Over the past week, the regulators paved a way for foreign exchanges to operate in US markets, driving more liquidity and competition domestically. Japan appears to be moving towards more friendly crypto tax laws, including a 20% flat tax rather than punitive 55% capital gains taxes, and progressing toward a Bitcoin ETF filing for the country. Meanwhile, both existing and net new Bitcoin treasury companies continued with their aggressive acquisition strategies, as well as planned listings.

Sovereigns are testing acquisition and access frameworks, including Philippines proposal to accumulate 10,000 BTC and Brazil's upcoming hearing on a $19B reserve, pointing to prior adoption of competing nations and plans for legislative adoption by others. Bitcoin treasury companies, government pension funds, and banks all continue to ramp up their Bitcoin exposure. At the same time, payments infrastructure continued to develop with international payments through the Lightning Network, as BitBit facilitated user tipping through X.

Block introduced the Proto Rig (air-cooled efficiency as low as 14.1 J/TH; rack density up to 9.4 kW/ft²) with swappable hashboards and on-rack service. Abu Dhabi's sovereign wealth fund grew their Bitcoin exposure, as Brevan Howard almost doubled its $2.3B IBIT position at Q2 end. On the public markets front, Bullish listed on the NYSE, over $1B while Coinbase completed their $2.9B acquisition of Deribit, and Nakamoto completed their merger with KindlyMD.  On the policy front, Treasury kept the door open to acquiring Bitcoin, while the Federal Reserve limited ended its review of digital asset related banking activities.

University endowments and pensions moved further into Bitcoin, with Harvard disclosing a $116.7 million IBIT position, Brown reporting an initial $4.9 million allocation, and Michigan’s state fund tripling its spot ETF holdings. The corporate and capital-markets pipeline stayed active as Bullish filed for an IPO, Block reported higher income on growing Bitcoin revenue, and Metaplanet raised $3.7 billion via preferred equity. On the policy front, the White House cleared a path for Bitcoin in 401(k)s and barred debanking, while Dubai approved the first retail Bitcoin options license and Indonesia evaluated strategic reserve diversification.

The White House Digital Asset Working Group shared its report on how it plans to usher in the golden age of 'crypto', largely leaving out any mention of Bitcoin outside of reiterating earlier Presidential executive orders. The SEC’s in-kind creations/redemptions for crypto ETPs and a 10× expansion of IBIT option contract size lowered frictions and deepened liquidity, even as price chopped. Strategy raised $2.5B for its new preferred equity offering, while Marathon and Twenty One raised additional capital for the purposes of acquiring more Bitcoin, as Kraken is the latest digital asset firm planning to go public.

The week’s signals clustered around one theme: convergence. Retail Bitcoin interest appeared to pick up as evidenced by Coinbase jumping on the app store rankings, as Charles Schwab announced their intents to enter the apace to compete directly with Coinbase. Meanwhile, institutional Bitcoin interest remained driven by Standard Charted turning on institutional trading, while Strategy has amassed almost 3% of Bitcoin's supply, and Adam Back launched his own SPAC. On the policy front, “Crypto Week” in the House delivered three significant bills and set up a potential executive order expanding 401(k) access. The demand stack, banks, brokerages, corporates, retail, and legislators, keeps growing even as new supply growth maintains its certainty.

The week’s signals clustered around one theme: convergence. Retail Bitcoin interest appeared to pick up as evidenced by Coinbase jumping on the app store rankings, as Charles Schwab announced their intents to enter the apace to compete directly with Coinbase. Meanwhile, institutional Bitcoin interest remained driven by Standard Charted turning on institutional trading, while Strategy has amassed almost 3% of Bitcoin's supply, and Adam Back launched his own SPAC. On the policy front, “Crypto Week” in the House delivered three significant bills and set up a potential executive order expanding 401(k) access. The demand stack, banks, brokerages, corporates, retail, and legislators, keeps growing even as new supply growth maintains its certainty.

Bitcoin stamped fresh all-time highs this week, closing above $118K as demand from U.S. spot ETFs crossed the $140 billion threshold only 18 months post-launch, while new players joined the public corporate treasury play. Payments rails kept pace as SoFi confirmed it will route cross-border transfers through on-chain Bitcoin, and Jack Dorsey’s BitChat prototype showed Lightning invoices relaying entirely offline over Bluetooth mesh. Meanwhile, El Salvador’s president took a victory lap on his $400 million unrealized Bitcoin gain. In short, durable demand is broadening across retail, institutional, and nation-state channels just as supply growth halves every four years.

Germany’s €1.4 trillion Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe approved bitcoin access for 50 million retail customers, while US-listed Figma quietly disclosed a $70m Bitcoin ETF position and board approval to add more. Fintechs followed suit: SoFi is routing cross-border payments through Bitcoin rails, and a Thiel-backed cohort is building Erebor Bank to serve AI and crypto customers. Corporates kept stacking as MicroStrategy added almost 5,000 more Bitcoin, while DDC Enterprise secured a $528m facility. However, policy winds were mixed: Congress passed the One Big Beautiful Act minus the de-minimis exemption, but Senator Lummis immediately re-floated a narrower Crypto Tax Clarity bill.

The gang went to Washington this past week as many policy makers, operators, and investors converged in The District. Bitcoin Policy Institute put on a high quality event laying out everything from the first principles reasons for why Bitcoin protects private property and empowers human rights to the rationale for Bitcoin as a strategic asset for statecraft, and the best practices for Strategic Bitcoin Reserve implementations. This backdrop of coordinated thought-leadership and rule-making set the tone for a week in which corporate treasuries kept stacking sats and lawmakers fast-tracked bills that could soon make such moves routine.

Bitcoin marched deeper into the mainstream this week, even as cyber-skirmishes flared, revealing a market that’s broadening and hardening at the same time. Texas joined the strategic-reserve club, Ukraine and Arizona queued up similar bills, and corporates from MicroStrategy to Semler added to their treasuries, while spot-ETF inflows notched their longest winning streak since launch. Meanwhile, leverage traders held a different view as futures premiums collapsed to a three-month low, hinting at traders tamping down risk just as hacker collective Predatory Sparrow torched $90 million at Iran’s Nobitex and knocked Bank Sepah offline.

Bitcoin just graduated from speculative asset to blue-chip collateral—JPMorgan is now lending against BlackRock’s IBIT shares while Russia launches Bitcoin bonds and new cash-settled BTC futures. Demand for stablecoins continues to rise, acting as a top of funnel and increased liquidity to BTC with Circle's very successful IPO, and increased corporate adoption. Read on for the details, plus MIC Part 4, Seoul and London’s regulatory pivots, and the latest capital raises stacking BTC at corporate scale.

Bitcoin just graduated from speculative asset to blue-chip collateral—JPMorgan is now lending against BlackRock’s IBIT shares while Russia launches Bitcoin bonds and new cash-settled BTC futures. Demand for stablecoins continues to rise, acting as a top of funnel and increased liquidity to BTC with Circle's very successful IPO, and increased corporate adoption. Read on for the details, plus MIC Part 4, Seoul and London’s regulatory pivots, and the latest capital raises stacking BTC at corporate scale.

When state treasuries, Wall Street loan desks, and point-of-sale terminals all pivot to Bitcoin in the same week, you know the market’s center of gravity just moved. We map how the “multi-institution custody” standard is catching fire—just as Square, Amboss and Flash push Lightning into everyday commerce and unlock 9% yields on idle BTC. On the balance-sheet front, Trump Media, GameStop and Cantor Fitzgerald join Tether’s $2 billion mining bet in proving that corporates, miners and Wall-Street desks are all racing to out-stack one another. Meanwhile Texas and Pakistan are writing laws for state-level Bitcoin reserves, and the U.S. Labor Department has green-lit 401(k) exposure.

Last week delivered a rare role-reversal. While equities and long-dated Treasuries buckled under fresh 50 %-tariff threats and another $3.8 trillion spending bill, hard assets caught a bid. Bitcoin sprinted to within a hair of $112k and gold logged its best five-day stretch of the year, reminding investors that the 21-million-cap asset can play a genuine risk-off role when deficits look unfixable. Add record-high Japanese bond yields, a boom in corporate BTC treasuries, and Texas green-lighting state-level reserves, and the signal is hard to miss: capital is seeking harder ground.

Trade tensions eased, producer prices cooled, and bond yields blinked—fuel enough to catapult stocks into a broad-based rally that left the S&P up 5% and the Nasdaq up 7% as Bitcoin held steady. Meanwhile, retailers from burgers to bourbon switched on Lightning at the point of sale. The signal is clear: Bitcoin is migrating from narrative to ledger, from conference key-notes to cash registers.

All eyes turn to Geneva this weekend, but Bitcoin has already priced in optimism. The digital asset jumped nearly 10% to just under $105K, shrugging off listless equity markets and a soft GDP print. As gold catches a bid and oil creeps higher on tariff-truce rumors, corporates keep stacking sats and regulators inch closer to clarity.

From billion-dollar treasury buys to bitcoin-backed credit markets and growing state-level interest, the signal remains clear: institutions are preparing for a different monetary future. Meanwhile, a weakening dollar, rising yields, and stalled trade negotiations continue to pressure legacy frameworks, clearing the path for a finite apolitical money.

From billion-dollar treasury buys to bitcoin-backed credit markets and growing state-level interest, the signal remains clear: institutions are preparing for a different monetary future. Meanwhile, a weakening dollar, rising yields, and stalled trade negotiations continue to pressure legacy frameworks, clearing the path for a finite apolitical money.

This week, the market continued to navigate the complexities of the Trump administration's tariff policies. Bitcoin ended the week roughly flat, but demonstrated resilience versus the broader market, maintaining a price around $84,234 amidst broader market volatility. Despite the flat performance, nation state, corporate, and individual adoption continues to increase.