Key Takeaways:
- Bitcoin held above $71,000 as PlanB and Mel Mattison framed the setup as a 4-year-cycle breakout test.
- Morgan Stanley’s ETF and $307B stablecoins showed institutional demand rising as altcoins lagged.
- Scott Bessent pushed U.S. crypto rules while Bitcoin’s Hormuz role hints at broader 2026 adoption.
Week In Review
Bitcoin finished the week just above the $71,000 level, prolonging a nearly two-and-a-half-month-long battle with its 200-week moving average. Ethereum printed a modest green weekly candle near the $2,100 mark while most other altcoins either bled down or traded sideways.
Regardless, blocks are being produced and Bitcoin is still consolidating in what Mel Mattison has described as a “textbook” pre-uptrend pattern. Crypto’s next move may be sparked by macro developments, but could also simply succumb to the 4-year cycle and the classic technical indicators, as PlanB is anticipating. Time will tell.
All major stock indices saw surprise moves to the upside, with the S&P 500, Dow, and Nasdaq all up nearly 4% on the week. Gold and silver both resumed their recoveries while oil cooled off, currently sitting below the $100 mark. The VIX has collapsed back to the 19.5 level, failing to reach the “Liberation Day” highs by a long shot.
Once again, developments (or perhaps simply rhetoric) relating to the situation in Iran dominated the week. A supposed ceasefire around Hormuz triggered bounces both in the stock market and in Bitcoin, though it’s unclear how rational that response was. Bob Elliott argued that shipping volumes remain so impaired that oil will not see meaningful relief unless transit gets back to at least 50% of pre-war capacity. That view builds on his earlier framing of how badly Hormuz flows had already been disrupted. An inflationary phase looks more and more probable.
The President said that Iran “better not be charging fees to tankers going through Hormuz Strait, and if they are, they better stop now.” However, as Tracy Shuchart pointed out, it’s well documented that they are.
News of China importing US oil and LNG to deal with the Hormuz crisis suggested the US may have more leverage over the situation than the average Twitter macro expert thinks. Regardless, as Bitcoin.com CEO Corbin Fraser wrote in his latest op-ed, this war is clearly “not what we signed up for.”
In a win for the “ BTC as a neutral reserve asset” thesis, Iran is reportedly demanding Bitcoin payment from ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz. Whether that becomes a regular policy or remains a dramatic signal, it may suggest that Bitcoin is increasingly seen not just as an investment, but as a neutral settlement rail during politically calamitous times. Even if Bitcoin isn’t used by Iran, “the fact that Bitcoin is even in the conversation is a milestone.”
The macro bulls are still making their case, even if price action won’t cooperate. Raoul Pal remains adamant that rising liquidity metrics look bullish for risk assets, despite a lengthy disconnect. His view is familiar by now: monetary expansion eventually finds its way into the highest-beta corners of the market, and crypto remains one of the cleanest expressions of that trade. While many have sounded the alarm over the $8 trillion in US debt maturing this year, Lyn Alden said it was one of the topics that gets “100x more airtime than they deserve on fintwit.”
Tom Lee, whose company just graduated to the “Big Board” at the NYSE, is again calling the bottom in equities, but the counterargument is getting stronger too. Gold had another strong week, and Northstar Charts argued that based on multi-decade relative performance data across gold, the S&P 500, and the ASA mining fund, gold may still have nearly a decade of outperformance left versus stocks.
That could be why some of the more aggressive bears are getting airtime. Bloomberg’s Mike McGlone is out with one of the starkest calls on the board, saying that $10,000 Bitcoin is likely, and that the only “flippening” that’ll happen is Tether over ETH and maybe even BTC. McGlone’s pro- stablecoin stance isn’t necessarily unfounded. CoinGecko’s data shows the total stablecoin market cap went up again this week, now only a fraction of a percent away from yet another all-time high at $307 billion.
CryptoQuant says Bitcoin network activity has ticked up for the first time in months. CryptoQuant also noted that CEX activity has cooled rapidly, down 48% from the October 2025 peak, with Binance still leading the pack.
At the same time, Morgan Stanley launched a Bitcoin ETF with competitive fees. Morgan Stanley’s Amy Oldenburg announced their spot Bitcoin ETF launch had their “best first day of trading for any of our ETFs“. Eric Balchunas called it a “BFD”, and with the bank’s $1.9 trillion in AUM, rightly so.
Crypto security remained in the zeitgeist. A delivery-app data breach was linked to targeted robberies of crypto holders. Meanwhile, France is contemplating a new law forcing anyone with more than €5,000 in a crypto wallet to declare it to tax authorities. This, despite a French IRS agent selling data of people who declared crypto to criminals, who then went on to kidnap their families and cut fingers off.
Not the best recipe for adoption, but on the plus side, a new way of detecting North Korean hackers made the rounds: ask them to insult Kim Jong Un. Specifically, calling him a “fat, ugly pig.”
Looking at the regulatory sphere, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent published a Wall Street Journal op-ed arguing that digital asset rules need clarity, and urging that the US be the center of the new digital economy.
He argued:
“Congress will ensure that the next generation of financial innovation is built on American rails, backed by American institutions, and denominated in American dollars.”
His sentiments are encouraging, but his words clash with the government’s actions, e.g., Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Storm is currently on the verge of prison for developing software.
The war over crypto is also a war over who gets to tell the story. YouTube terminated Bitcoin.com’s channel for alleged “harmful and dangerous content,” refusing to elaborate beyond AI autoresponses. After receiving support from people like Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski and Gary Cardone, the channel was ultimately reinstated.
As is tradition, the mainstream media made another attempt to unmask the real identity of Satoshi. This time, it was the New York Times who suggested it is Adam Back. The substance almost matters less than the reaction. Nic Carter called it ridiculous. Laura Shin found it credible. Back has, of course, denied that he created Bitcoin. Ultimately, crypto’s oldest mystery remains unsolved.
Maybe the Satoshi debate persists because crypto still lacks a settled founding story, which is part of its power. No institution fully owns the origin myth, so everyone keeps trying to claim interpretive control over it.
AI continues to be an important narrative in many markets. Anti-data center activists were reportedly using AI to give them advice on stopping new AI data centers from being built.
Meanwhile, Anthropic built a model called Mythos that they say san’t be released because it is powerful enough to pose a serious security threat. Jason Calacanis, who has been vocally bullish on Bittensor and it’s ability to compete with centralized AI companies like Anthropic, has agreed to a debate on the matter with Kyle Samani, who is bearish TAO.
Speaking of TAO, Algod is predicting a 2026 “Subnet summer,” noting that his bags are “big enough to be happy.” He’s also not entirely phased by the sudden shutdown of Templar, the subnet that Chamath Palihapitiya brought up to Jensen Huang live on the All-In Podcast. Bittensor will likely implement lock-based subnet ownership, and its co-founder, Const, says Templar helped “develop a solution to one of crypto’s oldest problems: founders who rug their token holders.”
CZ, former Binance CEO and current 17th-richest man in the world, came out with an autobiography that he wrote in prison, detailing a classic rags-to-riches story that has been generally well received. OKX CEO Star Xu, however, challenged the legitimacy of CZ’s life story, alleging the book was “full of falsehoods.” CZ responded to one of the allegations, offering a $1 billion reward for proof.
-Alex Richardson
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