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Crypto Daybook Americas: Bitcoin Whiplash Shakes Market as U.S. Yield Spike Threatens Bull Run
By James Van Straten (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)
Bitcoin BTC started the week on a positive note, rising above $107,000 — the highest since Jan. 24, according to CoinDesk data —before pulling back to $102,000 during the Asian morning.
Despite the retracement, the largest cryptocurrency continues to trend upward, forming higher highs and higher lows within an ascending consolidation channel, while its market dominance rose above 64%.
There’s a bullish bias in the options market, too. Deribit data shows a heavy concentration of call open interest above $100,000, particularly at the $110,000, $115,000 and $120,000 strike prices for May 30, when $8 billion in notional value expires. Call options, which give holders the right to buy BTC at a specific price, are typically used to bet that the price will rise to or above that level.
Another sign of strong demand comes from Glassnode data showing widespread accumulation across all wallet cohorts from holders of less than 1 BTC to over 10,000 BTC. The accumulation trend score rose to 0.87; the maximum value is 1.
For a note of caution, take a look at the U.S. 30-year Treasury yield, which topped 5% as Moody’s Ratings downgraded the debt to Aa1 from Aaa, citing fiscal concerns in the U.S. The last time the yield rose that high, April 9, bitcoin dropped to a monthly low of $75,000.
Meanwhile, the U.K. overtook China as the second-largest holder of U.S. debt, and Tether’s U.S. Treasury holdings are poised to surpass Germany’s, potentially placing it among the top 20 foreign holders. At a time when the U.S. is actively seeking buyers for its bonds, none may be more critical than the issuer of the largest stablecoin. Stay alert!
What to Watch
- Crypto
- May 19: CME Group will launch its cash-settled XRP futures.
- May 19: Coinbase Global (COIN) will replace Discover Financial Services (DFS) in the S&P 500, effective before the opening of trading.
- May 22: Bitcoin Pizza Day.
- May 22: Top 220 TRUMP token holders will attend a gala dinner hosted by President Trump at the Trump National Golf Club in Washington.
- May 30: The second round of FTX repayments starts.
- Macro
- May 19: U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer meets European Council President António Costa and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in London for the first post-Brexit U.K.-EU summit, which should result in the signing of a landmark defense and security treaty and a joint statement pledging deeper economic cooperation.
- May 19, 10 a.m.: President Donald Trump is scheduled to call Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss a potential ceasefire in the Russia-Ukraine war. He will then call Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and various members of NATO.
- May 20-22: Canadian Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne and Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem will co-host the three-day meeting of G7 finance ministers and central bank governors in Banff, Alberta.
- May 20, 8:30 a.m.: Statistics Canada releases April consumer price inflation data.
- Core Inflation Rate MoM Est. 0.2% vs. Prev. 0.1%
- Core Inflation Rate YoY Prev. 2.2%
- Inflation Rate MoM Est. 0.5% vs. Prev. 0.3%
- Inflation Rate YoY Est. 1.6% vs. Prev. 2.3%
- Earnings (Estimates based on FactSet data)
- May 20: Canaan (CAN), pre-market
- May 28: NVIDIA (NVDA), post-market, $0.88
Token Events
- Governance votes & calls
- Arbitrum DAO is voting on launching “The Watchdog,” a 400,000-ARB bounty program to reward community sleuths for uncovering misuse of the hundreds of millions in grants, incentives and service budgets the DAO has deployed. Voting ends May 23.
- Arbitrum DAO is voting on a constitutional AIP to upgrade Arbitrum One and Arbitrum Nova to ArbOS 40 “Callisto”, bringing them in line with Ethereum’s May 7 Pectra upgrade. The proposal schedules activation for June 17. Voting ends on May 29.
- May 20, 12 p.m.: Lido to hist its 28th node operator community call.
- May 21: Maple Finance teased an announcement on the future of asset management.
- May 21, 6 p.m.: Theta Network to host an Ask Me Anything session in a livestream
- May 22: Official Trump to announce its “next Era” at the day of the dinner for its largest holders.
- Unlocks
- May 19: Pyth Network (PYTH) to unlock 58.62% of its circulating supply worth $306.28 million.
- May 31: Optimism (OP) to unlock 1.89% of its circulating supply worth $21.6 million.
- June 1: Sui (SUI) to unlock 1.32% of its circulating supply worth $161.9 million.
- June 12: Ethena (ENA) to unlock 0.7% of its circulating supply worth $14.31 million.
- Token Launches
- No major upcoming token listings.
Conferences
- Day 1 of 7: Dutch Blockchain Week (Amsterdam)
- May 20-22: Avalanche Summit London
- May 20-22: Seamless Middle East Fintech 2025 (Dubai)
- May 21-22: Crypto Expo Dubai
- May 21-22: Cryptoverse Conference (Warsaw)
- May 27-29: Bitcoin 2025 (Las Vegas)
- May 27-30: Web Summit Vancouver
- May 29: Stablecon (New York)
- May 29-30: Litecoin Summit 2025 (Las Vegas)
- May 29-June 1: Balkans Crypto 2025 (Tirana, Albania)
- June 2-7: SXSW London
Token Talk
By Shaurya Malwa
- Elon Musk revived his “Kekius Maximus” persona on X over the weekend, sending an associated memecoin up more than 100% after months of inactivity.
- Musk updated his profile picture to a gladiator-style depiction of himself and changed his display name.
- The Ethereum-based KEKIUS surged as followers noticed the change. Trading volumes for the token jumped to over $45 million, up from an average of $5 million in the past week, CoinGecko data shows.
- The ‘Kekius’ name is linked to existing frog-themed coins like pepe, featuring a frog dressed up as a Roman gladiator.
- It stems from the «Cult of Kek,» a tongue-in-cheek internet phenomenon linking the term to an ancient Egyptian frog-headed deity of chaos and darkness.
- Ethereum-based PEPE, another frog-themed memecoin, surged 5%, with trading volume nearly tripling to $2.19 billion, making it the second-most traded memecoin after dogecoin (DOGE).
- The original Kekius Maximus rally occurred on New Year’s Eve 2024, when Musk first adopted the persona, sending the coin up 600% in a few days.
- The coin lost all gains after Musk dropped the avatar, but has since seen episodic spikes tied to his social media activity, as in March.
- The latest price movement underscores Musk’s continued outsized influence on speculative crypto markets, especially meme tokens, and how monitoring his account might open up short-lived profit (albeit highly risky) opportunities for micro-cap traders.
Derivatives Positioning
- Total open interest (OI) across all instruments on centralized exchanges remained relatively stable over the weekend, dipping slightly to $150 billion.
- Among assets with over $100 million in open interest, the biggest week-on-week gains were seen in PAXG, PEPE, TON and ALCH.
- The largest declines were observed in PNUT, POPCAT, BONK and SHIB.
- After sweeping key liquidation clusters at $106.5K and $102.8K, bitcoin is now trading around $103K.
- The next significant cluster of liquidations on the BTC-USDT pair on Binance sits at $107.5K, representing some $71.4 million in potential liquidations. On the downside, there’s notable liquidation interest worth $52.7 million at $102.2K — a level that acted as support during today’s earlier reversal.
- Short-term hedging has intensified ahead of the May 23 and May 30 expiries, with puts dominating volume (~$1.3B notional) and concentrated OTM exposure, signaling traders are bracing for near-term downside, according to data from Deribit.
- May 30 is the key expiry to watch, holding the largest OI (~$8 billion) on Deribit, skewed toward OTM calls and puts. This positioning suggests potential for sharp moves on spot price shifts around key strike levels.
Market Movements
- BTC is down 0.78% from 4 p.m. ET Friday at $102,937.12 (24hrs: -0.74%)
- ETH is down 6.36% at $2,408.96 (24hrs: -3.89%)
- CoinDesk 20 is down 4.24% at 3,072.36 (24hrs: -3.33%)
- Ether CESR Composite Staking Rate is down 15 bps at 2.91%
- BTC funding rate is at 0.0054% (5.9261% annualized) on Binance
- DXY is down 0.97% at 100.11
- Gold is up 1.04% at $3,237.26/oz
- Silver is up 0.71%% at $32.50/oz
- Nikkei 225 closed -0.68% at 37,498.63
- Hang Seng closed unchanged at 23,332.72
- FTSE is down 0.78%% at 8,616.91
- Euro Stoxx 50 is down 0.77% at 5,385.80
- DJIA closed on Friday +0.78% at 42,654.74
- S&P 500 closed +0.7% at 5,958.38
- Nasdaq closed +0.52% at 19,211.10
- S&P/TSX Composite Index closed +0.29% at 25,971.93
- S&P 40 Latin America closed -0.28% at 2,623.99
- U.S. 10-year Treasury rate is up 7 bps at 4.55%
- E-mini S&P 500 futures are down 1.33% at 5,896.25
- E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are down 1.72% at 21,135.25
- E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index futures are down 0.84% at 42,375.00
Bitcoin Stats
- BTC Dominance: 64.01 (0.26%)
- Ethereum to bitcoin ratio: 0.02327 (-0.85%)
- Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 855 EH/s
- Hashprice (spot): $54.44
- Total Fees: 5.92 BTC / $617,813
- CME Futures Open Interest: 149,515 BTC
- BTC priced in gold: 31.9 oz
- BTC vs gold market cap: 9.03%
Technical Analysis
- After recording the highest ever weekly close, bitcoin has retraced to the lower end of its current range at $102,800.
- Last week, each dip below this level was met with strong buying interest, highlighting continued demand.
- While the weekly close signals bullish momentum, it’s worth noting that bitcoin has rallied from its April lows without a meaningful pullback, printing six consecutive green weekly candles.
- Should the range lows break, a deeper move toward the weekly order block between $94,000 and $99,000 becomes likely. This zone also aligns with key technical confluences, including the 50-day exponential moving average and the previous monthly high.
- Today’s price action is shaping a typical Monday range setup, and a reclaim of Monday’s low in the coming days could serve as a catalyst for further upside.
Crypto Equities
- Strategy (MSTR): closed on Friday at $399.80 (+0.7%), down 1.32% at $394.52 in pre-market
- Coinbase Global (COIN): closed at $266.46 (+9.01%), down 2.8% at $259
- Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY): closed at C$31.49 (+3.01%)
- MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $16.21 (+3.38%), down 1.97% at $15.89
- Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $9.15(+5.17%), down 1.97% at $8.97
- Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $10.78 (+2.57%), down 3.15% at $10.44
- CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $9.78 (+4.49%), down 2.56% at $9.53
- CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $18 (+8.63%)
- Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed at $40.88 (+28.59%), down 4.35% at $39.10
- Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $35.40 (-1.01%), down 1.13% at $35
ETF Flows
Spot BTC ETFs:
- Daily net flow: $260.2 million
- Cumulative net flows: $41.74 billion
- Total BTC holdings ~ 1.18 million
Spot ETH ETFs
- Daily net flow: $22.2 million
- Cumulative net flows: $2.53 billion
- Total ETH holdings ~ 3.45 million
Source: Farside Investors
Overnight Flows
Chart of the Day
- Bitcoin long-term holder supply is approaching a one-year high of 14,326,823 BTC.
- That’s an increase of 400,000 BTC from this year’s lows as long-term holders show growing conviction in price increases.
While You Were Sleeping
- ‘Sell America’ Is Back as Moody’s Pushes 30-Year Yield to 5% (Bloomberg): Moody’s downgrade over America’s budget deficit sparked Max Gokhman’s warning that shifting from Treasuries could lift yields and curb demand for the dollar and U.S. stocks.
- China’s Economy Feels the Sting From Trade War (The Wall Street Journal): April data showed weakening industrial output, spending and investment as tariff uncertainty weighed on growth and analysts urged stronger stimulus to meet official targets.
- The Bull Case for Galaxy Digital Is AI Data Centers Not Bitcoin Mining, Research Firm Says (CoinDesk): Rittenhouse analysts say AI data-center operations generate stable, long-term cash flows with minimal capital needs, making them more attractive than the volatile, capital-intensive business of bitcoin mining.
- Russia Unleashes One of Its Largest Drone Barrages of the Ukraine War (The New York Times): Ukraine’s air defenses battled 273 drones over nine hours, mostly near Kyiv, where a woman was killed and several others, including a child, were wounded.
- Metaplanet Buys Another 1,004 Bitcoin, Lifts Holdings to Over $800M Worth of BTC (CoinDesk): The Tokyo-based investment firm added to its bitcoin position at an average price of $103,873 per BTC.
- Ripple Signs Two More Payment System Customers in UAE Expansion (CoinDesk): Ripple signed UAE-based Zand Bank and Mamo to its cross-border payments platform after securing a license from the Dubai Financial Services Authority in March.
In the Ether
Cryptocurrencies regained footing on Monday after a rocky start to the trading session, mirroring a broader recovery in risk assets as traders digested Moody’s downgrade of U.S. government bonds.
Bitcoin BTC notched a strong rebound after slipping to as low as $102,000 early in the U.S. session, following its record weekly close at $106,600 overnight. The largest cryptocurrency by market cap climbed back to $105,000 in afternoon trading, up 0.4% over 24 hours. Ether ETH rose 1.2%, reclaiming the $2,500 level.
DeFi lending platform Aave AAVE outperformed most large-cap altcoins, while the majority of the broad-market CoinDesk 20 Index members still remained in the red despite advancing from their daily lows. Solana SOL, Avalanche AVAX and Polkadot DOT were down 2%-3%.
The bounce extended to U.S. stocks, too, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq erasing their morning decline.
The early pullback in crypto and stocks came after Moody’s late Friday downgraded the U.S. credit rating from its AAA status. The move rattled bond markets, pushing 30-year Treasury yields above 5% and the 10-year note to over 4.5%.
Still, some analysts downplayed the downgrade’s long-term impact on asset prices.
«What does [the downgrade] mean for markets? Longer-term – really nothing,» said Ram Ahluwalia, CEO of wealth management firm Lumida Wealth. He added that in the short term there might be some selling pressure centered on U.S. Treasuries due to large institutional investors rebalancing, as some of them are mandated to hold assets only in AAA-rated securities.
«Moody’s is the last of the three major rating agencies to downgrade U.S. debt. This was the opposite of a surprise – it was a long time coming,» Callie Cox, chief market strategist at Ritholtz Wealth Management, said in an X post. «That’s why stock investors don’t seem to care.»
Bitcoin targets $138K this year
While BTC hovers just below its January record prices, digital asset ETF issuer 21Shares sees more upside for this year.
«Bitcoin is on the verge of a breakout,» research strategist Matt Mena wrote in a Monday report. He argued that BTC’s current rally is driven not by retail mania, but by a confluence of structural forces, including institutional inflows, a historic supply crunch and improving macro conditions that suggests a more durable and mature path to fresh all-time highs.
Spot Bitcoin ETFs have consistently absorbed more BTC than is mined daily, tightening supply while major institutions, corporations such as Strategy and newcomer Twenty One Capital accumulate and even states explore creating strategic reserves.
These factors combined could lift BTC to $138,500 this year, Mena forecasted, translating to a roughly 35% rally for the largest crypto.
Clients of JPMorgan Chase (JPM) will soon have the option to buy bitcoin BTC, according to CEO Jamie Dimon, who spoke at the bank’s annual Investor Day on Monday, signaling a shift in how the firm approaches the asset.
“We are going to allow you to buy it,” Dimon told shareholders, though he added the bank has no plans to hold the asset in custody.
Dimon, long known for his skepticism of cryptocurrency, doubled down in his closing remarks, saying he’s still “not a fan” of bitcoin, mainly because of its use for illegal activities, including sex trafficking and money laundering
He also pushed back on the industry’s hype around blockchain technology, arguing it’s less important than it’s made out to be — even as JPMorgan continues building in the space.
“We have been talking about blockchain for 12 to 15 years,» he said. «We spend too much on it. It doesn’t matter as much as you all think.»
The bank’s own blockchain platform, Kinexys, recently ran a test transaction on a public blockchain for the first time, settling tokenized U.S. Treasuries on Ondo Chain’s testnet.
Blockchains are a technical marvel, but in this vastly competitive landscape, I’ve come to see the social consensus and ecosystem around blockchains as by far their most important strategic asset. The social layer matters, but for different reasons depending on the chain.
Specifically, I have the hypothesis that the “Layer 0” for any blockchain ecosystem can only excel at one primary mission. When I say “Layer 0,” what I am really talking about are the communities of people that sustain these networks. They are everyone from enthusiasts to engineers, developers, investors, venture capitalists and volunteers. As public networks that are built with open-source code, the strength of each ecosystem is primarily the community around it.
Despite their superficial similarities, the communities and the ecosystems that underpin bitcoin and Ethereum are radically different. I have long said that “bitcoin is the asset. Ethereum is the platform.” In both cases, the social consensus around these blockchains is what keeps them together and makes each one ideally suited for its mission.
Bitcoin first. Bitcoin is a scarcity-based store-of-value. Better than fiat currency. More reliably scarce than gold. Immune to politics and protected by a vast proof of work infrastructure. Bitcoin is in a constant battle for mindshare with other crypto-assets and, even more so, against traditional fiat currencies and central-bank-issued assets.
This is not the same as other stores-of-value. There can be many kinds of government and corporate debt, and their values are all tied to the likelihood of repayment. The closest analogy for bitcoin is with gold, which does not pay interest or generate any cash flow. Nor is there any meaningful industrial demand for gold. The value of gold is simply that it is scarce and getting more of it is not easy.
One particularly important feature of this crypto ecosystem is that it is a zero-sum game. If you admit that there can be more than one cryptocurrency used as a store of value, you are on a slippery slope because technically, there can be an infinite supply of identical copies of bitcoin. If there can be two, there can be a thousand. If that happens, the value of bitcoin is uncertain and likely low.
Right now, there are no other cryptocurrencies that have a value even remotely close to that of bitcoin. Assets like litecoin, bitcoin cash, dogecoin and others represent a tiny fraction of bitcoin’s market capitalization. The only asset in the same general league is ether, and I would argue that it should be seen less as a cryptocurrency and more as a stake in a computing ecosystem.
The result of this logic is a uniquely aggressive approach to mindshare. The value of bitcoin must be sustained by constant memetic warfare against other cryptocurrencies. Scroll through r/bitcoin, and you will find a stream of memes that aim to reinforce the value of bitcoin. Typical content includes dire warnings about the U.S. dollar’s debasement with quantitative easing, the serious U.S. federal debt, the horrors of inflation, and rapturous predictions for future prices. That quantitative easing did not cause inflation and that low to moderate inflations inflict no measurable economic harm does not matter in that context: Political harm, yes, economic harm no. (See here and here)
A typical bitcoin meme includes a reminder that a long, long time ago, a dollar would buy you a full bag of groceries. The implication is that you are being robbed through gradual printing of money. This meme has never stood up to the most basic examination. Moderate inflation is fine, necessary, and infinitely better than deflation. We are vastly better off than we were when a dollar could buy a bag or groceries, but acknowledging that would undermine the narrative. It does not matter, however. Never let the facts get in the way of a good story.
To sustain its value, bitcoin needs a very assertive social consensus. And that has to continue for an exceedingly long time. Gold’s use as a shared global store of value dates to 650 BCE in ancient Türkiye, so they have a significant head start. And while there are other precious metals, none of them have ever approached gold in terms of total market capitalization. The market cap of gold is 10 times larger than the market cap for silver.
The social ecosystem that underpins Ethereum is different. First and foremost, Ethereum is the world computer. Ethereum is a positive-sum ecosystem where people are encouraged to build and extend. The discussion and tone of r/Ethereum is, again, a good proxy for the whole ecosystem: it is focused on engineering, development, and new applications.
Ethereum, like bitcoin, has an equally passionate Layer Zero ecosystem and is as dominant compared to other “smart contract” blockchains as bitcoin is to other pure crypto-assets. Ethereum’s dominance is visible in the market cap of the asset but also in its share of tokenized assets. Ethereum is the dominant ecosystem for most “real-world” assets and the majority of stablecoins as well. With over 100 Layer 2 networks in operation, Ethereum has 20 times more “network extensions” than any other ecosystem, including bitcoin and Solana.
Both the Bitcoin and Ethereum ecosystems have ardent believers that see things differently from the dominant narrative. There is a small, but resilient application layer being built upon bitcoin. Bitcoin will soon have its own layer two networks, including some that are EVM- compatible.
Similarly, there is a passionate group of Ethereum believers who think Ethereum should be both the network computer and a scarcity-based asset. EIP-1559 (Ethereum Improvement Proposal), which was adopted in August 2021, reduced the rate at which new ETH was issued and shifted the gas fee model so some ETH is burned with each transaction. The result is that the amount of ETH in circulation is increasing at a slower pace than bitcoin and, in some cases, even decreasing.
Neither of these is necessarily a bad idea and, at least in theory, either ecosystem could be a host to both types of activity. In practice, the cultural requirements of each ecosystem are so different that they cannot really excel at more than one function at a time.
In the real world, currencies like the U.S. dollar are most effective as a means of exchange, but not necessarily as a store of value. You can use dollars to buy things, but a deflationary system that increased the value of the dollar, over time, would be catastrophic for the economy as it forced up real interest rates. As Ben Bernanke discovered, trying to stimulate an economy when inflation is low is very difficult. The same problem makes bitcoin unsuitable as a currency even while it may excel as a store of value.
With Ethereum, we’ll see how well the current blockchain boom plays out over the next few years. If the ecosystem retains its dominant share of new asset tokenization and smart contracts, I think we can declare it a winner on the primary mission. Bitcoin has a longer game to play, but if we see increasing correlation with gold, that may be an indicator that real-world investors are buying into the argument for digital scarcity.
Either way, it could be several more years of real world experience before I can prove (or disprove) my theory. This also means that memetic warfare on Twitter between ecosystems isn’t going away anytime soon.
The views reflected in this article are the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the global EY organization or its member firms.
Bitcoin Climbs to $105K; Crypto ETF Issuer Sees 35% Upside
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Bitcoin Is the Asset, Ethereum Is the Platform
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