BTC $80K, Jobs Report, & GameStop Play

View from the Arch #131

May 08, 2026

Price action this week?

This Week in Crypto

Bitcoin finally crossed $80,000 this week - a level it’s been eying nervously for far too long.

  • The catalyst was, of all things, the CLARITY Act, which has been lost somewhere in the Senate since it passed the House in July of last year. 

  • Senators Tillis and Alsobrooks reached a compromise allowing crypto firms to offer stablecoin yield. Coinbase stock jumped 7% and Circle jumped 15% on Monday morning. 

  • Bitcoin dipped back below $79K after U.S. forces fired on Iranian targets, but is currently continuing to hover around the $80K mark.

Coinbase had quite a week:

  • On May 5, Coinbase announced it would lay off roughly 14% of its workforce, citing crypto market conditions and the power of AI to make engineering teams work much faster. 

  • Coinbase reported Q1 revenue of $1.41B, missing the Wall Street consensus of $1.48B, and posted a GAAP net loss of $394M.

The institutionalization train continues:

  • Morgan Stanley is rolling out crypto trading on E*Trade with pricing designed to undercut Coinbase, Robinhood, and Schwab.

  • BNY Mellon is launching crypto custody services in Abu Dhabi, starting with BTC and ETH and later expanding to stablecoins and tokenized assets.

This Week in TradFi

Markets continue to be beholden to Iran news:

  • Stocks hit record highs on Wednesday after a report that the U.S. and Iran were nearing a deal. We call that a peace dividend.

  • Then, Thursday, stocks retreated after uncertainty over whether the peace talks would actually hold. 

The jobs report was surprisingly fine:

  • The economy added 115,000 jobs in April, well above market forecasts of around 62,000 - the second consecutive month of gains after February’s ugly -156K print. 

  • Healthcare led with 37K new jobs, while federal government employment continued to decline, down another 9K.

Other notable happenings:

  • AMD surged 13% after issuing strong second-quarter guidance and beating on both revenue and earnings, lifting the broader chip sector with it.

  • Disney beat Wall Street estimates on streaming and theme park revenue.

This Week in Tech

GameStop had a surprising move this week!

  • GameStop submitted a non-binding proposal to acquire 100% of eBay at $125/share in a cash-and-stock deal, valuing the transaction at roughly $55.5B.

  • For context, GameStop’s market cap is just under $12B, while eBay’s is $46B. 

  • eBay shares climbed about 5% on the news, while GameStop stock dropped 10%. That probably tells you everything you need to know about whether the deal will go through.

Anthropic signed an agreement with SpaceX to access more than 300 megawatts of computing capacity at the Colossus 1 data center in Memphis.

  • The deal comes even though Musk has repeatedly criticized Anthropic, calling them "doomed to become misanthropic" and questioning whether there's a "more hypocritical company." I guess $300 megawatts speaks louder than tweets!

  • SpaceX reserved the right to reclaim the compute if Anthropic's AI "engages in actions that harm humanity" - criteria presumably determined by Elon? 

Google shut down Project Mariner, its experimental AI browser agent that could perform web tasks like booking hotels or organizing email.

  • This is Google's preferred method of sunsetting things - not killing them, just absorbing them into a product with a slightly different name that may or may not also eventually get killed.

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

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.

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