Masa's $BTC Moon Mission & $TLSA Misses

View from the Arch #82: SoftBank stacks sats, Tesla Stalls, and Uber takes customers for a ride!

April 25, 2025

Watch out Saylor, there’s a new kid on the block…

This Week in Crypto

Bitcoin had another great week, crossing $95,000 this morning. Long time readers will know that we’ve been hoping and expecting exactly this price action to come eventually.

  • Stocks took a hit after Trump lamented Powell this week (before recovering), but Bitcoin was seemingly indifferent to the commentary. Something we really have not seen in a while.

  • Gold kissed $3500 before settling back down, and Bitcoin is poised to end the week green against it.

  • Now, it’s still early to call for a full decoupling, but the macro-environment (rate cuts, tariffs and capital controls) for this sort of price action over extended weeks and months is a perfect storm in which Bitcoin could cement itself as an apolitical, global store of value and settlement network.

The main piece of headline grabbing news this week was regarding Jack Mallers and Masa Son, founder of SoftBank, who are involved in launching 21 Capital, a multibillion-dollar Bitcoin investment vehicle.

21 Capital is being seeded with ~$4 billion worth of Bitcoin (42,000 BTC): $1.5 billion from Tether, $900 million from SoftBank (roughly a 0.5% allocation), and $600 million from Bitfinex.

The graphic below details how they aim to challenge $MSTR by creating a more capital efficient Bitcoin acquisition company.

Laura Shin recorded a good pod with Matthew Sigel of VanEck, which is worth a listen:“If Bitcoin really moons, then these are your next Bitcoin banks and they could end up with enormous balance sheets”.

Elsewhere, some headlines that caught our eye:

This Week in TradFi


Finally a return to normalcy in the tradfi section, with not much update on tariffs.

  • Stocks closed higher yesterday, rallying for a third straight day, after solid performances from various tech companies.

  • The Dow rose 1.23%, the S&P 500 rose 2.03%, and the Nasdaq Composite rose 2.74% yesterday.

  • Of the 157 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported so far, 74% have beaten expectations.

  • But just in case you missed the tariff news, we still have some for you. The Trump Administration has been talking with China to strike a tariff deal, but Beijing continues to dispute that negotiations are taking place. 

    • It’s a confusing time for investors, since China did grant some U.S. imports exemptions on the recent 125% tariffs imposed. 

    • The only thing we can tell you is to just wait and see - although Trump did say in a recent interview that he would consider it a “total victory” if the U.S. had tariffs as high as 50% on foreign imports a year from now.

  • And to follow up from last week, Trump said Tuesday that he does not plan on firing Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. He did mention he wants Powell to be a little more active on lowering interest rates, but explicitly stated that he has no intention of firing the Chair. Equity futures immediately jumped almost 2% as a result.

On the international front:

  • European shares also increased with signs of a potential de-escalation in the U.S.-China trade war. The European STOXX 600 index was up 0.3% this morning and is on track to increase almost 3% over the course of this week, its second straight week of gains.

  • UK retailers reported the best start to the year since 2021, a much needed boost for the economy. Retail sales volumes rose by 0.4% in March, following a 0.7% growth in February. For Q1 as a whole, retail sales rose 1.6%, the strongest rate in four years, providing a 0.08pp boost to overall economic output this quarter.

  • Oil prices increased slightly yesterday, with the dollar continuing to remain weak. Brent crude futures rose 0.7%, and U.S. West Texas Intermediate rose 0.8%. 

  • And economists expect India’s economy to grow slower than previously expected, due to U.S. tariffs negatively impacting business sentiment. GDP growth is expected to be around 6.3% this fiscal year. 

This Week in Tech

Tesla earnings were this week, and we’ve got the rundown for you.

  • Tesla missed earnings expectations pretty significantly, with profits in Q1 coming in 71% lower than Q1 last year. For some reason, though, stocks didn’t fall? They actually rose in after-hours trading? So much for the efficient market hypothesis.

  • Kidding. It seems that shares remained steady because Musk has promised to reduce his time with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and turn more of his attention back to Tesla. He’s stated that starting in May, he’ll cut his time at DOGE to a day or two per week and allocate the rest of his time back to Tesla.

  • During the earnings call, Musk remained committed to launching a robotaxi service in Austin, talked about the future of Optimus, and said a cheaper EV would go into production in June. 

The FTC filed a lawsuit on Monday against Uber, alleging that the company has charged customers for the Uber One subscription service without their consent.

  • The lawsuit also claims that Uber failed to deliver the savings promised in the subscription service and made it unreasonably difficult to cancel the subscription. 

  • In October of last year, the FTC finalized their “click to cancel” rule that required companies to make cancelling a subscription as easy as signing up for one. The rule is expected to go into effect May 14.

  • The lawsuit specifically accuses Uber of automatically charging customers who signed up for a free trial before their billing date. And it also claims that users had to navigate “as many as 23 screens and take as many as 32 actions to cancel”. Yikes! 

And it’s unclear if this means we’re so back or it’s so over, but an Ex-Meta engineer has raised $14M for a startup that claims to be a “revenue generation software” company. 

As usual, below are some fundraising announcements, M&A, and tech personnel changes that caught our eye:

And Cluely, a startup that helps users “cheat” on exams, sales calls, and job interviews with a hidden browser window, has raised $5.3M in seed funding.

Arch is building a next-gen wealth management platform for individuals holding Alternative Assets. Our flagship product is the crypto-backed loan, which allows you to securely and affordably borrow against your crypto. We also offer access to bank-grade custody, trading and staking services, powered by BitGo.

Disclaimer: None of the above is financial advice, seriously.