What if credit scores break and freeze consumer lending?
If lenders conclude FICO mis-ranks post-pandemic borrowers, the reaction is an underwriting freeze — credit availability collapses before losses materialize, so the trade is wider consumer-ABS/HY and lower for consumer lenders on volume, not crypto. This rhymes with the 2008 'ratings don't work' moment for structured credit, when loss of model trust froze issuance overnight. Skeptical: a pure underwriting-freeze is a flow event (less new credit) more than a mark event; the MSTR/SOL legs are unrelated risk beta.
Every number ships with its receipt — the odds, the range, the precedents, and a public grade at Reality Check. The statistical machinery that produces it is proprietary.
The butterfly cascade
How this trigger trickles across markets, left → right — the root shock, its first‑order moves, then the ripple effects. Drag any node; tap a market for its real price history.
Resolution timeline — how this probability is moving
Our model's odds (electric blue) over time vs the market's (Polymarket, amber), from the past toward the 6–18 months horizon. Each dot is a real macro event that nudged the probability — green pushed it up, red pushed it down. Tap a dot for the source. Loading the probability audit trail…
What it would mean
If this plays out, it is a risk-off shock. Lenders discover credit scores mis-rank post-pandemic borrowers, triggering a sudden underwriting freeze across consumer lending. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Credit spreads ▲ · Financial conditions ▲ · Consumer spending ▼ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.