It was a dreadful week for the stock market, with the S&P 500 falling more than 6% over the last five days. That didn’t help Bitcoin, but the original cryptocurrency fared better than the wider market, rising over 1% in the same period.

The Nasdaq had one of its largest falls in 25 years Thursday, but Bitcoin held relatively steady (CoinDesk’s James Van Straten reported) even if now it’s nowhere near the highs above 100,000 that we saw at the beginning of the year.

The big question for bitcoin amid market uncertainty is whether it’s seen as a risk asset to be sold off in a storm or a safe haven akin to gold (which until the last 24 hours at least was doing well relative to the market). The impact of tariffs on crypto is much debated by researchers. Meanwhile, the digital assets industry prepared for better days ahead. Circle — the issuer of the second largest stablecoin, USDC — officially filed for an IPO. An important U.S. House committee advanced its stablecoin bill, with significant Democrat support.

Fidelity Investments, a major brokerage firm, announced plans to offer an IRA allowing investors direct access to crypto in their retirement accounts. Helene Braun had the news. Advisers are increasingly willing to promote crypto products to their clients, surveys show. In other news, corporate bitcoin buyers, like Strategy, Metaplanet, Mara and Tether, kept stockpiling bitcoin, taking advantage of today’s prices.

Ethereum developers locked in May 7 for their next upgrade (named Pectra), Margaux Nijkerk reported. Ripple reported big demand for its new stablecoin RLUSD, Kris Sandor reported.

Then in regulatory news, Paul Atkins neared confirmation for SEC Chair and long-time D.C. crypto advocate stepped down from heading the Blockchain Association to work for a new Solana-focused group.

Much of the news followed a pattern we’ve seen for the last few weeks: Sagging markets and quiet industry growth aided by a regulatory thaw.

Given the tumultuous macroeconomic environment, it’s going to be fascinating to see how crypto continues to fare.

Bitcoin’s original promise of «peer-to-peer electronic cash» hasn’t exactly developed in the way Satoshi intended. More people than ever are eager to pay in crypto, while most vendors want nothing but fiat.

While the mismatch has plenty of workarounds in countries with a strong banking and credit card culture, it’s a real problem in places with alternative electronic payment rails, like QR codes, says pseudonymous crypto developer Sheldon Cooper. How can one scan a fiat-only code and pay in stablecoins?

Cooper’s claimed solution, P2P.me, does it without ever touching the regular on-and-off ramps. Instead, this blockchain-based service relies on a network of middlemen willing to accept USDC from, say, Alice and send the equivalent fiat along to Bob. The whole process takes about 90 seconds, he said.

There are no traditional identity checks, either. P2P.me vets its users with zero-knowledge proofs that checks for a real-seeming social media presence and maybe even for a government ID. But it doesn’t store this personal data as would most financial institutions from banks on down to Binance.

«What we thought about is, ‘How do we decentralize this? How do we do on and off rams in a decentralized way,'» said Cooper. «The number one concern is privacy and self custody. All these CEXes give data to the government.»

P2P.me’s quirky blend of permissionless markets and privacy tech has processed $1.6 million in payments from around 1,100 users, mostly in Indonesia, Nigeria and Vietnam. That modest amount, quickly growing, was enough to get venture capitalists’ interest: Multicoin Capital and Coinbase Ventures recently invested $2 million P2P.me’s seed round.

The money’s already helped P2P.me scale its team to 20 people ahead of a planned push into Latin America, Cooper said. He sees local communities that struggle to navigate established financial rails as key adopters. So too are crypto-savvy tourists who go places where their credit cards don’t work, but their cell phones do.

Built on Base, the open protocol plans to launch a token in the next 12 months that will shift control to the community, according to Cooper.

«The strategic idea of the token is to scale globally, to break the network effects of the centralized exchange with P2P,» he said.

Gold-backed cryptocurrencies like Paxos Gold (PAXG) and Tether Gold (XAUT) retreated from record highs on Friday amid a global financial-markets sell-off that erased $2.5 trillion from U.S. equities alone in a single day after U.S. President Donald Trump unveiled his reciprocal tariffs.

The tokens, which are backed by physical gold and track its price, initially rallied as investors sought shelter from the uncertainty the tariffs introduced. Gold is usually seen as a haven investment, but large-scale losses in equity markets often force investors to liquidate safer assets to cover margin calls and cash out losses.

PAXG climbed to an all-time high of $3,191 with XAUT following closely behind to reach $3,190, exceeding spot gold’s peak of $3,167. The initial rise didn’t last, with PAXG dropping to $3,074 and XAUT to $3,064, mirroring gold’s pullback to $3,038 per ounce.

The tariffs announced on Wednesday spooked markets with their breadth and unclear targets. Investors, already jittery from a volatile global outlook, responded swiftly. The S&P 500 posted one of its steepest drops since the COVID-era panic in 2020 on Thursday, while the Nasdaq 100 saw its worst single-day point loss in history according to the Kobeissi Letter. The rout extended into a second day, with the MSCI World Index dropping 4.3% on Friday after losing 3.7% on Thursday.

Still, gold-backed tokens remain 17% higher since the start of the year. The rally has been driven by Federal Reserve interest-rate cuts, sustained demand from Asia and a wave of central bank buying earlier in the year. In February, central banks reported net gold purchases of 24 metric tons, according to the World Gold Council.

Poland led the pack, adding 29 tons and bringing its total reserves to 480 tons, now 20% of its foreign exchange holdings. China, Turkey, Jordan, and Qatar also increased their holdings.