What if the world splits into rival US and China tech blocs?
A US/China tech-and-payment bloc split is a supply-chain-and-tariff shock, so the cleanest trade is short the chip complex (TSMC, Nvidia, ASML) and Alibaba with the yuan weaker, while bitcoin catches a small neutral-rail bid. Direct rhyme is the Apr 2025 US-China tariff peak (both sides >100%) that hammered semis and China ADRs. Forward angle: bifurcation forces duplicate capex and inventory across both blocs — margin-dilutive for the whole semi chain, and TSMC sits on the fault line as the single most exposed name.
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 3–10 years 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. The world bifurcates into US-led and China-led tech and payment blocs. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Trade tension ▲ · Semiconductor supply risk ▲ · Dollar/reserve confidence ▼ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.