Bitcoin Reclaims $88,000 for the First Time in Weeks — Is $110K Next?

As Trump seemingly prepared to soften his stance on tariffs, Bitcoin and the rest of crypto rallied Monday along with the major stock indices. As that potential growth headwind gets a bit less scary, investor confidence looked like it was turning a corner — with one well-known trader pointing out that a surge back to $110,000 now looks more likely than a re-test of the lows in the mid-$70,000s.

Plus, big changes in Washington are expected this week, with a big confirmation hearing scheduled for Thursday as Trump’s pick to replace Gary Gensler as SEC Chair gets set for his moment in the hot seat.

Here’s everything you need to know in crypto this week (including an important update on Coinage’s new memecoin that subscribers are hearing about first. Keep reading for the alpha.) As always, we covered all these stories and more in our Monday Live Show (above.) Let’s dig in…

Crypto Inflows Snap a 5-Week Losing Streak

Things were starting to look ugly on the digital investment product outflows front — but the worst of it all might be over. CoinShares’ data shows that this past week showed more than half a billion dollars flowing into crypto investment products.

Inflows totaled $644 million, mostly led by Bitcoin. Ethereum faced the heaviest outflows, as $86 million exited the asset, while Solana recorded $6.4 million in inflows.

And as investors come back around to crypto, there may be hope on the horizon that this isn’t just a dead-cat bounce. For one, noted crypto trader Arthur Hayes was tweeting about his confidence, saying “I bet $BTC hits $110k before it retests $76.5k.”

And then there’s Michael Saylor, the CEO of Strategy. He was back to buying Bitcoin on Monday — scooping up another 6,911 BTC for ~$584.1 million. His company now holds more than 500,000 Bitcoin. As he continues to raise money to buy more Bitcoin, it looks like his levered bet is still on.

The SEC’s New Chair?

People have been wondering when Trump’s pick to replace Gary Gensler would have his moment in the sun. Now, a date has been set for his confirmation hearing on Thursday when he will be pelted with questions. In a new interview with SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce, we asked if Paul Atkins becoming SEC Chair might expedite a couple issues still up in the air (like staking via the Ethereum ETFs.) The interview was quite good (as always) but Commissioner Peirce told us Atkins isn’t the type to say they should hold anything up.

But that assumes Atkins gets confirmed. Some Dems are setting up to give their best shot at scoring a few slams before that happens. In fact, Sen. Elizabeth Warren wasted no time turning up the heat by writing a letter to Trump’s nominee Paul Atkins about his past as he served on the board of the Digital Chamber, one of the big crypto lobbying groups.

Warren pointed out potential conflicts of interest and called on Atkins to commit in writing to recuse himself from weighing in on certain crypto issues and called on him to say he wont serve in the industry for four years after departing as Chair to potentially bolster the thought he’s acting in the public’s best interests and not his own.

Thursday should make for good TV, and thus, Coinage will be carrying the stream live on our channels.

Attention on Stablecoins Heats Up

Elsewhere in Washington this week, regulators are busy meeting over stablecoins. Not only did the OCC recently put out new guidance to clarify that banks can custody digital assets, but it appears as though President Trump’s World Liberty Financial DeFi project is also getting in on the act of digitizing dollars and putting them on the blockchain.

While they haven’t technically said anything about it yet — onchain sleuths noticed the “USD1” contract on Ethereum and BNB chain had been launched. World Liberty later warned users on X that it wasn’t tradeable yet and to be careful of imposter coins.

Of course, this is a very lucrative thing to do. You basically just park a lot of cash, collect the interest, and sell tokens that do not entitle anyone to that interest. It’s printing free interest for yourself. It’s also why everyone is getting into stablecoins now. And as that boom takes off, the idea is that crypto as a whole will stand to benefit with more money onchain sloshing around.

A bill on what will be and won’t be kosher is making its way through the Senate now. It could be coming up for a vote pretty soon over the next couple of months. But looking at the growth that’s already happened for the largest stablecoins over the last few years is actually pretty wild.

The Coinage Memecoin Experiment

Last but not least, Coinage launched a memecoin, $PLYBTN, to celebrate crossing 100,000 YouTube subscribers and winning a Silver Play Button award. Solana’s co-founder Anatoly has tweeted about a couple times — and it was one of the largest Solana fair launches on the PinkSale token launchpad over the last few months.

Now, as we get into our second week, the experiment is heating up and so are the questions. Coinage will probably send out a follow up email this week with reflections on the memecoin launch and where things are at — but for now, check out our series on YouTube for all the behind-the-scenes action.

Until we have more to share publicly tomorrow, Coinage members are steering where we go next with the memecoin via onchain DAO votes. If you want to get involved, consider buying a Coinage Caucus pass today — or joining our token-gated telegram channel for Network and Caucus holders where we always share the alpha.

The crypto landscape is shifting quickly, and we’re here to cover it all. If you haven’t yet, mint a Coinage NFT to co-own the first-ever Web3 media DAO and join us in shaping the future of decentralized journalism. Subscribe to our free Substack newsletter.