🦄 Shun the nonbelievers

A dream is a wish your heart makes… unless that dream is bitcoin topping $100k, which happened late in the night for some of us. 

With $100k breached, bitcoin is the “seventh most valuable asset in the world by market cap, just behind the likes of Google and Amazon,” GSR’s Brian Rudick pointed out. 

Since November, we’ve seen bitcoin nearly double to hit $100k. And this climb hasn’t been without its challenges.

“Most investors are underestimating the price potential from continued global flows into bitcoin, whether from companies adding to their balance sheet or inflows into ETFs. There’s substantial interest in getting off zero, and there’s a market structure that is very different from traditional finance, which can lead to panic buying, pushing prices up quickly. The outlook for crypto is incredibly strong and returns are likely to outperform other risk assets,” Galaxy’s Chris Rhine said.

We’ve already gone over the price targets to watch, per Ledn’s John Glover, but I wanted to review one more time given bitcoin’s ability to stay above $100k. If it can quickly gain momentum to top $125k, then we could see a top of $160,000. But if we’re hanging around $100k, kind of like what we’ve seen so far, then $125,000 is the magic number. 

Oh, and if you need a laugh this morning, might I suggest checking out this 2019 tweet from notorious goldbug Peter Schiff:

Anyway, putting bitcoin aside (stay with me here), I wanted to take a quick look at some other things to watch this month from K33’s Vetle Lunde. 

First and foremost: Lunde said any December dips may be buying opportunities. 

“The underlying momentum is not to be messed with. I view hypothetical adverse reactions to surprising employment data or unchanged interest rates at the FOMC as opportunities for aggression. The market is well poised to peak near Trump’s inauguration, where I’ll look to de-risk properly. Until then, my allocation reigns long and strong,” he wrote in a note.

Lunde, who penned the note pre-$100k, is of the mind that we’ll see bitcoin “well into the $100,000’s.”

But a top hit could occur next month, which may track with what we heard from Glover if — and while technical analysis is a good thing to watch, it’s not a crystal ball — we see the levels in his reading of the Elliott Wave Theory.

“The average distance between BTC’s first cycle ATH and its last ATH during its past three cycles is 318 days. Under the assumption that average trajectories hold, a peak would occur on January 17. This is not unlikely, given that Trump’s inauguration will take place on January 20,” Lunde wrote. 

Thankfully, bitcoin’s holding above $100k for now, so we can all bask in the six-figure glory.

— Katherine Ross

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• Bitcoin’s holding above $102,000 in early morning trading, per Coinbase. 

• Ether’s up over 5% in the past day, climbing over $3,900. 

• JASMY, RENDER, and HYPE lead the top gainers on CoinGecko.

• DeFi’s TVL has jumped over $40 billion in the last month, hitting $135 billion per DeFi Llama.

• Coinbase and MicroStrategy are up 5% and 8% respectively in premarket trading after bitcoin’s milestone.

👋 Goodbye Gary

Crypto is “really exciting,” former SEC Commissioner Paul Atkins said in a podcast interview last year. 

In that same interview, he noted that the FTX collapse just happened to occur in crypto but essentially, fraud is fraud. He compared Sam Bankman-Fried’s actions to Bernie Madoff’s. 

Aside from public appearances, it’s clear that Atkins — who, in case you somehow missed it, is officially President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to take over the SEC — is not only knowledgeable about crypto but has been active in the space for years.

On paper, Atkins looks pretty pro-crypto, but I was curious to get some idea of who Atkins is and what he’s like. Which, of course, could give some readthrough on how he’d lead the SEC if he were to take the helm — which, as my colleague Casey Wagner pointed out — won’t be for a while because he has to get through the nomination process. The deal’s not done yet, so temper your expectations. 

He’s been a part of Securitize’s advisory board since 2019, Securitize CEO Carlos Domingo told me. 

“He's definitely going to bring a different attitude toward the space that is less about enforcement actions and litigation and more about figuring out what's the right regulation for letting this industry flourish,” he continued. Domingo knew of Atkins from his SEC days and from his work as co-chair for the Token Alliance which was launched by the Chamber of Digital Commerce. 

Atkins, Domingo said, is likely going to be “less controversial” and he’s more likely to have “a dialog with the industry participants to figure things out … Not having this animosity toward the industry, but somebody can sit with people and understand, you know, what needs to be done, so that there is investor protection and there is a certain type of regulation, but at the same time, the industry can actually grow.”

In the Free the People podcast episode I mentioned above, Atkins said it was “too bad” that a lot of crypto companies “couldn’t comply” with the current rules “the way they’re written.” He also praised Hester Peirce, who he previously worked with. 

“If the SEC were more accommodating and would deal straightforwardly with these various firms, I think it would be a lot better” for crypto companies to work directly in the US instead of going overseas, Atkins said.

While Domingo’s sad to be losing Atkins as an adviser, the US is gaining a “really good” potential leader of the SEC, he said.

— Katherine Ross

• President-elect Trump congratulated bitcoin on $100,000, adding “you’re welcome,” as he promised to “Make America Great Again.”

• Ark Invest CEO Cathie Wood tweeted that “bitcoin is a much bigger idea than gold” in response to Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s comments about the asset.

• Trump named former SEC Commissioner Paul Atkins as his pick to chair the regulatory agency.

• Interoperability protocol Union Labs announced a $12 million Series A round, bringing their total capital raised to $16 million.

• Grayscale notified the SEC that it hopes to list and trade shares of its Solana Trust, joining a growing group of Solana ETF hopefuls.

Q: What does Atkins as a potential SEC chair mean for crypto?

Short version: Let ‘er rip.

Long version: I anticipate a bidirectional spurt of activity once Atkins takes over. By this I mean the SEC will likely take a more permissive approach to the crypto-tied product proposals before it, and the industry, in turn, will ramp up the production of said proposals. We might see a Cambrian explosion of new offerings, crypto style.

But there might be a darker undercurrent here: Bad actors, operating under the assumption that a Gensler-free SEC might turn a blind eye to their activities, might be emboldened. This, I think, was the crux of Gensler’s approach: Wield a big hammer and scare the would-be fraudsters out of the market.

But as the last few years showed, Gensler went too far and angered potential partners in the market. Did he prevent the next FTX? I doubt it. Did he create the conditions for his own exit from office? Yes, I think he did.

In short, Atkin’s ascent is a bull signal. I think it’s hard to not see bullishness here given the atmosphere Gensler engendered. Once he’s in place, I think the crypto space will see the signal and run accordingly.

— Michael McSweeney 

I think you know what I’m going to say based on my chat with Domingo above, but after listening to Atkins speak about the SEC and crypto, I think he’s going to come in with far more of an open mind than we’ve previously seen. 

He’s not the type to regulate by enforcement (based on what we’ve heard so far) and it seems he is of the belief that the current rules and regulations don’t really cover crypto. But it goes a bit deeper than that: While Atkins obviously wants to encourage US innovation, he’s also spoken of the impact that all of this could have on investors and, for me, that’s the key. 

Look, I’m all for innovation too, but I think having a leader who is both knowledgeable of the industry and someone who is fiercely protective of investors is the best of both worlds. 

To Michael’s point, it’s hard to be even slightly bearish here. For me, this could very well be the bull signal we needed to really get retail back. 

— Katherine Ross