Elon backs Bitcoin, U.S. Job Growth Up and YC’s Favorite Employee

Happy Fourth of July to those who celebrate, and to those who don’t hopefully we’ll be celebrating a Bitcoin ATH very shortly…

This Week in Crypto

A later edition of the newsletter this week given the holidays, but Bitcoin certainly finished the week feeling better than me - with it’s highest weekly close ever.

The ETF flows continue to support price action with 9 figure daily inflows, now the norm, showing no signs of stopping.

Elsewhere, Elon moved to form the America Party in the wake of his disdain for the Big Beautiful Bill dramatically increasing the Federal deficit. His focus on the debt as a key political issue has lead to some interesting speculation of his future moves with respect to Bitcoin. Some of his tweets have only added fuel to the rumours:

Okay, that one is reasonably explicit, but this one is more of a punt… Could we see $TSLA increase their BTC holdings with their next filings?

A few notable developments for public equities too:

1. $HOOD announced it’s bringing US stocks and ETFs onchain, launching first on Arbitrum before migrating to its own Layer 2. This marks a pivotal step to blur the line between public equities and crypto markets, eventually enabling 24/5 trading and global access to familiar tickers as well as faster settlement and fractional ownership. By building its own chain, Robinhood will also earn sequencer fees, creating a new revenue stream on top of trading commissions. However, the regulatory status of these tokenized equities—especially whether they qualify as unregistered securities or derivatives—remains unresolved and could trigger scrutiny from the SEC and other regulators.

2. Robinhood’s move underscores a broader contest with $COIN - while Robinhood is pulling crypto infrastructure into its brokerage platform, one would imagine Coinbase would eventually look to expand into equities (or at least tokenise them). Today, Robinhood appears ahead: it’s easier to move from traditional markets > crypto than visa versa. Price action of the two stocks indicates the market feels the same way:

   

   HOOD/COIN

    

3. $CRCL filed for a national trust bank charter with the OCC to bolster USDC reserves management and prepare for expected requirements under the GENIUS Act. On the PA front - we expressed a heavy short bias in previous editions at $200 and continue to hold that view (NFA).

Headlines:

• Kazakhstan Plans To Establish Bitcoin And Crypto Reserve

• PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel and Anduril’s Palmer Luckey are launching Erebor - a digital bank tailored for crypto firms and tech startups

• Ripple (XRP) Applies for US Banking License

• Satoshi Era Whale Moves 80,000 BTC After 14 Years of Silence

This Week in TradFi

Steady news out of the U.S. this week - 

• U.S. job growth in June was above expectations and the unemployment rate is down - all signs of a stable labor market. 

  • Nonfarm payrolls increased by 147,000 jobs last month, after increasing 144,000 in May. 

  • The unemployment rate dropped to 4.1% in June, down slightly from 4.2% in May.

  • As a result, all major Wall Street indexes were up after market open, with the S&P up 0.46%.  

• Oil prices fell late this week, with investors worried that U.S. tariffs could slow energy demand ahead of an expected supply boost. 

  • Brent crude futures dropped 31 cents, and U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude fell 31 cents. 

• Investors will be keeping a close eye on the administration next week, with the temporary tariff pauses set to expire on July 9. 

  • On Wednesday, Trump announced a deal with Vietnam that will impose a lower than initially promised 20% tariffs on many Vietnamese exports. 

  • The administration has also talked about a forthcoming deal with India and Japan - though it’s unclear where those talks lie. 

  • The S&P has risen almost 30% since April, when stocks dropped following Trump’s April 2 tariff announcement. 

On the international front - 

• The UK’s stocks were mixed this week, with investors worried about domestic fiscal worries and rate cuts. 

  • The FTSE 100 was up slightly this week, while the FTSE 250 lost 0.7% on Friday and ended the week lower. 

• German industrial orders fell more than expected in May, driven by a drop in demand from the euro zone. 

  • Orders dropped 1.4% MoM - much lower than an expected 0.1% drop. 

  • The slump was driven by an almost 18% MoM drop in orders in the computer, electronic, and optical products sector. 

• Japan’s household spending surged at its fastest pace in almost 3 years in May - increasing hopes that consumption might be on the rise. 

  • Consumer spending in May was up 4.7% YoY, much higher than the forecasted 1.2%. 

  • This is the fastest rise since August 2022 when consumption increased 5.1%. 

• Gold prices rebounded late this week, driven by a drop in the U.S. dollar and safe-haven inflows. 

  • Spot gold was up 0.3% on Friday and up almost 2% over the week. 

This Week in Tech

Last week we were begging tech to do something interesting, and wow did the monkey’s paw curl on that request.

You already know what we’re talking about this week - Twitter was abuzz with news of an employee that apparently worked at every YC-backed startup, Soham Parekh. 

• Parekh initially started trending after Suhail Doshi, founder of Playground AI, posted a tweet saying “PSA: there’s a guy named Soham Parekh (in India) who works at 3–4 startups at the same time. He’s been preying on YC companies and more. Beware.”

• Doshi said that he fired Parekh about a year ago after finding out he was working for multiple companies, and that Parekh continues to do the same thing a year later.

• And then all the world’s CEOs started speaking up -

  • Flo Crivello, CEO of Lindy, then tweeted that his company had just hired Parekh and immediately fired him upon seeing Doshi’s tweet. 

  • Parkhurst, CEO of Antimetal, confirmed that Parekh was the company’s first engineering hire in 2022, and he was fired in early 2023 after finding out he was moonlighting at other companies. 

  • Parekh also worked at Sync Labs and was even part of a promotional video for the company - and ultimately let go. 

  • Haz Hubble, cofounder of Pally AI, says Parekh was offered a founding engineer role at their company as well. 

  • Adish Jain, cofounder of Mosaic, also apparently interviewed Parekh. 

• We’ll stop there, but we’re not kidding when we say so many CEOs have a story about interviewing this guy. The real story might be that this guy is the world’s best interviewer.

• Parekh was on the Technology Business Programming Network to share his side of the story. 

Robinhood announced earlier this week that it would start selling tokenized shares of OpenAI, SpaceX, and other private companies to people in the European Union. 

• Robinhood says the launch is an attempt to give everyday people equity in the world’s most valuable private companies via blockchain. 

• Shortly after the announcement, Robinhood stock skyrocketed to an all-time high. 

• OpenAI immediately made clear that Robinhood’s sale of OpenAI tokens is not affiliated with OpenAI. 

  • The company stated that they do not endorse Robinhood’s efforts and were not involved in facilitating the token sale. 

  • The company tweeted “These “OpenAI tokens” are not OpenAI equity. We did not partner with Robinhood, were not involved in this, and do not endorse it.  Any transfer of OpenAI equity requires our approval—we did not approve any transfer. “ 

• Robinhood’s response was that while the tokens aren’t technically equity, the tokens “effectively give retail investors exposure to these private assets”. 

Ilya Sutskever is becoming CEO at Safe Superintelligence, the AI startup he started in 2024.

• He confirmed that Daniel Gross, the company’s cofounder and CEO, is departing the company. 

• Cofounder Daniel Levy will become president of the startup. 

• Gross’ departure comes after weeks of speculation that Zuckerberg was in advanced talks to hire Gross and his investing partner Nat Friedman.

  • Zuckerberg had initially tried to acquire all of Safe Superintelligence but was unsuccessful. 

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

• Microsoft is laying off 9,000 employees, around 4% of the company. 

• Grammarly is acquiring email client Superhuman to build out AI for its productivity suite. 

• Hypersonic weapons startup Castelion is raising a $350M Series B. 

• Lovable is raising $150M at a $2B valuation - just months after a $15M round in February. 

• Figma is moving closer to an IPO that could raise $1.5B.

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