America Flexes While Crypto KOLs Sniff out a Bottom — Week in Review

This week, Bitcoin edged closer to the $60,000 level in another red week, while almost all altcoins disintegrated further.

The major stock indices opened lower to start the week, but have almost recovered their losses as of Friday morning. Gold and silver both printed red weekly candles, and oil is getting crushed, currently trading at $76.

The United States of America flexed hard this week. The World Cup, largely held in the U.S., is blowing European minds. The White House held a UFC fight on the South Lawn, with some over-the-top Americana content.

The biggest geopolitical and macroeconomic risk was taken off the table with the announcement and subsequent signing of the U.S.-Iran MoU at Versailles. After he signed it, President Trump declared, “oil down, stocks up.” The day before, upon arriving at a session for the G7 summit in France, President Trump paused long enough to state, “I’m the boss.”

Anthropic, an American company that has chafed at the U.S. government’s control before, was brought to heel. U.S. capital markets flexed on the rest of the world with the successful SpaceX IPO, the largest IPO in history.

The U.S. dollar continued to flex, looking good here over 100. Meanwhile, the Bank of Japan hiked rates to their highest level since 1995 amid stubborn inflation. As of writing this Friday morning, Dollar-Yen sits precariously at 161.

Finally, the new Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh in his first FOMC meeting signaled the end of forward guidance. Many analysts and commentators such as Felix of the great podcast Forward Guidance (lol) think this is a good thing.

While this is all happening, there’s a growing consensus among those brave few left in crypto that this is the time to buy quality.

Standard Chartered’s Geoff Kendrick declared crypto winter over, holding his year-end targets of $100k BTC and $4k ETH and suggesting the dip toward $59k likely marked the low. Coinbase’s Brian Armstrong said the bottom is in, reminding everyone it’s “never as good or bad as it seems.”

The technicians concurred. DonAlt likes this area as an entry after BTC retested $60k and bounced, low-timeframe noise notwithstanding. Glassnode described a market in repair, pointing to improving liquidity, stronger passive bids, and patient ETF holders as evidence of a floor forming. CryptoParadyme reckoned we’re so close to the bottom that one more gut-punch candle should finish the job.

The most data-driven case came from Sykodelic, who noted this was the fastest Bitcoin has ever entered higher-timeframe oversold. A rebuttal to everyone penciling in a ritual October bottom just because the four-year cycle says so. Ansem agreed sentiment is “guttered,” with smart allocators rotating into stocks and near-silence around crypto’s fundamental value — exactly the kind of stretch, he suspects, we’ll look back on fondly. Jason Yanowitz went further, teasing that crypto is about to get very exciting with several mainstream moments three to six months out.

As mentioned in this newsletter and on Token Narratives the past couple of months, there are very promising parts of crypto. Hyperliquid is the obvious standout. While Bitcoin and nearly all crypto assets trend downward, Hyperliquid’s HYPE printed a fresh all-time high, jumping 11.6%.

The aforementioned Anthropic tussle with the U.S. government is a boon for the decentralized AI narrative. TAO rallied roughly 25% and Venice’s VVV jumped 15% on the news. Companies are also realizing how important it is to have sole ownership of their data. There are also growing concerns from many companies that they are feeding frontier models their code and data, planting the seeds of their own demise.

Well-known TAO bull Algod doesn’t like Venice, calling VVV a distribution platform fully reliant on Erik Voorhees’ marketing. In a follow-up jab, he argued its privacy claims were thin (it leans on Near) and its models are effectively trained by someone else. He’s mulling a short.

DeFi still needs to work through the short-term AI exploit-pocalypse, but some think the recovery will be swift because once AI fixes vulnerabilities then no more exist! Also, there are some really cool DeFi products coming online. Electric Capital’s Avichal could barely contain himself, declaring that confidential DeFi is real and “works.” Squads’ Stepan Simkin chipped at a stubborn myth, arguing stablecoin payments don’t have to be irreversible. Smart contracts can encode escrow, chargebacks, dispute resolution, and recovery, whatever the business actually needs. This kind of maturation seems inevitable.

The institutions are noticing. Standard Chartered initiated coverage on Uniswap with a $100 target by 2030 on the thesis that tokenized assets in DeFi grow 37x this decade and UNI becomes core trading infrastructure. CryptoQuant CEO Ki Young Ju’s framework for which altcoins actually survive: global internet companies with tokenized market layers, DeFi services with real revenue, and projects aligned with broader financial trends. Speaking of accruing value, Solana leadership moved to let SOL stakers vote on reducing inflation via SIMD-550.

This is not to say there wasn’t plenty of bearish news this week. For example, JPMorgan bear-posted about Bitcoin miners, noting Bitcoin has traded below its ~$78,000 production cost for five straight months, leaving roughly 20% of them underwater. Of course, the biggest bearish news everyone focused on this week was Michael Saylor’s Strategy and the still depegged STRC.

Matt Cole called it the most difficult day in the history of Digital Credit as STRC traded as low as $82.50 before recovering sharply. With STRC down 15% in two weeks, this video from a year ago resurfaced of Mr Saylor admitting he designed STRC with ChatGPT.

One CT ( Crypto Twitter) KOL laid out a full STRC-implodes, MSTR-follows, Saylor-exits, this-marks-the-bottom sequence, while another floated the theory that CZ is hunting Saylor’s liquidation levels, still bidding for coins in the $50k range. Jeff Dorman thinks Strategy is still in a pickle and the best thing to do is raise around $4 billion in order to mollify the markets by pushing out the dividend question a couple of years.

Early Friday morning, Mr. Saylor tried to assuage markets with a post that many felt was similar in vibe to the infamous “Steady Lads” Do Kwon comment.

The other big bearish news this week centered around the embattled OG L1 Cardano. Several weeks ago, the Cardano community rejected a proposal to spend $2 million for the flagship Cardano Summit 2026. Following that, Charles Hoskinson, de facto head of Cardano, warned there’s going to be a wave of failures in the ecosystem. He then posted, “I’m taking a break. TTYL.”

This week, Mr. Hoskinson announced he’s migrating the community from X to Discord to escape the “drama, lies, endless rage, and embittered people.” One builder laid bare five years all-in on Cardano. Another offered a brutal eulogy: the tech is “dogshit and going nowhere,” and the most valuable thing the ecosystem ever had was its people, whom he urged to find one another and move on.

Those bearish on Europe got more validation this week. Binance is reportedly set to lose permission to serve EU clients as its MiCA license application in Greece looks likely to be rejected. USDT is suffering at the hands of MiCA too. It is being pushed off regulated EU trading venues under MiCA because Tether has not secured the required authorization. I suppose the EU was helping America look good this week.

-David Sencil