Just a week after President Trump in the U.S. announced the creation of a strategic Bitcoin reserve, the price of Bitcoin has taken a bit of a tumble. This dip seems to be largely due to broader economic uncertainties that have arisen from the new administration’s typically unpredictable and dramatic policy decisions.
As of late Friday evening, you could snag a Bitcoin for a little over $84,000, according to CoinGecko. That’s after a nearly 4% decrease over the past seven days.
While Bitcoin has certainly seen better days, dropping more than 20% from its January record high, analysts chatting with Decrypt suggest this downturn might not last for long.
And you can probably guess why… yup, it’s Trump again.
Turns out, a White House official let slip to a group of crypto heavyweights on Thursday that the new administration is keen on accumulating as much Bitcoin as possible.
Indeed, this week has been anything but quiet in the world of Bitcoin.
ETF Action
Let’s talk ETFs. This week, American crypto investors kept pulling money out of Bitcoin ETFs. A hefty sum of nearly $900 million exited these investment vehicles just by Thursday, according to the most recent figures from Farside Investors.
And it seems Bitcoin ETFs are now trailing behind gold ETFs, a reversal from last December when they briefly took the lead.
However, don’t hit the panic button just yet! Experts have reassured Decrypt that Bitcoin ETFs still have plenty of potential this year. Bloomberg’s ETF analyst, Eric Balchunas, even suggested that Bitcoin is likely to emerge as the long-term victor in the ETF arena.
Bitwise Drops Another Bitcoin-Related ETF
And speaking of ETFs, it seems asset managers are far from thinking the market is saturated. On Tuesday, Bitwise rolled out yet another fund, this time designed to give investors exposure to publicly traded companies that are sitting on the largest piles of Bitcoin.
The freshly launched Bitwise Bitcoin Standard Corporations ETF—trading under the ticker OWNB—tracks a total of 21 companies that each hold 1,000 or more Bitcoins. This includes names like Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy), Bitcoin mining giant MARA, Coinbase (the biggest crypto exchange in the US), and even Tesla, the electric car manufacturer.
Rumble Keeps Stacking Sats
While YouTube competitor Rumble didn’t make the cut for Bitwise’s new index, they’re a prime example of a smaller company embracing Bitcoin. This media firm announced last year their plan to allocate a cool $20 million of their extra cash reserves into Bitcoin.
And just this Wednesday, the Nasdaq-listed platform revealed they’d added roughly 188 Bitcoin to their treasury, snagging them at an average price of $91,000 each.
Has Strategy Pumped the Brakes on Bitcoin Buys?
Strategy, the Bitcoin treasury pioneer that laid the groundwork for companies like Rumble, seems to have dialed back its Bitcoin acquisitions after a pretty intense buying spree.
Decrypt reached out to some experts to get the scoop, and the consensus is that it’s unlikely Strategy—formerly known as MicroStrategy—is abandoning its long-term Bitcoin strategy. Instead, they might be shifting focus to their new stock offering, STRK.
Is the White House About to Go Big on Bitcoin?
Perhaps the most jaw-dropping Bitcoin news this week? Word on the street is that the White House might be about to dive even deeper into Bitcoin.
Sources who were present at a closed-door Bitcoin Policy Institute roundtable on Tuesday have confirmed to Decrypt that the new administration is indeed planning a significant Bitcoin buying spree. Apparently, Bo Hines, executive director of the Presidential Working Group on Digital Assets, spilled the beans.
This revelation follows President Trump’s move last week, where he made good on a campaign promise by signing an order to establish a strategic Bitcoin reserve.
Edited by James Rubin
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