Bitcoin (BTC) fell to $74,190 on Saturday, its lowest level in more than a month, despite pro-crypto Kevin Warsh being sworn in as Federal Reserve chairman a day earlier.
BTC/USD daily chart. Source: TradingView
Key takeaways:
Higher odds of a rate hike in 2026 are pressuring the Bitcoin market.
Bitcoin has historically struggled during years marked by Federal Reserve leadership changes.
Why is Bitcoin down despite a pro-crypto Fed chair?
Bitcoin’s sell-off came as the 2-year US Treasury yield climbed to 4.14%, its highest level since February 2025.
US 2-year bond yield daily chart. Source: TradingView
The 2-year yield is closely tied to where traders expect the federal funds rate to move in the near term. Its move above the Fed’s current 3.50%–3.75% target range suggests markets are no longer betting on quick easing under Warsh.
CME data shows traders now expect the Fed to keep rates unchanged for most of 2026, with futures pricing pointing to a possible 25 basis point hike in December.
Target rate probabilities for the December Fed meeting. Source: CME
Over the past three decades, the Fed has typically raised rates when the 2-year Treasury yield moved above the federal funds rate, as the gap suggested markets were pricing in tighter policy ahead, according to data provided by BCA Research.
US 2-year Treasury yield vs. US Fed fund target rate. Source: BCA Research
Conversely, when the 2-year yield fell below the Fed funds rate, it often signaled expectations for future rate cuts.
Related: Bitcoin ETFs snap 5-day inflow streak as BTC dips under $80K
Such a shift weakens the bullish case for BTC, which typically benefits from falling yields, lower real rates and easier liquidity conditions.
Warsh is “a known inflation hawk”
In the past, Warsh has spoken favorably about Bitcoin, criticized central bank digital currency, and backed a larger role for private-sector financial innovation. For crypto traders, that checks several bullish boxes.
But from a monetary-policy perspective, Warsh may still challenge the bullish Bitcoin narrative, according to analyst Crypto Patel.
In a Saturday post, Patel noted that Warsh is “a known inflation hawk,” not a dove, adding that a difficult macro backdrop, including Iran war-driven inflation risks and labor-market pressure, may keep him from slashing rates.
“Crypto-friendly on regulation is NOT the same as dovish on rates,” he said.
Bitcoin underperforms in years of Fed leadership changes
Another warning comes from Bitcoin’s historical reaction to Fed leadership changes.
In a Saturday post, analyst Lucky noted that BTC has struggled during previous chair transitions: it fell 84% after Janet Yellen took over in January 2014, 73% after Jerome Powell started in February 2018, and 60% after Powell began his second term in May 2022.
Source: X
Warsh’s takeover has so far coincided with a sharp BTC decline, suggesting traders may again be de-risking as they wait for policy clarity from the new Fed chief.
Bitcoin’s digital nature is the source of most of its advantages. Since it is programmable, it unlocks self-custody practices that can make theft and confiscation very difficult. Since it is digital, it can move at the speed of light, allowing movement of value and settlement across the globe in minutes.
Nevertheless, Bitcoin has at times been criticized for being hard to grasp, literally. Bitcoin, in its natural state, can not be touched, can not be physically held; it can only be imagined and understood. To many people, that’s a significant barrier and one that has inspired quite a few attempts to bring the coin into meat space, but it is not easy.
Entrepreneurs and artists alike, for well over a decade, have taken on the challenge of making Bitcoin physical in a way that retains its most valuable cash-like properties, and while nobody has entirely solved the problem, significant progress has been made, leaving a wonderful trail of artifacts along the way.
Casascius Coins
(Image by Stacks Bowers Galleries)
Minted as early as September 6th, 2011, at a bitcoin price of barely $8 dollars, Casascius coins are without a doubt the most iconic physical Bitcoin artifacts in history, with many copycats since. Named after Mike Caldwell’s Bitcointalk forum nym, which appears to be an idiom for “call a spade a spade”, the Casascius coins developed many of the practices that other attempts at physical Bitcoin would innovate on over the years.
One problem with making Bitcoin physical is the handling of private key material. Since Bitcoin is digitally native, it can only live in a cryptographic private-public key pair, a secret that is used to generate a public key, with Bitcoin-compatible cryptography. In the case of the Casascius coin, Caldwell generated the private keys in an airgapped machine and printed them, gluing them to the iconic precious metal coins and then presumably destroyed the copy that could have been kept on his computer. He described the security precautions taken on his website for potential buyers to review.
The printed private key was then covered by specialized tamper-proof stickers, which, if removed, leave an obvious mark in a “honeycomb pattern”. Buyers of the coins could thus tell if the private keys in a Casascius coin had been exposed before purchase from a third-party vendor.
This key management issue is the biggest hazard in the creation of physical bitcoin, and one which, in the case of Caldwell, was dealt with by trusting him not to cheat. He was also very transparent and careful by the standards of the time. To this day, his reputation is strong if not legendary, so that trust was well placed by buyers who profited greatly from the collector’s value of the items, which to this day mark a premium on top of the bitcoin and precious metal values of the piece.
Casascius coins were discontinued in November 2013 after the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), a branch of the Treasury Department, informed developer Mike Caldwell that minting physical bitcoins qualified him as a money transmitter business with heavy compliance requirements. The trust involved in generating the private keys may have been a centralizing element that put a target on his back.
RavenBit Coins
A year after Casascius coins shut down, RavenBit launched, with an attempt at decentralizing the trusted minting problem of physical bitcoins. The RavenBit coins, very similar in form factor to Casascius, did not come with pre-generated keys; instead, they came with the tamper-proof sticker unpealed, such that the user could generate their own keypair, paste it to the coin and slap the tamper-proof sticker on top.
This, in a sense, decentralized the mint and, in theory, that is a breakthrough, but in practice, it just created a thousand trusted mints, without brands, without reputations, using office printers that probably had malware on them. If you got a RavenBit coin from someone, how could you know that the person who bought it and generated the private key in there didn’t keep a copy or take proper precautions?
To date, the RavenBit project has been abandoned, but it probably taught the industry an interesting lesson. To make Bitcoin physical, we need to go higher tech.
Opendimes
To route around the trusted mint problem — both at the center and at the edges – of physical bitcoins, Coinkite, the hardware wallet maker, designed the Opendime, a tiny computer purpose-built to be a Bitcoin bearer asset. Looking back on what motivated him, NVK, co-founder of CoinKite, told Bitcoin Magazine that, “Bitcoin is digital money. All we can do is an analog backup. Maybe someone cracks doing secp256k1 by hand in the future.” Meaning that currently, you always need some kind of computer to generate valid Bitcoin keys; that computer is the mint.
Opendimes were designed around this fundamental fact. They have a computer chip that can generate a private-public key pair and store the private key securely, behind a silicon tamper-proof mechanism.
Users have to feed it a file or some kind of input for entropy during setup, which the chip uses in part to generate the Bitcoin wallet, this grants further assurance that the random generation logic, which is open source, has an even better entropy input in the generation of those bitcoin keys.
The public key of the generated Opendime wallet can always be seen by connecting the device to a computer, as you would a normal USB stick; its balance is visible on a block explorer.
Users can then send bitcoin to the opendime, but if they want to withdraw BTC from it? They have to physically puncture the device, which unlocks a circuit to access the private key, but renders the device visibly unsealed.
Opendimes represent a major breakthrough in bearer asset technology and go for about $20 dollars each today, rising in price slightly with inflation from a low of about $13 each in 2016. As a result, they have also achieved iconic status, with artists embedding them in premium Bitcoin art and making them into Bitcoin meme culture.
While $13 to $20 dollars is very cheap for hardware wallets, and the trusted mint issue is effectively solved by letting users fill the device with their own coins, the price and form factor are still far away from cash. On a price basis alone, $20 dollars is a big ask. If Casascius charged about 20% markup for his coins, then Opendimes should hold at least $100 worth of Bitcoin inside to be worth the hardware, and for use as a currency, which prices out most every day purchases.
Finally, the badass cypherpunk USB stick form factor, while epic, does not visibly tell the user much about its contents, making each device effectively non-fungible with other Opendimes and thus not cash-like. A cheaper and probably more fungible alternative is needed.
The Satodime
Taking the Opendime concept to a more friendly form factor, the Belgian hardware wallet manufacturer Satochip created an open source credit card-like Bitcoin wallet, which has very similar qualities to the Opendime. It can generate Bitcoin private-public key pairs, and depending on the version, can even sign transactions. Users can interact with it via phone apps that talk to the card via NFC. Other form factors are available as well, like rings and coins that contain the same chip and capabilities.
The cost for Satochip hardware can be as low as 13 Euros, depending on the bulk purchases, which is cheaper than an Opendime, which gets us closer to everyday cash purchases, but not by that much. The Satochip cards are intended to be high-security hardware wallet devices anyway, not daily-use cash containers. And these powerful and small computer chips are not cheap, hence the price floor above $10 that seems so hard to break through, for now.
Too Expensive? The Fundamental Limits
So, how cheap does physical Bitcoin hardware need to be to make business sense, if it can make sense at all?
According to the Federal Reserve, it costs anywhere from 4.1 cents to 11.3 cents to produce U.S. dollars. The smaller the value, the more expensive it is, with $1 bills incurring a 4.1% loss in production costs.
That means that to justify a 20,000 Satoshis bill — roughly $16 dollars at today’s prices — the hardware needs to cost well under a dollar. Most computer chips powerful enough to do Bitcoin cryptography are above that price target, but there is one chip that demonstrates what is possible, the NXP’s NTAG X DNA chip.
Available in sticker antenna form factor, a couple of millimeters thin, this NXP chip can handle a variety of cryptographic primitives, such as ECDSA and ECC. It can create secrets, sign them and even encrypt a message. However, while powerful, it does not include the Bitcoin cryptography curve, secp256k1, which means it can’t do Bitcoin things natively.
Nevertheless, this 2025 generation NTAG can be purchased for roughly $3, if you can find any supply, demonstrating how low the price can go on a chip capable of performing cryptographic functions.
Sadly, the cash-like form factor most of the world is used to, with flexible bills that people can fold into their pocket, can be very damaging to computer chips, a fact that NVK says he learned from experience, as they experimented with Bitcoin bearer assets hardware.
The closest anyone may have come to the cash-like format is the OfflineCash company, with a beautiful, collection-worthy set of Bitcoin-denominated bills that have an NTAG-style NFC chip, which stores a user-generated key, while the company generates a second key on their servers, to create a 2 of 2 multisignature wallet. The Server key is on a time lock, degrading the multisig address to a 1 of 1 wallet, from which the user can eventually withdraw the bitcoin. This tries to get around the trusted mint issue, but ends up just replicating the many mints problem. Though their cash-like form factor is undeniably gorgeous.
The costs of producing a Bitcoin native NTAG can easily hit a few million dollars, and implementing Bitcoin’s cryptography in this way can be fraught with errors if manufacturers are not experts on the topic. It would also need to be fully open source to guarantee that there are no backdoors.
There’s one more fundamental problem with physical Bitcoin bearer assets. Even if you could get a cheap enough chip in a cash-like format, you would always need online access to verify its authenticity —that the cash is loaded with real bitcoin— since the asset is unavoidably digital. The problem could be solved by simply trusting an issuing mint of Bitcoin-denominated cash instruments, and believing in the face value of a redeemable bill, but that would miss the ideal of self-custodied, trusted cash. Though it probably would work in a friendly jurisdiction.
So, while it would be cool to have physical Bitcoin bills like those created by OfflineCash Company with a bearer asset secure chip and not trusted mint risk, we are still a ways away. And it might actually be overkill today, since no one would have bitcoin-denominated change anyway, so you’d end up getting fiat cash back, but maybe one day, post-hyperbitcoinization. NVK does believe there’s a superior solution to the cash format, at least for the foreseeable future, which is why Coinkite created the Tapsigner.
The Tapsigner
Built on the Coinkite Bitcoin NFC chip, a technology similar to the X DNA NTAG by NXP, though perhaps more powerful and thus more expensive, the Tapsigner comes in the familiar debit card form factor, with a secure element chip, NFC tap to pay and cool designs to choose from. Inside the chip, though, is a fully capable Bitcoin wallet, with scep256k1 cryptographic capabilities, letting it create Bitcoin keys, store the secret securely enough and sign transactions internally, to be broadcast by an accompanying phone, which serves as a critical visual aid for the user to verify transactions.
The Tapsigner can function as a bearer asset, but perhaps even better as a refillable hardware wallet that can spend specific amounts of bitcoin, like any credit card, resolving the issue of change, and enabling tap to pay to wallets that support the already popular feature.
With cards like the Tapsigner, which cost about $20 bucks, the problem of bitcoin-denominated payments returns to good old-fashioned retail adoption, and integration with major business accounting and payments software, which Cashapp and Square are blowing wide open.
After crumbling about 4% late Friday into early Saturday, bitcoin BTC$76,577.37 has more than retraced those losses in the past few minutes after President Trump announced a coming agreement with Iran and other Middle Eastern countries.
“An Agreement has been largely negotiated, subject to finalization between the United States of America, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the various other Countries,” wrote Trump in a Truth Social post.
“In addition to many other elements of the Agreement, the Strait of Hormuz will be opened,” the president continued.
The news sent bitcoin sharply higher to $76,700 after having fallen to nearly $74,000 earlier on Saturday.
Kevin Warsh, who was sworn in as the chairman of the United States Federal Reserve on Friday, will likely slash interest rates, despite the “consensus” view that he will raise interest rates, according to author, Bitcoin investor and market analyst Lawrence Lepard.
Lepard said that comments from other US officials, including Kevin Hassett, the director of the White House National Economic Council, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, support the likelihood of rate cuts in 2026. He added:
“Warsh will cut. He will use the AI productivity and trimmed inflation excuses and will claim that all the war inflation is transitory. Two data points from today’s Wall Street Journal support this view.”
Source: Lawrence Lepard
During Warsh’s swearing-in ceremony on Friday, US President Donald Trump said that the US would tackle its rising national debt through “growth,” signaling an expansion of the monetary supply and a lower interest rate regime.
Investors, traders, and analysts continue to debate about Warsh’s impact on interest rate policy and whether he will cut interest rates, which would boost risk-on asset prices, including Bitcoin and crypto.
Related: Odds against rate cuts high as new US Fed chair set for swearing in
Traders forecast rate hikes in 2026, as uncertainty mounts over new Fed chair
Nearly 68% of traders have priced in an interest rate hike of 25 basis points (BPS) or more by December 2026, according to the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) Group’s FedWatch tool.
“We want to stop inflation, but we don’t want to stop greatness,” Trump said on Friday, which was met with skepticism from investors, economists and market analysts.
Kevin Warsh gives his acceptance speech at his swearing-in ceremony on Friday. Source: The White House
In April, US lawmakers scrutinized Warsh’s commitment to preserving Federal Reserve independence, casting doubt on whether Warsh would resist pressure from the Executive Branch to loosen monetary policy.
Senator Elizabeth Warren said that Warsh’s appointment could create potential conflicts of interest, in which the Trump family’s crypto businesses benefit from policies enacted by the new Fed chair.
Meanwhile, Bitcoin, crypto and stock investors could face several months of declining asset prices following the Fed’s leadership transition, as uncertainty over interest rate policy grows.
Magazine: Is China hoarding gold so yuan becomes global reserve instead of USD?
Bitcoin BTC$75,976.08 may be entering a new period of outperformance against traditional assets as inflation pressures persist and bond markets weaken, according to Risk Dimensions chief investment officer Mark Connors.
Connors, who spent years as the global head of portfolio management at Credit Suisse, said bitcoin recently broke out of what had been its longest stretch of underperformance against the S&P 500 in history, a 142-day period that ended in early May.
“I think bitcoin’s underperformance versus markets is over,” Connors said in an interview. “It’s in the consolidation phase [that] has shifted into an outperformance phase.”
The shift comes as investors grapple with stubborn inflation, rising oil prices and uncertainty around interest rates. Connors argued that bonds, traditionally viewed as defensive assets, are increasingly under pressure as markets adjust to a “higher-for-longer” rate environment.
“Bitcoin, as it always does, takes it on the chin early, but then it always comes out first,” he said, adding that bitcoin could continue outperforming both equities and fixed income “as we grind through the straits of poor news and oil persistently being high.”
Connors tied much of the current macro environment to persistent geopolitical tensions and elevated energy prices. Oil has remained structurally high this year, he said, fueling inflation concerns while forcing markets to look toward technology and productivity gains as a counterweight.
He argued that AI and blockchain are becoming increasingly linked as businesses look for decentralized systems to support machine-driven transactions and automation.
“The only way to punch through that inflationary pressure is through technology,” Connors said.
He also pointed to shifting investor preferences between gold and bitcoin. Connors compared the current environment to 2020, when gold initially outperformed during the early stages of the pandemic before bitcoin began a strong resurgence.
“Gold has had its run,” he said. “Bitcoin is now on its resurgence.”
A Hyperliquid (HYPE) whale is refusing to close a massive short position even as the token’s rally leaves the trader sitting on more than $22 million in unrealized losses.
Key takeaways:
HYPE’s 134% year-to-date rally, rising ETF inflows and fresh whale accumulation may deepen squeeze pressure on the short seller.
Technical setups suggest a potential 20% pullback toward $51.5–$45.
HYPE whale increases short exposure to over $100 million
As of Thursday, the wallet ‘0x8ef…’ held a 5x cross-margin short on 1.80 million HYPE, worth about $102.98 million, with an entry price near $44.96, according to HypurrScan data.
With HYPE trading around $57.30, the position was down roughly $22.18 million. The trader had earned about $204,522 in funding, but that barely offset the growing losses as HYPE rallied nearly 8% intraday.
The short exposure was worth about $95 million earlier on Thursday, suggesting the whale has increased its exposure despite mounting losses. It risks liquidation if the HYPE price rises to around $69.
Strong HYPE accumulation may deepen whale’s losses
HYPE has emerged as one of the best-performing cryptocurrencies so far in 2026, up about 134% compared to the crypto market’s 16% drop.
A huge chunk of those gains surfaced in May as market attention turned to newly launched US spot HYPE ETFs and Coinbase’s role as the official treasury deployer for USDC on Hyperliquid.
Since the May 12 launch, these ETFs have attracted $58.73 million amid a steady increase in daily inflows, according to data resource SoSoValue.
US spot HYPE ETFs net inflows. Source: SoSoValue
A wallet linked to Galaxy Digital bought 158,100 HYPE worth $8.8 million in two hours, while a new wallet withdrew 536,247 HYPE worth $29.87 million from Coinbase over two days, according to data resource Arkham Intelligence.
Together, they accumulated or withdrew around 694,500 HYPE, valued at nearly $38.67 million. Such moves may deepen losses for the already underwater short seller.
Related: Hyperliquid eyes 55% price rise after Silicon Valley investor’s ‘massive HYPE buy’
As of Thursday, Hyperliquid had witnessed $36.33 million in liquidations on a 24-hour rolling basis, according to CoinGlass. Shorts accounted for $34.29 million, or about 94% of the total, while long liquidations were only $2.03 million.
Hyperliquid liquidation data. Source: CoinGlass
That shows HYPE’s rally is heavily driven by forced short covering, increasing squeeze risk for the underwater whale if prices keep rising.
HYPE technicals hint at a 20% correction
HYPE’s rally is showing signs of upside exhaustion as the price tests the upper boundary of its ascending channel.
That resistance zone sits near $59–$60, the same area that marked HYPE’s September 2025 record high before plunging by over 65%.
HYPE/USD daily chart. Source: TradingView
Its daily relative strength index (RSI) has also climbed to around 77, the highest level since May 2025, putting HYPE firmly in overbought territory.
A pullback from this resistance confluence could send HYPE toward the 0.786–0.618 Fibonacci retracement range, near $51.5–$45. This range aligns with the channel’s lower trend line.
In other words, HYPE price risks a decline of up to 20% from current levels if traders start taking profits near the channel top.
The short seller would recover roughly $10.4 million–$22.1 million from current levels, though the trade would only turn profitable below the $44.96 entry price, excluding funding and fees.
XRP held near $1.37 by midday Hong Kong time on Thursday, according to CoinDesk market data, with fresh ETF and on-chain data suggesting some investors may be rotating into XRP. Meanwhile, market leader bitcoin BTC$75,402.12 hovered around $77,400 and ether (eTH) remained under pressure.
CoinGlass data shows XRP-linked funds pulled in $8.88 million in the latest session, extending a streak of positive flows that includes $18.52 million on May 14 and $10.87 million on May 15. Across the past week, XRP products have attracted roughly $42 million in net inflows.
This has caught analysts’ attention because money has been leaving the largest listed crypto products. Bitcoin ETFs lost another $100.9 million in the latest daily session, following redemptions of $648.6 million, $331.1 million, and $290.4 million earlier in the same stretch. Ether products also remained under pressure, losing $32.6 million in the latest session.
The data suggests a selective appetite for alternative crypto exposure, though XRP’s broader network growth trend remains weaker than late 2025 levels.
Onchain activity offers a second, though less definitive, signal.
XRP recorded the fourth-largest daily spike in wallet creation this year, with 4,300 new wallets added in 24 hours, according to Blockchain analytics firm Santiment.
(Santiment)
Fresh wallet creation can sometimes point to new network participation, particularly when paired with capital inflows.
But the broader Santiment chart suggests caution.
XRP’s network growth has generally trended lower since late 2025, making the latest move look more like a sharp one-day spike than clear evidence of sustained adoption.
For traders, the question is whether XRP is seeing the early stages of a broader rotation trade, or simply a short-lived burst of speculative positioning while the wider crypto market remains under pressure.
Financial headlines continue to warn of macro risks, yet bitcoin’s BTC$75,385.06 volatility metric seems to think it’s all noise.
The cryptocurrency’s annualized 30-day implied volatility index, BVIV, continues to slide, hitting 38%, its lowest reading since October 2025, according to data source Volmex. When implied volatility falls, it signals that traders expect calmer price action and fewer large moves ahead.
“Bitcoin volatility has collapsed, and you can see it clearly in the BVIV levels, which we track closely to monitor market complacency,” said Shiliang Tang, Managing Partner at Monarq Asset Management.
“First, the geopolitical risk from the Iran conflict is finally moving into the later stages. Second, the continued BTC buying from Strategy (MSTR) and its perpetual preferred STRC complex is dampening downside BTC volatility by acting as a structural floor,” Tang added.
He also blamed systematic “call overwriters” for driving the yield lower. Overwriting involves selling a higher strike out-of-the-money call option to earn an additional yield on top of the spot market holding. BTC is currently trading near $77,300, so anyone holding BTC and selling calls above that price is a call overwriter.
Systematic overwriters, typically institutional funds running yield-enhancement strategies, continuously sell bitcoin options to collect premium income. This steady supply of options suppresses implied volatility and dampens expectations for large price swings.
“Finally, because Bitcoin has underperformed other risk assets to the upside, systematic overwriters are aggressively selling options for yield, keeping a heavy lid on the entire volatility complex,” Tang noted.
Bitcoin is currently trading around $77,000, while oil markets, often used as a proxy for geopolitical risk, remain relatively contained, with WTI crude trading below $100 per barrel.
Meanwhile, Strategy has purchased 171,238 BTC in 2026, significantly outpacing the roughly 63,450 BTC mined during the same period. That imbalance reinforces persistent institutional demand and reduces market supply.
Bitcoin’s declining volatility also reflects its maturation as an institutional asset. As adoption expands across ETFs, asset managers, corporates, and treasury allocators, liquidity deepens, and ownership becomes more diversified, naturally reducing the extreme volatility that characterized bitcoin’s earlier years.
The Clarity Act’s biggest outcome may be the creation of an entirely new market for “yield-as-a-service,” according to Joe Vollono, chief commercial officer at stablecoin infrastructure firm STBL.
At the center of the debate is Section 404 of the proposed legislation, which would prohibit Digital Asset Service Providers (DASPs) and their affiliates from offering yield solely as a function of holding a digital asset.
The provision could fundamentally reshape how crypto users earn returns, pushing the market away from passive “hold-to-earn” products and toward more active, compliant yield-generation strategies.
“What this effectively does is shift the industry from a hold-to-earn market to a use-to-earn market,” Vollono told CoinDesk in an interview. “You’re going to need compliant yield strategies to generate rewards on what would otherwise be idle capital.”
The Clarity Act has already cleared the Senate Banking Committee and is now expected to move into the full Senate to be merged with the Senate Agriculture Committee version of the bill before House reconciliation, with an optimistic timeline pointing to a full vote as early as July. Regulators would then have roughly 12 months to implement the framework.
Vollono, who spent more than seven years at Morgan Stanley and served at SIFMA, where he worked on industry advocacy and market structure issues, said the implications of the Clarity Act extend far beyond yield products themselves. Regulatory clarity, he argued, could finally unlock large-scale institutional participation in crypto markets.
“Once these issues are resolved, it allows capital at scale to enter the market,” he said. “That’s the real catalyst here.”
Passage of the Clarity Act is widely viewed as a potential inflection point for crypto markets because it would establish the first comprehensive U.S. regulatory framework for digital assets, ending years of uncertainty over whether and how tokens fall under Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) or Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) jurisdiction.
The legislation would create clearer rules for exchanges, brokers, stablecoin issuers and decentralized finance platforms, a move many analysts say is necessary before large institutional investors, banks and asset managers can commit capital at scale. Supporters argue that regulatory clarity could reduce legal risk, improve consumer protections and give traditional financial firms the compliance framework needed to build crypto products and services in the U.S. rather than offshore.
The role of AI
The likely result, Vollono said, is the emergence of a middle layer of infrastructure providers focused on compliant yield generation. He said he expects many of those services to be powered by artificial intelligence acting as an orchestration layer for regulated capital flows.
Among the potential beneficiaries are decentralized finance (DeFi) infrastructure providers, vault curators, collateral management platforms, automated treasury services, lending markets and rewards systems.
“All of this can be automated by AI in a regulated market,” he said.
The underlying technology stack already exists, Vollono said, pointing to smart contracts, oracles, DeFi rails and API-based infrastructure that could be adapted to fit within a regulated framework.
“This creates a whole new world,” he said.
Legislation
The debate around the legislation has also exposed tensions between traditional banks and the crypto industry, particularly over stablecoins and deposit migration.
“There’s a lot at stake,” Vollono said. “Banks are worried about deposit flight, but I think that concern is largely overstated.”
He said that the traditional fractional reserve banking model depends on banks maintaining large capital bases that can be lent out to create credit and liquidity. If deposits migrate into tokenized dollars or yield-bearing blockchain products, that model could come under pressure.
Still, Vollono said he sees the eventual compromise as beneficial for incumbents rather than existentially threatening.
“Smart incumbents are going to compete,” he said. “Banks don’t necessarily have to give up market share.”
He suggested banks could eventually collateralize reserves to issue their own stablecoins and generate compliant yield under the Clarity framework, opening the door to entirely new business models.
Stablecoin 2.0
That dynamic is central to STBL’s own pitch.
The company describes itself as “stablecoin 2.0,” arguing for a shift away from the traditional centralized issuer model that dominates the market today.
Instead, STBL is building infrastructure that allows users to mint real-world-asset-backed stablecoins while retaining the economics generated by the underlying reserves.
“Users that provide value into the ecosystem should participate in the economics,” Vollono said.
The company’s infrastructure is designed to support compliant yield management while allowing users, rather than centralized issuers, to capture the yield generated by reserve assets.
For Vollono, the Clarity Act could provide the regulatory framework needed to accelerate that transition. “I’ll tell you what the Act makes clear: money-as-a-service has arrived,” he added.
Read more: Crypto Clarity bill has 30% chance of passing this year, Wintermute’s Hammond says
Latest developments: Hyperliquid is outperforming much of the crypto market as traders rotate back into higher-risk assets.
Hyperliquid’s HYPE token hit a new all-time high after two HYPE ETFs launched in the U.S.
Van de Poppe said European traders have increasingly moved to Hyperliquid because perpetual futures trading remains difficult to access on many regulated venues in Europe.
He argued Hyperliquid’s push into tokenized stocks, commodities and pre-IPO assets is accelerating broader tokenization trends across crypto markets.
Van de Poppe said HYPE could rise to $100 or more if crypto market appetite continues to strengthen.
Van de Poppe joined Jennifer Sanasie on CoinDesk’s Markets Outlook.
What this means: Van de Poppe sees Hyperliquid as a short-term winner but Solana as the stronger long-term conviction bet.
He said liquidity in crypto markets is concentrating around a small group of protocols generating strong user growth and revenue.
Van de Poppe said Hyperliquid currently benefits from that concentration but warned competitors will eventually enter the market and pressure its dominance.
He described Solana as successfully transitioning from a “degen” ecosystem into a more institutional blockchain ecosystem.
Van de Poppe said Solana’s long-term positioning as infrastructure makes it more attractive than Hyperliquid over a multi-year horizon.
The AI trade: AI-linked crypto projects remain deeply undervalued relative to traditional AI companies, van de Poppe said.
He pointed to NEAR and Bittensor as two of the strongest infrastructure plays tied to AI adoption in crypto.
Van de Poppe argued valuations for private and public AI companies have become overheated, while crypto AI tokens have fallen sharply despite continued ecosystem growth.
He said NEAR’s projected revenue growth from roughly $10 million in 2025 to as much as $100 million this year supports a significantly higher valuation.
Van de Poppe said Bittensor’s ecosystem expansion and subnet structure could justify prices between $1,000 and $2,000 if adoption continues.
The privacy debate: Privacy remains one of crypto’s biggest long-term themes, but fully anonymous systems face major regulatory risks.
Van de Poppe said institutional and retail users both want more transactional privacy on blockchains.
He argued governments are unlikely to support fully anonymous privacy coins over the long term because regulators want visibility into transactions.
Van de Poppe said funds in Europe already face restrictions interacting with certain privacy-focused assets.
He pointed to zero-knowledge proof systems and permissioned privacy models as more sustainable paths forward for institutional adoption.
Macro outlook: Van de Poppe said bond yields and central bank policy remain the biggest near-term macro drivers for crypto.
He said Japanese bond yields are a key market signal and could heavily influence broader risk appetite.
Falling yields could support equities and crypto markets, while persistent inflation could create headwinds.
Van de Poppe said he does not expect aggressive rate cuts or renewed monetary easing from the Federal Reserve in the near term.
He warned additional rate hikes would likely pressure crypto and broader risk assets.
