Bitcoin dropped in price overnight as

Trump announced that the ceasefire was

over in Iran. But there was some

structural weakness underlying the

market in the first place, leaving many

to wonder whether this is just another

bare market rally or if in fact Bitcoin

is ready to start its next leg up. We're

going to unpack all of that and

everything else happening in the news

right now on the Daily Wolf.

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. Now, we have to

talk about Bitcoin price and the market

every single day, but I think it's

important first to set the table. When

you zoom out, Bitcoin is doing

effectively nothing. We can talk about

it moving up 3 or 5% on a certain

headline and down 3 or 5% on a certain

headline. But the reality is that

Bitcoin has been trading at roughly the

same price in the high50s, low to mid60s

for a very very long time. And we have

nothing convincing to tell us that it's

going to break out of that range anytime

soon. That's not a bad thing, right? We

see this almost every single summer with

markets, but specifically with Bitcoin

and crypto. Even in bull markets,

summers tend to be choppy and boring as

traders from New York head off to the

Hamptons and their boats and their

pools. That's what's probably happening

and that's why we're seeing a lot of

sideways chop. But still, it is worth

digging into the headlines and trying to

find some signal amongst all this noise.

The first headline is very obvious.

Bitcoin drops after Trump says US Iran

ceasefire is over. I'm old enough to

remember when we knew what a ceasefire

was. Uh, I think that we've ceased

ceasing fire. I don't even know if we

know what ceasing fire actually means

because to my knowledge, we were firing

the whole time that we were ceasing. But

if you're wondering why this

theoretically affects the market, it is

once again the same mechanism where

Bitcoin gets tied into these temporary

macro black swan or uh just generally

macro events. Right? This is the

mechanism, right? If we have an issue in

Iran, that means the price of oil goes

up, which is what we saw, right? We saw

a spike in oil. That means that

inflation is up, that means fears of

inflation are up. And if fears of

inflation are up, that means that the

Fed no longer has the air cover that it

needs to cut rates. And everybody in

crypto is waiting for a rate cut because

apparently that is the singular catalyst

that can send Bitcoin going up, right? I

don't agree with that. But I do think

that that is generally the narrative for

Bitcoin and other assets in general.

Everybody waiting for the Fed to cut so

that they can then see money flowing

massively into all of their beloved

assets. Portfolio goes up. Number is

green. Everybody is happy. But there are

some structural things underneath that

are giving some people who've been here

for a while on Bitcoin a pause and

leading them to believe that maybe this

is just another bare market rally. First

of all is this one. Coinbase Bitcoin

premium index hits record 50-day

negative premium streak. In fact, it's

51 days today because I checked it right

before the show, but that wasn't as

convenient to show in this beautiful

image that we have here. But this is

according to coin coin glass data. The

Coinbase Bitcoin premium index has

remained negative for 50 conse

consecutive days. It's the longest

street ever. Prolonged negative premiums

are often associated with weaker US

institutional demand or short-term

market pressure. So basically TLDDR

Americans are not buying Bitcoin in the

same quantity that others are and

institutions are likely buying less

Bitcoin. All of this is happening while

we're seeing massive leverage building

up once again on the long side. So we

got a little bounce. People start to

FOMO. They think that the bottom is in.

they start to add leverage and what

happens well last time this happened in

June we saw a flush of roughly three

billion in longs in 48 hours uh which

obviously means that price was pushed

down so a lot of people hesitant right

now wondering if that is what's about to

happen now

we can talk about Bitcoin price all we

want but once again it's important to

zoom out and I think one of the biggest

questions especially in context of STRC

trading off par and strategies ceasing

to buy Bitcoin right now in fact selling

some Bitcoin The biggest question in the

market may be who is the next buyer of

Bitcoin. And I think that there's a lot

of fear that that demand floor does not

exist. So, I actually asked that

question to one of my favorite guests,

Matt Hogan, this morning on YouTube on

my 9:00 a.m. show, which you're all

obviously watching every single day on

9:00 a.m. at YouTube. And if you're not,

it's YouTube.com/cottaler.

Uh, but I'm going to show you the clip

of what Matt said about who the next

buyer is. Here's the video.

>> Uh, the question is who it becomes. I

think the answer there is obvious. it's

institutional investors. But maybe more

important is for people to reflect on

the fact that we've seen this sort of

baton transfer before, right? Before

strategy, it was GBTC. Before GBTC, it

was US retail investors. Before US

retail investors, it was Asian retail

investors. Before that, it was cipher

punks. There have been like a series of

leading buyers. We're now at the end

boss of that series, which is

institutional capital. and I actually

think they're going to take it and run

with it. So, I feel pretty good about

where we are, but yeah, for sure Micro

Strategy is not going to be the big

buyer for the next five years of

Bitcoin.

>> So, it's interesting because I think a

lot of people were wondering who would

be buying and are now pricing in the

fact that strategy won't. I mean, it

would be very surprising if they sold

$216 million worth of Bitcoin in one

week and then bought back a bit of it

the next week. I think the idea of that

would be very conf confusing to the

market. People would be wondering what

Sailor and Strategy are doing. So, as

I've said, right now, I would assume we

either see selling or just a bit of a

pause for a while to remove themselves

from the narrative, but it does make you

wonder who the next buyer is. And Matt

thinks that it's institutions. Now,

remember Matt is at Bitwise. He's having

these conversations every single day, so

he knows better than anyone else. And we

do actually have a bit of anecdotal

evidence that he might be correct. And

that's the next story here which is that

in Japan Bitcoin XRP draw Japanese firms

as weekend drives treasury

diversification. So this platform

basically saw uh institutional cl

clients skyrocketing from 1 million to 2

million signups and it's very

interesting to see what those people are

doing because this is corporates that

are adding Bitcoin and XRP

to their balance sheets instead of

holding treasuries because of yen

weakness. So this is the debasement

trade in real time. This is the original

Bitcoin thesis was if you believe that

the dollar current that your currency

not in this case the dollar yen is going

to become weaker that there's going to

be inflation that there's going to be

debasement you buy hard assets. And

right now in Japan they're buying both

Bitcoin and XRP for that reason. So this

is actual evidence of exactly what Matt

said is likely to happen and what we

believe will happen in the United

States. Now, he was very honest about

the fact that right now we've seen a

historic outflow from these spot ETFs

and all the cryptoreated products. So,

this is theory. In practice over the

past few months, we've actually seen a

lot of those people exiting their

positions. But his point is that at the

real institutional level, they're

chomping at the bit to actually get in

here and they're less concerned about a

bare market. Now, remember, if you're an

institutional allocator of capital, you

don't make decisions based on a day, a

week, or even a month of price action.

and you do it in years. And if people

believe that the four-year cycle is

currently intact, that Bitcoin is going

to rise again, then this is the time

that they're starting to purchase these

assets to avoid the future debasement

that we all know is coming. Now, the

next story uh is hearkening back to

something we talked about last week,

which was that Robin Hood had their huge

announcement that they were launching

their own layer 2 blockchain built on

Arbitum. Well, they've got a nice little

uh run going on here. Robin Hood chain

hits 100 million in TVL. That's total

value locked for those of you who don't

know what TVL means. Uh it's not the

show on MTV. Just one week after lunch.

Carson Daily TRL.

Uh so listen, this is actually quite uh

rapid growth. We've seen a lot of change

launched over the years, but Robin Hood

has 30 million customers and is offering

this to all of them. And the catch

there, as I told you last week, is

they're offering 7% yield for using DeFi

on Robin Hood chain. Of that 100

million, 89.8

million sits on lending protocol Morpho,

which powers Robin Hood's new 7% earn

product. Now, you might remember uh we

also have Binance launching BTC Yield,

which is a somewhat similar product.

Clearly right now there is a race for

yield in crypto and people deeply trust

Robin Hood. And so what I find so

interesting about this is it's probably

not the cryptonative degenerates who

have always known how to use DeFi uh for

borrowing and lending that are using

this. This is probably Robin Hood's

actual customers who now have a very

simple UX UI to go on a platform that

they trust and understand and are

comfortable with and they see a button

that says, "Hey, do you want to make

7%." And they click that button and yes,

there's a mechanism that's in crypto and

it depends on a stable coin and lending

and all this, but for them it's probably

as simple as using anything else on

Robin Hood. Now, there's an interesting

nuance here and it's funny. I asked Matt

once again hearkening back to that

conversation this morning. Every time

we've seen a protocol launched, the

first thing you see blowing up is

memecoins. Like even when Coinbase

launched Base, which is their layer 2,

which you could argue this is like the

direct competitor to that since we know

that Coinbase and Robin Hood are always

headtohead on creating the Everything

app. The first thing we saw were Brian

Armstrong base memes that blew up. I

think one of them was called Bald.

That's funny because he's bald.

Um,

a lot of bald guys in crypto. I don't

know if there's a correlation or

anything, but uh but interestingly, this

is what Vlad tweeted. While we're

building Robin Hood chain to be the best

chain for RWA real world assets,

works great for memes, too. That's the

CEO of Robin Hood basically telling the

crypto gens to come over and do some

crypto dgen stuff over there to get that

TVL and interest going. So, it will be

interesting to see, especially since

we're seeing a little bit of a Salana

memecoin re renaissance coming back,

which I do not promote participate in.

Uh, it's just something that I mentioned

in passing with a slight bit of cringe.

Uh, will that also come to Robin Hood

chain? But this is fast growth. There's

real interest here growing once again in

DeFi and I'm here for it. Next story

here is a interesting one. New Hampshire

Bitcoin bond nears final vote, but

there's catch. So, this is a New

Hampshire backed municipal bond. Now,

this is great marketing for New

Hampshire because they have said that

they want to be the crypto capital. They

were the first state that uh allowed for

a Bitcoin treasury. But this basically

has very little to do with the state,

the people, the taxpayer or Bitcoin

itself. What this is is effectively a

hund00 million loan that they're allowed

to approve to a private borrower which

is apparently CleanSpark the Bitcoin

miner. So interestingly this is over

collateralized 150 $160%. So, CleanSpark

borrows $100 million. They put in $150

to $160 million in Bitcoin into it. And

this gets liquidated if there's a 12 or

starts to get liquidated if 12.5% drop,

which uh if you've ever been here

before, you know in Bitcoin we just call

that Tuesday, right? So, it's very high

risk actually for CleanSpark. You got to

wonder why they would do this. It's

because they get uh New Hampshire

business fi finance authority as the

backer which probably allows them to

borrow money cheaper from other people.

And this gives New Hampshire a win by

basically earning the fees on doing

this. They're guaranteed not to lose

money because the liquidation is so high

above the amount of Bitcoin that they're

holding and they get the marketing of a

very cool headline about their product.

Notable though that it will now be in

the headlines that a state is voting on

a Bitcoinbacked municipal bond. And we

were just talking about lending and we

got another story in the lending space.

Yield is the yield is on the menu guys.

Jack Mer's strike launches volatility

proof Bitcoin loans to protect against

liquidation. Now this is interesting

because you can take a loan against your

Bitcoin and you cannot get liquidated.

We saw something similar with Coinbase

and their Bitcoinbacked mortgages saying

that you can't get liquidated on those

loans. This seems to be the new

catchphrase, no liquidation. But is that

really true? Technically, yes. But it's

not like you don't have to pay back the

loan on time. So, you basically get a

10-day grace period before they start

liquidating you at the point uh in which

your loan becomes in trouble. So yes,

you will not get automatically

liquidated, but it doesn't uh prevent

you from having it liquidated in an

orderly manner if you're 10 days over on

your payments. And more interestingly,

it's a six-month loan, which is a very,

very short time preference for

Bitcoiners who generally want a loan on

their assets that lasts much much longer

than just that amount of time. So, I I

think that this is a uh interesting

headline. It's an interesting product.

I'm sure that people will use it, but

I'm not quite sure it's exactly what uh

what we're hoping that it is, which is a

long-term solution for Bitcoin lending.

There are amazing products in the market

actually for borrowing against your

Bitcoin. They just generally have

relatively high interest rates. Uh but

they work really well because Bitcoin is

pristine collateral. So, if you post

Bitcoin and you're overcolateralized,

there's literally no reason to check

your uh to check your credit score or to

see if you're creditworthy or how many

assets you have, the person who's

lending you the money is holding the

Bitcoin and if it goes down a certain

amount if you don't add margin, they

just liquidate it. Much easier actually

than almost any other kind of loan. So,

I would say that we're getting close. Uh

this is an interesting product in that

direction, but it is not the final boss.

And we're going to see what happens with

Bitcoin price. My base case has remained

that we just chop sideways through the

summer and then see what happens when

the fall comes. Uh we were going to be

here every day to analyze it. Either

way, that's all I've got for you today.

I will be back tomorrow for the next

Daily Wolf. Peace.