Bitcoin just posted its second best week

since early 2021. People are wondering,

is this a new bull market or yet another

blistering bare market rally? I'm going

to dive into that and all of the news

that might inform that decision as to

whether this is the time to buy Bitcoin

or wait for it to go down again. Let's

go. [music]

What is up everybody? Welcome to the

Daily Wolf on Yahoo Finance. I am your

host, Scott Melker, also known as the

wolf of all streets. And it's nice to

show up on a Monday and see that Bitcoin

has rallied and has actually maintained

its price. Now, you know, I've got on my

McLaren jersey here, Lando Norris

winning the Dutch Grand Prix yesterday.

Our friends over at OKX celebrating

that. But we can also celebrate this

blistering Bitcoin rally that is not yet

showing any signs of abating. So, what

happened? Well, first of all, as I said

there at the top, crypto roars back as

Bitcoin posts its second best week since

early 2021. So that's on a percentage

basis. But if you look at the actual

dollar gain, this was the largest weekly

dollar gain in Bitcoin history. It ended

up gaining approximately 21% last week.

At one point, it was up 24 25%. Now,

interestingly, Ether gained 30%. We have

Zcash uh making almost all all-time

highs and certainly cycle highs. So, we

are seeing liquidity and money flowing

into other places besides just Bitcoin.

Now, you know that the big story was the

fact that we had about $3 billion in

shorts liquidated. But you can no longer

just say that this was a short

liquidating rally, right? We know that

that was the spark was maybe the fuel to

the fire. I told you about the fact that

Besson provided the spark, then leverage

provided the gasoline for the fire, then

the White House came over the top, but

that only got us to 7071. The fact that

Bitcoin started pushing towards 80, not

just because shorts were being

liquidated, that was not a leverage

squeeze at all. And what we can now see

that was a big part of that is the fact

that Bitcoin ETFs the biggest weekly

inflow in 10 months during rally.

Bitcoin ETFs attracted $1.9 billion

1.92 to be exact billion dollars in the

week. Ether ETFs added another $697

billion. That is a very large number. I

had Alex Thorne from Galaxy on Macro

Monday this morning on YouTube and he

pointed out the fast fact that this was

effectively the most volume that we've

seen on Bitcoin ETFs since the all-time

high for Bitcoin in price and for ETFs

all the way back in October. So that

cannot be ignored. People buying ETFs is

not a part of a short squeeze. It is

general belief that the bottom is likely

in and this is the time to re-enter the

asset class. Now, as you know, Matt

Hogan on my show last Friday said that

he thinks that the people coming in

right now are long-term buyers looking

to capitalize on an entire next cycle

with Bitcoin going into the six figures

and beyond. I tend to agree with them

because it fits my bias exceptionally

well. I do believe that we are likely

here near a bottom. All the signals I've

been telling you about for months were

there and now we've passed some

fundamental levels that I think are

important. That said, for the technical

analysts out there, for the charters,

Bitcoin needs to get above around 82,800

and hold there to make a new higher high

and abolish the bearish market structure

that still exists. This was a huge week

for Bitcoin. Now, people hoping that we

can see some followthrough. I would

imagine personally, if I had a gun to my

head, which I don't, so I don't need to

care, that we will see some sort of

retracement to some degree. Let RSI cool

off. Let the chart cool off a bit. Maybe

go back and te test the low 70s, high

60s, get people thinking we're going to

bare market again and then gain fuel for

that next rally to truly break out and

start the next bull market. I am

absolutely loving it. It's nice not to

be trading sideways at 64,000

indefinitely. It seems that uh Bitcoin

finally produced the perfect bottom

signal which was everyone stopped

caring.

Perfect. Timebased capitulation as I've

often told you about. Now, one person

who was forced to capitulate a little

bit at the bottom of this bare market of

course was strategy. It's Monday. We

have to talk about strategy. Strategy

earmarks 1.6 billion cash pool for

treasury operations buybacks. I was not

going to talk about strategy again

today. I'm lying. I was going to talk

about strategy again today, but it gave

us something more interesting to talk

about. So, first, what happened this

week? Strategy sold 18.26 26 million

MSTR shares and raised $2.01 billion. So

obviously this is devaluing the shares

of Micro Strategy which people do not

love. But what he did with it is very

interesting. He did not buy Bitcoin. He

did not sell Bitcoin. Those holdings

remained at 840,447

Bitcoin. What he did do was obviously

buy back some STRC, add about 300

million to their protected reserve,

which is the money that they're using to

fund all of their obligations and

dividends. You know, people wanted to

see them have a runway. But he used

1.559 billion of this as a USD cash

pool. That is dry powder for buying

Bitcoin or for buying back MSDR stock or

anything they want to do in their

financial wizardry. But it's important

that over 5 billion 5.1 billion now that

they have raised before can only be used

for those dividends and for financial

obligations. This is the new money that

can be used to buy Bitcoin and to buy

other things. So we have not seen any

indication beyond words that they

intended to buy Bitcoin again. This is

the first time that we are seeing

something like that and I think that it

is important. Now the question is

knowing that they have always bought the

top as he admits uh would be the case

and they were forced to sell the lows.

Why are they not taking that $ 1.59

billion now and just buying Bitcoin? I'm

assuming because the optics of selling

Bitcoin much lower and then buying it

right back higher would be poor. But

maybe they believe there's another dip

coming where they'll be able to uh use

some of this money. Now you know

you know that uh we've shown many memes

of Michael Sailor over the last few

months and usually they're megaade from

space balls and we talk about the fact

that originally he was mega made sucking

up all the bitcoin and then sadly he

went from suck to blow and sold some

bitcoin. We have a new meme for him

because now he's no longer sucking up

Bitcoin. He's sucking up all the USD.

And apparently Catchy B thinks thinks

that vacuums have a mouthpiece.

Just saw that. So weird. So weird. But

he is not the only treasury company in

the market that is doing things. And

that is very, very important because we

also have Bitmine and Tom Lee right

here. This is just an aside to this

story, but it's important because while

uh Sailor has had to sell Bitcoin and

has been doing that financial magic to

start to raise cash, Tom Lee has not

stopped buying Ethereum at all. Bought

32,447

ETH today for $81 million. This is the

company's largest weekly hall since

early July. They're only 187,000 away

from owning 5% of the Ethereum supply.

And interesting, they project roughly

330 million in annualized revenue just

from staking that Ethereum, which is

obviously something an Ethereum treasury

company can do and that a Bitcoin

treasury company can not do. So,

obviously, one Treasury company here

found the sell button. The other one

removed it entirely. Tom Lee has not

stopped buying Ethereum and seemingly

has absolutely no intention of doing so.

I'm really I'm really intrigued by

what's going on with strategy, right? I

I love it because I think that they've

matured. They're admitting what they

are. I think that Bitcoin going from the

low 60s to the high 70s or around 80

without Sailor in the market buying even

after he sold is a huge narrative shift.

I've talked about this a lot, but there

was a prevailing belief that Sailor was

the only buyer of Bitcoin that existed

in the market, and that clearly is not

the case. And there was a prevailing

belief that we couldn't put in a bottom

unless Michael Sailor was forced to sell

a lot of Bitcoin. And what he ended up

doing was selling a little Bitcoin,

which actually sparked the rally from

around 60 to 64. And then as he's ceased

to be the main character in the market,

Bitcoin has continued to rally. Now,

it's probably not that comfortable to be

sitting uh in his chair or anyone who is

forced to sell Bitcoin at the lows and

see it go higher. We've all had that

feeling where you find yourself

wondering if you should be chasing a

rally or waiting for the next dip and

you know that probably means you'll just

end up buying at 126,000,

right? But uh uncomfortable position to

have sold what looks like the lows if

this ends up being the entire bottom of

the market. Now he's forced to buy back

higher. Now, another unfortunate

situation that's uncomfortable that I've

been talking about capitulating at the

low is this one. BitMart, they now have

creditors. Congratulations. BitMart

suggests restructuring weeks after

closure announcement. So, I've been

telling you the story of BitMart. I

won't entirely reiterate it. This is one

of those exchange failures that kind of

happened quietly. BitMEX had their

orderly uh closed down. Ascendex had

their own situation, but BitMart had

that controversy as to whether they were

or were not solvent. We still cannot

speak to that, but they have now hired

White and Case as restructuring counsel.

The exchange is considering creditor

distributions

alongside a phased restart.

Creditor distributions. Nothing says a

successful relaunch or reopening of your

exchange like announcing who the

creditors are first. Right. This this

gives us a little PTSD of the FTX,

Voyager, BlockFi,

uh Celsius days where there's

effectively uh paybacks to people and

maybe there are partial paybacks. This

is the real bare market stuff and of

course happened right before the market

went massively to the upside. But they

are talking about interestingly

restarting the exchange, right? Maybe

they saw the price go up and they were

like, "Oh, we got to get some of that,

right? We can't uh we can't capitulate

at the dead lows." But it's interesting

if they're going to have creditor

distributions. We don't know necessarily

who those creditors are. They could be

customers, they could be vendors, they

could be lenders, but you do not have

creditors and start hiring counsel if

you're likely completely solvent and

have no problems with your balance

sheet. So, we're going to see what

happens there, but still looking

relatively ugly for BitMart. Next, we

have a couple stories around stable

coin. Standard Charter becomes first

bank to distribute Hong Kong dollar

stable coin. Now, we've talked about the

fact that stable coins are eating the

world, but we are yet to see much

popularity of stable coins that are

backed by anything other than the

dollar. This is a Hong Kong dollar

stable coin that will be used for

tokenized fund subscriptions, asset

manager settlement, internal treasury

transfers, and crossber payment. So,

interestingly, this is not yet a retail

stable coin that's backed by the Hong

Kong dollar, but is one that will be

used very very heavily with uh eligible

institutions and partners and backed by

a massive institution here in standard

charter. So, I think that uh this is

just yet another small story in the

advancement of stable coins. But I think

it is a signal that we will see stable

coins beyond US dollar backed stable

coins becoming extremely popular over

time. It makes sense that they will uh

but I do think that we will still see

largely dominance in the US dollar back

stable coins. But stable coins are

moving forward all across the world in

many different iterations. And this is

an unstoppable force of nature. We have

another story about that. Crypto card

spending tops $1 billion

as stable coins move into everyday

purchases. This has tracked card volume

more than tripled in a year with USDC

and USDT funding over 70% of spending as

users increasingly paid for groceries,

rides, and subscriptions. If the

standard charter news about the

institutions, this is real consumer

spending using stable coins and almost

entirely with crypto uh with credit

cards using stable coins. So, it's

interesting that this is basically, you

know, crypto finally achieving adoption

by hiding behind a Visa and Mastercard

logo. But this is three times what we

were seeing a year ago at this time.

More than 10 million purchases were

recorded just in the last month and 70%

of that was stable coins. Interestingly,

50.8% was uh USDC, 20.3% was USDT and

average transaction volume increased

from $59 to approximately $86. I had

Harold Goose, the CEO of OKX Europe on

my morning show last week and he talked

about the explosion of these cards,

especially around Europe after Mika and

the OKX card and what he said echoed

exactly what we're seeing here now in

the data. Now, interestingly, stable

coins are now funding traditional Visa

and Mastercards, not really replacing

those networks. So, this isn't people

making directto vendor stable coin

payments. They're using a familiar

framework in their Visa and Mastercards

to do it and just backing them with

stable coins. But still really, really,

really interesting stuff here. And now

for our favorite closing segment, how

not to invest. Hit it.

>> How not [music] to invest.

>> How not to invest.

>> Listen, I want to show you bad trades

and horrible financial decisions, but

I'm going to keep pounding the pavement

on these exploits and how bad they are.

We have two of them. So, I'm going to

show you right here. DeFi lending

protocol term finance loses an estimated

8.5 million to governance exploit.

That's number one. And web 3 gaming

network sandbox stops base and B&B chain

bridging after exploit. At this point,

we don't need to get into the nuance and

the details. It's just a reminder it is

very hard in a world of AI and hackers

to trust some of these and having

exposure to them is very much at your

own risk. I remember when people were

buying land next to Snoop's mansion in

the sandbox for millions and millions of

dollars and I would say, you know, they

can just make more of that land.

It was dumb at the time, still dumb now,

and now people are getting exploited.

That is the Daily Wolf for today. I

can't even imagine what we will be

talking about tomorrow, but I'm looking

forward to it, and hopefully you are,

too. See you then. Peace.