Michael Saylor's Bitcoin buying machine

has sputtered as they aggressively add

to their cash reserve. Meanwhile, the

company that owns the New York Stock

Exchange is teaming up with a crypto

exchange OKX to bring tokenized stocks

to 120

million people. And we have

announcements from Franklin Templeton

and Morgan Stanley. We have a lot to

talk about today in The Daily Wolf.

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. Now, we're coming

out of a very busy weekend specifically

in the macro. Of course, we had a number

of Iran headlines, but we're not going

to focus on those today because as you

know, we try to separate the signal from

the noise. And right now, any headline

coming out of the war seems to be noise.

But what is not noise is deeply

analyzing every single week what is

happening with one Michael Saylor. So,

here's the headline as we get every

Monday morning.

Strategy added 35 million in Bitcoin,

300 million in cash reserves last week.

The boost to cash reserves is meant to

reassure investors about dividend

payments on the company's hard-hit

preferred shares STRC. So, yes, I know

that we constantly harp on what is

happening here with strategy, but

there's a reason because it is the main

narrative right now in the market. And

just Friday, we talked about the worst

day in digital credit history where we

saw the massive liquidation event across

both Theta and STRC with STRC trading as

low as $82. Now, as you know, STRC is

supposed to trade around $100. It's

still trading well below par today. And

as long as it's trading down below 100,

it is effectively turned off as far as

being able to buy Bitcoin. In fact, they

are shutting down the ATM temporarily

and not even issuing more shares while

it's trading below par. So, they bought

520 Bitcoin this week. $34.9 million at

an average of 67,068.

Shockingly, once again, that's probably

the highest price that Bitcoin really

traded at this week. They seem to top

tick the market. Saylor himself jokes

about the fact that he'll be buying the

top forever. That seems to be what

happened here. But, the bigger story is

that their cash reserve is back up to

1.4 billion. It was at 1.1 billion last

week after going as low as around 100

million after they paid 800 million

after they paid off that convertible

note that caused this massive scare that

we have been watching. So, listen, the

only way right now that Michael Saylor

seemingly has to buy Bitcoin and add to

the cash reserve is to sell off

MicroStrategy stock, which is obviously

dilutive, at least temporarily, to

strategy shareholders. The market is not

loving that. They want to see some

massive buys and not these small ones.

That said, I think if this if this uh

cash fund gets back up to two, three

billion dollars over the next few weeks,

and Bitcoin even slightly rises, this is

going to be a narrative of the past. I

think another interesting narrative to

add to this is that rival Strive, who

I've been telling you about with their

very attractive product, Saylor, they

bought 759

Bitcoin this week. So, they actually

bought more Bitcoin this week than

Strategy was able to buy. So, we could

see a bit of a transition here from

Strategy to Strive. That has certainly

been the trend of late. We're going to

see over the next few weeks what happens

with Strategy's Bitcoin buying machine.

But, right now, clearly, temporarily,

it is sputtering a bit. Now,

the next story to me is not going to be

the one that grabs the largest

headlines, but is arguably the biggest.

Let me show it to you here.

Intercontinental Exchange and OKX

establish joint venture to bridge

traditional and digital asset markets.

So, what they announced today was ICE,

which is the parent exchange parent

company, of course, of the New York

Stock Exchange and others. They formed a

50/50 joint venture to build

infrastructure for tokenized and

digitally native financial products.

Now, why is this interesting?

So, first of all, they

did a deal where NYSE or ICE, the parent

of NYSE got a board seat and invested in

OKX last March. We know that Andrew

Cuomo has been working with OKX to help

with the regulatory and legislative

environment. And now, this is the huge

announcement. And And once again, this

is the reason. So, we've seen a lot of

crypto exchanges

and OKX is one of the largest on the

planet, but we've seen a lot of crypto

exchanges building products out to

attract a new non-crypto native

audience. Last week, we told you about

how Coinbase was adding 11 products or

so, nine, 10, 11 products all at once to

be the everything app. And we've seen a

lot of products coming from Wall Street

that are trying to bring some Bitcoin

into their existing customers'

portfolios, right? But this is the first

major example where I can see an entity

as large as the New York Stock Exchange

and ICE, which is arguably the largest

entity and institution of its kind

directly trying to create something for

a huge swath of crypto native users. OKX

has 120

million customers, and this is going to

bring

all of those tokenized products from

Wall Street directly to those people.

That's why I think that this is so

massive and so different. It'll operate

as a US registered broker-dealer and

FCM. And so, now those 120 million

customers from OKX, and those people are

primarily all around the world. Of

course, many of them are US users, but

all over the world to access directly

tokenized offerings from the New York

Stock Exchange. So, this is a completely

different direction, a completely

different approach, and arguably the one

that in my opinion is going to have the

largest impact on our actual industry.

Now, I told you about how this isn't

just coming in one direction. We also

have, of course, the incumbents creating

new products to try to give exposure to

Bitcoin and crypto in different ways to

their existing customer base. We've got

two stories about that right now, but

the first is this one.

Franklin Templeton files first Bitcoin

dividend ETFs. Stock income buys Bitcoin

automatically. So, these are called DRIP

ETFs, d r i p. Now, this is an existing

structure that's been around for a very

long time. It's a dividend reinvestment,

uh which is what DRIP is, right? And so,

what this is going to do, and they filed

two of them, is effectively you'll have

a basket or an index within the ETF, and

those of them that have dividends, that

dividend will be directly used to

purchase Bitcoin into that fund. So,

it'll be 95% equities, 5% Bitcoin, and

this is targeted to launch in September.

So, this is, as I said, not a new

product in that there are plenty of

these DRIP ETFs that redirect the

dividends back into the asset. So,

basically, you know, if you have a

dividend uh yielding stock, uh you get

that dividend, and the ETF automatically

uses that dividend to buy more of that

stock. But, this is the first time that

it's being used to buy Bitcoin, and this

is once again a new and novel product

for us that it already exists in the

market and is extremely popular. And it

shows the maturation of products around

Bitcoin and crypto. So, I think that

this is absolutely going to be huge. I

mean, Franklin Templeton, I believe has

1.3, 1.4 trillion assets under manage

and will be continuing to aggressively

pitch these new products to their

customer base. I think it's absolutely

huge. On the other side, we have another

huge entity, which is Morgan Stanley.

Now, Morgan Stanley targets crypto ETF

fee crown while Franklin Templeton wants

their stock dividends buying Bitcoin.

So, this is the second half of somewhat

of the same story, which is more

products being offered to retail in the

United States around crypto and Bitcoin.

Now, what they're doing here

we saw when Morgan Stanley came into the

ETF race a few months ago. I reported on

it widely. You can go back and watch

those shows. But, what was interesting

there is that Morgan Stanley generally

doesn't issue ETFs, but they had the

opportunity to enter a very crowded

Bitcoin spot ETF space within their own

ETF and their sales force of 15 to

16,000 advisors out there pitching it.

Why give the fees to BlackRock when you

can create your own product and capture

those fees themselves? But, it wasn't

just about themselves because they came

in with the lowest fee product in the

market at 14 bips. That is an

exceptionally cheap product. It undercut

all the existing Bitcoin spot ETFs. And

so,

that was a huge story because it meant

that they were also clearly intending to

try to compete in the retail space. Now,

they're coming in now. This announcement

is they have amended their filings for

their upcoming Ethereum ETF and their

upcoming Solana ETF, both with 14 bip

products. So, this is the same

uh sort of playbook that they recently

took

with Bitcoin that they're now taking

with Ethereum and Solana. They will come

in as the cheapest uh I believe Eric

Eric Balchunas from Bloomberg ETF said

that this was going to be the cheapest

offerings in the market that he's

effectively ever seen. I mean, Wall

Street basically spent 10 years calling

crypto rat poison. Now they're in a

price war war war over who gets to serve

you that rat poison.

Right? It's really a just massive change

in the way that our industry is viewed

and the biggest institutions on the

planet are all coming through with a big

plan for how to approach it. Now,

the next story really leans on two

stories that I told you last week. So,

we have Bank of England softens

stablecoin rules

in final policy draft. So, now you'll

remember last week we had America

putting a surveillance camera on

stablecoins. All of the big uh

regulators and agencies saying that they

wanted full KYC and AML on every

stablecoin. Of course, I told you the

story about how

Europe, specifically Greece and Lagarde,

effectively blocked Binance from getting

approval and that was a stablecoin story

as well. Well, now we have a third

approach, which is the Bank of England,

which was historically the most

contentious for stablecoins, completely

softening their stance and reversing and

going the other direction. I mean, the

only thing that uh everybody can agree

about on stablecoins is that they can't

agree on how to approach stablecoins.

Right? But so, you now have basically

these different regimes. And as I said,

the Bank of England was the worst. So,

when they originally floated their idea

for sterling-backed stablecoins, that's

important. These are not dollar-backed

stablecoins. For sterling-backed

stablecoins, they proposed that an

individual would only be able to hold

20,000 pounds worth of stablecoins and a

business could only have 10 million. It

sent the crypto world into a frenzy.

Now, of course, almost all stablecoins

are dollar-backed. Very few are

sterling. But what happened here is that

people started to say they were going to

go to other places to mint stablecoins

and the Bank of England and the pound

would be completely left out. They can't

have that happening. So, what they've

floated now is a 40 billion pound cap on

the issuer instead of targeting the

individual. This is a complete and utter

reversal and it lends to the story that

Lagarde was telling in Europe about

their fear of dollar stable coins coming

in and eating their lunch. I've told you

stories like this actually for months

now about how a number of governments

are fearful of stable coins because why

would you use your inferior currency if

you are a retail investor in any country

if you can get access to dollars which

is what everybody wants. Well, I'm not

sure they can stop this hyper

dollarization through stable coins, but

they're certainly going to try and

that's really what the story here is

from the Bank of England. What they're

trying to do is make it more popular for

somebody to create sterling back stable

coins instead of dollar backed stable

coins because they need to somehow

compete, but I find it very interesting

that the United States has been leading

with the genius legislation, but now is

calling for higher surveillance. And I

told you how they're already doing that

through both private companies and

through the government having full

transparency into your uh into your

transactions. Of course, Europe being

very contentious now for stable coins

and England trying to open the doors.

Now, the final story is a string of

stories and it's a story I hate telling,

but here we are. We had one of the worst

weekends

uh I can recall not in size, but just in

number of hacks and events across DeFi

and across crypto. This seems to be a

theme that will not die. Now, the first

was a Microsoft report

that they found malware that hijacks

crypto wallets and spreads through USB

sticks.

USB sticks, right? I mean, we're in the

age of super intelligence of AI talking

about quantum threats and apparently

what's coming for your Bitcoin is a USB

stick. Right? I mean, we declared this

technology obsolete in 2012. I'm not

sure the last time I've even put one

into my computer and your crypto can

survive a 50% drawdown in bear market,

but it can't survive Greg from

accounting plugging in a mystery thumb

drive into his laptop in the parking

lot. Right? So, we don't know if this

has actually been used at all, but it

has been it has been highlighted as a

potential risk. The malware is

definitely out there and when people

plug it in, it effectively infects the

computer. You think you're sending a

transaction to a friend and instead

you're sending it to a hacker. Well,

that's not the only story. We've got

Ethereum MEV king Jared from Subway had

a massive 50 million exploit. This is

ironic cuz this guy was basically

stealing money using MEV bots and then

got hacked himself for 50 million

dollars. Secret Network bridge exploited

for 4.7 million with infinite mint bug.

And of course, Taiko halts its Ethereum

layer 2 network after bridge exploit

token dives.

Never even heard of that.

Once again, I do this all day, every day

and these protocols that keep getting

exploited are things I have never even

heard of or paid attention to it. So,

we have a hacking problem. Luckily,

right now it's not the big mainstream

names that are getting hacked. I mean,

that's really all we've got today. It's

interesting to see the approach towards

stablecoins from all these different

countries and continents and of course,

interesting to see how institutions are

now trying to grab their piece of the

crypto pie. We'll be talking about it

all week. It's all I got for you today.

I'll see you back tomorrow on the next

Daily Wolf. Peace.