Conviction, compounding, and borderless cashflow.
Crown Compendium VI — On Grip Strength and Conviction
An informal compendium of Market musings trade updates and personal insights.
The Royalty King’s Remarks
The year has started strongly, with performance across all portfolios already well into double-digit territory. I don’t usually highlight this—by design. In 2026 I’m operating with an almost religious commitment to shutting out noise and avoiding short-termism. That said, an exception is warranted for the new publication Machina Capitalis .
As a one-man operating company, its explicit mandate is near-term income generation through options selling and more exotic structures, where transparency around results matters. To the early founding members: thank you. Year-to-date returns now stand at 32.34%, achieved with only partial capital deployment and the core allocation still to be put to work. The theme is simple:
Funding freedom through borderless cashflow generation.
A Lesson In Grip Strength.
Texas Pacific Land spent much of the past year grinding through a deep drawdown—testing patience, headlines, and weak hands—before sharply recovering as fundamentals quietly reasserted themselves. Those who sold near the trough did not lack intelligence; they lacked understanding. They had copied the thesis without internalising the business. TPL’s value does not hinge on quarterly sentiment or commodity noise, but on irreplaceable land, water, and infrastructure that compound regardless of market price action. This pattern is not even new, in fact TPL has experienced ~5 50% drawdowns in price over the last 10 years (depends on how you count) on its way to deliver a 33X return!
The same pattern repeats across markets. The investors who sold TPL at the lows are often the same ones who will sell Bitcoin in volatility—not because the asset changed, but because their conviction was never earned. You can copy trades, models, and ideas. What you cannot copy is understanding. And without understanding, conviction fails precisely when it is needed most.
Market Musings
The two main forms of debasement - resistant money in my view are gold and bitcoin.
YTD gold is + 14% vs the USD while BTC is -24.6%, with bitcoin denominated in gold terms being down 33%.
Over the last 5 years the scorecards sits at 177%, 18% and -54% rounded, respectively as seen below.
I maintain my view that we are in for a period of short term price weakness possibly across the board as debt/liquidity ratios appear to be tightening in western markets and Bitcoin is acting as the ‘crypto-canary in the coal mine’.
It’s worth re-iterating my thesis here:
For the TLDR crowd, I’ve stated my target range for BTC Jan 26-27 at $40-70k and that I’ll be loading up with very levered ways to play should BTC drop <$60K.
Media
Chinese opportunities came up in my latest conversation with Louis Vincent Gave. If you found value in the discussion, I’d appreciate you subscribing and sharing it.
My key takeaway is this: a period of strengthening Asian currencies would have second-order effects that matter—most notably a firmer bid under commodity prices and higher trading volumes across those markets. Given the scarcity of royalty and streaming companies listed in Asian public markets, I continue to express this theme indirectly via exchanges. If commodities—particularly gold—are bid higher, trading activity rises, and the royalty and streaming businesses I own should benefit materially.
Wishing you all the best.
— Benjamin
The Royalty King
