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The Great Decoupling

Coinbits's Photo
by Coinbits
Sunday, Apr 27, 2025 - 15:57

Last week we highlighted gold's surge past $3,300 as investors sought refuge from volatility in equities and softness in the bond market. Throughout this episode, bitcoin traded sideways. What a difference a week makes. Bitcoin has now ripped past $92,000 even as gold continues reaching new all-time highs. Both assets have decoupled from faltering equity markets, with the BTC/Nasdaq ratio – how many Nasdaq units it would take to buy one bitcoin – approaching its historic high of 5.08.

While gold maintains its position as the world's largest asset by market capitalization, bitcoin climbed to fifth place globally, overtaking several tech giants such as Alphabet (the parent company of Google) and other "Magnificent Seven" stocks.

"Bitcoin's independence from market forces is not a temporary dislocation," writes Nick Ward. "It is the consequence of how the asset is built." Unlike stocks, bitcoin's performance is increasingly driven by sovereign accumulation, ETF investment, and growing demand for a store of wealth outside the legacy system.

Expect bitcoin's emergence as an uncorrelated monetary instrument to dominate attention throughout the year.

NEWS

Strike CEO Mallers to lead new bitcoin investment powerhouse

Bitcoin industry leader Jack Mallers co-founded Twenty One Capital, a $3 billion bitcoin investment company backed by financial heavyweights including Tether, Bitfinex, and SoftBank. The venture is the result of a merger with Brandon Lutnick's Cantor Equity Partners SPAC and its management team plans to acquire over 42,000 bitcoins immediately, which would make it the third-largest corporate bitcoin holder behind Strategy and MARA Holdings.

Strategic alignment of bitcoin-native talent

With Mallers as CEO and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick's son backing the project, this venture represents a convergence of bitcoin expertise and institutional capital. The company will use metrics like Bitcoin Per Share (BPS) and Bitcoin Return Rate (BRR), reflecting a shift in how public companies measure performance. As Mallers put it: "We're not here to beat the market, we're here to build a new one." Twenty One Capital will trade on Nasdaq under the ticker "XXI" when the deal closes, a nod to bitcoin's maximum supply of 21 million coins.

ETH/BTC ratio hits 2020 lows

The ETH/BTC ratio dropped to 0.01791, its lowest level since 2020, as institutional investors continue to divest their ethereum holdings. Galaxy Digital alone has transferred over $100 million worth of ethereum to exchanges in recent days, with additional large movements from Paradigm and an address linked to the Ethereum Foundation sending thousands of coins to exchanges like Binance, Anchorage Digital, and Kraken.

Bitcoin dominance

With bitcoin prices approaching $90,000 while ethereum trades around $1,574, capital is clearly flowing away from ethereum and other altcoins. There is no "altcoin season" this cycle – just bitcoin's superior monetary properties increasingly attracting capital.

Fed withdraws bitcoin and altcoin restrictions for banks

The Federal Reserve rescinded its supervisory letter that required banks to seek prior approval for bitcoin and altcoin-related activities, becoming the last of three major banking regulators to remove restrictions on financial institutions engaging with digital assets. This completes the regulatory rollback that began with similar withdrawals by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) in March.

Banking freedom arrives?

This decisive regulatory shift fulfills President Trump's campaign promise to remove barriers keeping traditional banks from participating in the ecosystem. The Fed's action eliminates the final piece of the previous administration's restrictive approach that effectively prohibited banks from offering bitcoin services. The central bank also indicated it will "work with the agencies to consider whether additional guidance to support innovation, including crypto-asset activities, is appropriate."

Crypto media outlet sentiment reveals bitcoin narrative divides

Q1 2025 analysis by Bitcoin Perception shows Bitcoin Magazine leading with 74% positive bitcoin coverage, while The Block remains the most neutral at just 24% positive. Middle-tier outlets like Blockworks (52% positive) and Cointelegraph (47% positive) maintain moderate enthusiasm. The research analyzed content across ten major crypto publications, quantifying stories as positive, neutral, or negative while tracking topic focus.

The methodology exposed significant editorial divergence, with most outlets prioritizing market analysis and investment vehicles while only top-ranked publications consistently highlight retail adoption and self-custody solutions. Despite reporting on the same fundamental asset, this sentiment spectrum underscores how coverage within the "crypto" media landscape shapes different narratives.

BITCOIN ADOPTION CONTINUES

UAE's ruya bank launches first Shari'ah-compliant bitcoin investment service, giving customers direct access to bitcoin through a mobile app partnership with Fuze.

Italian town Fornelli to unveil a locally-funded Satoshi Nakamoto monument on May 1, with the municipality of 1,800 residents claiming the "highest density of bitcoin adoption in the world."

Spain's University of the Hespérides launches first Spanish-language Master's in bitcoin program, covering economics, technology, regulation and philosophy with faculty from leading industry firms beginning April 28, 2025.

Riot Platforms secures $100M bitcoin-backed loan from Coinbase, using a portion of its 19,223 bitcoins (valued at $1.8B) as collateral to fund expansion plans, with the credit facility carrying at least 9% annual interest.

Japanese investment firm Metaplanet reaches 5,000 bitcoin milestone ($460M) after acquiring 145 more coins, achieving 50% of its target to accumulate 10,000 bitcoins by the end of the year while maintaining a 121.1% bitcoin yield.

HOW BITCOIN WORKS

Learn one key idea about bitcoin each week. This week:

What happens to "quantum-vulnerable" bitcoin?

Bitcoin enthusiasts are discussing quantum computing years ahead of any real threat. While quantum computers capable of breaking bitcoin's cryptography are still theoretical, the community is already planning for this eventuality.

Bitcoin's ECDSA and Schnorr signature schemes will eventually be vulnerable to Shor's algorithm running on a sufficiently powerful quantum computer. Although address hashing provides some protection (because your public key is only exposed when you spend), it would ultimately still be necessary to upgrade the bitcoin protocol to be quantum resistant.

This raises a key question being debated by bitcoiners today: what happens to quantum-vulnerable bitcoins after such an upgrade?

Two viewpoints have emerged. Casa's Jameson Lopp argues for "burning" vulnerable coins, making them permanently unspendable through a soft fork. His reasoning is that allowing quantum computers to seize these coins would effectively be "theft from everyone" by devaluing all other bitcoin by suddenly reintroducing thousands of lost coins into the circulating supply. He believes this approach properly incentivizes users to upgrade their security while preventing wealth redistribution to whoever wins the quantum computing race. Lopp also contends that burning these coins would protect exchanges and important whale wallets whose public keys have been exposed, preventing potential market crashes from sudden quantum thefts.

UTXO Management's Guillaume Girard counters that such confiscation violates bitcoin's fundamental principles. He argues that permanently burning coins introduces dangerous precedent for human intervention in the protocol. While acknowledging the dilemma, Girard suggests that lost coins should maintain their slim chance of recovery rather than face guaranteed destruction through protocol changes. He warns that once we accept burning coins for one reason, it opens the door to doing so for other reasons in the future, potentially undermining bitcoin's ethos of immutability and resistance to centralized control.

Regardless of which path bitcoin ultimately takes, the very existence of this debate (no other monetary network is thinking about addressing the threat) demonstrates the protocol's resilience through foresight and adaptability to technological challenges.

COIN CHECK

Which was the first country to recognize bitcoin as legal tender?

  1. United States

  2. El Salvador

  3. Japan

  4. Switzerland

Check your answer at the end of the page.

FROM THE MEME POOL

ANSWER

  1. El Salvador became the first country to adopt bitcoin as legal tender when its Bitcoin Law took effect on September 7, 2021. President Nayib Bukele framed the move as a way to empower citizens without access to traditional banking and to position the country as a hub for innovation and economic growth.

Contributor posts published on Zero Hedge do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of Zero Hedge, and are not selected, edited or screened by Zero Hedge editors.
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