Hi everyone! Though Casey is now enjoying some time off, Ben is back.

Playing catch-up today, Ben reacts to the crypto developments that occurred during a week in which he successfully unplugged (and looks ahead too). Let’s get into it.

Playing crypto catch-up

The crypto space moves fast. As a journalist covering the segment for the past four years, I already knew this. I’m sure you did too.

But this fact becomes even more apparent when you disconnect for some family time and do a better-than-usual job of unplugging. Then you log in Monday morning and realize what can occur in five business days. At least in this segment, and in this environment.

Enough with the preamble. BTC and ETH are plenty higher than when I departed (at ~$120,000 and ~$4,300, respectively).

One reason for last week’s run-up, I’m seeing, is Donald Trump’s order around “democratizing access to alternative assets for 401(k) investors.” Digital assets are mentioned. Casey addressed this Thursday.

A Monday CoinShares report mentioned the flow trend change for crypto investment products in the back half of the week — noting the 401(k)-related news followed “growth concerns stemming from weak US payroll figures.”

I was reminded of a piece I wrote exactly 20 months ago about pension funds’ attitudes toward crypto. And this one from 2022 about several 401(k) providers not seeing demand for crypto investments in retirement plans. A quick reminder of the Department of Labor’s 2022 stance:

The regulator also notes custodial and record-keeping concerns, valuation issues and an evolving regulatory environment. Boy, has the regulatory climate changed since then. And we now have crypto ETFs that make exposure easier. 

I also saw last week that we got SEC guidance on certain liquid staking activities and a Roman Storm trial verdict (my colleague’s opinion on the latter is here). Figure Technologies also filed “confidentially” with the SEC for an initial public offering. We’ve seen similar filings by Grayscale, Bullish and BitGo in recent weeks.

Moving on, we’re seeing public companies continue to implement crypto treasury strategies (or add to such positions).

Heritage Distilling Holding Company, Inc. just revealed $220 million in financing to help it buy the Story network’s native token, IP. And Nasdaq-listed Mill City Ventures, also this morning, noted that it now holds nearly 82 million SUI in its treasury (valued at roughly $300 million). That comes after BIT Mining last week made its initial purchase of SOL, and Verb Technology Company got set to launch its Toncoin treasury.

Looking ahead, we have Circle reporting its Q2 earnings tomorrow. The stablecoin issuer’s stock ran up above $260 a few weeks after its early-June NYSE listing, but has dropped substantially since. CRCL shares were going for ~$162 at 1:30 pm ET — down 13% from a month ago.

Compass Point analysts Ed Engel and Abdullah Dilawar predict competing stablecoins products from traditional banks and fintechs will put pressure on Circle’s premium valuation.

In their latest note, the analysts said they expect Circle to beat Q2 forecasts given its revenue from various blockchain integrations. Engel and Dilawar explain, however, that they view this as a non-recurring revenue stream over the long term. They retained their $130 Circle price target (and sell rating).

“With CRCL trading at 78x the Street's 2026 EBITDA, we don't believe investors are valuing the stock off near-term results,” the analysts wrote. “Rather, we're more focused on commentary around recent FIS and OKX partnerships and the impact on CRCL's gross margins.”

That’s all for now. I still have a few hundred unread emails to sift through.

— Ben Strack

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• Bo Hines, who was working as executive director of the White House Crypto Council, said Saturday he would be returning to the private sector. Expected to replace Hines in that role was Patrick Witt, a former deputy chief of staff of the US Office of Personnel Management.

• Ethereum ETPs edged bitcoin ETPs in net inflows last week ($268 million to $260 million), CoinShares data shows. The ETH products saw $461 million of inflows on Friday alone — the category’s highest total since July 22. 

• In case you missed it, Coin Center published a mid-year scorecard. Developments in its “over-performance” category include the SEC’s plan to draft clear tokenization rules and the resolution related to the so-called DeFi broker rule.

• We’ll see The Bureau of Labor Statistics put out the consumer price index (CPI) for July tomorrow. That should gain some extra attention given Trump’s recent firing of BLS chief Erika McEntarfer (and ongoing questions around inflation, of course).

— Ben Strack