Bitcoin - $76,500 Ethereum - $2,289 Big headline news? - Jerome Powell's final press conference as Fed Chair. Rates held - no change! Yup, we called the chop. Expect to go slightly lower over the summer. Now let me tell you why the "bad news" is actually the setup for this summer. ________________________________________________________________________ 💠#1 - Powell's last words. Today was Jerome Powell's final press conference as Fed Chair. Rates held. No cuts. The vote wasn't even close to unanimous, it was 8-4, with 4 dissenters. Which to me is just additional writing on the wall that an interest rate cut is more likely to happen than not. Powell seemed "hawkish" which is a fancy way of saying, he's willing to be aggressive and accept financial/economic pain to bring inflation down. He kept highlighting the sustained tariff inflation and Iran War oil price shock. Basically, without saying it.. he signaled that the rates are going to stay higher for longer and won't change until the Iran War is basically over AND oil prices stabilize. ________________________________________________________________________ 💠#2 - The consumer is not fine + Iran War Like we said last week...jobless claims are still holding around 214,000 .... technically "stable," according to the headlines but people are hurting. Credit Card Debt is exploding almost at 1.3 trillion and just from personal experience I'm hearing close friends talk about how financially tough its been. Then add on the fact the Iran war isn't resolved, instead it's ramping up again. Trump rejected the Iran proposal and is looking to extend the blockade. Oil will stay above $100 for the summer keeping inflation sticky, which gives the Fed cover to hold rates unchanged, which keeps the squeeze on. We've known this. This is what leads to "the chop" where crypto ranges, doesn't go all the way down.. or all the way up, like a wave BUT that wave is telling. _______________________________________________________________________

For years, the official line on Bitcoin went something like: "It's for criminals, it's a scam, it's going to zero, insert more screeeeeeeeching" Elizabeth Warren called it a threat. The SEC sued everyone in sight. The Fed acted like it didn't exist. And if you watched the FTX collapse, saw billions vanish, and heard "crypto" in the same sentence as "fraud" for two straight years, then that skepticism DEFINITELY made sense. The loudest voices in the room were either selling something or stealing something. So here's what makes the next part interesting. While the lawsuits were flying, the money was moving underneath. BlackRock filed for a spot Bitcoin ETF. Fidelity built custody infrastructure. Congress started drafting legislation to regulate Bitcoin as a legitimate asset. The politics shifted because the money shifted first. Then came the executive order. The facts: - On March 6, 2025, the White House signed an executive order creating the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. - The US government holds roughly 198,000 BTC, worth over $17 billion. The largest known state holding on earth. - That Bitcoin is explicitly not to be sold. Held as a long-term reserve asset. - Treasury and Commerce are developing budget-neutral ways to acquire more. - The White House has signaled the full reserve architecture will be announced by mid-2026. Why this matters: - The country that issues the world's reserve currency is stockpiling a scarce, permissionless asset it cannot print. - The reserve is still an executive order. The next president could erase it with a signature. - If Congress codifies it into law (the NDAA is the likely vehicle), those BTC become a permanent national asset backed by statute. - If the US codifies it, every central bank on earth has to answer the same question Switzerland is already asking: do we need one too? The part worth sitting with: Governments hold reserves for one reason. Insurance against the failure of the thing they print. Gold served that role for a century. A nation building a Bitcoin reserve is a nation hedging its own currency.

------- Let's start today's market update with an interesting stat --------- Bitcoin is up 12.3% and Ethereum is up 20.2% since the Iran war began. Yup. I don't think there's a bigger signal than this no matter what I think might happen, it seems the market is pretty over it and the smell the Trump Admin's desperation to get this war over. So as I've said over the last few weeks, the Iran Chart is the only chart that matters and right now it seems like it's legitimately the only thing holding markets back in the short to medium term. For example here's a few more interesting bits: - Spot ETFs posted $471 million in single-day inflows last week - Smart money is buying. - Iran put a toll on the Strait of Hormuz of $1 per barrel of oil - payable in Bitcoin or stablecoins! - The power is shifting away from USD... slowly but surely. - Kevin Warsh, Trump's nominee to chair the Federal Reserve, filed his 69-page financial. What's inside? Investments in more than 20 crypto entities, including dYdX, Polychain, Dapper Labs, the Solana and Optimism networks. -- Lol, I think we can say he likes crypto. Interesting note for sure. - Iran talks failed on 1st attempt, expected - markets rallied later. - With the Strait of Hormuz closed by the US, more countries are forced back into trade with the US Dollar via US oil companies - Short term gains with long term consequences. Okay so after all this what's my diagnosis? Well... this smells like accumulation-chop. The market is okay with bad news because they can see the ending.... and that's really telling. I mean the US literally just created a blockade forcing a complete stop, choking the world of oil even further and for what? So US oil companies can make more money? Nope. The short-term pressure is pulling countries back into dollars. The long-term question is what happens when the war ends and those same countries remember exactly why they were looking for alternatives in the first place. What it means for you: The dollar is getting a short-term break, not a long-term rescue, the devaluation will continue. The structural pressure that was building before the war, US debt, weaponized sanctions, fracturing trade blocs, hasn't gone anywhere. It's just paused while everyone figures out their energy situation with multiple countries running low on oil reserves. When that resolves, the de-dollarization conversation comes back stronger, louder, with more urgency, and with countries that now have even more reason to want alternatives. This is why even with terrible Iran War updates, the Bitcoin and Ethereum bottom continue to get bought up.

You've probably noticed it. Groceries cost more. Gas costs more. The same cart of stuff you bought in 2020 for $100 runs you closer to $130 now. And the weird part is, you might be earning more than you were back then. So what happened? Most people land on one of two conclusions: 1. "I'm spending too much." 2. "I need to earn more." Both feel logical. Both miss the actual problem. Between 2020 and 2022, roughly $6.4 trillion in new dollars were added to the U.S. money supply. That's about 26% of all dollars currently in existence, created in just 2 years. Here's where it gets interesting. When people hear "money printer," they picture a machine cranking out cash. The real version is quieter and way more technical. But the effect is the same. New dollars come from 4 places: - The Federal Reserve buys Treasury bonds from banks and pays with freshly created digital reserves. The Fed's balance sheet roughly DOUBLED during COVID. - Commercial banks take your deposit, keep a fraction, and lend the rest. That loan becomes someone else's deposit, which gets lent again. One dollar of reserves can generate around $10 in new loans circulating through the economy. - The U.S. Treasury issues bonds to cover spending that taxes can't. Stimulus checks, PPP loans, relief programs...all of these put brand new dollars into people's hands. - Shadow markets (repo lending, money market funds, derivatives) create money-like instruments that function as dollars. Mostly invisible, but massive in scale. So now there are trillions more dollars in the system. But the supply of houses, groceries, cars, and energy didn't grow at the same rate. More money chasing the same stuff. Prices go up. Your paycheck isn't the thing that shrank. It's the dollar. And that's the part that messes with people's heads, because the number in your bank account looks the same (or even bigger). But what that number buys keeps getting smaller, slowly, year after year. Most of us know it's happening. But the confusing academic jargon keeps most people from knowing how. Now you know.

So this number blew my mind when I saw it this week and I had to share it with you all. Since Bitcoin ETFs launched back in early 2024, over $53 billion has flowed into them from institutional investors. The original prediction from analysts? $15 billion max. It tripled that and kept going. We're talking the biggest names in finance. The same people who spent years on CNBC calling Bitcoin a scam, a fad, a pet rock. Now look at what they're actually doing: - BlackRock has been the single biggest driver of Bitcoin ETF inflows all year, pulling in roughly $1.7 billion in just the last few weeks - Morgan Stanley just filed to launch their own Bitcoin AND Solana ETFs - On April 6th alone, $471 million flowed into Bitcoin ETFs in a single day - For perspective, it took gold ETFs five years to hit this level of inflows. Bitcoin ETFs did it in just over two That last one is worth sitting with for a second. Five years vs two years. That tells you how much big money demand was sitting on the sidelines just waiting for a "legitimate" way in. So what does this actually mean for regular people like us? It means the debate is already over at the top. The institutions made their decision. They moved. Meanwhile the mainstream conversation is still stuck on "is crypto even real?" This is how it always works with money. The big players move first and move quietly. Then years later everyone else finds out and wonders why they didn't pay attention sooner. It happened with real estate in the 70s. It happened with tech stocks in the 90s. It happened with index funds. It's happening right now with Bitcoin. I'm not saying go buy anything tomorrow. That's not what this community is about. But understanding what the biggest money managers on Earth are doing with their capital is probably worth 10 minutes of your time. So be honest in the comments... Did you know about the $53 billion number before reading this? Does it actually surprise you that big institutions are buying?