Bitcoin just had its best week since

March. And it seems that both

institutional and retail money are

tiptoeing back in as we have a few days

of sustained ETF inflows after a record

streak of outflows. We're going to be

talking about that in a whole lot of

things, Donald Trump, today on The Daily

Wolf. Let's go.

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 we're going to

spend the next 15 minutes diving into

the heap of news and trying to find a

little bit of signal amongst all the

noise. Now, yesterday I was wearing my

very patriotic red, white, and blue USA

jersey. You'll see that today I've

reverted to black as a funeral for the

United States men's national team and

for American football, which is no

longer called soccer. Once again, that

was an atrocious day, but now we can

move on and get back into the market.

So, first of all, here we go. Bitcoin

rises 7% in its best week since March

amid easing US inflation fears. I'm not

really buying the back half of that

title. Everybody wants to assign a

narrative to why Bitcoin is up. So,

first of all, let's be honest. It

bottomed near 58 and now we're trading

in the low 60s. This is not exactly a

massive moment to celebrate. We're still

sort of in the same range, trading right

around the 200-week moving average on

the weekly chart there. And as always,

you know, Bitcoin took a run at 64,000

and Crypto Twitter has already gone from

it's so over to we're so back, which is

usually historically the

precise moment that the universe gets

the folding chair and WWE smacks it

right over the back of our heads. So,

it's hard to get too excited. Now, what

I will say

that I'm impressed with is that the

market has absorbed sailor's selling so

incredibly well. So yesterday obviously

we reported on the fact that he had sold

216 millionish dollars worth of Bitcoin.

Of course as a Bitcoin he bought high

and sold low. We can call it tax loss

harvesting but everybody knows that

that's not the best investment or

trading strategy. But what he did do was

cover over three months of dividends for

all of his preferred offerings with a

single sale proving to the market that

by selling less than a half a percent of

his Bitcoin he can cover his obligations

for an entire quarter and I think that

the market liked that. STRC was up, MSTR

was up yesterday. Bitcoin was also up

yesterday and I think the bigger story

there not only proving that he can fund

the dividends with a small sale but the

market absorbed the worst case narrative

which was that Michael Saylor would

start selling or even that Michael

Saylor would stop buying. So I think it

is really interesting actually to see

the price action after that and highly

encouraging. Just to show you that BETF

Bitcoin BTC ETF flows right there. You

can see all these months right here, all

these days excuse me with the

parentheses negative negative negative

but but last Thursday 223 million in

flows and then yesterday 265

million in flows. So maybe things are

starting

to turn around. I think it's too early

to tell but we obviously have a bit of

cautious optimism in the market and

we're all here for that. So the next big

story is one that tracks a trend that

we've been talking about quite a lot

which is this rotation from Bitcoin into

AI and more specifically when you really

dig into it the rotation of Bitcoin

miners into AI. So this was a big story

yesterday. TeraWulf signs 19 billion

lease with Anthropic for AI

infrastructure campus expects to bring

400 megawatts of computing power online

by 2028. Isn't that the number from the

Back to the Future? Those are gigawatts.

Get the car going fast enough

right into the future of AI though.

That's how this works. But this is a

trend that we've seen quite a lot of.

This one actually

absolutely huge if you take a look

because it's a $19 billion contract for

20 years basically just to host

AI infrastructure instead of Bitcoin

mining infrastructure for a company

that's entire market cap was $12

billion.

So this is a bigger deal than the entire

value of TeraWulf. And this is a trend

that we've seen a lot of. So I believe

we've seen 70 plus 70 billion plus

dollars in AI compute contracts

for

the artist formerly known as Bitcoin

miners. So this leaves a lot of question

marks, right? Because these are all

publicly traded Bitcoin mining companies

that have wholesale pivoted into a new

model because it's the next big thing

and it's just far more profitable and

easier to do than Bitcoin mining. And

and you can see by looking at a chart of

Bitcoin hash rate, it's dropped

it's dropped massively since the highs

back in October. And a big story part of

that story obviously is this pivot into

AI from the miners. So

difficulty will obviously adjust. People

will step in and take on that mining

capacity. But at the same time that

these miners are

wholesale moving over to AI, they're

also now selling Bitcoin and have ceased

to be holders. So that's probably

provided a lot of pressure on the market

as they've been selling off their

Bitcoin to close debt and to fund this

AI infrastructure. And it's going to be

an interesting story to watch. But this

is actually a really big deal, I think,

for TeraWulf. And I really do think that

public Bitcoin miners are largely going

to become extinct. They're going to be

AI compute centers that occasionally

probably maybe decide to mine a little

bit of Bitcoin.

Now, this next story was a big one

reported yesterday that a lot of people

seem to miss, but I think it's a big

signal in the market right now. So,

Circle's USDC pulls ahead of Tether as

stablecoin volume hits record 1.79

trillion dollars. So, this report not

just coming from some arbitrary source,

this is coming from Visa, who by the way

is also doing less transaction volume

than stablecoins. But, saying that 70%

of adjusted volume in the first quarter

uh was done by Circle USDC with only 25%

by Tether. Now, if you go back a few

years, Tether was 90%. I think 2020

Tether literally did 90% of all

stablecoin volume. So, not only right

now in actual usage of the stablecoin is

Circle and USDC eating their lunch, but

you can see that there's a wholesale

shift right now in diversity of

stablecoins that can be used as we see

more stablecoins being built out both

publicly and privately. So, really,

really interesting uh story here. Now, I

think the bigger story is that the

entire pie is exploding. As you saw that

number, June record 1.79

trillion dollars. Uh that's up 63%

month over month. Uh H1 8.82 trillion,

which is more than all of 20 24. If you

want to talk about where all of the

interest is coming, it's post Genius Act

into stablecoins, which are a faster,

cheaper, and better way to transact in

the United States dollar. So, obviously,

because of the regulatory environment

and the legislation for the Genius Act,

USDC, which is highly regulated and very

much under the microscope of the United

States government and its regulators has

been seeing increased adoption and usage

and obviously Tether has plans to come

more aggressively into the United States

and compete in that market. But you'll

remember last week I reported on OUSD,

Open USD, a consortium of 140

companies launching a stable coin.

Now you can see why. Now you can see why

the Visa's and the Mastercards and the

American Expresses and the Blackrocks

and the literally anyone who has any

interest in making money in payments are

all backing a new competitor because

Circle is absolutely eating their lunch

as the anointed one in the United States

and there's a lot of money to be made by

launching their own stable coin. Of

course that one as I told you is backed

by Stripe, their own payment company

uh from the acquisition of Bridge that

they recently did. The stable coin

market is going to continue to

absolutely explode. There is nothing

stopping this train. There will be more

competitors, but right now on actual

sheer transaction volume and usage,

forget trading and market cap, Circle

clearly winning.

Now, one of the biggest narratives that

we've had in the last 16 months uh since

Trump became president was the strategic

Bitcoin reserve. Obviously we talked

about that in the past. There was an

executive order saying that we would

have a strategic Bitcoin reserve. We

would commit to holding all of the

Bitcoin that we already had uh in the

government's wallets. We would also have

a digital asset stockpile of other

assets and commit not to sell them and

we would look at budget neutral ways to

add Bitcoin to that treasury. Well,

here's the story breaking today. Some

are painting it bullish, some are

painting it bearish.

Trump Bitcoin reserve faces hurdles as

departments seek control. So obviously

Bloomberg is taking a more bearish tilt

at this. And what they're reporting is

that there's basically a battle between

Treasury and Commerce, percent and

Letnick if you really uh want to dig

into that over who should control the

strategic Bitcoin reserve. The bullish

side is a lot of crypto media is

reporting on the very fact that we're

talking about a Bitcoin strategic

reserve, so it must be happening. That's

literally how the reporting is seemingly

structured. But right now the United

States holds approximately 300,000 give

or take Bitcoin, which is worth around

$21 billion.

Interestingly part of those executive

orders from the early days of the Trump

presidency were that we would get an

actual accounting on this.

We haven't. We have no idea, no audit,

much like Fort Knox and the gold. We

have no idea how much Bitcoin the US

government actually holds, but right now

we have an aggressive turf war between

Treasury and Commerce over who will

control it. Now interestingly, if we had

started buying Bitcoin when the reserve

was originally announced, we would have

been buying at 93, $95, $96,000. So if

we get started now here in the low 60s,

we could have a an accidental boon uh

for buying Bitcoin at much lower prices.

But I don't think anyone right now

expecting the United States government

to actually come in and start buying

Bitcoin.

Now the next Trump story,

which is a fun one, is

uh this one right here.

"I'm a big crypto guy." Trump fields

Bitcoin question as $1,000 Trump

accounts go live. So listen, Trump was

basically uh announcing the launch of

the Trump accounts, which I think are

absolutely brilliant. You know, kids

born between 2025 and 2028 can get

$1,000 into these investment accounts,

which are effectively, you know,

structured like retirement accounts. And

you know, they've shown the numbers of

how much money just by saving. I think

this is a great idea. We do not have

enough financial education in this

country and giving children a head start

is always a good thing. But of course,

because somebody had to ask it, a

reporter asked the president, "Any

chance Bitcoin goes into these these

accounts?" And his answer was,

"I'm a big crypto guy."

Which is less of a commitment and more

of a bumper sticker. I would put that on

my car, to be honest. Uh and then

probably get robbed.

Especially if I was in France. But yeah,

so listen, uh

I just want to talk about this because

then of course the media ran with the

fact that it was likely that Bitcoin was

going to be put into these accounts.

Literally illegal, can't be done.

Ignore that nonsense. Right?

Retirement accounts in general and then

these accounts, which are not exactly

retirement accounts, are very specific

about what can and cannot go into them.

We've already been having the battle

actually about Trump wanting Bitcoin to

go into 401(k)s, which is technically

allowed, but most 401(k) providers don't

allow it. Well, this is even more

specific with these because they have to

be effectively market tracking index

funds and ETFs. So in theory one day

they could change the law in Congress to

allow single asset ETFs or crypto or

anything like it to go into these

accounts, but right now it's literally

impossible. So when we talk about

separating signal from noise, this is

one of those things where A, the guy

didn't even say yes, he just said,

"I'm a big crypto guy." Which to be

fair, like you know, if I made $2.4

billion a year in crypto, I'd probably

have that bumper sticker, too, or say

the same thing. But this is not going to

happen.

Right? So I think you should cheer for

the Trump accounts. Think you should

sign your kids up. Absolutely take

advantage of the growth over time from a

very young age. Very compelling and

important, but yeah, it's not going to

be the place that you put your Bitcoin.

And now for the last story of the day,

if we're doing the clown show and the

noise, but which we have to do. Bonk,

one of the favored meme coins of

previous cycle, Dow loses 20 million in

governance attack, token falls 10%. So

we've talked about all kinds of and

crypto and all kinds of exploits and

problems. Turns out sometimes the actual

governance is the biggest problem. What

this guy basically did, he needed 1% of

the supply for a quorum to be able to

vote. He spent 4.4 million buying Bonk

and then basically voted to send the

entire 20 million dollar treasury to

himself. And only seven wallets decided

to jump in for that vote because nobody

cares anymore,

which is a 2.9% turnout. 99.9% yes cuz

they were obviously using Biden's auto

pen

to do the vote and 20 million dollars

auto drains. The question is, is this

theft

or is he using the rules? I mean,

obviously Bonk DAO chainalysis are

calling it an attack. There's law

enforcement involved, but what the guy

did was buy enough tokens to be able to

vote. Then he set the vote and while

everybody was asleep, the smart

contracts executed and sent him the

money that rightfully was his by the

vote. You can determine it

as you see fit, but clearly we still got

some problems. So, listen, we have a

cautious optimism in the market.

Bitcoin's slightly reversing ETF flows

coming in and once again watching stable

coins absolutely eat the lunch of Visa,

Mastercard, ACH and all other payment

networks. I will see you tomorrow for

the next Daily Wolf. Peace.