We hope all had a good weekend after the GENIUS Act signing wrapped up a roller coaster week in Washington. Moving on, Ben shares an update on crypto treasury strategies. 

And Monday means Casey details what’s on this week’s economic calendar.

Unrelenting crypto treasury updates

It seems like just about every day we get an update on a company buying bitcoin, ETH or another altcoin — for the first time, or adding to its pile. 

But firms forming and getting these assets on their balance sheet is just phase one, Galaxy asset management head Steve Kurz told me last week. 

“To the extent that companies are able to use capital markets tooling to achieve escape velocity, they’re going to be able to build potential operating businesses and ecosystems around the networks they’re supposed to back,” he said. 

Foundations pushing various decentralized systems are generally not exploring the use cases of them in the same pointed (and commercial) way, Kurz noted. 

He added: “So what will be interesting in determining how many are successful is to what degree do those ecosystems become more vibrant and where is the synergy between that and the business model of these companies that will have success.”

The original (and behemoth) in this space, Strategy, now holds 607,770 BTC (acquired for ~$43.6 billion) after its latest 6,220 BTC buy. Trump Media said this morning it has accumulated $2 billion of bitcoin and has another $300 million earmarked for an options acquisition strategy for BTC-related securities.

Also revealed this morning was the creation of The Ether Machine via the combination of The Ether Reserve and Nasdaq-listed Dynamix Corporation. Labeling its aim of “enabling public market investors to access Ethereum yield,” the public vehicle expects to launch with ~400,000 ETH (worth more than $1.5 billion). 

We saw Bitcoin Standard Treasury Company say last week it plans to launch with holdings of 30,021 BTC after merging with SPAC Cantor Equity Partners.

And a week before that, ReserveOne said it planned to list on the Nasdaq after combining with (yes, you guessed it) another SPAC — this one called M3-Brigade Acquisition V Corp. The company looks to offer investors access to “a diversified digital asset portfolio inspired by the proposed US Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and Digital Asset Stockpile.”

ReserveOne lists Galaxy Digital as a strategic partner. Galaxy also agreed to help oversee SharpLink Gaming’s ETH treasury strategy, led by board chair Joseph Lubin. 

That brings us back to my convo with Kurz, who noted Galaxy has done business with 15 or so companies who have raised $4 billion to buy crypto. That includes offering execution, custody, risk management services as well as yield-generation infrastructure.

“The bigger picture is crypto intersecting with public markets in the US [being] the story of 2025,” he said.

By Bitwise’s count, 125 public companies held bitcoin at the end of Q2. 

Kraken CFO Stephanie Lemmerman predicted in April that we could see more than 10,000 public companies holding BTC a few years from now. Swan Bitcoin CIO Ben Werkman told me in May that corporations could one day hold between 25% and 35% of all bitcoin.

Kurz isn’t so sure about those projections but notes the likelihood of many companies owning at least a little bit of BTC (even if not raising a ton to keep accumulating) — given its scarcity, de-dollarization, etc. 

A Keyrock report found bitcoin treasury companies were trading at, on aggregate, a 73% premium to their BTC holdings. Not all will trade at a premium forever — particularly those “being the 10th in line to do the same thing,” Kurz explained.   

“If there’s 100 right now and 10 of them achieve scale, what does phase two look like for those that achieve the scale?” the Galaxy exec posed. “And are they able to do more in DeFi to generate yield and stay ahead of the ETFs on performance and hire a great team to build out a broader investment program?”

How these companies’ business models evolve over time is unknowable right now. 

“This is capital markets meets crypto innovation all at once,” Kurz said. “Some of it will be great and some of it won’t be great.”

— Ben Strack

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📅 October 13-15 | London

This is the percentage by which House Republicans hope to cut the SEC’s funding. 

The House Appropriations Committee released its fiscal 2026 Financial Services and General Government bill ahead of a markup hearing on Monday. The bill proposes allocating roughly $2 trillion to the SEC — $154 million less than the agency got in fiscal year 2025.

Happy Monday. It’s the final trading week before the FOMC’s July meeting, and the economic calendar is fairly subdued. 

Investors are keeping an eye on the trade warfront as the Aug. 1 deadline for most countries to ink deals approaches. Here’s what else we’re watching: 

• The Conference Board on Monday morning published its June Leading Economic Indicator Index, which showed a 0.3% month-over-month decline. Analysts had expected the report to come in 0.2% lower. June’s figure was bolstered by the rally in US equities, but poor consumer sentiment and lower manufacturing orders ultimately weighed the index down. The LEI still is not projecting a recession, although economic growth is expected to slow. 

• Coming up, we have a few Fed speakers scheduled for Tuesday. Chair Jerome Powell is speaking at 8:30 am ET from a banking conference in DC. Later, Vice Chair for Supervision Michelle Bowman will speak from the same event. Both sets of remarks will be streamed. We don’t expect either to comment on President Trump’s renewed threats to fire Powell before the end of his term in May. We’ve written before about why Trump could face some legal hurdles should he pursue removing Powell, but with this administration, it’s hard to imagine that being much of a deterrent. 

• On Thursday, we will get initial jobless claims for the week ended July 19. They’re projected to show 229,000 first-time filers, which would be a mild uptick from the week prior. New home sales for June will also come out on Thursday. This figure is expected to come in at 650,000, which would be a slight increase from May (623,000).

— Casey Wagner