Traders eye big BTC breakout

Looking around corners – and salivating – traders have elevated the expectations surrounding a possible run for the world's largest crypto.

Bullish vibes owe to some intense, hardly inconspicuous buying of Bitcoin call options set to expire at month's end.

"Options flow was clearly bullish," crypto derivatives experts at Paradigm said on Wednesday afternoon via Telegram.

One market observer, per CoinDesk, noted an influx of big-money speculators looking to profit off a rally from current levels (BTC clung just below $71K early this morning) to as high as $80,000 by the end of this month.

Rocketing right this very moment, meanwhile, is Brett (BRETT), 80th-largest digital asset, per CoinGecko, and which merely hours ago hit an all-time high of roughly 14 cents.

Brett was inspired by a character from the popular "Boy's Club" stoner comic about mutant slacker roommates. Brett's creator, Matt Furie, is best known for his Pepe the frog. Brett the blockchain project launched in February on Base, a layer-2 chain. BRETT the coin has a total supply capped at 10 billion and there is no mechanism for minting any more. While there was no pre-sale process in the name of fairness, skeptics about a month ago pounced on rumors that insiders had hoarded three-fourths of supply, causing BRETT to momentarily hit the skids.

Since March 1, BRETT, obviously still beloved by a community of kindred spirits at a time when memecoins are the rage, has gained a stunning 16,500%.

Total crypto assets rose 0.5% in the past day. That's as of Thursday at 7:15 a.m. (EST). Large-cap coins are mostly unmoved.

A few are slightly down. For example, XRP shed 0.5% in the past day.

Surging Kaspa (KAS), 30th-largest coin, reached an ATH yesterday around this time. KAS hit $0.1916 but has since fallen 6%.

Turning to the regulatory front on this 80th anniversary of D-Day, SEC Chair Gary Gensler appears to be shifting his once combative crypto tone. Speaking to CNBC while attending an International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA)/Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) event, Gensler displayed curious nonchalance when asked about Ethereum ETFs, shrugging off drama around the approval process as if it were no biggie and not in any way a protracted battle that saw its tide suddenly turn.

"Ethereum had been traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange futures for three-plus years," Gensler said. "And the staff looked at that closely, and that was approved. Now, the underlying exchange traded products still need to go through a process to have the disclosure about that. And that’ll take some time, but they're working on that right now."

The head of the SEC “sped through an account of its ongoing approval process as if it were a casual matter," CoinDesk noted.

GameStop (GME) shares pumped (again) on Wednesday even as meme stock influencer Keith Gill, also known as Roaring Kitty, came under growing scrutiny. GME closed regular trading hours at $31.57, up 19% on the session. GME was notched above $32 during pre-market trading. 

It’s been a rollercoaster. At one point on Monday, GME rocketed by as much as 70% on an intraday basis, ultimately finishing the session up 21%.

Gill recently posted a screenshot of his portfolio containing 5 million shares of GME and 120,000 GME call options with a strike price of $20 and which expire on June 21. State and federal regulators are supposedly looking into Gill's trading activities of late while E-Trade is weighing whether to nix his account, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Regulatory heat led Gill to take a three-year hiatus from the spotlight following an identical GameStop game plan: rallying the masses to create momentum in GME’s share price, ostensibly to squeeze hedge funds that were shorting the video game retailer, ultimately causing such a bubble formation/fallout ruckus that the U.S. Congress held hearings and Hollywood producers turned the whole zany episode into "Dumb Money," a not terrible but fairly forgettable movie attempting to replicate "The Big Short."

Once-bitten/twice-shy GameStop bears should be on notice this entire episode still could have a few more twists and turns while also keeping in mind the power of an underdog story: merry prankster Gill could be on the verge of becoming a billionaire later this month if meme buying legions do their part.

"It appears there could be another leg higher," InvestorPlace said.

"It's a cult stock," Andrew Left told the WSJ.

Left you may recall is the short seller whose 2021 bet against GME first provoked the wrath of GameStop fans. Left is once again shorting GME, although he's taken a smaller position than the one he had three years ago.

"Here's the reality," MarketWatch's Cody Willard insists. "GameStop has few growth prospects and questionable survival potential. There is no short squeeze coming."