Why bitcoin isn't rallying even with billions of dollars in ETF inflows
The stock market has made an extraordinary comeback from its lows earlier in the year despite lingering questions about the economy and rising geopolitical tensions, but bitcoin's gains have been more muted. The flagship cryptocurrency hasn't rallied in a big way since the beginning of the year. Since May 9, it's traded in a tight $10,000 range – with a brief blip above that ceiling to its all-time high of nearly $112,000, which was still just a step above its previous record. And this is despite billions of dollars in ETF inflows in that period. On Wednesday, bitcoin ETFs logged 12 consecutive sessions of inflows. The trend followed a second week in a row of inflows. Both milestones underscore the strength of institutional demand even amid market uncertainty. The funds have collectively seen about $3.5 billion in inflows this month, while the price of bitcoin itself has risen just 2%, according to Coin Metrics. One reason for that could be that despite interest in bitcoin remaining at elevated levels, early megawhales are holding on to their coins for longer, waiting to offload them in greater amounts to today's biggest bitcoin buyers, ETFs and corporate treasuries, in an "orderly" and "well managed" shift in dynamics, according to 10x Research's Markus Thielen. "There is this change of ownership happening," said Thielen, CEO of the digital assets investment research firm. "We are not seeing a lot of real demand right now because the demand has been almost perfectly offset by the selling from these larger wallets." Data from CryptoQuant shows that wallets holding between 100 and 1,000 bitcoins have been the biggest buyers this year. Julio Moreno, head of research at the firm, said bitcoin ETFs likely fall into that cohort. Meanwhile, whales (wallets holding between 1,000 and 10,000 coins) and megawhales (which CryptoQuant labels as humpbacks and whose wallets hold more than 10,000 coins) have been net sellers this year. Retail investors, wallets holding less than a bitcoin, have also been sellers. The two whale cohorts have been setting the bitcoin price for weeks. As long as buying from the 100-to-1,000-BTC holders outpaces the selling from the bigger whales, bitcoin's muted rally can continue, Thielen explained. If the opposite happens, momentum fades and the rally stalls, he said. Moreno highlighted that historically, whales have been regarded as having 1,000 to 10,000 bitcoin in a wallet. However, since the launch of bitcoin ETFs and the emergence of the bitcoin treasury companies, the number of so-called dolphins, as CryptoQuant labels the 100-1,000-BTC cohort, have grown because those institutions tend to spread their bitcoin holdings across many smaller wallets. For example, BlackRock and Strategy have about 550 and 490 unique wallet addresses, respectively, with an average of 1,290 coins per wallet for BlackRock and 927 for MicroStrategy, according to 10x Research. "In reality, these entities are in fact large holders, having purchased thousands of bitcoin," Moreno said. The biggest bitcoin holders are likely miners based in China. From 2013 to 2021, China accounted for as much as 75% of the global hashrate, or the measure of the computational power being used to secure the Bitcoin network and validate transactions. To date 19.9 million bitcoins have been mined. Chinese mining companies account for approximately 11 million to 15 million coins created in that period. They still retain control of at least 5 million coins, according to 10x Research. "In all the other previous peaks, these dormant wallets were waking up and sending bitcoin onto exchanges for liquidation," he said. "But this time, so far, it seems that these wallets are holding – holding tight and only releasing as many bitcoin as can be scooped up by ETFs and by Strategy." While Strategy, which rebranded this year from MicroStrategy, remains the biggest corporate buyer of bitcoin, its acquisition cadence has slowed from the more aggressive levels seen last year, due in part to its narrowing stock premium and increasing competition in corporate treasury adoption of bitcoin. "If megawhale selling accelerates further, a deeper correction is likely," Thielen said. "Conversely, if selling pressure eases while whale accumulation picks up, the next leg of the rally could begin." "At the moment, the imbalance creates a slight bearish bias, making a breakout unlikely without a clear shift in our tactical flow indicator. Until that signal improves, consolidation is expected to continue."
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CNBC
3 hours ago
- CNBC
The market is as hopeful as it's been in ages. The winners and losers might surprise you
When the tyranny of the "Magnificent Seven" ended, I always figured the money would go to the rest of tech. I also didn't think that there would be anything left of the Mag 7 to invest in. They would all be obliterated as part of a source-of-funds move. Club name Nvidia would be grounded by China fears, both DeepSeek and restrictions by President Donald Trump. It was too good to be true, when Nvidia was in the high $80s a share, that it could find its way to new highs. Microsoft , another portfolio member, would falter because Copilot would falter. How in heck could Microsoft's stock retain its leadership thanks to Azure growth picking up by just a few percentage point? The answer to this conundrum is something I have started to come to terms with that calls into question the entire world of stock picking: I am beginning to think the nature of buying the right stocks has shifted from some hedge-fund playbook to a retail-majority fascination that is disrupting everything coupled with a level of hopefulness about individual stocks not seen in ages. I think that much of it stems from a belief that Trump, like him or not, may turn out to be fabulous for the stock market because he is putting in regulators that are pro-business and against a fundamental belief that business itself of any size — including small business — is evil. I know this view cuts across a variety of lines, but it is based on the charts themselves, a comprehensive examination of more than a thousand charts to understand this incredibly complex market. So let's break it down by pattern and see if my view can hold up to scrutiny. First, the clear winner in this market, bar none, is the financials. That covers insurers. It includes regional banks. But it really involves the majors, including the likes of JPMorgan , Goldman Sachs , Morgan Stanley , Wells Fargo and Citigroup , as well as names like asset management giant BlackRock , which is newly anointed after struggling for some time. We own Goldman, Wells and BlackRock for the Club. I can't emphasize enough how important this move financials is. It encompasses a multitude of thoughts, a cornucopia of positives the likes of which we haven't seen in ages, and they revolve around what could be an extended trend involving multiple expansion from the current range of roughly 14 to 15 times earnings to something closer to the market's 22 multiple. How is that possible? A few reasons: We are beginning to believe that deep in the heart of the Biden administration was a core group of administrators in the agencies who were from the Bernie Sanders/Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wing of the party. That's the part of the party that many traditional Democrats feel has hijacked the apparatus and may have been responsible for some of the backlash that led to the disaffection of typical middle-of-the-road bankers who might have been enthusiastic Democratic supporters but went for Trump or didn't vote at all. Those agency administrators — including those in the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department, but also the Federal Communications Commission and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and all of the others that interfaced with businesses — simply had a dislike for Corporate America that mimicked that of former President Joe Biden. As someone who followed Biden's career and knew him fairly well at one point, I was shocked how anti-business he had become. The core group who ran the country in the last two years may have been as antithetical to the positives of business as any that our history has recorded, maybe even in the first years of Franklin D. Roosevelt administration, maybe worse. The insult to business found its leader in former FTC chief Lina Khan, a 36-year-old populist firebrand who was an anathema to business and tried to check its every move. She reminded me of a modern-day Mary Lease. But she was almost outdone by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau which, at its core, despised the banks it regulated and truly viewed them as the oil behind the kleptocratic machine that drove an ever-widening wedge between the rich and the poor. Without the incredibly fast dismantling of what amounted to a nihilist fifth column within the government, we are seeing nothing more than a wholesale revision of a group of stocks that has been shackled ever since the 2008 financial crisis when the multiples were far higher than they are now. With the anti-business wing of the Democrats now crushed, we are left with a nexus of banks that will be able to print money the following ways: Facilitating a merger wave that will be among the most powerful in history after it had been on hold because of Khan's strident policies. Mergers and acquisitions involves a small handful of people at these banks so their profit margins will be immense. A more forgiving "stress test" from the Federal Reserve with an easy curve that will allow much more money to be put to work lending. We just saw the beginnings of this Friday evening , and more reform could be on the way. An initial public offering market that will be intense, and I expect many private equity-owned companies that have been kept on those firms' balance sheets will be offloaded on the public. A wave of foreign buyers because of a weak dollar, a la the period between 1987 to 1989. A dramatic shift of disrupters who will IPO even as they pretended they did not want to. They can't help themselves. There's too much stock-based compensation for younger employees to stay private. A dramatic cost reduction accomplished by cutting the number of younger associates who specialized in meeting ever-increasing regulations and documentation who did nothing but repeat the same document writing over and over. Now that can be done by artificial intelligence. This new regime can last a couple of years and, on net, will produce equity shrinkage before the secondary offerings overwhelm the market. It is breathtaking in its power because it is producing stock-chart breakouts the likes of which I have never seen before. That includes credit card issuers like Club name Capital One and American Express , along with the money centers and investment banks. Second set of winners: the data centers and all of its accoutrements. This move is tectonic in nature because we have never seen an industrial revolution like this before. Some want to compare it to the internet bubble. I view it as a space race among a host of companies that must spend money to stay in the new game of generative AI, which can change the way we do everything from banking and self-driving to robots and the construction of buildings and ships. That's Meta Platforms , Amazon , Alphabet , Microsoft, Oracle and Tesla for those who are counting. We own Meta, Amazon and Microsoft for the Club. At the heart of this technological revolution is the physical data center itself. It's based around semiconductors, not software, and that's a huge change. If you look at the software companies, especially enterprise software, you see stalled stocks like ServiceNow , Workday , MongoDB , Salesforce , Accenture and Adobe . These are truly struggling stocks this year that now feel like they are all going against each other. There are some surprising names on that list. Contrast those charts with the performance of names like Club name Eaton , Carrier , Johnson Controls and Emerson Electric for the grid; or GE Vernova , Quanta Services and really anything involving natural gas or nuclear power; or CoreWeave and Nebius , as well as Vertiv , Cummins and Arm Holdings . These moves are insanely powerful. The money coming out of enterprise software is making a beeline to the much smaller semi cohort like Analog Devices , KLA Corp , Lam Research , Texas instruments , Advanced Micro Devices and Micron . The amount of money coming into the exchange-traded funds that agglomerate these segments is spectacular. Oh, and let me say it again for emphasis: Nvidia. There is a small and puzzling group of contract manufacturers — Flex , Celestica and Jabil — with stock moves that defy logic. I don't have a line on it yet, but it is a fascinating move. And then there are the companies that have figured out how to minimize their tariffs and are ready to roll come July 9, the day that Trump's 90-day pause is set to expire. Then there are the losers, and they are so hideous I wouldn't even deign to think of them as a possibility in a fund: drugs, foods, consumer packaged goods, retailers save the dollar stores, fast food (as opposed to fast casual), and oil and gas. These are plain out sources of funds and can't be trusted to hold no matter how big their yields might become. Take a look at Conagra and Campbell's if you disagree. What's it all mean? This is a market where the discourse is radically at odds with what we talk about all day. We are so stuck on Fed talk — should they cut? — that we are part of the hideous misdirection play that is going on in the professional discourse of the moment. These buyers and the stocks they buy don't care about any of what "we" talk about, and I have to redouble my efforts to try to blunt what I see as a radical mistake in coverage that is geared toward hedge funds and not the dominant chord of individual investors. Oh and remember, I am not even talking about the youthful traders who congregate around stocks like Coinbase , Robinhood and Michael Saylor's bitcoin-focused Strategy . While that cohort can't be ignored, they are more obvious. They are part of a confused, momentum-oriented new investor class that is led by those who will drive Palantir to $200 a share, an excellent speculative stock by the way. And it is going to $200. Now, I am schooled in the value of the Fed talk myself. But I am trying to pull the wires from my own brainwashing, which is never easy. I need to go back to the 1990s, when what mattered was stock picking — not the S & P 500 and earnings; not sales and companies that did something meaningful; not companies that catered to the enterprise software mob of code-writers who might be obviated by AI; or those who do nothing but trade the S & P and a bunch of stupid ETFs. Will it be difficult to upend the Fed-geared reportage that every single outlet finds to be the holy grail of business journalism? No. Because those who follow it and believe in it don't know jack about individual stocks anyway. Learning about them is a time-consuming anathema. Plus, they don't know their game is atavistic anyway. They don't see themselves as an obstacle to new world performance. Business journalism has gotten away from learning new stories — too difficult and time consuming and not the province of young researchers anyway. They console themselves that they follow Magnificent Seven drizzle and can speak about Tesla with the best of them. In order to help the waning tide of viewers to stay with us, the new manifesto is to learn the "great unwashed" of stock stories that are under $100 billion in market cap that are truly terrific. There are investors who want to own Nvidia or the next Nvidia, and by golly, we better help find them, or we might as well cut the cord, too. (See here for a full list of the stocks in Jim Cramer's Charitable Trust.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust's portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED.
Forbes
4 hours ago
- Forbes
Rails vs Benchmark: Rethinking Stablecoins In a BTC-Denominated World
Photo by Ozan KOSE / AFP) (Photo by OZAN KOSE/AFP via Getty Images While stablecoins have emerged as crypto's dominant payment mechanism, a subtler shift may be underway: the emergence of Bitcoin not just as a store of value, but as a reference benchmark, a unit of account for global assets and financial flows. The idea may sound speculative, but some of the world's most prominent institutions are already signaling in this direction. Just this March, BlackRock's tokenized fund BUIDL added Bitcoin to its balance sheet, allocating to Sablier's Bitcoin streaming vault via an on-chain money market. Hours later, Franklin Templeton's CEO publicly endorsed BTC as a 'monetary anchor', stating: 'It's not just a hedge. It's part of a long-term capital structure.' Meanwhile, dollar-backed stablecoins have become the de facto infrastructure layer for digital payments with over 140 million daily transactions and settlement volumes rivaling major card networks. Yet the reliance on USD pegs comes with regulatory frictions and geopolitical exposure. What if the future of trade isn't denominated in fiat, but in Bitcoin while still settled in stablecoins? BTC as Benchmark, Not Just Collateral Historically, Bitcoin has occupied the 'digital gold' narrative; a scarce store of value held by long-term investors and protocol treasuries. But that framing may be expanding. 'More and more institutions are pricing assets in Bitcoin terms, not just holding it as treasury collateral,' says Luke Xie, co-founder of SatLayer. 'If you're a mining firm or a sovereign wealth desk in a high-inflation country, benchmarking in BTC can help de-risk exposure to dollar volatility. You still use stablecoins to settle but the unit of value is BTC.' This shift is playing out at multiple levels: mining equipment priced in BTC, tokenized assets benchmarking against Bitcoin baskets, and emerging DeFi derivatives denominated in sats rather than cents. Earlier this year MicroStrategy began referencing its own valuation in BTC terms, highlighting the symbolic and functional importance of Bitcoin as a monetary measuring stick. Are BTC-Denominated Stablecoins Next? If Bitcoin becomes the reference unit, what happens to stablecoins? 'People assume all stablecoins must be pegged to fiat but that's just the first chapter,' argues Alex Hung, product lead at BTCC. 'We're now seeing interest in stable-value instruments that are BTC-denominated: synthetic sat-backed units, baskets that adjust for volatility, or vaults that rebalance into BTC indexes. These are no longer theoretical. They're being built.' Indeed, on-chain experiments like Ethena's USDe (backed by ETH and delta-hedged positions) or Inverse Finance's DOLA are already pointing to hybrid stabilization models. Builders are now exploring whether similar constructions can track BTC reference prices, while maintaining predictable purchasing power for everyday transactions, particularly in emerging markets where dollar access remains constrained. Borja Martel Seward, co-founder and CEO of Roxom, sees this trend as part of a broader economic pattern already unfolding globally: 'What we see at Roxom is that the world could become one big Argentina. A bi-monetary world. People might spend and get paid in dollars or local currencies but they'll think in Bitcoin. Just like in Argentina, where citizens transact in pesos but save and measure wealth in USD, the global future could be spend-in-fiat, save-and-benchmark-in-BTC.' The appeal? A non-sovereign benchmark with programmable logic, coupled with stable settlement instruments that can function across jurisdictions without FX friction. Neutral Rails, Global Context In a fragmented monetary world, the allure of a politically neutral reserve benchmark (and programmable settlement rails) is growing stronger. The IMF recently projected that cross-border payment corridors could save $100 billion annually with programmable settlement layers. But implementation remains constrained by currency frictions and compliance complexity. Bitcoin may not replace the dollar in daily use but it could offer a consistent value layer across systems, enabling settlement in whichever stablecoin makes sense locally. It's a modular approach: Bitcoin sets the standard, stablecoins do the plumbing. From Theory to Trade This dual-stack thesis - BTC as unit of account, stablecoins as medium of exchange - is still nascent. But momentum is building. The Lightning ecosystem is exploring 'synthetic stablecoins' denominated in sats. Firms like Galoy and Fedi are developing Bitcoin-native community banking models that enable USD or fiat-pegged balances underpinned by BTC reserves. In parallel, sovereign miners, export firms, and even DeFi protocols are beginning to report in BTC, not dollars. This isn't a return to the gold standard, it's the emergence of a programmable, post-sovereign ledger standard. As institutions lean into tokenized real-world assets and programmable finance, the logic of separating benchmark from settlement may prove not just efficient, but inevitable. Will Regulators Allow This? Global regulators thus far have mandated that stablecoins maintain a 1:1 backing with fiat currency, emphasizing stability and investor protection, while expressing reluctance to allow reserves in alternative assets like cryptocurrencies or commodities due to their volatility. With that said, historically the U.S. dollar was backed by gold, a tangible asset that provided intrinsic value, until the abandonment of the gold standard in 1971. As Bitcoin gains traction as a decentralized store of value, often likened to "digital gold," could regulators eventually allow it to evolve into a reserve asset for stablecoins? While this shift is unlikely in the near term, figure adoption trends could prompt a reevaluation.
Los Angeles Times
7 hours ago
- Los Angeles Times
Plan to sell off public land in the West nixed from ‘big, beautiful bill' amid GOP backlash
A controversial plan to sell hundreds of thousands of acres of public land across Western states — including California — was axed from the Republican tax and spending bill amid bipartisan backlash, prompting celebration from conservationists. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), who spearheaded the proposal, announced he was pulling the provision on Saturday night on the social media platform X. Lee had said the land sale was intended to ease the financial burden of housing, pointing to a lack of affordability afflicting families in many communities. 'Because of the strict constraints of the budget reconciliation process, I was unable to secure clear, enforceable safeguards to guarantee that these lands would be sold only to American families — not to China, not to BlackRock and not to any foreign interests,' he wrote in the post. For that reason, he said, he was withdrawing the measure from the 'One Big Beautiful Bill' that Trump has said he wants passed by July 4. Lee's failed measure would have mandated the sale of between roughly 600,000 and 1.2 million acres of Bureau of Land Management land in 11 Western states, including California. The areas available for auction were supposed to be located within a five-mile radius of population centers. The effort represented a scaled-back version of a plan that was nixed from the reconciliation bill on Monday for violating Senate rules. The initial plan would have allowed for the sale of up to 3.3 million acres of land managed by BLM and the U.S. Forest Service. Lee's decision to scrap the proposal arrived after at least four Republican senators from Western states vowed to vote for an amendment to strike the proposal from the bill. At lease five House Republicans also voiced their opposition to the plan, including Reps. David Valadao of California and Ryan Zinke of Montana, who served as the Interior secretary during Trump's first term. The death of the provision was celebrated by conservationists as well as recreation advocates, including hunters and anglers, even as they steeled themselves for an ongoing fight over federal lands. The Trump administration has taken steps to open public lands for energy and resource extraction, including recently announcing it would rescind a rule that protects 58.5 million acres of national forestland from road construction and timber harvesting. Some critics saw the now-scrapped proposed land sale as means to offset tax cuts in the reconciliation bill. 'This is a victory for everyone who hikes, hunts, explores and cherishes these places, but it's not the end of the threats to our public lands,' said Athan Manuel, director of Sierra Club's Lands Protection Program, in a statement. 'Donald Trump and his allies in Congress have made it clear they will use every tool at their disposal to give away our public lands to billionaires and corporate polluters.' Chris Wood, president and chief executive of Trout Unlimited — a nonprofit dedicated to conserving rivers and streams to support trout and salmon — described protecting public lands as 'the most nonpartisan issue in the country.' 'This is certainly not the first attempt to privatize or transfer our public lands, and it won't be the last,' Wood said in a statement. 'We must stay vigilant and defend the places we love to fish, hike, hunt and explore.' Lee, in the Saturday X post, suggested the issue remained in play. He said he believed the federal government owns too much land — and that it is mismanaging it. Locked-away land in his state of Utah, he claimed, drives up taxes and limits the ability to build homes. 'President Trump promised to put underutilized federal land to work for American families, and I look forward to helping him achieve that in a way that respects the legacy of our public lands and reflects the values of the people who use them most.'
