Here’s what you’ll find in today’s edition:

• Stocks were still riding yesterday’s high, albeit less enthusiastically. 

• Why it might not take much for BTC to keep rising. 

• Another analyst starts covering COIN and gives us a new price target.

Give the traders what they want 

It’s been weeks of mixed messages from the White House. Even as the administration flip-flops on tariff policies, one thing has remained consistent: Investors are acting on just the slightest hint of good news. 

Yesterday afternoon I wrote that markets were trading on a dream. I was talking about the rally we saw after US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent reportedly said in a private meeting that the trade war with China is “unsustainable.” 

That was nothing compared to the after-hours surge we saw later on Tuesday. 

The main catalyst was a comment from President Trump. He told reporters yesterday afternoon that he has “no intention” of firing Fed Chair Jerome Powell. Trump added that he “never” planned on removing Powell despite previously posting that the Chair’s “termination cannot come fast enough.” 

Markets got a second boost when Elon Musk said on Tesla’s Q1 earnings call that he’d be stepping back from his DOGE duties next month. The comment was enough to distract investors from Tesla’s first quarter miss and 71% decline in net income. Shares were up almost 7% midday Wednesday. 

Stocks and the dollar rose while Treasury yields retreated. It’s further proof that the market doesn’t need to see any tangible policy changes to rally. 

US indexes were still in the green Wednesday, but the rally was fading. The S&P 500 was trading 2% higher at 2:15 pm ET while the Nasdaq Composite had gained 3%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up around 600 points, although earlier in the session it had added as many as 1,100 points. 

The intraday pullback followed more remarks from Bessent, this time in a public appearance. The Treasury Secretary spoke at an IIF event Wednesday morning, saying that China “is in need of rebalancing.” He did not, however, reassure investors that the White House will be walking back its levies on the country — a comment investors would have appreciated. 

“China’s current economic model is built on exporting its way out of its economic troubles,” Bessent said. “It’s an unsustainable model that is not only harming China but the entire world.”  

Trump yesterday told reporters that tariffs on Chinese imports will “come down,” but “won’t be zero.” As of Wednesday afternoon, the White House had not commented further on the situation or the status of any negotiations. 

The Wall Street Journal, however, just reported that China tariffs could land around 50% to 65%, citing unnamed senior officials. This would be less than half of the current level. 

Confirmation on this would no doubt send stocks higher. In the meantime, at least Trump has taken firing Powell off the table. 

We’ll share more updates tomorrow, when the tariff situation undoubtedly will be completely different.

— Casey Wagner

Markets Don’t Build. Builders Do.

Permissionless IV isn’t about momentum trades or macro predictions — it's about what’s already being shipped by the people rewriting crypto’s foundation.

Infra. DeFi. Consumer apps. Modular design.
This is where the next cycle gets built.

Hear from:

• Hayden Adams (Uniswap) on what it takes to build at scale.

• Jesse Pollak (Base) on bringing crypto to millions — without compromising what matters.

• Kain Warwick (Infinex) on where DeFi goes next.

• Mert Mumtaz (Helius) on what real infra looks like under pressure.

📅 June 24–26 | Brooklyn, NY

This was Tesla’s earnings per share in Q1, coming in much lower than analysts’ forecasts of $0.41. 

Still, as mentioned above, Tesla stock was well in the green on Wednesday — likely due to comments that CEO Elon Musk would be soon distancing himself from the White House.

Bitcoin’s rise to a level not seen in more than a month has many wondering when its price will get back to six digits — and what exactly it will take. 

Maybe not as much as you’d think. 

Bitcoin was trading around $93,700 at 1:30 pm ET — up 12% from a week ago. 

The crypto market benefits from a foundation of “long-term structural growth drivers,” YouHodler markets chief Ruslan Lienkha reminded me — namely deeper integration with TradFi, improving regulatory clarity in the US, adoption via bitcoin ETFs, etc. 

A quick note on the inflows into the US spot BTC funds yesterday:

Headwinds in recent months preventing a new all-time high above ~$109,000 include mixed expectations around US tariff policy, future Fed actions and the potential for a recession. That has, as you know, more broadly sent the stock market tumbling in recent weeks.

That said, Lienkha’s view is: “Bitcoin does not require a strong equity rally to move higher. Simply a stable and less volatile macro backdrop would likely be sufficient to support renewed upside momentum.”

While BTC crashed alongside equities earlier this month, it has more recently strayed from acting as a high-beta version of US tech stocks. BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes alludes to this in a Tuesday blog post — and in his convo with Forward Guidance’s own Felix Jauvin. 

“Now that the global community believes Trump is a madman crudely and savagely wielding the tariff weapon, any investor with US stocks and bonds is looking for something whose value is anti-establishment,” Hayes wrote in the blog post. “Physically, that’s gold. Digitally, that’s bitcoin.”

Major economies printing money to cushion the effects of declining globalization would serve as a tailwind for BTC, he added to Jauvin.

We’ve written before about how various market participants perceive bitcoin as a risk-on asset. That’s despite the asset sharing global, scarce properties similar to gold — a metal that has hit new price highs amid the latest market turbulence.

Hayes believes BTC bottomed at $74,500, adding optimistically: “Bitcoin will shed its association with said tech stocks and will rejoin gold in the ‘Up Only’ cuddle puddle.” 

I’ll say it for him — that’s not investment advice. 

— Ben Strack

Two weeks ago we wrote about the outlook for Coinbase as macro uncertainty swirled.

Cantor Fitzgerald analysts, at the time, initiated coverage of COIN — giving the crypto exchange’s shares a buy rating and a $245 price target.

Now, Benchmark analyst Mark Palmer has officially started examining Coinbase’s stock. He similarly gave it a buy rating, with a price target of $252.

When the Cantor pros wrote their COIN outlook on April 9, shares were trading for about $165 — less than half of what the stock was trading for in early December. At 1:30 pm ET today, the stock price hovered around $197.

Palmer notes that Coinbase’s partnership with Circle (allowing it to receive a portion of interest income generated from USDC reserves) means COIN will especially benefit from stablecoin legislation and increased adoption there. 

Standard Chartered projects that the stablecoin market cap — currently ~$230 billion — could hit $2 trillion by the end of 2028. As I mentioned in yesterday’s newsletter, Agora co-founder Nick van Eck cited that same number by 2030. 

“As COIN continues to focus on the growth and expansion of its subscription and services offerings, the result should be a product mix with an increasing percentage of recurring revenue that should serve as a buffer against crypto market volatility,” Palmer wrote in a Wednesday note. 

If you forgot, subscription and services revenue is a fancy name for Coinbase’s income streams not derived from transactions. In addition to stablecoin revenue, these include blockchain rewards and custodial fee revenue.

Subscription and services revenue jumped to $641 million in Q4 2024, a 15% increase from the prior quarter. That total represented 29% of Coinbase’s total revenue over that three-month period. 

While Palmer pegs the compound annual growth rate of the company’s revenues at ~21% through 2026, he anticipates the CAGR for revenues from its non-trading offerings to be ~36% during that span.

Coinbase is set to report its Q1 results after the market closes on May 8. We’ll be tuning in.

— Ben Strack

• SEC Commissioner Mark Uyeda said the agency hopes more companies will go public this year, adding that more lenient regulations will motivate firms to enter the market. The comments came during a Wednesday CNBC interview. 

• President Trump’s memecoin was up more than 40% from a day ago after issuers said the top 220 holders of the token will be invited to dinner with the president in Washington next month.