🥳 Party in the USA

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Coinbase is making moves. 

Its asset management division is launching a new institutional fund that seeks to deliver yield on bitcoin holdings. 

Bloomberg reported that it’s looking to seek a 4% to 8% annualized net return. 

Here’s the catch: You have to be a non-US institutional investor. Womp womp. 

But hey, I have some good news for US folks if you just keep reading…

Elsewhere:

• Bitcoin’s at $95,000 this morning, a 9% increase in the last week. 

• Total RWA onchain, excluding stablecoins, is up 8.6% in the past 30 days to $21 billion.

• DeFi TVL is up 2.4% in the past 24 hours to $101 billion, per Blockworks Research.

🚚 Moving back

The news of the morning is that crypto lender Nexo — one of the few survivors from the collapse of the lending sector — is returning to the US. 

The announcement took place at an “exclusive” event with Donald Trump Jr. and represents yet another sign the Trump administration wants to open the US back up to crypto. 

"The key to everything crypto is going to be the regulatory framework,” Trump said in a press release.

Nexo says both retail and institutional customers will be able to access its products suite, which includes “high-yield crypto savings accounts, asset-backed credit lines, advanced trading, and institutional-grade liquidity solutions.”

Back in December 2022, Nexo announced that it would “gradually” exit the US, citing an unclear regulatory environment. BlockFi, FTX, Celsius and Voyager had all collapsed by then. 

“Our decision comes after more than 18 months of good-faith dialogue with US state and federal regulators which has come to a dead end,” Nexo said at the time, adding that it had attempted to “provide requested information and to proactively modify its business in response to their concerns.”

Fast-forward to now, and we’re in a totally different environment. 

Nexo isn’t the first to capitalize on that — OKX said just a few weeks ago that it was opening up OKX US in California. As I wrote on Friday, Pantera’s also aiming to expand the amount of capital it invests in US-based projects. 

It was a significant statement from Paul Veradittakit, given that a large portion of Pantera’s capital has gone to global projects, and because one of the earliest approaches to crypto from Veradittakit and Dan Morehead was to identify firms that adopted Coinbase’s approach to non-US markets.

Here’s the thing: Nexo’s announcement isn’t just another crypto company coming back to the US. My early take on this is that it shows the potential resurgence of the crypto lending market, which has pretty much been dead on arrival since 2022. 

If that sounds familiar to you, it’s probably because Galaxy first noted the potential resurgence earlier this month, when it reported that CeFi lending is up 73% following the collapse. 

Overall, the resurgence of crypto lending is healthy, but Nexo’s move is simply a step. More regulatory work is needed to ensure that nothing like 2022 happens again.

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Arkham is a crypto exchange and a blockchain analytics platform that lets you look inside the wallets of the best crypto traders — and then act on that information.

Arkham’s Intel Platform has a suite of features including real-time alerts, customizable dashboards, a transaction visualization tool, and advanced transaction filtering — all of which is accessible on all major blockchain networks, and completely free.

Arkham’s main product is the exchange, where users can express their trade ideas against the market.

• Stripe is testing a new stablecoin product aimed at companies that operate outside of the US, UK and EU. 

• New SEC chair Paul Atkins made his public debut as the head of the SEC at one of the agency’s crypto roundtables. 

• Nasdaq sent the SEC its thoughts on crypto regulation in a lengthy letter with a special focus on defining crypto.

🔎 A look inside

This morning’s Empire podcast was all things BlackRock. 

Empire co-host Jason Yanowitz chatted with BlackRock’s Samara Cohen. There’s a lot of insight to be gleaned from Cohen, who’s a powerhouse in her own right, and she certainly delivered. 

It’s no secret at this point that bitcoin’s not really acting the way some folks think it should — that is, be a safe haven like gold during market downturns. 

“This is an important moment to play out in terms of how Bitcoin's price performance does show up. I mean, this environment of market volatility is really induced by cross border tension and supply chain complexity like this should be Bitcoin's environment,” Cohen noted. 

Cohen added that, if anything, bitcoin’s just increased its correlation with equities. 

And yet, BlackRock’s bitcoin ETP IBIT hasn’t seen the level of outflows one might expect. For Cohen, this shows that the price action was focused on retail and speculative positions held by institutions, since IBIT can’t be levered in the same way bitcoin can be.

She added: “ Bitcoin hasn't had the volatility in the downtrade. It continues to have this kind of positive skewness to its volatility.”

But it’s not just bitcoin that Cohen or BlackRock are focused on. They’re also quite bullish on tokenization and how it can improve capital markets. 

“We  are very much focused on the path to more tokenization in markets. We are very focused on the utility of bridges to investors,” she told Yanowitz. 

My takeaway? BlackRock can’t stop, won’t stop its crypto journey. This is just the beginning.

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On my mind: Bitcoin price targets

Katherine: Standard Chartered thinks that bitcoin could top $120,000 this quarter, maintaining its very bullish end-of-year price target of $200K. 

The update from Standard Chartered comes on the heels of Cathie Wood’s Ark update to its price target: $2.4 million per coin by 2030. 

Price targets make for fantastic headlines, but I’m always a bit wary of them. 

There are a lot of things up in the air right now, and while we’re finally seeing bitcoin bounce back, I’m keenly aware that US tariffs aren’t fully off the table, and that could have a huge impact since — as Cohen pointed out above — bitcoin isn’t separating itself from equities. 

In a report last week, Coinbase Institutional said it still believes a “defensive stance” may be warranted throughout this quarter, with a potential upswing for prices at the tailend. 

I may not be a fortune teller, but it never hurts to take everything with a grain of salt.