rewrite this title This should’ve been bullish. So why isn’t it

Plus: The real reason Bybit got hacked

GM. From rotten bananas to golden apples, we’ve sorted through today’s crypto madness to serve you the freshest picks on a silver platter.

📝 Donald Trump’s new executive order.

🍋 News drops: the roots of Bybit’s hack, SBF’s comment on Diddy + more

🍍 Market flavor today

The moment we’ve all been waiting for finally arrived – Donald Trump signed an executive order to establish a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve.

Right after the announcement, our bags pumped like never before… or so you’d think.

In reality, Bitcoin’s price somehow looks worse than it did yesterday.

That’s cuz the reserve didn’t quite live up to the hype – we’ll get into why in just a sec.

Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley isn’t freaking out about this, tho’. He pointed out that when spot BTC ETFs launched in January last year, we saw a similar dip – right before Bitcoin hit a new all-time high.

That said, prepare yo’ self for more drama + price swings today.

At 1:30 PM ET, the White House is hosting a crypto summit. Basically, the president’s crypto czar, David Sacks, is bringing together top industry execs and Trump’s inner circle to cook up policies that could finally give crypto the legitimacy it’s been craving.

This is a huge deal, which means expectations are also huge – and the market reaction could go either way.

If the summit delivers bullish news, we could see some green candles;

But if it turns out to be just a round of handshakes and empty words… well, don’t be surprised if the market reacts accordingly.

Aight, now – quick break, and let’s move on to the reserve drama 👇

🧃 Sip of gains

FINAL CALL 🚨

The BYDFi stage in BitDegree’s Season 7 airdrop ends on Monday – so this is your last chance to get a share of an extra $1,000 USDC.

The main $30K airdrop is gonna keep going, but if you want that bonus bag, you gotta hustle now.

Grind Missions, drag your friends into it, earn Bits, climb the leaderboard, and lock in your spot among the winners!

Clock’s ticking – so go get it, champ 🔥

🥝 Memecoin harvest

Memecoins that sent early buyers to the moon and late buyers to therapy:

Data as of 06:10 AM EST.

Check out these memecoins and plenty more here.

The strategic Bitcoin reserve is official, but the market kinda just… yawned. So, wtf happened?

Let’s look at the official statement:

“The Strategic Bitcoin Reserve will be capitalized with Bitcoin owned by the Department of Treasury that was forfeited as part of criminal or civil asset forfeiture proceedings.”

Basically, the reserve is being built with BTC the government already has – so the executive order is pretty much just a promise not to sell, not a promise to buy.

Naturally, the general vibe was like: uhh… sick… so, how is this gonna upgrade me from pre-rich to rich? 🤨

But actually, this is a bigger deal than some of you might think.

The US government holds around 200K BTC, mostly seized from criminal cases.

Under federal asset forfeiture laws, the DOJ was required to sell these seized assets – either by giving the proceeds to victims or dumping them into the Treasury’s forfeiture fund.

95K BTC from the Bitfinex hack is being returned to Bitfinex (so that’s off the table), but the rest was supposed to be sold eventually.

Now tho’, that Bitcoin isn’t getting dumped anymore = less selling pressure = good news, obviously.

And it’s not just about that:

Bitcoin got a MAJOR legitimacy boost – it’s now way harder for institutions to argue that it’s too risky or not appropriate to hold;

No way the US ever bans BTC now;

If the US is doing this, other nations, state treasuries, and institutional investors might follow (and likely fast, cuz, you know, competition);

With all that 👆, you can expect improvements in Bitcoin banking services, on-chain settlement, and better fiat on/off-ramps.

Plus, thing is… the government actually might buy more Bitcoin in the future. The official order also says:

“The Secretaries of Treasury and Commerce are authorized to develop budget-neutral strategies for acquiring additional Bitcoin, provided that those strategies impose no incremental costs on American taxpayers.”

Budget-neutral means no extra cost to taxpayers. And guess what? Selling gold to buy Bitcoin is a budget-neutral strategy. Using the Exchange Stabilization Fund is also budget-neutral.

So, the idea that the US might actively buy BTC isn’t dead – it’s just not happening right away.

Oh, and some of y’all might be like – how ‘bout that strategic crypto reserve involving ETH, SOL, XRP, and ADA Trump’s been talking about? Well… that’s kind of a flop.

The executive order establishes a US Digital Asset Stockpile for everything other than BTC – and it’ll only include cryptos that the government seized from criminal or civil cases.

In other words, the government might not buy BTC, but it’s definitely not buying anything else.

And the Treasury Secretary can decide to sell them whenever. So, basically, the goal is just to manage these assets responsibly.

Overall, sure, this executive order might not have been the moon mission bulls were dreaming of, but it does prove that crypto has come a DAMN LONG way.

And that’s something to be happy about.

Now you’re in the know. But think about your friends – they probably have no idea. I wonder who could fix that… 😃🫵

Spread the word and be the hero you know you are!

🍋 News drops

⚠️ Multisig wallet provider Safe traced the $1.4B Bybit hack to an infected laptop. A senior dev unknowingly interacted with a malicious Docker project, which compromised their workstation and handed hackers the keys to Safe’s AWS account.

🏂 The US is offering $10M for info on ex-Olympic snowboarder Ryan Wedding. Apparently, he’s been dealing with a different kind of snow, too – the FBI says he ran a massive drug trafficking operation and laundered the profits through USDT.

🎂 FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried turned 33 yesterday and marked the occasion with a prison interview. He shared that no ex-FTX employees have dropped by to say hi – but at least Diddy’s been nice to him.

🤖 Alibaba Cloud’s new AI, QwQ-32B, is small but mighty. With only 32.5B parameters, it rivals DeepSeek r1, which has 671B.

🎮 The Axie Infinity team dropped Axie Infinity: Atia’s Legacy, a new MMO set in the fantasy world of Lunacia. In this game, you’ll lead a squad of up to four Axies, battle, explore new territories, and tackle quests.

🍌 Juicy memes