BTC Treasuries, Middle East Tensions and Chime Finally IPOs

From Bitcoin Boredom to TradFi Turbulence - and a $15B AI Bet | View From The Arch #89

June 14, 2025

A quiet week for crypto, not so quiet for traditional and tech markets!

This Week in Crypto

Bitcoin showed little volatility this week - rangebound between $110k and 104k. And it was business as usual for the ETF complex… nothing to write home about here:

Farside Investors

I’m honestly quite light for other content this week, so I’ll outsource to a somewhat weird (but entertaining) crossover podcast:

There were a fair few things to note on the headlines front. Starting with treasuries, who continue to stockpile BTC, and now $HYPE:

On the stablecoin front:

And elsewhere:

This Week in TradFi

Well, it was almost a calm week (isn’t that always how it goes?):

  • Wall Street’s main indexes opened lower today after Israel’s deadly strike on Iranian nuclear facilities inflamed tensions in the Middle East.

    • The Dow fell almost 1% at open, the S&P fell 0.74%, and the Nasdaq dropped a little over 1%. 

  • Separately, the dollar has sunk to its lowest level in three years, as U.S. trade policy continues to unsettle markets and expectations for the Fed’s rate cuts. 

    • The dollar did rise slightly today, lifted by safe haven flows following the Israel strike.

  • The Fed seems to be on path to cut rates in September, with reports showing cooling inflation and potential weakening in the labor market.

    • U.S. producer prices rose 2.6% in May YoY, following a rise of 2.5% in April YoY. 

    • It’s also estimated that the core Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index rose in line with the 2% goal last month, and core PCE is estimated to have risen only 0.12% in May MoM. 

    • The Fed does have a meeting next week, but it’s extremely unlikely they change rates from the current 4.25-4.50% range. 

  • Initial weekly claims for jobless benefits held steady, while continuing claims jumped to 1.95M, its highest level since November 2021 - a sign that it’s increasingly becoming harder for unemployed workers to find a new job.

On the international front:

  • European stocks also dropped, hitting their lowest level in three weeks today, following the Israel strike on Iran.

    • STOXX 600 was down 0.6%.

    • London’s FTSE 100 also dropped today after closing at a record high in the previous session - it is still set for a fifth consecutive week of gains, though.

  • A surge in oil prices after Israel’s strikes also led to a drop in the Indian rupee - leading to the central bank stepping in to limit further losses. 

    • Brent crude increased as much as 11% at one point. 

    • The rupee fell to 86.20 per dollar, its weakest level in two months. 

  • The number of regular insolvencies in Germany fell by 0.7% YoY in May, its first decrease in more than two years. 

    • And German inflation eased to 2.1% this month.

  • Gold prices rose today as investors moved to safe-haven assets after the strike.

    • Spot gold rose 1.7% this morning to $3,439.79, close to its record high of $3,500.05 in April. 

    • U.S. gold futures also rose 1.7%. 

This Week in Tech

A slower week in tech this week, which is probably good, because how many headlines can one newsletter writer really keep up with.

Chime finally IPO’d yesterday!

  • The company raised $864M in IPO, pricing shares at $27, above the previously announced range of $24 to $26. This brings its starting market cap to $9.8B.

    • They closed the day at $37 and a $12B market cap.

  • Chime reported $1.3B in revenue in 2023 and $1.7B in 2024. Losses dropped from $203M in 2023 to just $25M in 2024. It then became profitable in Q1 2025 with $13M of net income on $519M in revenue.

Meta is investing another $15B in data-labeling firm Scale AI, taking a 49% stake in the startup.

  • Why so much money? Meta is betting on the data used to train top AI models. 

  • For the last few years, leading AI labs like OpenAI have relied on Scale AI to produce and label the data that’s used to train their models. 

  • Earlier this year, Meta’s generative AI group launched Llama 4, which failed to match the capabilities of DeepSeek and was generally seen as a disappointment. 

  • Meta’s also bringing on CEO Alexander Wang to help lead a new “superintelligence” lab within the company. 

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.