Welcome to the Forward Guidance newsletter, brought to you by Casey Wagner and Ben Strack. Here’s what you’ll find in today’s edition:

• The flood of crypto developments in the two weeks since Trump’s win.

• Casey preps you for Nvidia’s Q3 earnings report after the bell.

• After today’s court proceedings, the SBF saga is officially over now?

What the US election outcome spurred in crypto land  

It’s been two weeks since the US presidential election outcome that sent BTC to new highs and spurred some of the latest bullish happenings.

Let’s review what’s occurred in crypto land since Donald Trump’s political victory.

Starting with the crypto price rally, BTC rose 8.8% on Election Day (Nov. 5), Coinglass data shows. There were modest gains the next few days before BTC saw notable daily price increases of 4.8% and 10.2% on Nov. 9 and Nov. 10, respectively. Then a 4.2% rise on Nov. 14.

By Bitfinex analysts’ count, BTC rose roughly 40% (from the pre-election selloff point of about $66,880 to a then-peak $93,300) — marking the largest nine-day price increase for BTC since January 2021.  

Bitcoin surged to a new high over $94,900 early Wednesday. It was hovering around $93,800 at 2 pm ET — up 1.5% from 24 hours prior. 

Outside of price, everyone was reminded of some of Trump’s crypto-related pledges. Given the Republicans’ majority in the House and Senate too, hope around the US creating a strategic bitcoin reserve (via a bill proposed by Sen. Cynthia Lummis) is aplenty.  

In an X space yesterday, Lummis said she hopes “we can tee this up for adoption in 2025.” She noted that after Trump is sworn in, the US could get a headstart by converting gold certificates to bitcoin (even before the bill’s potential passage).

“The advantage of having legislation is it sets up the functional basis for the government holding bitcoin in a variety of locations, and then helping states hold their bitcoin as well,” she said. 

On the latter point, a notable post-election crypto headline was Pennsylvania lawmakers introducing a bill that would allow the state’s treasury to keep BTC on its balance sheet.

Then there are the companies following MicroStrategy’s lead in buying bitcoin for their treasuries (or planning to). MicroStrategy founder Michael Saylor said on the same X space with Lummis that if the US creates a strategic bitcoin reserve, others will “stampede to keep up” — namely the EU, Asia and Brazil.

“This is all about laying in place a power infrastructure to build the 21st century economy that’s so incredibly compelling that it attracts the capital from the rest of the world into the United States and into US values and US politics,” Saylor added.

As for US spot bitcoin ETF demand during the trading days after the election (from Nov. 6 to Nov. 19), those products have seen net inflows of about $5 billion.

Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan told me the election outcome “removes the last vestige of reputational risk from crypto” — noting he expects institutional ownership to follow “an exponential curve from Q1 onwards.” 

And Jersey City’s mayor and business administrator told me last week the city’s pension fund was just about ready to allocate to bitcoin ETFs — undeterred even given the latest price increase. 

Ether products saw an uptick in demand as well, reeling in $796 million in the six trading days after the election. Despite net outflows over the past four trading days, the category’s flows remain slightly positive since those launched in July. 

Positive sentiment around the space has shown up in more ways than buying-fueled price increases and fund flows.

Robinhood appeared to ride the wave of regulatory optimism by adding solana, cardano, XRP and pepe to its platform. ETF issuers are also perhaps betting on a more lenient SEC, with Bitwise, for example, proposing after the election to convert its crypto index fund into an ETF. 

A more recent amended ETF filing for a Grayscale Bitcoin Covered Call ETF came as options on the US spot bitcoin ETFs got the final regulatory OK.   

What am I forgetting?

Well, Trump’s nomination of Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick to lead the Department of Commerce sets the stage for another crypto-friendly person in a powerful position (if confirmed). 

And then there’s the conversation between Trump and Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong — reportedly in part about personnel appointments.

The biggest thing to watch for now? Blockchain Association CEO Kristin Smith has a thought on that: 

Industry watchers have labeled SEC Commissioner Mark Uyeda and former Coinbase chief legal officer Brian Brooks as potential candidates to replace Gary Gensler as SEC chair, but we don’t yet know Trump’s thoughts on the matter.

So we’ve been busy writing. And it doesn’t appear there will be a shortage of things to report on going forward. Galaxy CEO Mike Novogratz’s prediction was perhaps an understatement.

— Ben Strack

The total notional exposure for options on BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) on Tuesday (the first day of trading on the Nasdaq exchange).

Of the 354,000 contracts, 289,000 were calls (82%) & 65,000 were puts (18%), Bloomberg Intelligence analyst James Seyffart said in an X post. 

He added: “These options were almost certainly part of the move to the new Bitcoin all time highs today.”

The third and final cooperating witness in Sam Bankman-Fried’s criminal trial was sentenced today, bringing the case that started over a year ago to a close. Well, unless SBF’s appeal moves forward, but chances are slim. For now, my days in court are over. 

FTX’s co-founder and former chief technology officer, Gary Wang, was sentenced on Wednesday to time served with three years supervised release. He will not go to prison. 

Wang, who was the first ex-FTX employee to cooperate with the government back in 2022, testified last fall that he was the one who created the “special privilege” that allowed FTX-adjacent hedge fund Alameda Research to borrow money from the exchange. He said he didn’t know at the time that the line of credit was taking funds from customers. 

Prosecutors said Wang was invaluable in their case against Bankman-Fried, helping the government decipher code that otherwise would have taken “months if not years” to interpret. Now that he will be avoiding prison, Wang has agreed to continue working on a tool for federal investigators to help with the “detection of potential illegal activity in cryptocurrency markets.” 

Of the three so-called inner circle members (Wang, and fellow FTX execs Nishad Singh and Caroline Ellison), Wang was the least culpable, presiding Judge Lewis Kaplan said. 

“You immediately did the right thing,” Kaplan said Wednesday, addressing Wang. “You are entitled to a world of credit.” 

Singh last month was also granted a sentence of time served. Ellison was given two years, a term she started earlier this month at a low-security prison in Connecticut.

— Casey Wagner

It’s a high-stakes day for tech stocks as the grand finale to earnings season looms: Nvidia’s third quarter report, set to drop today after the bell. 

As the world’s largest public company by market cap, Nvidia has been the definitive winner of the AI boom. Shares are up almost 200% year to date and 1,000% since September 2022. 

Analysts are expecting big things from Nvidia tonight. Wall Street has consistently upped its predictions for the report, increasing earnings per share estimates to $2.84 (from $2.81 in September). Earnings per share from the second quarter came in at $2.70, a 148% increase year over year. 

Revenue estimates for the third quarter come in at $33 billion, which would be an 83% increase from the prior year. Second quarter earnings showed revenue was $30 billion. 

Investors are going to be looking for signs that Nvidia’s Blackwell GPU, a high-performance chip expected to drive the next AI wave, is in high demand and functioning well. Tonight’s call comes as reports of Blackwell GPUs overheating continue to swirl. Nvidia has invested more than $2 billion in developing Blackwell, so shareholders (and the broader market) are going to want to see signs that these issues are being worked out. 

Check back tomorrow for a full recap of Nvidia’s Q3 earnings and what will no doubt be some interesting market moves to follow.

— Casey Wagner

• After the Tuesday debut of IBIT options on Nasdaq, options for other US spot bitcoin ETFs started trading Wednesday. That included options on Grayscale’s GBTC, with the firm noting in an X post: “It’s incredible to see how far Bitcoin investing has come” since that trust’s 2013 launch.

• Despite bitcoin’s rise on Wednesday, ether was down about 2% from a day ago, as of 2 pm ET, hovering around $3,050 at that time. 

• MicroStrategy’s stock price had surged another 14% on Wednesday, as of 2 pm ET — in the wake of revealing its biggest BTC buy to date.