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ARB $0.1804 -0.26%
NEAR $4.82 -0.57%Two inflation reports, one day apart, told crypto most of what it needed to know this week. Wednesday's hotter-than-expected US consumer price data revived talk of Federal Reserve rate hikes, and Thursday's producer price figure came in at 6.3% against an expected 5.3%. Bitcoin had already slipped below $82,000 by then, and it closed the week at $81,179, down 3.2%. Ether fared worse, falling 6.9% to $2,374. Around those numbers ran a second story that refused to go away: the Ledger saga, which grew stranger by the day.
Rates Set the Terms
The week opened with the macro backdrop already crowded. Tankers were reported burning in the Strait of Hormuz over the weekend, and TASS noted that an Iran-Oman agreement on the waterway did not provide for its immediate reopening. Business Times Singapore floated a counterpoint, suggesting a global bond sell-off might mean fewer central bank hikes. On Monday the Bank of Korea's chief said back-to-back increases had bought time to respond to financial risks, and diesel prices eased after Donald Trump claimed an energy ceasefire in the Ukraine war.
By Tuesday, The Block reported Bitcoin under $82,000 with liquidations surging past $770 million. Then came the inflation data. Yahoo Finance and others tied the market's slip directly to rising hike bets, the Nasdaq closed sharply lower, and ZyCrypto argued that US institutions were offloading bitcoin faster than Binance traders. Thursday's producer price surprise kept the pressure on, with attention turning to a speech by Fed chair Kevin Warsh.
Warsh avoided rate-hike hints, and on Friday Cointelegraph described Bitcoin steadying around $82,000 as markets pared back their expectations. Hormuz stayed in the headlines throughout: the BBC reported ship attack reports reaching a record high, and on Saturday Euronews relayed an IRGC claim that a supertanker was ablaze after striking a mine.
Ledger's Long Week
On Sunday, Ledger said the scope of the wallet-draining episode was limited. By Thursday, Bloomberg reported the company unveiling an $899 smartphone-like device in the wake of a $90 million crypto theft. Friday brought the oddest turn, as CoinDesk reported a scammer losing almost $5 million in bitcoin to a Ledger spy-chip exploit, and the Daily Hodl added that the drained wallets held proceeds from a so-called task scam.
Security worries spread well beyond one hardware maker. A report circulated that OpenAI models had hacked a crypto wallet, Bitcoinist covered a Pirate Chain exploit that created 39.8 million unauthorized tokens, and Crypto.news reported onchain data showing hackers moving stolen funds into Zcash.
Buyers, Policymakers and Big Wallets
Corporate treasuries kept buying regardless. Strategy added 250 bitcoin for $21.5 million, taking its holdings to 848,250 BTC, while DFDV continued accumulating SOL. Strive said it would sell another $130 million of SATS stock to buy more bitcoin. Binance launched an AI trading tool after a 150,000-user beta. Not everyone was persuaded, however: John Paulson dismissed bitcoin as a limited supply of nothing and warned of an AI bubble.
On policy, TD Cowen suggested the CFTC's new crypto framework could run up against a 2028 election deadline. A BIS paper linked bank deposit rates to stablecoin growth, finding USDC more responsive, and France's lower house passed an amendment taxing crypto gains on stablecoin conversions, with Senate review still pending.
The ledger showed some very large movements. The biggest was $498 million in WBTC moving from Morpho Blue to an unlabelled address, followed by $378 million in BTC passing between unlabelled addresses. BlackRock's Coinbase Prime deposit address sent $100 million in ETH to a Coinbase Prime hot wallet, and Abraxas Capital Management moved $74 million in stETH to Lido's wstETH contract. A $41 million ZEC transfer between unlabelled addresses rounded out the week's largest moves.
Next week, attention turns to whether the Fed's tone holds, how Hormuz develops, and how the French Senate handles the stablecoin tax.
