 A Message From Porter & Company Editor's Note: Porter Stansberry's bombshell exposé is now live. Sitting down with financial reporter Kimi Weintraub, he reveals why he believes President Trump is secretly replacing the U.S. dollar – and why the story could break wide open on December 14. He also names his No. 1 move to help you prepare. Watch it here before you read another word.
In the autumn of 408 A.D., a Gothic king named Alaric marched his army to the walls of Rome and simply waited. He didn't need to storm the city. He cut off the grain barges coming up the Tiber, and within weeks the richest city on Earth was starving. His price for leaving was thousands of pounds of gold, tens of thousands of pounds of silver, and three thousand pounds of pepper. Rome no longer had it. So the Senate stripped the temples and melted down the statues of their gods to pay him. According to the historian Zosimus, one of them was Virtus, the goddess of courage, and once she went into the furnace, whatever courage the Romans had left went with her. Two years later Alaric came back and walked straight in – for the first time in eight hundred years, Rome was sacked by a foreign army. Rome had been brought to its knees because it allowed its money to go to ruin.
For two hundred years before Alaric arrived, emperor after emperor had shaved the silver out of the denarius to pay for their wars – until the coin that was once trusted from Britain to Babylon was a lump of bronze with a thin silver wash. By the time the Goths reached the gates, Rome's walls were still standing, but its money had already given way. Today, America faces its own barbarians at the gate. China’s Silent Siege The new Barbarians aren't camped outside Washington – like Alaric, they don't need to storm the capital, they're simply waiting for the money to fail. China has slashed its holdings of U.S. Treasuries by more than 45% from their peak. It controls the vast majority of the world's refined rare earths, the metals without which no advanced chip or weapon can be built. And it is building gold vaults in Hong Kong and payment networks that let nations trade without ever touching a dollar. Beijing is cutting off the grain barges, and now it's waiting at the walls. A Cycle Nobody Escapes If you study enough history, you start to see that Rome's fate was not bad luck. It was a repeating pattern, and nearly every great power since has followed it. Kublai Khan's paper money was printed into worthlessness to pay for his wars, and in 1368 his dynasty was driven out of China. Weimar Germany ran through the whole cycle in barely five years, until a single U.S. dollar fetched more than four trillion marks. Each empire borrowed beyond its means, debased its money , and watched its allies drift away until the barbarians arrived. America is speed-running toward the same fate. If your family had set aside a dollar when the Federal Reserve opened in 1913, it would buy about three cents' worth of goods today. 
By all rights, the dollar should have gone the way of the denarius long ago. What saved it was a secret deal Henry Kissinger struck with Saudi Arabia in 1974: the world's oil would be priced in dollars, so every nation that needed oil had to hold dollars too. It was the modern equivalent of Rome's grain supply, except America controlled the barges. That arrangement bought time, fifty years of borrowing on the rest of the world's tab, and created staggering fortunes for those who owned the companies the new money flowed through. ExxonMobil climbed 9,700% in the decades that followed, JPMorgan 6,000%, Lockheed Martin 14,400% and Microsoft 479,000% – extraordinary price rises unleashed by the petrodollar era. By some estimations, America went from roughly 180,000 millionaires in 1974 to nearly 24 million today. But Washington never stopped clipping the coin. The dollar has lost more than 84% of its purchasing power since that deal, and in June 2024 the petrodollar arrangement quietly expired. Ask almost any historian or economist how this ends, and they'll tell you the same thing. No empire has ever escaped the cycle. Trump's Secret Dollar Reset Instead of melting down the statues, President Trump is trying to give the world a new reason to need the dollar. Working hand in hand with the likes of Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Sam Altman, he is racing to lock the physical foundation of artificial intelligence (the minerals, chips, energy and data centers) under near-exclusive American control. That's why the government has taken billion-dollar stakes in obscure mining companies, why the President negotiated a reported $500 billion of Ukraine's minerals, and why he refuses to let go of Greenland. It's also why, on September 30, 2026, he announced what he called one of the largest energy infrastructure investments in American history: a $22.3 billion natural gas power complex in Texas built to feed AI data centers, alongside a framework for eight new nuclear reactors. Seen together, I believe these emergency moves are the foundations of a new monetary order, with the dollar anchored not to oil but to what I call the AI Matrix. The companies at its chokepoints are already moving the way ExxonMobil and Lockheed did half a century ago. Vertiv is up more than 500% since 2024, GE Vernova nearly 700% and Arista Networks more than 750% since 2021. Whether Trump's gambit succeeds or fails, I believe it will draw a dividing line through this country, just as the petrodollar did. On one side will be the people who own the assets that will benefit from the new monetary order. On the other, those whose plans and portfolios get left behind. I won’t mince my words: I believe getting on the right side of this change to America’s money might be a critical way to protect your family's wealth, long-term. To help you understand the magnitude of what’s unfolding – and how it could impact your money directly – I recently laid out the full story for financial reporter Kimi Weintraub. In our in-depth interview, I explain why December 14 could be the moment this new order is revealed. I also share the five companies I believe sit at its narrowest chokepoints, and the name and ticker of my No. 1 move to make today. Watch the full interview here. 
Good investing, Porter Stansberry
This Week's Bonus Article
IonQ's Bold Expansion Could Leave Shareholders Paying the PriceWritten by Nathan Reiff. First Published: 10/20/2026. 
Key Points
- Shares of IonQ dropped 9% after the company unveiled plans to acquire cybersecurity firm Elisity alongside a $2-billion equity offering carrying 100 million warrants.
- IonQ aims to pair quantum computing with Elisity's zero-trust and microsegmentation technology to get ahead of quantum-era cybersecurity threats before rivals adapt.
- Combined with its earlier SkyWater Technology purchase, the Elisity deal makes IonQ a three-pronged quantum company, though its P/S ratio of 90 reflects a steep valuation.
- Special Report: What Elon Musk's Cybercab Reveal Could Mean for Investors
IonQ Inc. (NYSE: IONQ) bulls may have balked when the market responded to the company's mid-October announcement that it would acquire cybersecurity provider Elisity by sending shares plunging 9%. Nonetheless, the response makes sense. Investors are likely concerned about the deal's dilutive impact, particularly when combined with a concurrent $2 billion equity offering. Together, these transactions could substantially increase the number of IONQ shares outstanding.
IonQ's offering includes warrants for 100 million shares that are exercisable over seven years. While those warrants could ultimately be worth nearly $7 billion to the company, they would also increase its share count by about 20% from current levels, significantly diluting existing shareholders' stakes. Combined with a major employee-retention package included in the Elisity deal, this makes the acquisition's stakes particularly high. The question for investors is whether IonQ's decision to lean into cybersecurity—potentially at the cost of shareholder value—will lead to greater technological development, a stronger position in an evolving industry and, ultimately, revenue growth. What Expansion Into Cybersecurity Means for IonQIonQ's acquisition of a major cybersecurity player is a strategic move at a time when the quantum industry threatens to completely upend how digital assets are protected. As quantum computers grow more powerful, new security risks are emerging—and cybersecurity needs will likely evolve, requiring improved hardware to maintain adequate defenses. The Pentagon has already taken note of a similar development in the defense industry. For IonQ, bringing quantum-computing technology to the cybersecurity space could give it an advantage over traditional security firms that may be unprepared to address quantum-powered threats. The acquisition of Elisity is particularly helpful not only because of the company's strong user base, but also because of its unique focus on microsegmentation and zero-trust architecture. How Elisity Can Benefit IonQ's FinancesMicrosegmentation is a small but fast-growing corner of the cybersecurity market. Some analysts predict that it could achieve double-digit compound annual growth as the push to integrate quantum technology into the industry accelerates. Elisity has grown both its revenue and client base rapidly in recent quarters, and IonQ's acquisition presents an opportunity to continue fostering that growth. The terms of the deal also help ensure a smooth transition. The agreement includes a $150 million earnout opportunity based on the performance of Elisity's business line following the acquisition. IonQ Positions Itself as a Multi-Pronged Quantum PlayerDespite the potential benefits of the Elisity acquisition, the deal may stretch IonQ's bandwidth in the near term. Following the company's other major purchase so far this year—quantum foundry SkyWater Technology—IonQ now seeks to operate its core quantum-computing business alongside both a manufacturing arm and a cybersecurity arm. The vision of a company with in-house chip-fabrication capabilities and a presence in both the quantum and cybersecurity industries could help keep scalability high and costs low. For now, IonQ's revenue growth is helping bring this vision to life, particularly in Q2 2026, when revenue nearly quadrupled year over year (YOY). Analysts expect the firm to come close to maintaining that growth pace when it reports Q3 2026 earnings in early November 2026. Another major issue for the company is that its shares still trade at a hefty premium, with a price-to-sales (P/S) ratio of 90. Investors Should Watch for Continued Revenue and Customer GrowthIn the near term—while the integration of quantum computers into cybersecurity remains in its early stages—investors should watch for signs that the acquisition has not derailed Elisity's ability to grow its revenue or customer base. The acquisition is also predicated on synergies between IonQ's technology and Elisity's current offerings, so it will be important to see how the two companies integrate these aspects of their operations. On the other hand, share dilution may be one of the most important concerns to keep in mind. With IonQ's valuation already high, the company will need to achieve an impressive increase in enterprise value to justify the potentially significant dilution required to facilitate the deal. If it can do that, IonQ could further strengthen its advantage over other quantum firms by opening an entirely new—and potentially transformative—corner of the market. . |
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