Bitcoin decoupling, U.S. Stock’s Slump, and AI Revenue’s

Apologies in advance for how many times you have to read the word “Tariff” over the next 5 minutes. Tariff.

This Week in Crypto

Really scratching my head for something entertaining to write in the crypto section this week. Unfortunately, I can’t invent the news.

ETF flows have been relatively low volume recently - the real driver of PA has been from ‘ol faithful:

That probably goes half the way to explaining why price has held so well with equities nuking. When you contextualise everything from election day, Bitcoin actually looks like it’s decoupled somewhat:

If you chart Bitcoin vs Mag7 it’s held phenomenally well and is actually nearing ATHs. A sane man would think that when Mag7 bottoms later this year - likely after a handful of rate cuts (or after they get priced) - Bitcoin takes another leg up alongside them as global liquidity increases.

Given the lack of substance this week, we’ll switch to talking about what we know best. Ourselves. You can sign up to our webinar on April 24th, co-hosted with the Onramp team, below:

And if you have a spare 20 minutes, catch our CEO on Tim Kotzman’s Bitcoin Treasury podcast here. It’s a great conversation - Tim’s podcast focuses on companies that have adopted a Bitcoin standard and are running some variation of the Saylor strategy. It’s definitely worth tuning in - and we are not bias (we promise).

Finally, some headlines:

• Tether bought 8,888 bitcoin in Q1, bringing its total holdings to $7.8 billion

• Circle is gunning ahead with it’s IPO

• MARA are raising another $2B for BTC purchases

This Week in TradFi

I mean… do we even need to tell you what we’re going to write about? One word dominated the TradFi news this week - tariffs, tariffs, and more tariffs.

On April 2, so-called “Liberation Day”, President Trump announced a slew of tariffs: a 10% baseline tariff on all imports and higher targeted tariffs on dozens of countries.

• You can view the whole list of tariffs here.

• Countries around the world immediately began threatening trade war, with the tariffs feeding fears of a global downturn and massive price increases for a myriad of goods.

  • China immediately vowed retaliation on Trump’s 54% tariffs on Chinese imports, slapping 34% additional tariffs on all U.S. imports to the country. The EU Union also promised retaliation for their 20% tariff.

  • French President Emmanuel Macron called for European countries to suspend investment in the U.S. 

  • Japan, South Korea, Mexico, and India are currently holding off on retaliation for now as they try and get concessions. 

  The U.S. tariffs are the highest trade barriers we’ve seen in more than a century, and businesses immediately began discussing how to adjust. Auto company Stellantis is planning on temporarily laying off U.S. workers and closing plants in Canada and Mexico, while General Motors is going to try and increase U.S. production. 

  • The stock market immediately suffered a global meltdown, with the U.S. dollar dropping rapidly and oil prices set for their worst week in months.

    • The Dow fell nearly 4%, its biggest one-day percentage loss since June 2020. The S&P 400 dropped almost 5%, and Nasdaq declined almost 6%. 

    • American companies with significant overseas production also took a massive hit. Nike stock lost 14%, and Apple dropped 9%. 

    • Exxon Mobil and Chevron fell, with crude prices dropping almost 7%. 

    • JP Morgan now sets the chances of the global economy entering a recession by year end at 60%, up from 40% previously. 

• Traders are now expecting four interest rate cuts from the Fed, beginning with a 25bps cut in June.

• It’s unclear from the White House whether the tariffs are permanent or temporary to gain concessions from other countries.

This Week in Tech

Nothing too major this week, especially in comparison to the massive tariff news, so we’ll speed-run some headlines for you.

Anthropic announced on Wednesday that they’re launching a new Claude for Education tier, in response to OpenAI’s ChatGPT Edu plan.

• The new tier is aimed at higher education, allowing students, faculty, and other staff access to Claude with more capabilities. 

• One key feature is “Learning Mode”, which helps students develop their own critical thinking skills, rather than simply feeding in questions and receiving answers. When Learning Mode is enabled, Claude will ask questions to test understanding, speak to fundamental principles behind specific problems, and provide templates for research papers, outlines, and study guides.

More tea in the Rippling-Deel drama - Rippling publicly released the affidavit of the Rippling employee who testified that he was working as a spy for rival company Deel. 

• According to the affidavit, Keith O’Brien was hired by Rippling in July 2023 in the global payroll and compliance department. In early 2024, he interviewed for a job at Deel and didn’t get it, but connected with Deel’s founder on LinkedIn. 

• The employee then started a payroll consulting business, pitched Deel, and said he would quit Rippling to work full-time on the consulting business.

• The employee then testified that Deel execs suggested that instead of quitting, the employee would spy on Ripping for them. 

• Deel apparently paid him €5,000/month. He turned over information on sales leads, product roadmaps, customer accounts, names of superstar employees, and anything else that was asked for.

Tesla recorded only 336,681 deliveries last quarter, its worst quarterly performance in more than 2 years.

• This comes as CEO Elon Musk faces backlash for his political actions. Musk has been leading the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an agency that has laid off thousands of federal employees and attempted to eliminate entire agencies and programs.

And Amazon has submitted a bid to acquire all of TikTok, as ByteDance faces an April 5 deadline to shed its Chinese ownership or once again face a ban in the U.S.

• According to The New York Times, the parties involved in the deal talks don’t seem to be taking Amazon’s bid seriously, though. 

• President Trump said earlier this week that a deal with ByteDance to sell TikTok would be finalized before the April 5 deadline.

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

• Meta’s VP of AI research plans to leave the company after more than 2 years of overseeing the company’s AI research lab.

• Qualcomm has acquired the generative AI division of VinAI for an undisclosed amount.

• Construct Capital has raised a $300M fund for defense and manufacturing tech.

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.