Last night, while scrolling on my phone, a CNBC alert stopped me in my tracks: hedge fund legend Paul Tudor Jones said U.S. stocks in 2027 “are going to be very, very tough,” and that he plans to “short the whole year.”

What’s interesting isn’t the tough talk—it’s who said it. Jones made his name as a seasoned pro who got out ahead of Black Monday in 1987, and he was also one of the earliest people on Wall Street to champion Bitcoin. Back then, he called Bitcoin “the fastest horse” in the inflation-hedge race. A Bitcoin bull now publicly saying he’ll short U.S. stocks for an entire year—that’s a signal worth thinking about.

His reasoning is very specific. Since 2022, U.S. companies’ bond issuance has risen 50%. If the financing appetite for AI infrastructure materializes, AI-related bond issuance alone could reach 3.6% of GDP. Goldman Sachs has run the numbers: this year, U.S. companies have already raised $431 billion through IPOs and secondary offerings, and the total could hit $675 billion for the year—surpassing the frenzied peak of 2021. A major SpaceX IPO, SK Hynix heading to the U.S., and Anthropic waiting in line to go public. More and more shares are being issued, but there’s no more money to buy them.

Jones drew a direct comparison with 2000 to 2002: back then, there was also a wave of IPOs and lockup expirations, liquidity was drained, and the index steadily slid lower. “Those were the easiest years to make money shorting.” He added that government deficits around the world, combined with AI-related borrowing, would eventually make the bond market say, “I can’t take it anymore.” When that happens, “something is bound to break.” He put the odds at 60%.

When liquidity gets drained from U.S. stocks, Bitcoin never escapes unscathed.$BTC As it moves in tandem with risk assets, it falls even faster than U.S. stocks. U.S. September CPI is due tonight at 9:30 p.m., with the market expecting 3.7%, up from 3.4% in August. BTC is hovering around $83,000, holding above the ETF cost basis of $81,500. If the data comes in scorching hot, holding the $80,000 level could be tough.

2027 is still a long way off; for now, let’s see what happens tonight. No one knows whether Jones’s prediction will come true, but tonight’s CPI will give us the first answer. In a year when even Bitcoin bulls are calling for a bear market, how many plays do retail investors have left?