Bitcoin holds steady as yields climb, major exchanges go 24/7

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This episode of “The Daily Wolf with Scott Melker” explores bitcoin’s (BTC-USD) steadiness versus the continued climb in bond yields, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and London Stock Exchange (LSE) are both building tokenized stock markets, while Binance is building a 24/7 options trading market.

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Bitcoin’s rally is confronting a hostile global bond market. But Bitcoin has remained surprisingly strong in the face of all of that. We’re going to tell you why and break down all the other stories moving crypto markets today on the Daily Wolf. Let’s go.

What is up everybody? Welcome to the Daily Wolf on Yahoo Finance. I am your host Scott Melker, also known as the Wolf of All Streets and we’ve got about 15 minutes to dive into Bitcoin price action and all the stories that are moving markets and I’ve got to say

that Bitcoin has been surprisingly resilient in the face of quite a bit of macro headwinds. We’re going to break those down right now. Here you go. Here’s the headline. Bitcoin holds near 78,000

as rising oil, treasury yields cap further gains. Now, obviously we know

that when Bacent announced that he would intervene in the bond market, Bitcoin went flying, we had a short squeeze and then continued up over $80,000. And it was the idea that the United States government had finally seen enough pain in the bond market that they were going to react. But of course, since then,

even as Bacent has increased his rhetoric, we’ve seen those yields skyrocket back up as if he never said anything. The bond vigilantes are not buying what Bacent is saying, which has been problematic, but not for Bitcoin.

Now, let’s just look at how bad it is across the board. Japan’s benchmark bond yield rises to 3% for the first time in 30 years. 10-year yield hits highest since January 2025 as higher oil prices stoke inflation worries. Same story here. Seeing these headlines everywhere. Bond yield surge as oil prices fuel inflation worries. Of course, we’ve seen

an uptick in military action in the straits of Hormuz, which I hear are going to be the straits of America soon.

Why not? We’ve got a lake, we’ve got a golf. We need some straights. Right? Uh, and all of these things are going to put more pressure on the Fed. Right now, obviously, we’re seeing that people are pricing in Fed rate hikes. I still don’t believe that those will happen. But we basically had,

you know, Bacent create this situation where Bitcoin could go up. Then Warsh on Friday came in and poured cold water all over the idea, and now the actual markets are sort of confirming what Warsh said, right? So we’ve got Bitcoin consolidating here after gaining 24%. This was its strongest month since November of 2024.

But then, you have all this bad news which is supposed to send Bitcoin down, but it’s remained extremely strong. So once again, to add some more fuel to this. US Treasury yields reach their highest levels, but German 10-year yields highest since 2011, British 10-year yields highest level since 2008.

And now some markets even pricing a Fed rate hike at 70%. So, we all know that Warsh’s mandate is to come in and cut rates. We all know that what Bacent needs to see him do is to cut rates because we have $40 trillion in national debt now and the bond market is seemingly breaking.

A lot going on here and the real story once again is that Bitcoin has ceased to care. Now, I told you when Bitcoin seemed like it was bottoming for all those months, that one of my favorite signals was the fact that bad news was no longer sending the market lower.

We got, you know, news from strategy and all of these uh, you know, exchanges shutting down and of course macro bad news, and Bitcoin remain steady before heading up. And it’s still doing that even as it’s established a higher floor up around $78,000. I think that uh Bitcoin is looking extremely healthy right now even if it gets some retracement before

what I believe is likely to be another move to the upside. So, Washington’s obviously fighting over the price of money here, uh, with the Fed and the Treasury on opposite sides, but the operators of the world’s largest exchanges are rebuilding those markets themselves. And one of those

is the London Stock Exchange right here. London Stock Exchange to work with Payward to bring biggest UK stocks on chain. So Payward is the parent company of Kraken. We’re going to continue to tell you about them later in the show as well. But Payward making absolutely monster moves right now. And the second story, I’ll break them both down. NYSE owner ICE taps T0 for tokenized securities push,

take stake in firm. The deal adds transfer agent and settlement infrastructure to ICE’s plans for a New York Stock Exchange affiliated market for tokenized stocks. T0 says.

Okay, let’s go back to our friends over in London who lost the Revolutionary War to us. Sorry that happened to you guys.

The London Stock Exchange part with payward, Kraken’s parent company to put the 100 largest LSE listed stocks on blockchain rails. They’re going to do this through X stocks, which is the existing uh product that Kraken has, and those tokens are backed one for one by shares held in custody. Now, we know there’s a lot of ways that people are doing tokenized stocks. This is arguably the right way. So obviously they’re going to you’re going to be able to trade around the clock across exchanges, self-custody wallets and on chain applications, you’ll be able to take yield

and do all the things that you can do with every other asset on chain. And that’s what’s important here. This is really an innovation across the board when these assets start to be tokenized and used within Dfy. But importantly for the London Stock Exchange,

this could provide access to these US UK liquid uh UK listed equities in more than 110 countries. Now you’ve got to imagine that most places on Planet Earth do not have access to the companies on the London Stock Exchange

and now they will. So, this is part of their long-term plans to tokenize everything, which we’ve also seen in the United States with the DTCC talking about tokenization. And of course, the second story which was the New York Stock Exchange Ice investing here in T0, uh which is also bringing them 103 blockchain patents, which might be the most valuable part of this deal. As I said, T0 will provide transfer agent, broker dealer and settlement infrastructure for ISIS planned tokenized

security markets. And importantly, Ice has generally been exploring whether tokenized stocks can be used as collateral inside its clearinghouse. So Ice, uh Intercontinental Exchange, the company behind the New York Stock Exchange has invested in quite a few things uh over the past year in the crypto space, including, of course, OKX. Did a massive deal with OKX, took a board seat, and seemingly very, very interested in being involved in the future of crypto in the United States. And the future of crypto, I think, as we know, at least blockchain rails

is tokenization of everything. So obviously we have traditional exchanges now with Ice and London Stock Exchange carefully constructing regular uh regulated blockchain markets.

On the other side, crypto exchanges have already skipped ahead to 24-hour uh stock casino. Right? And the story right now here is Binance ads options on 1,000 US stocks and ETFs as monthly tradfi perpetual volume hits $433 billion. So I’ve long told you about the story that we basically have two converging forces that will meet in the middle to compete for who will be the everything app. Right? I just told you about the New York Stock Exchange and the London Stock Exchange, then of course we have the Morgan Stanleys and Schwabs and all the major institutions

all coming into tokenization through the back door. and coming into crypto through the back door and having limited access to this market. On the flip side, you have all of the crypto native companies like Kraken who I just told you about with their ex-stocks and now Binance here trying to add everything that TradFi already has. You can argue that Hyperliquid is somewhere in the middle because it’s blockchain rails and perpetual uh swaps on effectively all of these assets.

Right? So Binance adding options, right? This isn’t tokenize stocks. Options on 1,000 US stocks and ETFs is massive news. So eligible users can purchase calls and puts and receive the underlying shares when contracts are exercised. This is all through Binance’s Abu Dhabi regulated broker dealer, routed through a US registered Alpaca securities for execution, clearing, settlement and

custody. Now I’m going to tell you something that’s going to shock you.

This is not available to Americans.

I may have heard me say this before, but there’s one thing that I know about us in America when it comes to fun is we hate it. When it comes to financial markets. We can’t do anything. And by the way, uh, if you think you can do things in America, just go to New York because they can’t do anything fun for sports gambling and crypto. Right? Uh, but they can go to Times Square, which I guess is

nice for them. Right? So listen, uh Binance already provides eligible international customers access to more than 7,000 US listed stocks and ETFs, but now, obviously, adding options is a huge, huge move and their volumes are absolutely insane. As it said there, Binance’s trad by perpetual volume reach 433.4 billion just doing August. That’s approximately 15 times

what they did in January to give you some context on how fast these are growing. Equity-linked perpetuals generated 342.9 billion representing 79% of the total. And if you think this is just a Binance story, part of the same story in my mind is this.

Robin Hood chain hits record 989 million in daily Dex volume as TVL grows. So if you haven’t been paying attention,

like me. I wish I was over there flipping meme coins in the trenches, but obviously that is not my core competency. But Robin Hood chain predictably, I think is absolutely exploding. They have such a big name, so many customers, so much interest in in the crypto space. They’ve launched Robin Hood chain, which is a layer two on Ethereum that’s part of the Arbitrum stack using their technology. Arbitrum has gone up recently as a result. This is now

the largest L2 arguably by volume on Ethereum and has even surpassed Ethereum itself even though it’s a layer two in fees gathered over the past 24 hours. A lot of that is because of meme coins. But not just meme coins, tokenized stocks, once again, same narrative have actly absolutely exploded here on Robin Hood Chain. Obviously different from what you can trade on Robin Hood. This is Robin Hood on chain on their own Layer 2 blockchain on Ethereum.

This stuff is just going absolutely bonkers, right? I don’t know. I think the meme coin craze will probably, you know, go up and down and go from Robin Hood Chain back to Solana, to other green pastures and back. I don’t really know how to manage or look at that market, but I know that this is a one-way street towards the tokenization of everything and Robin Hood definitely intends to compete

big time in that market. So, you know, Wall Street asked for stocks to trade 24 hours and crypto added perpetual leverage and a dog token before lunch, you know? But once every asset

can trade around the clock, the obvious next step is allowing people to trade every event in the world. And that, of course, means that they’re going to do it in prediction markets. And we’ve got some big news here from Polymarkets.

Trump Jr.’s firm leads 1 billion Polymarket raise at 21 billion value reports. So 1789 capital, that’s the year he was born. is putting in about $300 million, adding to a roughly $200 million stake as a prediction markets valuation rises from 15 billion to 21 billion. Now, interestingly, Polymarket is not available still officially in the United States, which is

surprising considering that they have backing from the Trump family. But Trump Jr. is an advisor to Polymarket here, not just an investor, but also an advisor to their direct and largest competitor Kalshi who is available in the United States.

That’s like literally me, uh, being on the board of McDonald’s and Burger King. I don’t understand it, but I’m here for it because, uh, you know, we know that prediction markets are going to continue to grow massively, but their valuation growing 40% in just a matter of months

is absolutely huge news for Polymarket. Now, you know, Polymarket’s valuation shows how valuable these open markets can become. Hyperliquid, which we’re going to talk about next, shows why moving these markets inside the regulated American system is so difficult. And here is a two-part story. Hyperliquid seeks US foothold through Kraken parent

Payward. Remember I told you I’d talk about them again. In Crypto perpetuals, deal

Bloomberg. Now I’m going to talk about that story first, then we’ll get to the second half of this uh in a moment. So under this proposed structure, a payward subsidiary bitnomial would provide registered US users access to selected perpetual contracts linked to Hyperliquid’s market. So the reason that this is so interesting

is because the day that Bitcoin skyrocketed from the mid-60s all the way to basically 80,000, we had the Bacent news, then the short squeeze, and then Donald Trump gave a speech at the White House where he literally said hyper liquid.

He said, I know that Mike Cling and CFTC is working very hard to onshore hyper liquid and bring their contracts onshore. Well, now we’re seeing evidence that that is possible and it’s all through once again, Payward, which is the parent company of Kraken. Bitnomial who they would do this from already operates a CFTCC licensed exchange, clearinghouse and brokerage stack. So there might be a way to back door it through this. Now,

just for the size of Hyperliquid, they’ve processed more than 5 trillion in cumulative perpetual volume, and they currently have approximately 13.3 billion in open interest and processed roughly 205 billion

during the past 30 days. Now, the problem with bringing unregulated decentralized markets onshore is this. North Korean hackers are moving tens of millions on Hyperliquid as Trump pushes to onshore the crypto platform. So this is one of the things that comes with crypto is that you can’t always stop the people that are using it, especially when you don’t have AML and KYC. Well, North Korea’s Lazarus Group, the largest hackers on this planet of Earth have sold more than 30 million of Bitcoin through Hyperliquid

during the past three weeks. So obviously, this is the push and pull of decentralization versus centralization and control and regulation versus something that’s deregulated and everyone around the world can use. They’re going to have to figure that out. Meanwhile, I’m just very, very encouraged to see Bitcoin holding strong in the face of all these macro tail headwinds. I’m sure we’ll be talking about that more tomorrow on the next daily Wolf, because that’s all I got for you today. See you tomorrow. Peace.

Source: finance.yahoo.com