What if lenders write down depreciating GPU collateral?
Marking down depreciating GPU collateral chokes the asset-backed financing chain, lifting credit spreads and pressuring Nvidia via reduced buildout funding; financials lead. Same collateral-revaluation mechanism as 2008 mortgage markdowns (BNP/Lehman). Forward angle: unlike housing, GPU obsolescence is policy- and architecture-driven (each Nvidia generation guts the prior one's residual), so lenders structurally over-haircut — the writedown is a feature, not a tail.
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 mark down depreciating GPU collateral, choking the asset-backed financing fueling AI buildouts. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — AI capex ▼ · Credit spreads ▲ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.