This editorial is from last week’s edition of the Week in Review newsletter. Subscribe to the weekly newsletter to get the editorial the second it’s finished.
Bitcoin dominated crypto headlines and mindshare last week by continually breaking all-time highs throughout the week. As of writing this, bitcoin has broken $99K, and stands on the cusp of $100,000. If I had to guess, it looks like $100K will be taken by the U.S. session on Friday.
There were, of course, many bullish bitcoin stories that came out this week, for example bitcoin ETF options began trading. James Seyffart of Bloomberg said, “Just flat out it’s been a pretty big success.” This spurred some to wonder if a gamma squeeze frenzy could cause bitcoin’s price to explode into the stratosphere.
Call me a cynic, but it feels like many of these news “catalysts” don’t affect the price all that much. People point to them post-hoc to explain price action. Said another way, bullish and bearish news is always coming out, but depending on market sentiment (which is largely, if not entirely, determined by price action) bullish or bearish stories become the focus of news outlets, pundits, and market participants.
Take the cursed asset ethereum (ETH). It experienced a rally on Thursday, but overall still continues to bleed against bitcoin. With the price languishing as it has for 18 months, I’m pretty sure that if it came out that Solana is becoming an ETH L2 (layer two), it would cause a flaccid pump before plummeting. Why? Because Solana’s strategy is actually genius. Don’t you know L2s are parasitic?
Jokes aside, could ethereum have finally bottomed? Eric Balchunas, Senior ETF Analyst for
Bloomberg, posted on X about ethereum ETF inflows which shows the bleeding might’ve finally stopped. On Thursday, two OG traders, Bitcoin Jack and the legendary Cobie, both posted bullish trading setups for ETH. Cobie wrote, “Idk if right now (timing is hard) but as BTC is > 100 or >150K or whatever, ETH starts to look pretty cheap.” Jack posted that this ETH setup might not last after November.
In politics, there have been a number of pro-crypto stories connected with the incoming Trump administration. This will reassure many that Trump will follow through with his pro-crypto promises. Trump’s admin is reportedly considering a “crypto czar” role to oversee crypto policy. Trump picked crypto advocate Howard Lutnick for Commerce Secretary nomination. Additionally, Trump’s media company is reportedly in talks to acquire crypto exchange Bakkt, and Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong recently held a private meeting with the president-elect. Trump did say we were going to get tired of winning.
There were many meme coin antics this week. Tiktok meme coins have debuted with the rise of $CHILLGUY. Unfortunately, the artist who created Chillguy seems to be not such a chill guy. He’s rejecting crypto donations and refusing to engage with the meme coins using his creation’s likeness. Meanwhile, a Gen Z creator live-streamed the creation and subsequent rug-pull of the Pump.fun coin ($QUANT), pocketing $30K in the process.
He repeated the stunt with a second token, $SORRY, netting another $20K. However, the incensed community rallied around $QUANT, pumping its market cap to $70M—an amount that would have made the creator’s coins worth over $2 million had he held them. The community also doxxed the creator and his entire family, who each were turned into Pump meme coins. Gambling in a casino just can’t compete with this kind of entertainment coupled with monetary payouts.
Meme coins continue to be strong, but it looks like NFTs might be showing signs of life. Cryptopunks, the most blue chip of NFTs, has started to heat up. 150 trades occurred in just five days and the floor price climbed back above $100,000, recovering from a recent low of $60,000. If ether begins to do well, I expect Ethereum-based NFTs to take off.
