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Every month, Blockworks publishes a disclosure page where you can track what folks around our company hold (if it’s a position over $5,000). 

Yesterday, people around CT weren’t too pleased to see that the editorial team maintains few positions in crypto. If you follow me on X, then you might have seen my response to this, but I wanted to share it with all of you given that you choose to wake up with the Empire newsletter every morning.

I started off on Wall Street, where I signed forms preventing me from owning any single stock. I no longer have those mandates in place at Blockworks, but I carry the belief that there’s no way I can report on crypto without bias if I own anything. I don’t even expose my personal stock portfolio to crypto firms. 

My job is to objectively bring you news and insights, I’m not here to pump my bags. And, hopefully, this newsletter informs your decisions. That’s all I can ask for.

Meanwhile:

• Bitcoin’s trading around $81,000 after dipping to $76K overnight, marking a 2% decline in the past day.

• Mt. Gox’s making moves… again. This time, it transferred $905 million of bitcoin to an unmarked wallet, per Arkham.

• Total liquidations in the past 24 hours sit at $881 million, according to CoinGlass.

🎉 Banking excitement

Right before the weekend kicked off — and in the middle of the White House Crypto Summit — the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency clarified that, actually, banks could engage in some crypto activities. 

What’s more, they don’t necessarily need to seek the okay from regulators before hopping into crypto. 

It’s a big deal, but one that got lost in the sauce because we were a bit preoccupied with the executive order on the strategic bitcoin reserve and stockpile. Essentially, this was the first step that banks were waiting for. 

Pillsbury partner Brian Montgomery told me his clients — which include banks, financial institutions and the like — are excited. He spoke to me from a banking conference where OCC’s acting Comptroller Rodney Hood appeared, and Hood sounded “very eager” to open the avenue for banks.

Apparently, Bank of America’s Brian Moynihan isn’t the only one considering a stablecoin either, as quite a few large national banks are mulling the idea, too.  

“Some banks have wanted to be able to provide services in the digital asset space, and haven't been able to do it. So I don't know that the tone for banks has changed. I think the tone from regulators has been changing over the last several months,” Montgomery told me.

The thing is that the OCC’s statement only covers national banks. We’d need to see something similar on the federal level from the FDIC and even the Federal Reserve to actually change the stance of regulators, but Montgomery thinks it’s just a matter of time before everyone’s in alignment. 

The timing could be a matter of months — specifically three to four months, though Montgomery was careful to note that the timeline is a bit speculative. 

I should note there are reports floating around that suggest President Trump is mulling an executive order that would roll back some of the anti-crypto banking policies that the former administration put into place. Specifically, the EO would be expected to focus on the Federal Reserve’s policies and could be signed as soon as this week.

Either way, guidance could arrive in the next month or two. If this timeline works out, then it gives banks and regulators a cushion between letting financial institutions explore potential offerings and (hopefully) the passing of stablecoin regulation or other crypto regulation over in DC. 

It’s not just stablecoins the banks are interested in, either. They’re also looking to custody crypto and provide banking services to crypto firms (which is a shift in tone from Operation Chokepoint 2.0). 

“We've had to remind folks and think to ourselves that there are still state regulators out there that have a say in a lot of how this works, and so — whether it’s potential money transmission activity or state charter banks providing these services — it's a positive step that the federal administration and federal regulators are moving in this direction. But that's not always the end of the game. [We] need to be thinking about state regulation as well,” Montgomery explained. 

It’ll be a “hurdle” given that not all state regulators are crypto friendly, but it’s nothing Montgomery is concerned about — just something that he’ll be mulling in further conversations

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• Coinbase’s back in business in India after registering with India’s Financial Intelligence Unit, though it won’t actually roll out services until later this year. 

• CleanSpark is joining the S&P SmallCap 600 index later this month.

• An Ethereum whale, who’s held since its ICO, moved roughly 7,000 ETH to Kraken as the selloff deepened. It’s just a small portion of the whale’s total holdings, though, which sit at 30,000 ETH. 

😩 No pain no gain

It’s a blood bath no matter where you look.

And unfortunately, there’s no denying equities and crypto are interconnected this time around. 

ETH’s trading just a few hundred dollars above where it was around the time FTX collapsed in November 2022, while bitcoin’s maintained a sizable distance from that figure (a cool $65,000 above where it was at the time of the collapse, if you want a positive number).

Justin Barlow, head of BD & Investments at Sei, told me it’s hard to pinpoint any bottom, not just the bottom, but right now, we’re very much tied into the macro narrative.

If sentiment were to flip, then he wouldn’t be surprised if crypto changed its tune and we started to see more green pop up on various charts. 

“If you look at sort of historical correlations between the equities market and crypto, it's seemingly increased over time as crypto becomes more and more mainstream. And I think that's to be expected right now you have a lot of the big names that are active in traditional markets, very active in crypto markets, and naturally, when they want to be risk off, that translates into not just obviously equities, but also the crypto market as well,” Barlow explained. 

Basically, when things are good, having BlackRock and other big financial giants in the space is great. But when things go sideways, well, crypto’s one of the first trades that gets cycled out.

In the short term, this leaves crypto in a bad spot. Continue to expect a bit more pain until there’s more favorable economic data, but it doesn’t change the thinking that, long term, crypto is still looking strong. 

(Please scroll up and reread the first section if you don’t believe me.)

This is just one of the first cycles, Barlow said, where we’re seeing the mesh of traditional financial institutions and crypto play out. 

“Not to say that there aren't opportunities for crypto to diverge from traditional markets, but it's certainly a factor, particularly for some of the larger assets,” he added. 

The cycles are happening “much faster,” and he wouldn’t be surprised if we start to see some excitement “bubble back up” in the “near future.”

“I think the important thing is just looking at things from the long term and thinking about it in terms of the sort of underlying metrics that matter and growth that matters of users, rather than just sort of intraday price fluctuations,” he told me. 

This is just an unfortunate side effect of adoption, I guess.

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ZKsync is accelerating institutional blockchain adoption and the rise of tokenization. Institutions choose ZKsync to move tokenized assets securely across enterprises while preserving privacy and governance. With gasless transactions, seamless onboarding, and scalable ZK infrastructure, enterprises can transfer financial products and data privately using ZK Stack — an open-source, trustless blockchain platform designed for speed, low costs, security, and interoperability without sacrificing control.

Learn more at ZKsync.io/empire.

On our minds: Crypto IPOs

Katherine: It’s a topic I’ve been dying to get into after seeing reports that both Kraken and Gemini want to debut on the stock market. 

I said this a while ago but I do think that this is the year of the crypto IPO. Or at least filing for one. We may need to see a bit more of a stable environment in equities before folks start heading to places like the New York Stock Exchange or Nasdaq to ring the opening bells. 

These things also take a while. We’re going to hear rumors and whispers about the roadshow — or not, depending on how the companies go public — and we’ll get a sense of where these firms stand. 

More importantly, we’ll get a look at the financial makeup of the companies and that will give us a better understanding of how these firms are performing. 

That’s also why I love traditional IPOs: I’m nosy. I want to see what you have in your S-1 and dig through the filings for all the juicy details.