Weekly Market Update: Two Pizzas and a Downgrade

Bitcoin’s shaping the future of money

This week marks two historic firsts, one in real time and one in the review mirror.

In a surprise announcement famed rating analyst Moody’s downgraded the U.S. credit rating for the very first time in history! Another major blow to the already shaky confidence in the U.S. dollar and global hegemony. 

In stark contrast, tomorrow marks 15 years since that magical first Bitcoin commercial transaction, when programmer Laszlo Hanyecz famously spent 10,000 BTC (worth over $1 billion USD today) to buy just two Papa Johns Pizzas. Happy Bitcoin Pizza Day!

This week’s newsletter is a special edition! We’ll explore key historical moments that forged the U.S. dollar’s global dominance, juxtaposed with pivotal milestones in Bitcoin’s journey so far. Join us to uncover lessons from these contrasting paths. Buckle up!

Pioneers (USD Pre-1776 vs. BTC 2008-2010):

The American colonies ran on a chaotic mix of barter, wampum, and foreign coins, with trust as local as a handshake and no central system. Contrast that with 2008, when Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin whitepaper hit like a bomb during the Great Recession.

Bitcoin’s peer-to-peer system mocked Wall Street’s collapse. Cypherpunks mined coins on old PCs, echoing those pioneers who crafted their own money – both eras were raw, rebellious, and fiercely independent, bowing to no king or banker.

A Chaotic Experiment (USD 1776-1789 vs. BTC 2011-2013):

The Revolutionary War pushed America to mature – the Continental Congress issued “Continentals” to fund the fight, but inflation soared! Post-war, the Constitution and 1792 Coinage Act created the USD, tied to gold and silver, for fragile unity.

Bitcoin’s parallel? The early 2010s, when it surged from niche forums to cypherpunk fame. Mt Gox and Silk Road highlighted its risky, rebellious edge – anonymous and borderless. Like the early USD, Bitcoin was a daring, chaotic experiment, rallying outcasts for freedom.

Triumph Through Conflict (USD 1861-1865 vs. BTC 2014-2017):

The Civil War tested the USD, with the Union issuing greenbacks – fiat money unbound to metal – to fund the fight, risking inflation but showing federal power to define value. Post-war, national banks cemented USD dominance.

Bitcoin’s echo? The mid-2010s altcoin surge – Ethereum, Ripple XRP, and others – flooded markets, yet Bitcoin soared from $200 to $20,000 by 2017, fueled by tech stock hype. Like greenbacks, Bitcoin’s value was a market gamble, with platforms like Coinbase acting as modern national banks.

Coming of Age (USD 1870s-1913 vs. BTC 2018-2022):

America’s industrial surge – railroads, steel, oil – made the USD a global contender. The Federal Reserve’s 1913 launch gave it a steady hand, cementing trust. Bitcoin’s equivalent? It’s 2018-2021 coming-of-age. After the 2017 crash, crypto matured.

MicroStrategy’s Michael Saylor went full Bitcoin maximalist, stacking it as a corporate shield against inflation, pitching it as “digital gold” to boardrooms. PayPal and Square brought crypto to the masses. The 2020-2021 bull run, fueled by stimulus and rock-bottom rates, catapulted Bitcoin to $69,000. 

Global Dominance (USD 1914-1971 vs. BTC 2023-present):

The World Wars crowned the USD. World War I weakened Europe and by World War II America was the global banker. Bretton Woods in 1944 made the USD the world’s reserve currency, linked to gold until Nixon’s 1971 rug-pull.

Bitcoin’s parallel? The 2022-2025 era, in 2024 spot Bitcoin ETFs let the world’s wealthy boomers invest without touching a private key. Trump’s 2025 push for Bitcoin as a strategic reserve echoed Bretton Woods’ geopolitical flex. Banks, once skeptical, now chase custody deals, with pension and sovereign funds eyeing up crypto.

It’s undeniable that Bitcoin is still in the Global Dominance phase – and its future gleams with promise when compared to the rocky path that lies ahead for the USD.

The USD’s rise was top-down, hammered out in wars, laws and America’s iron grip – trust that was built on battleships and bureaucracy and is now starting to fade like the setting sun.

Bitcoin’s a bottom-up revolution, coded by outsiders, spread by memes and legitimized by the markets – trust rooted in algorithms and scarcity that is shaping the future of money.

Market sentiment is holding firmly in: Greed

Highlights this week: 

• BTC has held strongly above $100k and spiked to $107k before closing the week just below that – we could well see a new all-time high in the coming days.
• Investor sentiment is also holding up strongly in the ‘Greed’ zone but Google search results show that retail is still lagging with hesitation.
• ETF inflows added nearly $800 million last week, boosted by ETH ETF inflows.
• The overall market was a mixed bag with some Altcoins following Bitcoin higher but others having a rest and consolidation after their big price run last week.
• Total crypto market cap is holding up at $3.5 trillion with BTC holding over 63% share.
• The surprise winner of the week is AAVE up +9.9% after reaching over $40 billion in locked value.
• The big losers this week are OP and WIF down -19.4% and -17.0% after their big gains last week. 

View all top gainers: Visit the top gainers page to find out more. 

Highlights from the crypto space:

Bitcoin responded with renewed enthusiasm to Moody’s downgrade of the U.S. credit rating, recording its highest weekly close in history at $106,520 – and edging to just 2% away from a new all-time-high price.

Bitcoin futures ‘open interest’ just hit a record high of $72 billion, signalling rising use of leverage among institutional investors. $1.2 billion in shorts at $107,000 – $108,000 are at risk of liquidation, boosting BTC’s breakout potential.

After the deepest correction in 65 years, M2 money supply is now expanding again at 4.1% from a year ago – which is a very constructive ‘tail wind’ for the crypto market as a leading liquidity beneficiary and indicator.

In a remarkable u-turn, JP Morgan Chase has announced that it will now allow clients to purchase Bitcoin, but won’t custody the asset – a stark contrast to CEO Jamie Dimon’s famous quote from just a few years ago: “if a trader began trading in Bitcoin I’d fire them in a second. For two reasons: It’s against our rules, and they’re stupid. And both are dangerous.”

A report from Citi’s Future Finance think tank predicts the stablecoin market could surpass the current size of the combined crypto industry, growing to US$3.7 trillion by 2030!

Circle, the issuer of USDC Stablecoin, is still planning an IPO, but the company is also in informal talks with Ripple and Coinbase about a sale, according to a report from Fortune. Watch this space!

MoonPay has teamed up with Mastercard to launch a new suite of stablecoin payment cards that will seamlessly integrate digital asset spending at over 150 million merchants worldwide.

In a second distribution of assets, the FTX estate is set to start distributing more than $5B “within 1 to 3 business days” of May 30 – but not all FTX account holders will be reimbursed in this round.

El Salvador’s ‘Bitcoin President’ Bukele, just posted their Bitcoin P&L on social media showing +124% gains and $357 million in unrealised profit!

Bitcoin is now ‘deflationary’ according to CryptoQuant CEO, pointing out that Michael Saylor’s company Strategy is buying Bitcoin at a faster rate than total miner output – giving the supply capped asset a -2.33% annual deflation rate.

Veteran short seller Jim Chanos has revealed that he is “selling MicroStrategy stock and buying Bitcoin.” He has taken this approach because he sees Strategy’s approach as risky and perceives it has an inflated valuation relative to its substantial Bitcoin holdings

Yuga Labs has just sold CryptoPunks, one of the most iconic NFT collections consisting of 10,000 pixel-art characters, to the not-for-profit Node Foundation in a deal that is focused on the preservation and exhibition of digital art. Is this the formal ending to the NFT craze or will it throw on some much needed fuel to the fire?

Just days after joining the S&P 500, Coinbase reported last week that cybercriminals bribed overseas support agents to steal customer data to use in social engineering attacks.

The incident may cost Coinbase up to $400 million to fix – and CEO Brian Armstrong has issued a $20 million bounty for information leading to arrest.

In other crypto news…

• The SEC delayed its decision on Grayscale’s Solana ETF to assess compliance with investor protection.

• Uniswap has become the first DEX to reach $3T in all-time trading volume.

• As the meme coin dinner with President Trump approaches, it appears as if most of the attendees will be people from other countries.

• UK crypto firms will need to report customer transactions on their platforms from 2026 onward as part of an initiative to strengthen crypto tax reporting practices.

• Crypto Execs are reportedly ‘beefing up their security’ as violent attacks on crypto investors are on the rise and authorities are concerned about public safety.

• Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund disclosed a $408.5 million stake in the iShares Bitcoin Trust, according to a 13F filing released last week.

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🌎 Macro news TLDR: In the US dollar we trust?

Since the Great Recession of 2007-2009, the U.S. dollar has faced some serious challenges but it still remains on top. 

Four rounds of quantitative easing from 2008 to 2022 pumped $8.7 trillion into the economy, spiking money supply and massively diluting purchasing power. Inflation stayed low, but U.S. debt rocketed up. The dollar held firm with the USD Index climbing, yet the debt has lingered like an unpaid bar tab.

Sanctions have also rattled trust in the USD. In 2022, the U.S. froze $130 billion in Russia’s U.S. Treasuries – labeled theft by Moscow – while booting Russia from SWIFT and seizing assets. This global dollar weaponization has fueled further dedollarisation. 

Moody’s downgrade of the U.S. credit rating this past week is just another hole in an already leaky bucket. Sure, the dollar has been here before – S&P’s 2011 downgrade didn’t faze it. So is this time really going to be any different? 

A decade later, it is a different world now and the U.S. government debt obligations are much, much higher – and spiking long term treasury yields are not going to help! The U.S. led international debt based monetary system is without a doubt broken and radical reform and reset is a mathematical certainty – eventually. The question is: how much longer can the U.S. keep kicking the can down the road?

Keep a close eye on President Trump’s next move… Did his Middle East diplomatic tour lay the groundwork for a Petro-Dollar 2.0 agreement? Or will it escalate trade war tensions, potentially driving negotiations toward new Mar-a-Lago Accords?

Economic news from the Americas

Moody’s has downgraded the U.S. credit rating for the first time from AAA to AA1 – leaving the U.S. without a top grade among any of the major rating agencies.

Moody’s cited concerns over the level of government debt and the more than $100 trillion of unfunded liabilities – the stock market shook it off to close a 6 day winning streak on Monday.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent responded by calling Moody’s “a lagging indicator” – but the bond market is having little regard for the Trump Administration’s demand for lower rates, as 30 year Bond yields spiked over 5% and pushed up 30 year fixed mortgage rates back over 7%.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell warned last week that longer-term interest rates are likely to be higher as the economy changes and policy is in flux, but the markets largely shrugged it off.

Elevated long-term treasury yields is a strong signal that the risk premium for U.S. government debt is rising along with inflation expectations.

The Fed was caught quietly bailing out the Bond Market last week with a $43.6B liquidity injection. No buyers? No problem! 

Continuing on his America first campaign, President Trump has told Apple CEO Tim Cook that he doesn’t want the tech giant building its products in India. Apple has been ramping up production in India with the aim of eventually making 25% of global iPhones in the country.

UnitedHealth Group (UNH) was once one of the biggest companies in the world at $400 billion market cap, until the recent perfect storm of issues caused the stock to plummet over -50% in a month, in one of the biggest and fastest collapses in S&P history – proving that even the biggest companies can fail!

Over in Europe & the Middle East…

Concluding a diplomatic tour of the Middle East last week, President Trump announced a series of historic trade deals with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE – focused on tech, AI, aerospace, and defense, totalling more than $2 trillion and aimed at boosting U.S. economic interests. Some are calling it Petro-Dollar 2.0!

In a controversial move, President Trump has accepted a $400 million jet as a ‘gift’ from the royal family of Qatar, which former VP Mike Pence then called ‘a bad idea’, citing national security concerns and saying that “Qatar has a long history of playing both sides.”

Russian President Putin decided to ‘duck’ Kyiv’s challenge to attend peace talks in person, instead sending aides and deputy ministers to Turkey – Ukrainian President Zelenskiy has responded by doing the same and saying “Russia is not serious enough”. 

Europe has weathered President Trump’s trade war to deliver resilient first-quarter results, expected to have increased 1.9% from a year ago, the fourth straight quarter of growth. 

And Britain’s economy also grew more strongly than expected, accelerating to show growth of 0.7%, up sharply from just 0.1% in the quarter of 2024.

The U.K. and European Union announced a landmark deal to reset relations on Monday after Britain’s shock exit from the bloc in 2020 – officials heralded it as a “historic day” and a “new chapter in post-Brexit relations.”

And in Asia Pacific…

China’s April retail sales rose by 5.1% from a year earlier, missing analysts’ estimates of 5.5% – signaling that consumption remains a worry for the world’s second-largest economy. Sales had grown by 5.9% in the previous month.

Japan’s economy shrank for the first time in a year, contracting 0.2% in the March quarter as exports declined sharply.

Japan’s bond market just fired a warning shot at the global economy as their 40-year government bond yield surged to 3.445% on Monday, the highest it’s been in two decades.

The Australian government’s plan to tax unrealised gains on large superannuation balances, $3 million and above, has already sparked a capital flight as wealthy retirees scramble to sell assets and restructure their investment portfolios.

A judge’s ruling in a criminal case may pave the way for $640 million in tax refunds, challenging the Australian Tax Office’s long-held stance on crypto taxation. Let’s hope NZ is next!

Over in NZ, the Real Estate Institute reported that house prices fell -1.1% over the last year, bringing the median house now down to $781,000 in April 2025.

That’s a wrap for this week!

Stay tuned for the next update.

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