Bitcoin stamped fresh all-time highs this week, closing above $118K as demand from U.S. spot ETFs crossed the $140 billion threshold only 18 months post-launch, while new players joined the public corporate treasury play. Payments rails kept pace as SoFi confirmed it will route cross-border transfers through on-chain Bitcoin, and Jack Dorsey’s BitChat prototype showed Lightning invoices relaying entirely offline over Bluetooth mesh. Meanwhile, El Salvador’s president took a victory lap on his $400 million unrealized Bitcoin gain. In short, durable demand is broadening across retail, institutional, and nation-state channels just as supply growth halves every four years.
Bitcoin Update
Bitcoin reached fresh all time highs this week, aided by continued institutional and corporate flows, inevitably driving more interest into the asset class, as has historically been the case.
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Industry & Institutional Updates
SoFi Bank CEO Anthony Noto told CNBC the bank’s forthcoming international-payments product will convert USD to BTC on-chain before settling in local fiat, citing lower cost and higher speed.
Jack Dorsey’s newly open-source Bluetooth-mesh messenger BitChat allows users relay Lightning invoices and move bitcoin entirely offline, hopping encrypted transactions from phone to phone until one with internet connectivity forwards them to the blockchain.
Perplexity AI partnered with Coinbase to roll out a real-time crypto-data service for institutional researchers and traders.
Murano Global Investments secured a $500 million standby equity facility to launch its Bitcoin corporate treasury strategy and disclosed an initial 21 BTC purchase.
Semler Scientific purchased 187 Bitcoin, lifting its treasury to 4,636 BTC.
Nayib Bukele shared a screenshot of El Salvador’s sovereign Bitcoin holdings, which not show an unrealized gain of over $400 million, signaling to other countries the merit of the strategy to other capital allocators.
Bhutan transferred 212 BTC to Binance as part of active treasury management, which has similarly coincided with price spikes. However, the country's Bitcoin holdings still are equivalent to roughly 40% of GDP.
Regulatory Updates
The U.S. Secret Service is building a 60 country network to share intelligence and train agencies on digital asset forensics, signaling a more coordinated approach to digital-asset crime.
Congressman Nick Begich sat down with Bitcoin Magazine to discuss his intentions for the US to acquire 1m Bitcoin, and the importance of self-custody.
Attorney Zack Shapiro of the Bitcoin Policy Institute flagged an amicus brief in a case where the government is asserting that developers of non-custodial privacy tools like Samourai and Tornado Cash could face prosecution for unlicensed money transmission despite never touching funds.
IBIT surpassed $80B in AUM this week, the fastest to do so, and roughly 5x quicker than the previous record holder. Total assets in spot bitcoin ETFs surpassed $140B for the first time as well.
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