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What a week for US crypto!

Lots of commotion, big news, yet nothing changed. But it's good to see the largest economy on earth taking an interest in our tokens. More on my thoughts below.

Before you get to that, make sure you caught my market update from March 5, 2025.

In that update, I questioned where we're at in the famous “anatomy of a bubble” chart and look at some metrics and behaviors that nobody seems to notice, but should. I also talked about altcoins and general strategy.

Scroll down for some content you may enjoy.

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Chart of the Week

Crypto Has a Privacy Conundrum

Bottom line: Legacy entities won’t operate on-chain until they can hide their activities. Blockchain’s transparency makes that difficult to do.

My take: We have zero-knowledge proofs, ring signatures, mixers, multi-party computations, homomorphic encryption, and IP blockers, but those are either hard for developers to implement, difficult for users to navigate, or both. We won’t have robust, consumer-grade applications until that’s fixed. We’ll get closer once more money goes to builders than new VC tokens and memecoins.

Why you should care: Every time somebody says “mainstream adoption” or makes you think you’re too late for crypto, remind them we have this and other big problems to solve before widespread usage of crypto. You’re not late.

US cryto summit, etc

This week, crypto leaders came to Washington to discuss US policy and lawmaking.

Trump confirmed the US will seed a Bitcoin strategic reserve and build a separate crypto stockpile with tokens it holds from criminal or civil asset forfeiture proceedings. Further, he signed an order preventing the US from selling any of its Bitcoin.

The ultimate HODLer!

(Until another president comes along, takes back the order, and dumps on the market.)

Reuters has a nice summary:

The biggest news?

The embrace of USD stablecoins.

This is a massive shift in the US position on financial technology. No wonder Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan said he’d build one as soon as the legislative ink dries!

With its focus on stablecoins, the US government has told banks it wants to make their business model obsolete.

Why would anybody use a bank—or start a bank—when they can use the free infrastructure of the blockchain with the backing of the US government and all sorts of apps that builders will release in the coming years?

Once DEFI protocols abstract away technological complexities and make easy user interfaces, why would anybody go back to the clunky, convoluted, opaque financial rules of the legacy banking system?

Of course, we need to first build useful apps and services. This will come once speculative enthusiasm dies down and money goes to people and businesses that build things for normal people.

Many of these builders will not launch a token. They will leverage existing networks like AAVE, Chainlink, Uniswap, and possibly BTC if the lightning network takes off. Some will emerge from lesser-known projects like Thorchain, Goldfinch, Swarm Markets, and other newer alternatives.

We’ll need to wait until Billy the Neighbor stops throwing his tax refund into Fartcoin for “one more pump,” but we'll get there eventually. One thing at a time.

Has Saylor’s BTC Strategy Hit a Block?

You can’t help but notice how Strategy₿ has cut its Bitcoin purchases this year. Nor can you ignore how much of their $42 billion target they’ve already put into the market. $23 billion in addition to $2 billion of their own capital.

They’re burning through money like a drunk . . . sailor!

This may prompt you to worry about their strategy.

To be sure, their exotic financial engineering makes a mockery of the stock market.

Does that mean you have to worry about it falling apart?

No, but you do need to recognize the risks, both for MSTR shareholders and the price of BTC.

Strategy₿ has structured its balance sheet so it should not have to sell Bitcoin in a bear market. It’s well-protected from downturns in Bitcoin’s price.

The risks come from the way MSTR has structured its financing. If that unravels, it will have to sell BTC or go out of business.

As you can imagine, both the threat or the actual sale of Strategy₿’s stash would wreak havoc on the market. Nothing we need to talk about now, but certainly something you want to keep on your radar screen.

Token Dispatch dives into this topic in great detail in a fairly brief, easy-to-read article.