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The week is wrapping up, just like Q2 did last week. As bitcoin keeps hitting new all-time highs, Ben details other crypto narratives worth watching in 2025’s second half.

And Friday means Casey breaks down the latest economic data you might have missed.

Busy second half coming

Just 11 days into the year’s second half and we’ve already seen bitcoin hit several new all-time highs — most recently eclipsing $118,000.

With a new bitcoin ATH marked on the 2025 second-half crypto bingo card, what more could we see over the next six months?

Before moving on from BTC price, the surge comes as corporate bitcoin buying has swelled and segment observers expect more institutional platforms to allow access to the asset.

Remember how Ledn CIO John Glover tries to predict bitcoin moves? Well, he’s still eyeing the $136,000 mark, but now thinks it will come quicker than originally thought (this year). 

From there, Glover said he expects a subsequent correction to between $91,000 and $109,000 over time before ultimately moving higher again. 

Benchmark’s Mark Palmer sees the most significant upcoming catalyst for the broader crypto ecosystem as the CLARITY Act — a framework to determine whether crypto tokens are commodities or securities — becoming law. Casey told us about “Crypto Week” approaching.  

“With the possibility of a huge regulatory rug-pull removed, institutional investors would have a green light to invest in the space in earnest,” Palmer told me. 

When it comes to M&A in the space, an Architect Partners report highlights that the 78 crypto M&A transactions in Q2 was by far a record. You might recall us writing about Ripple’s buy of Hidden Road being one of a growing number of crypto-TradFi intersections. A big crypto-crypto deal was Coinbase acquiring derivatives giant Deribit.

Architect Partners founder Eric Risley believes we’re at the beginning of a long-term uptrend in crypto M&A as the value prop for crypto/blockchain has gained broader acceptance.

“Certainly quarter to quarter will fluctuate, but the fundamental strategic drivers of M&A are now quite clear,” he told me. “Participants will include existing crypto businesses and more importantly, traditional financial services organizations of all stripes — banks, traditional broker-dealers and payment businesses.”

A major open question, Risely added, is what the next generation of dapps look like — beyond those focused on price speculation and payments.

As we chew on that one, the assets under management in crypto investment products hit an all-time peak of $188 billion at the rough halfway point, CoinShares data shows. 

And that was before this week. It’s been 18 months (to the day) since spot bitcoin ETFs made their US debut; net inflows stand at $51 billion (after yesterday’s near-record daily mark of ~$1.2 billion). US ether ETFs also saw their second-best daily inflow total yesterday, at $383 million.

More crypto ETFs (single-asset and index) are expected to come this year, but timelines remain up in the air. On that, Grayscale shared some feelings with the SEC.

Investors preferring crypto exposure via equities will be watching for more public listings after Circle’s IPO. We’ll keep an eye on companies like Gemini and Kraken.

And continuing the tokenization conversation, Bitwise and VanEck execs had predicted the tokenized securities market to hit $50 billion in 2025. It’s about halfway there.

“If Robinhood is rolling out tokenized trading, you can bet that Charles Schwab and others are studying it aggressively,” Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan wrote in a June 30 memo. “I’d expect a wave of additional announcements this Fall.”

A Schwab spokesperson didn’t have specific plans to share, but told me the company is “actively tracking and exploring a number of opportunities in the digital asset space, including tokenization.”

Crypto journalists (and our readers) are certainly not bored.

— Ben Strack

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Happy Friday. It was a relatively slow week on the economic data front, but tariff policy updates gave investors plenty to consider. 

The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite both closed at all-time highs Thursday (and you already heard about bitcoin’s rise). Things were looking more subdued Friday, though, for both cryptocurrencies and equities. A quick recap:

• May’s FOMC meeting minutes came out Wednesday, showing that Fed officials are growing more divided about the timeline for cutting interest rates. Committee members have differing opinions on how tariffs will impact inflation; some believe President Trump’s trade policies will lead to a one-time price increase for consumers, while others expect a longer-lasting impact.

• Initial jobless claims for the week ended July 5 declined by 5,000 — to 227,000 vs. expectations of 236,000. First-time filers are now at a seven-week low. The four-week moving average also declined to 235,000, vs. 241,250 the week prior. Continuing claims, however, increased to 1.97 million for the week ended June 28. The print, like others in recent weeks, supports the narrative that while there may not be significant layoffs, it’s getting more challenging to find a job.

— Casey Wagner