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Twenty One Validates Bitcoin Strategy |
Helene Braun:
Michael Saylor's bitcoin buying strategy had both believers and skeptics. But a new rival just emerged, already holding nearly $4 billion BTC on its balance sheet—and it's a bullish sign, according to at least one Wall Street analyst.
When SoftBank, Tether, and Cantor Fitzgerald unveiled plans to launch a new bitcoin investment company called Twenty One, structured explicitly around holding bitcoin as its primary business, many called it a significant rival to Saylor's Strategy (MSTR). Its day-one bitcoin balance sheet holding would rank it as the third-largest publicly held bitcoin treasury on day one. In traditional finance, one could argue that such a big competition could hamper a dominant company's market share and capital raise opportunities, especially since Twenty One is already potentially launching with over 42,000 BTC at launch (worth nearly $4 billion at spot price). However, TD Cowen analysts Lance Vitanza and Jonnathan Navarrete see it as the exact opposite: "The proposed launch of Twenty One reflects the most-meaningful validation of Strategy's bitcoin treasury operations to date," leaving the analysts "incrementally bullish" on the stock.
The analysts added that the new rival could even convert MSTR's biggest skeptics, institutional investors, into believers in Saylor's bitcoin buying strategy. The move would also increase demand for bitcoin from a high-profile entrant, which could outweigh any pressure on Strategy’s cost of capital and attract more capital into buying bitcoin.
“Certainly this is what Michael Saylor professes to believe,” the analysts wrote, pointing to the Strategy founder’s long-standing push for more companies to adopt similar strategies.
TD Cowen maintained its $550 price target for MSTR and projects the company could hold 757,000 BTC by the end of fiscal year 2027 — about 3.6% of bitcoin’s total supply. The analysts said that if bitcoin hits an average price of $170,000 by then, TD Cowen estimates that stash could be worth $129 billion. The bullish impact of this rivalry is already prominent in the market. The shares of Cantor Equity Partners (CEP), Twenty One's SPAC vehicle, have already climbed as much as 130% since the announcement, while MSTR stocks held strong. |
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Sen. McCormick Owns Most BTC in Congress |
Jesse Hamilton: U.S. Senator Dave McCormick, the former chief executive of massive hedge fund Bridgewater Associates, is putting his own cash into bitcoin (BTC) as the committee he's on is at the tip of the spear for a legislative effort to regulate the digital assets industry. McCormick has made repeated recent investments in the Bitwise Bitcoin ETF worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to disclosures this week. Because of the ranges used in such lawmaker disclosures, the latest amounts invested last month can only be said to be between $310,000 and $700,000. The new investment follows McCormick's disclosure of as much as $450,000 in the Bitwise ETF in February, potentially bringing his total investment closer to a million. His investments represent the bulk of bitcoin investing in Congress this year. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican, invested a much smaller amount, favoring BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT). The Republican senator from Pennsylvania, who has held a series of high-profile government posts throughout his career, is new to the Senate and was put on the Senate Banking's Committee's subcommittee that deals with digital assets. That's the group of lawmakers likely closest to the coming action on crypto legislation that's expected to move this year. As a Senate candidate last year, the former hedge fund exec argued America needed to lead on crypto. He said during the subcommittee's first digital assets hearing in February, "This Congress must work alongside President Trump to pass bipartisan digital asset legislation that will guide the future of innovation and secure a robust economic future for the U.S." While his bitcoin stake is outpacing other lawmakers, he's been putting the bulk of his investments in municipal securities in recent months, the disclosures show. |
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ZORA Loses Sparkle As VC Tokens Fade |
Shaurya Malwa: Zora's much-hyped ZORA token launch was meant to be a celebration — a "fun" moment for its community, and a supposed triumph for the tokenization of content creators everywhere, with strong demand expected for the Coinbase Ventures-backed project. Instead, it has turned into a familiar post-airdrop slog so far: A quick pop in price, followed by a slow bleed. The token, issued late Wednesday, is down more than 50% from a price spike following launch, continuing a grim pattern that has become all too common for tokens pushed by venture-backed projects.
“Sold my $ZORA, thanks for playin,” wrote one trader, Faycytw, on X, summarizing the sentiment. They humorously posted images of deleting the Zora network and blocking its X profile - a jibe at users exiting most platforms after receiving token rewards. Zora’s pitch is that it’s a factory for tokenizing anything — tweets, memes, videos. Its sudden virality this week led to expectations of a game-changing token. Instead, ZORA came with no utility, no governance, and no roadmap beyond the phrase “a token for fun.”
What it did have was on-chain liquidity (over $1.7 million) and listings on prominent exchanges, such as Binance Alpha, on the first day.
Allocations were calculated based on a user’s activity on Zora, including but not limited to coining, minting, trading and referring. Last week, market watchers also perceived the rampant promotions and backing by senior Base network team members as contentious.
FULL STORY |
Coinbase Launches Free PayPal Conversion |
Kris Sandor:
Crypto exchange Coinbase (COIN) said it will introduce free conversions between PayPal’s dollar-pegged stablecoin, PYUSD, and the U.S. currency in a move aimed at accelerating the shift toward on-chain payments. The move, open to both retail and institutional customers, is part of a partnership aimed at promoting PYUSD as a payment currency. Coinbase also plans to use its platform to offer PYUSD to PayPal’s extensive network of merchant partners, which could ease the use of stablecoins in everyday transactions. Stablecoins — digital tokens pegged to traditional currencies, predominantly the dollar — are one of the fastest-growing sectors in crypto. They are marketed as a faster and cheaper alternative to legacy payment systems, and are increasingly popular for payments across borders. Standard Chartered projected the sector to grow to $2 trillion by 2028 from the current $220 billion. With regulation for stablecoins advancing in the U.S., the competition is heating up among issuers while banks and traditional payment firms are also eyeing the market. Binance, the largest crypto exchange, and Circle, issuer of the second largest dollar-backed stablecoin, have already linked up to use Circle's USDC as a trading pair and payment method. Circle introduced a remittances network this week. Market leader Tether, issuer of the $140 billion USDT, is mulling issuing a stablecoin designed for U.S. users. Meanwhile, PayPal, whose stablecoin debuted in 2023 and has grown to $860 million, recently introduced a 3.7% annual yield on PYUSD for U.S. token holders to attract more users. |
Opinion: Stablecoin Bill Must Protect Privacy |
By Cato Institute’s Jennifer J. Schulp: Both the U.S. Senate and House are considering bills creating a regulatory framework for stablecoins, and all of the usual crypto-skeptic refrains have been sung, including the hymn that crypto is for crime. For instance, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) warned that the Senate’s GENIUS Act “will supercharge the financing of terrorism.” During debate on the House’s STABLE Act, Representative Brad Sherman (D-CA) worried about the use of “unhosted wallets to evade” anti-money laundering provisions. Not surprisingly, both the GENIUS and STABLE Acts include significant sections on illicit finance, including subjecting stablecoin issuers to the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA). But lawmakers must ensure that the bills’ anti-money laundering measures don’t open the door to unfettered financial surveillance of stablecoin users. Stablecoins are crypto tokens that are pegged to the value of another asset, like the U.S. dollar. The general idea is that the stable value of these tokens will promote their use as a digital medium of exchange. Stablecoins can be thought of both as an improvement to existing payment rails and as a way to bring the U.S. dollar “on-chain.” In other words, stablecoins are a 21st-century upgrade to cash. The Senate and the House have both advanced bills that would create a regulatory regime for “permitted stablecoin issuers” aimed, in part, at ensuring that stablecoins are, in fact, stable. But these days, conversations about the dollar, financial services, and crypto seem to go hand-in-hand with conversations about preventing illicit finance. The BSA requires financial institutions to help federal agencies detect and prevent money laundering and other crimes by, among other things, keeping records of transactions and filing reports with the government. Both the GENIUS Act and the STABLE Act tackle illicit finance concerns by stating clearly that a permitted stablecoin issuer “shall be treated as a financial institution for the purposes of the Bank Secrecy Act.” Designating a permitted stablecoin issuer as a financial institution is comparatively non-controversial. Putting aside the question of whether the BSA is a good (or constitutional) way to manage illicit finance risks, permitted stablecoin issuers look a lot like other entities, like banks and trust companies, that are already BSA financial institutions. But it’s not quite so simple. The BSA’s surveillance framework requires financial institutions to “know their customers” and to monitor transactions taking place through the institution. However, such surveillance does not extend to transactions that take place between individuals without the involvement of an institution. For example, the BSA doesn’t apply when cash changes hands between two people, allowing individuals to transact privately. While it’s infeasible to track cash transactions in the manner prescribed by the BSA, stablecoins can be tracked across a blockchain as they move between holders, even when the transfers happen between wallets that are unhosted by intermediaries. This characteristic is tempting to those who may want to extend BSA surveillance beyond its already expansive (and constitutionally infirm) boundaries. Fundamentally, digital asset transactions that are genuinely peer-to-peer should not be subject to greater government surveillance than peer-to-peer transactions in cash. Applying anti-money laundering provisions to unhosted wallets — which more closely resemble physical wallets holding cash than bank accounts — would be a massive expansion of financial surveillance and an unwelcome intrusion into the abilities of Americans to order their financial lives outside the eyes of the government. FULL STORY. |
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A Week Is a Long Time in Crypto |
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