Open Range | May 11th, 2025 | From Tariffs to Treasuries, Bitcoin Outshines Equities
Bitcoin rallied almost 10% on the week to just under $105k, buoyed by constructive trade conversations and an acceleration of corporate and individual bitcoin demand.
U.S. equities gave back a slice of last week’s gains as investors waited for the weekend U.S.–China tariff summit in Geneva, despite a U.S.-U.K. mini-deal. The S&P 500 slipped 0.5% on the week to 5,659.91, the Dow edged down 0.2% to 41,249.38, and the Nasdaq Composite finished down 0.3% at 17,928.92. Earnings beats from the megacap tech cohort limited the damage, but breadth remained narrow with small-caps slightly red.
Spot gold rose 2.7% to $3,327 per ounce, as traders looked for protection in case Geneva talks sour or next week’s CPI surprises on the upside.
Brent crude settled around $62.70/bbl, up roughly 2% on the week, while front-month WTI finished at $61.06/bbl after five straight sessions in the green. The bid came on two catalysts: a Reuters report that this weekend’s U.S.–China talks could roll back a slice of the 145 % tariffs, and EIA inventory data showing the first draw in four weeks.
The first-look Q1 GDP contraction of 0.3% remains the headline, and April data hasn't brightened the picture: consumer confidence dropped to 86.0, the weakest since May 2020 as tariff sticker-shock filtered into sentiment.
April added 177k nonfarm jobs—solid, but the slowest pace since November—with unemployment steady at 4.2%. Weekly jobless claims dipped to 228k, suggesting no break in the trend yet.
The FOMC held at 4.25–4.50% but finally admitted ‘two-sided risks’—code for stagflation anxiety. Treasuries sold off into the close, nudging the 10-year to 4.38%, while the dollar index retraced early gains on soft services-PMI data.
President Trump hailed great progress with respect to tariff negotiations with China, and mentioned a total reset in tariff talks. While this means that the tariffs could likely end up as less than 125% on each country, many market participants remain sidelined due to the perceived potential volatility.
In the background, Japan’s finance minister again floated—and then half-walked back—the idea that Tokyo’s trillion-dollar U.S.-Treasury hoard is “a card” in its own trade negotiations, reminding bond desks that foreign-reserve politics are very much in play.
Institutional Update
Strategy keeps pressing the buy button. In an 8-K filed Monday, the company disclosed that it picked up another 1,895 BTC for $180.3 million, lifting its treasury to 555,450 BTC acquired at an average cost of $68,550.
The Tokyo-listed Metaplanet bought 555 BTC (≈$53.5 million) on May 7, pushing its stack to 5,555 BTC. Within 48 hours it filed to issue an additional ¥3.3 billion ($21.3 million) in zero-coupon bonds—its third debt raise in a week—to fund more purchases.
David Bailey—CEO of BTC Inc. and a bitcoin adviser to President Trump—has raised $300 million for a new vehicle dubbed Nakamoto. The plan is to merge with an existing Nasdaq shell, go public this summer, and deploy the war-chest directly into bitcoin, mirroring the MicroStrategy model.
Strategic M&A also accelerated. Coinbase agreed to acquire Deribit for $2.9 billion in cash-and-stock, giving the exchange a dominant perch in global crypto options and cementing a derivatives arms-race that began with CME’s open-interest surge last quarter.
Coinbase also stepped up its bitcoin acquisitions over the past quarter. Their balance sheet benefited from an increase in the price of bitcoin, but also experienced losses from their holdings of ETH and other tokens.
Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski previewed a non-custodial bitcoin + stablecoin wallet aimed at creators and slated for Q3—another sign that content platforms are moving to embed native payment rails.
Regulatory Update
At the federal level, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency issued Interpretive Letter 1184, formally confirming that national banks may provide crypto-asset custody and execution services—including via sub-custodians—as long as third-party-risk protocols are in place. The letter effectively aligns OCC guidance with last month’s Fed and FDIC rollbacks, shrinking the regulatory gray zone for banks that want to hold bitcoin on behalf of clients.
States are starting to treat bitcoin like strategic infrastructure. New Hampshire became the first state to authorize officials to invest up to 5 percent of public funds in digital assets with market caps above $500 billion—effectively bitcoin only for now—under HB302. Arizona followed 48 hours later, but with a twist: Governor Hobbs vetoed a “10-percent-of-treasury” bill yet signed HB 2749, which sets up a reserve fund seeded with unclaimed digital assets and staking rewards, giving the treasurer statutory authority to custody bitcoin without tapping pension money.
The Bank for International Settlements, meanwhile, added empirical heft to the policy debate: a new working paper pegs cross-border flows of BTC, ETH and the two largest stablecoins at $1.8 trillion in 2023 and rising again in 2024, noting that speculative demand now moves with global capital controls and liquidity conditions, while stablecoins track remittance costs.
The GENIUS Act—the Senate’s stablecoin framework—failed a key cloture vote on May 8, drawing only 49 of the 60 votes needed to advance. Democrats cited national-security gaps and what they called “Trump-related conflicts” after reports that the former president could profit from a $2 billion UAE-backed stable-coin deal. Republican leaders vowed to try again, but staff now say substantive AML language and stricter limits on officials’ crypto holdings will be the price of a renewed bipartisan push.
Early Riders Media
Digital Oil, Financial Freedom, and the Long Game for Bitcoin in Africa
In this episode of Final Settlement, the Early Riders team welcomes back Abubakar Nur Khalil—advisor to Early Riders and founder of Recursive Capital—for a deep dive into the shifting tides of Bitcoin regulation, capital formation in Africa, and the escalating ideological debates inside Bitcoin Core development.
We start in Nigeria, where the government just passed sweeping new digital asset legislation—classifying Bitcoin as a security. The move has been controversial, but as Abu explains, it's a “knife instead of a spoon”—imperfect but better than the regulatory void that came before it. For the first time, Bitcoin is formally acknowledged by the Nigerian state. The law bans Ponzi schemes, creates penalties for fraud, and offers a path forward for exchange licensing, but still names Bitcoin a security and is lumped in with altcoins, increasing compliance burdens and raising capital requirements. Still, this step has already begun unlocking venture capital interest in the region.
As Michael points out, “There’s always a tension between being right and being effective. And right now, capital needs a legal framework to move.” The team explores how this crude legal framework may open the door for real innovation—especially for Bitcoin-native entrepreneurs who can now begin positioning themselves ahead of a more developed regulatory architecture.
From there, the conversation zooms out to a broader geopolitical lens. Binance has been advising sovereign governments across Africa and Asia. The UAE is integrating Bitcoin into banking rails. Tether is pushing liquidity flows deep into frontier markets. And U.S. political tailwinds—from the Trump campaign’s crypto stance to treasury reports predicting $2T in stablecoin supply—are being noticed in capitals across the Global South.
Next, Abu shares a sobering but hopeful update on Bitcoin entrepreneurship in Nigeria. Regulatory clarity is expected to drive a wave of foreign capital by early 2026, but in the meantime, founders must navigate complex KYC/AML obligations and a lack of formal crypto licensing. The companies that survive this transition will be those already capitalized and ready to play the long game.
The team then digs into a fiery debate gripping the developer community: the OP_Return controversy. At the heart of it is a technical proposal to loosen limits on prunable data storage—raising philosophical questions about Bitcoin’s role: is it purely money, or also a protocol for data? Abu unpacks the distinction between consensus rules and standardness policies, the importance of anti-spam mechanisms, and the risk of core protocol changes without clear definitions. As Brian notes, “People can already put data on-chain. This is about how cleanly they can do it—and whether the trade-offs are worth it.”
Michael and Liam reflect on what’s at stake: Bitcoin works today as money, and changes—however well-intentioned—can carry second-order consequences. Developer incentives, censorship risks, and Bitcoin DeFi ambitions are colliding in ways that demand more principled discourse.
Finally, the team returns to Bitcoin and stablecoins. Abu outlines how Lightning has been outcompeted by Tether for practical reasons: stablecoins are simply better UX for dollar liquidity in emerging markets. But he emphasizes the importance of keeping Bitcoin and stables distinct in user mental models, product design, and infrastructure planning. As Michael summarizes, “Stablecoins are the gateway drug—Bitcoin is the destination.”
From policy to protocols, Nigeria to Nostr, and stablecoins to sovereignty—this episode offers a wide-ranging and urgent look at how Bitcoin’s next chapter will be shaped by developers, governments, and entrepreneurs outside the West.
