times headline: "Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks." It was his way of documenting the moment he created an alternative to the system that had just collapsed.

Today, Bitcoin is completely different. It went from being something unknown to almost everyone to having a market capitalization over $1 trillion. Major asset managers consider it almost essential in their portfolios. Even governments are buying it for their strategic reserves. The current price is around $76.69k.

What was once anti-establishment has become part of the financial system. But if this Blue Owl situation truly unfolds as another 2008 crisis moment, we could see a rather unpleasant awakening in global markets. And this is where Bitcoin could return to its original thesis: the solution when the system fails. Just that this time, after 17 years, with a completely different role in the financial ecosystem.