Bitcoin breaks above $97,000 as trade war headlines fade into the background

This editorial is from last week's edition of the Week in Review newsletter. Subscribe to the weekly newsletter to get the editorial the second it's finished.

As trade war headlines faded into the background last week, markets exhaled—and bitcoin broke above $97,000. Meanwhile, Token2049 Dubai offered both spectacle and substance.

This editorial is from last week’s edition of the Week in Review newsletter. Subscribe to the weekly newsletter to get the editorial the second it’s finished.

Bitcoin and Token2049 Dubai

Bitcoin broke through $97,000 this week, marking an 18% rebound since March’s close. This rally is fueled in part by renewed institutional interest, including increased ETF inflows and the continuation of the narrative that bitcoin is finally becoming a gold-like asset.

Another reason for Bitcoin’s price action relates to the lessening of trade war news. After a month of nearly constant Trump tariff news, this week was almost silent on the issue, though tariff news did continue to come out. Traditional markets and crypto markets responded positively to this lack of major trade war news.

I spent the week at Token2049 interviewing people, taking in the spectacle, and checking out projects and talks on the conference floor. Eric Trump headlined Day 2, discussing digital sovereignty and confirming that buyers of a new Trump Organization tower in Dubai can purchase apartments with bitcoin. On a related note, World Liberty Financial announced its USD1 stablecoin will be natively integrated on TRON, with plans to scale to billions in market cap.

Changpeng Zhao (CZ) made a rare public appearance. To me, the most interesting point he made was about Europe, “We are advising many countries on how to set up a crypto reserve like in the US. Europe isn’t part of the discussion, it’s missing on the map.” Europe, getting ahead of the U.S. with MiCA (Markets in Crypto-Assets), the nations themselves seem far behind both the U.S. and Asia. Afterwards, in an interview with Oliver Stauber, the CEO of KuCoin EU, I asked him about this, he wasn’t terribly hopeful in the short term, but was over the long term.

The spectacle of Token2049 Dubai included a zipline, climbing wall, big mascot costumed characters, men in mirror-paneled suits, a cold plunge, fresh coconut stand, an excessive amount of neon lights, arcade games, a race simulator with a moving seat, cosplay girls, and more. The floor was packed, and everyone seemed excited. I heard the hilarious phrase, “zipline to the moon!” It made me a little uneasy. Top signs?

My last interview of the conference, Eric Balchunas, Senior ETF Analyst for Bloomberg, and my go-to guy when it comes to ETF news related to crypto, made me feel much better about the exuberance of the conference. He also reframed my thinking of the coming fight between spot bitcoin ETFs and all the crypto native custodians like centralized exchanges, wrapped bitcoin providers, bitcoin sidechains and L2s.

I used to think the crypto native bitcoin custodians would eventually win out, now I’m not so sure. I think crypto companies are not taking the ETFs as seriously as they should.

Certainly some non-trivial percent of Bitcoin’s strong price action is attributable to the ETFs. These ETF inflows will only increase over time. The Bitcoin and crypto ecosystem cannot afford to underestimate the power of ETFs, which have transformed the traditional equity market.