Saylor Is Done Buying Bitcoin (Good News?)
48sChallenges the belief that Bitcoin's floor falls when Michael Saylor stops buying, sparking debate among crypto bulls and bears.
▶ Play Clip"The title accurately captures the Saylor narrative, but the video is a news roundup only partially about that theme."
The Daily Wolf host Scott Melker covers major crypto news: Strategy raises cash to cover obligations, stablecoin regulation misses its deadline, Morgan Stanley's E*TRADE launches crypto trading, Citadel Securities invests $400M in Crypto.com, and Trump Media plans to sell early access to Truth Social posts. The overarching theme is the institutionalization of crypto and Bitcoin's independence from Michael Saylor.
Strategy increased its USD reserve by $225 million to $3.2 billion while holding 843,775 BTC, covering 22 months of obligations.
The market no longer expects Michael Saylor to keep buying Bitcoin, removing the fear that he was the only floor at $60,000.
If Bitcoin trades at $70k-$100k, Strategy's stock will float to par and its obligations will effectively shrink, ending the negative narrative.
US regulators missed the one-year deadline to finalize stablecoin rules; no submissions from Treasury, OCC, Fed, FDIC, or NCUA.
Tether still lacks US compliance clarity; even with Bo Hines, questions remain about operating compliantly in the US.
GENIUS Act allows second-party yield (e.g., Coinbase) but not issuers like Tether/Circle; Jamie Dimon is fighting and CLARITY Act may close loopholes.
Morgan Stanley's E*TRADE now offers Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana trading via Zero Hash with 0.5% fees.
Morgan Stanley wants to prevent capital flight to BlackRock or Coinbase by offering its own crypto products to its customers.
Citadel Securities' investment values Crypto.com at $20B and will fund expansion into tokenized securities, derivatives, and prediction markets.
Citadel's investment is part of a broader trend of major platforms entering crypto, similar to ICE investing in OKX.
A $100,000/month subscription reportedly gives HFT institutions milliseconds-early access to Truth Social posts, enabling front-running.
Host believes a bottom formed in February and that governments and institutions are increasingly participating in crypto.
How many Bitcoins does Strategy hold?
843,775 BTC
00:55
What is Strategy's USD reserve amount?
$3.2 billion
00:55
How many months of payments does Strategy's cash reserve cover?
22 months
01:39
What fee does E*TRADE charge for crypto trades?
0.5% (50 basis points)
06:36
Which three cryptocurrencies does E*TRADE offer?
Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana
06:36
How much did Citadel Securities invest in Crypto.com?
$400 million
08:54
What is the reported monthly cost of Trump Media's early access subscription?
$100,000 per month
12:32
Which federal agencies failed to submit final stablecoin rules under the GENIUS Act?
Treasury, OCC, Federal Reserve, FDIC, and NCUA
03:50
Strategy's cash pivot
Shows the company transitioning from aggressive Bitcoin buying to financial prudence, removing a major market dependency.
00:55Regulatory deadline missed
Highlights persistent uncertainty in stablecoin regulation, a key risk for the industry.
03:35E*TRADE crypto trading
Demonstrates how legacy financial platforms are integrating crypto, expanding access to mainstream investors.
06:36Citadel's $400M bet
Underscores institutional confidence in crypto infrastructure, signaling a new era of adoption.
08:54Tweet access controversy
Raises serious concerns about market fairness and front-running in the digital asset space.
11:35[00:02] sold some stock to raise more cash for all of their dividends and preferred instruments and obligations. Meanwhile, Morgan Stanley finally launching Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana spot trading services and a lot more. We're
[00:15] going to dive into all of that right now on the Daily Wolf. Let's go.
[00:27] Daily Wolf on Yahoo! Finance. I am your host Scott Melker, also known as The Wolf of All Streets. As you can see, we are not in the studio. We are on week. We're going to be at some conferences doing some incredible
[00:41] other that will be presented for you right here on the Daily Wolf. But today, we are going to once again dig into the news of the day. As usual, and you know, repetitively on Monday, I guess we have
[00:55] to say that our biggest story is whatever Michael Saylor and strategy do. story. Here it is right here. Strategy increases USD reserve by 225 million. Now holds Bitcoin reserve of 843,775
[01:12] 843,775 and USD reserve of 3.2 billion dollars. So listen, we know that the market has been trying to price what strategy will do. As some of my guests have said in the in the past, at this
[01:25] know that Saylor and strategy were not irrational actors. And clearly, they're proving that to the market right now by raising enough cash to cover all of raising enough cash to cover all of their obligations. This now puts 22
[01:39] months of payments covered by a 3.2 billion dollar cash reserve. Now listen, if we're being honest, like the man obviously said that cash was trash for years. 3.2 billion dollars is quite a sizable recycling bin. But the fact is
[01:54] is now basically out of the market as a Bitcoin buyer. Nobody's expecting him to still continued to float up, which I think is a very positive narrative, he was the only buyer in the market, that the floor at 60,000 was going to
[02:10] drop right out if he stopped buying. Now, nobody expects him to buy anymore. does mean for MicroStrategy shareholders, because this is, by any metric, very slight dilution to sell shares to raise cash. But right now,
[02:27] character in the market, which, in my humble opinion, is very, very good news. As I continue to say, over the coming weeks, I do not think that we will be weeks, I do not think that we will be talking much about Saylor. And
[02:42] cure for all these problems is if the Bitcoin bull market commences. If Bitcoin's trading at 70, 75, 80, 85, 100,000 dollars, STRC will likely float to par. Strategy stock will go up. Uh all of their obligations will
[02:56] all of their obligations will effectively go down, and we won't be talking about this anymore. So, let's hope that that will be the case. Now, because I think it's been largely missed. I'll just show you what it says
[03:08] right here. US regulators miss GENIUS Act's one-year deadline for final stablecoin rule. So, obviously, the only thing people have been talking about on Capitol Hill when it comes to
[03:21] crypto is the CLARITY Act. Now, this is the GENIUS Act that passed a year ago. And for those who are paying attention, there was a one-year deadline in the GENIUS Act that said that the regulators and agencies had to come together
[03:35] and offer the rules. So, we didn't get that. Nobody actually submitted anything. We still have all of the rules out to lunch, and we have no idea what they actually are. This is an extremely bad situation for stablecoin issuers who
[03:50] still don't have the clarity that was supposed to come with the genius act on what they can and cannot do. So, the genius act got a first birthday cake, baking in the oven. Uh but so what happens? Treasury, OCC,
[04:04] Uh but so what happens? Treasury, OCC, Federal Reserve, FDIC, NCU uh NCUA, none of them have given their final regulations for implementation of the genius act. Now, for a lot of companies it probably
[04:16] now Circle has the clarity that they want, but you remember that the largest stablecoin issuer in the world, which is Tether, and their token USDT, they're still waiting for these rules to figure out how they can operate compliantly in
[04:30] the United States. Now, they had Bo Hines come in as the head of Tether in White House, uh and they've discussed even launching a compliant stablecoin in the United States, but right now they are still in
[04:44] a massive legislative and regulatory gray zone, and a lot of questions as to how they will proceed. Obviously, for others looking to launch stablecoins, for open USD, the other one that we've seen floated, nobody really knowing what
[04:58] this is going to mean. So, there's an interesting nuance here with the clarity act uh coming to the finish line uh finish line that I think it's going to drunkenly stumble on its fat face before it even gets there. But
[05:10] let's say that it does cross the finish line. We know that genius actually had for the banks because of the way that allowed stablecoin yield by second parties. So, the issuers like Tether and Circle are not allowed to offer or pass
[05:24] on the yield, but Coinbase, the exchange right now can. Jamie Dimon has been going absolutely buck wild about this saying that the banks will fight it. They actually need the clarity act close some loopholes in the genius act.
[05:38] for everybody. We have the genius act, but we don't have the clear rules from the genius act, and we now have the clarity act and confusion as to whether genius act or what will happen moving forward. It is a predictable and massive
[05:53] mess on Capitol Hill and we're just going to continue to talk about it and cover it with time and see where it all shakes out. Now this next story to me is just huge. Right? We have Morgan Stanley's E*TRADE rolls out crypto
[06:07] trading. Wall Street's push into digital assets continues. So listen, while we talk about markets and what Saylor does and try to figure out what's happening with legislation and regulation, the pipes are being laid by the biggest
[06:20] platforms on planet Earth to allow everyone access to crypto assets. So we talked about the fact that this would be happening in the past. So we knew been launched. I have an E*TRADE account. I got the uh I got the little
[06:36] alert that said you can now buy and sell Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana on the platform. This is through a partnership with Zero Hash and I believe it'll be 50 bips fees on these trades. So 0.5%
[06:51] on all of these trades. So what does this mean? So listen, Morgan Stanley was largely out of the crypto space for a very, very long time and I think made a announced that they were launching a Bitcoin spot ETF because generally they
[07:06] are not an ETF issuer. But as I told you on this show before, what Morgan Stanley was interested in was keeping the walls closed and not having capital flight out of their account. So why would they want to send their customers to buy a
[07:20] BlackRock spot ETF and pass that money on to BlackRock if they can do it themselves? They have tens of thousands of advisors and sales people out on the streets who, even if they didn't capture retail interest, they would be able to
[07:32] get the Morgan Stanley customers to stay within Morgan Stanley, buy that ETF, But interestingly, you'll remember that they came in with extremely low fees undercutting the entire market, meaning that they also wanted to compete for
[07:46] retail if the market ever ramped up again massively, which I think everybody in crypto believes it will do. Well, now they're following through with more plans here, relatively low fees for trading, and making sure that those
[07:59] Morgan Stanley customers don't exit and send their money over to Coinbase comes back. So, yes, it's only Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana, but we can assume that this is the beginning of a much broader trend of companies like this.
[08:13] We've seen it with Schwab that formerly did not offer crypto to their customers wholesale offering crypto to their customers. Now, interestingly, you cannot deposit and withdraw from the platform, so this is a very uh small
[08:26] ecosystem where you're going to keep your assets, you know, they will be in a separate account, not FDIC insured from the securities that are in these accounts. So, there are a lot of things here still to work through as to how
[08:38] it's going to actually work. But, really, really big news. I think that have access before, they are getting access through all the accounts and platforms that they're familiar with to be able to trade our beloved crypto
[08:54] assets. So, the next story that we have here, let me pull this up. Crypto.com announces $400 million strategic investment from Citadel Securities. I mean, this is wild. This is Crypto.com's
[09:11] mean, this is wild. This is Crypto.com's first institutional funding round ever, existed. Now, this is we you know, we've got the Crypto.com Arena, we've got Crypto.com all over F1, but I think a
[09:24] lot of people uh still, you know, looking at these platforms, choosing exchanges, and wondering which one to go to. Well, this is probably a big uh point for Crypto.com. So, what does this mean? Citadel Securities obviously has
[09:38] multiple branches. This is not the hedge fund side. This is the much bigger market making and security clearance side. And this is a massive, massive investment that values now crypto.com at $20 billion. So, Citadel has done
[09:54] they invested in some of Kraken's infrastructure, but this is going this money is going to allow expansion for crypto.com into tokenized securities, derivatives, prediction markets, and other traditional asset classes. But of
[10:08] course, more importantly, it gives them access to everybody that Citadel Securities has access to. Once again, this is, you know, Ken Griffin. This is the largest market making firm on planet Earth and really
[10:22] plugs them into the legacy system. So, I I don't know that this is a story as much about crypto.com individually. I think it's more a story about the institutionalization of the asset class and the different way
[10:35] participate. You don't see Citadel talking about buying an illiquid token. You're seeing them invest in the actual infrastructure that's likely to benefit into the future and to build out that infrastructure in a way that they can
[10:49] saw obviously the New York Stock Exchange parent ICE investing in OKX. We've seen a number of stories like this where the biggest exchanges and platforms on the planet are coming in wholesale to crypto to participate. So,
[11:05] I I would say that this is something we're going to see a whole lot of in the uh and that this is just the beginning of these stories. So, now, you know, we love to do a great segment on this show. You guys have heard us do it before and
[11:22] hit it. >> How not [music] to invest. >> How not [music] to invest. >> How not to invest.
[11:35] about our good friend Donald Trump. Okay, so here's the story in case you missed it. Trump Media to sell instant access to market moving social posts.
[11:48] I'm old enough to remember when inside trading was legal. Uh or certainly if you were going to inside trade that you certainly were not going to charge the world for that inside information very publicly uh and having articles written
[12:04] say how not to invest, if you're wondering why that, this is probably how wondering why that, this is probably how to invest if you are a large institution and if you are trying to make money in milliseconds on Trump tweets, the how
[12:19] not to invest is the part where retail once again will get rinsed because they once again will get rinsed because they will attempt to trade on tweets when the institutions and insiders already have all of the information
[12:32] what does this mean? So, what they're offering here effectively, by reports, offering here effectively, by reports, is a $100,000 a month subscription for large institutions that do high-frequency trading
[12:45] for them to be able to get early access, reportedly only milliseconds, to Trump's Truth Social posts. Now, we've seen that Trump's Truth Social posts have moved markets repeatedly in the past. And now that we have access to
[12:58] his disclosures, we can see that he was also actively trading on those. So, why not sell that access to his friends and make a massive profit? If he knows that he's going to say "Nvidia is a great American company" in a Truth Social
[13:12] post, he can front-run it by buying and now he's giving high-frequency traders, dollars to have the fastest information, the fastest internet, who pay for this they'll be able to trade on it in milliseconds before those messages hit
[13:26] and before we get access. Now, proponents for this or supporters will say, "Hey, people buy a $32,000 Bloomberg terminal and that gives them the fastest access in the world to news and that's the
[13:39] reason that they pay for it and he's just offering that exact same thing." But, this is entirely different. This is a much more reflective of the Trump rift that we've seen in crypto and of course is
[13:51] going to be one more massive story that leans into Democrats not wanting to support anything Trump related when it comes to markets, which could include the Clarity Act because of course of the ethics clause. So, listen,
[14:06] if you think you're going to massively profit from Trump tweets, you can just know that you're going to be front run and you're going to be buying into the people ahead of you who got the information, who have the massive
[14:19] capital, and who are selling into your information. So, listen, the crypto market continues what the crypto market does. You know that I kind of believed that we really started to form a bottom in February. Nothing about that has
[14:32] really changed in my humble opinion. What has changed is that we have governments, institutions, all really starting to get their feet wet and participate massively in this industry.
[14:46] I think that that will continue into the not-so-distant future. I'll be back from interviews. That's it for the Daily Wolf today. Peace.
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