The Data Kept Improving. Bitcoin’s Buyers Haven’t Shown Up Yet…
Thursday’s closer found a real gap. Softer inflation, rate odds favoring a hold, and fatigue in the Middle East all pointed the same direction, and gold, silver, and stocks caught the bid that logic implies. Bitcoin didn’t, because its own largest holder was selling and its fund buyers followed. That gap held all weekend instead of closing. Two events this week can test it: minutes from the Fed’s last meeting Wednesday, and the first read on August activity Friday.
Two quiet days changed nothing, and one loop is still open.
Five of the seven assets on this board are sitting near their highs or climbing. Bitcoin and Ethereum are the two that aren’t, and Ethereum is mostly just following Bitcoin. Disconnects like this don’t clear themselves. Something has to correct them, and nothing did over a quiet weekend.
One loop is still open from Thursday: whether Bitcoin’s largest known holder kept selling. Nothing new has been disclosed yet. Its last two sales were both reported on a Monday covering the prior week, so if a third is coming, tomorrow is when it shows up.
The question isn’t whether the backdrop is good. It’s whether crypto ever catches up to it.
The macro case is not in doubt. It has been building for weeks and the rest of the board has priced it. What is in doubt is whether crypto rejoins it, or whether the disconnect becomes its own story, running independent of everything else. That distinction matters because the two possibilities call for different things: one is a delay worth waiting out, the other means the macro read stops being useful for crypto specifically until the selling clears.
Both engines ran the same direction. Two events this week decide if they keep going.
Rate odds climbed further toward a hold rather than sitting still. Part of why data moves those odds this cleanly is that the Fed’s chair has spent his tenure saying less, not more, cutting back the forward guidance past chairs leaned on. That leaves more room for a single data point to move the odds by itself.
Iran moved unevenly. It reportedly agreed with Oman on shipping routes through the Strait this weekend, a concrete step, while attacks on ships there picked up rather than easing. Progress on paper, danger on the water, the same split pattern from the last two issues.
Both get tested for real this week, on Wednesday and Friday. The calendar below has the detail.
The S&P 500 joins the board, tracked through its own fund the same way we track the Nasdaq 100.
Two real events, both landing in the back half of the week.
A new fight over stablecoin rewards is weakening an old compromise.
Banks and crypto firms are fighting again, this time over whether stablecoins, digital dollars backed one-to-one by real cash reserves, should be allowed to pay users a yield for holding them. Banks want tighter rules against workarounds, worried a higher-yielding digital dollar pulls deposits out of the traditional banking system. Crypto advocates say the issue was already settled. The fight is weakening an earlier compromise right as the bill’s odds drift lower.
Worth pointing out while that plays out in Washington: our readers don’t need to wait on it. The self-directed earn from Lesson 3 collects a real yield today, without any stablecoin issuer needing permission from anyone.
Two ways to get paid while you wait, and one way to stay in without picking a side.
You own it outright, so a flat week costs you nothing but time. The question is whether that time earns anything. A covered call, selling someone else the right to buy your Bitcoin at a set price later, pays you premium for a stretch like this one where the price is going sideways. The live Lesson 5 position is a working example.
Fed minutes Wednesday are exactly the kind of scheduled event that moves rate odds fast in either direction, especially with a chair who is not tipping his hand beforehand. If you want to stay in the market without betting on which way that lands, a spread is the way to do it. You are long one thing and short another, so the direction of the whole market matters far less than the relationship between the two legs. Lesson 7 covers the mechanics.
Being flat means you get Wednesday and Friday before committing anything, which is the advantage nobody carrying risk has. But flat does not have to mean idle. The self-directed earn from Lesson 3 takes no directional view at all and is paying 8.61% annualized on a 7-day lookback funding average, so you can collect while you wait for the two events to tell you something.
By Thursday evening we will know whether this week’s two events started closing the gap between crypto and everything else, or whether the disconnect just kept extending.
You do not need a lending platform to earn a yield on Bitcoin. Buy Bitcoin outright, then sell an equal amount of the perpetual futures contract against it. The two positions cancel out, so you carry no directional risk if the price moves, and you collect the funding rate as your yield instead. That rate has averaged 8.61% annualized over the past seven days, a live number, and any reader can build it with exactly the mechanism Lesson 3 teaches.
Read the Lesson →Last Thursday’s roll, buying back the August $70,000 call and selling the September $70,000 call, is holding. That September call has decayed further since, meaning the position could be closed for less than it was sold for days ago. Combined with premium already banked and Bitcoin’s gain since entry, it keeps compounding through a stretch where Bitcoin itself has been flat to slightly down.
Read the Lesson →Bitcoin against the Nasdaq 100 sits below its entry level, which is the whole of this week’s question priced into one ratio: the catch-up has not happened yet, and that is exactly what makes it a cheap way to own the thesis if Wednesday or Friday deliver. The other spread got a real boost: short Tesla and long Intel, on the idea that Intel gets paid by the AI buildout while Tesla spends on it. Intel completed a $23 billion equity raise and the stock jumped nearly 8%, a company cashing in on its position rather than talking about one. That spread has moved in the earner’s favor since entry, from a ratio of 3.87 down to 3.29.
Read the Lesson →This content is produced by Harmonic for educational purposes. It is strategy education, not investment advice.