Bitcoin gets a lift
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What’s up
Fed Voucher Sends Crypto Out Of Garage
On a day when the world's most powerful central banker served up a mixed platter of news, No. 1 crypto Bitcoin shot from slightly below $102K to above $105K. That ride came yesterday afternoon and lasted into last night. As of Thursday, at 6:55 a.m. (EST), BTC was $105.3K on a gain of 2.6% over the past 24 hours. Total crypto market cap hit $3.71 trillion on a gain of 1.1% since this time yesterday, according to CoinGecko.
Following the Federal Reserve's decision to keep short-term borrowing rates unchanged, Fed Chair Jerome Powell remarked, hawkishly, that inflation remains stubbornly elevated. And while his meticulous language sent stocks lower, it was something else, off-cuff, off-brand, Powell said, regarding crypto, that turned digital asset charts green.
Asked by a reporter about the risks associated with crypto, Powell said banks under the Fed's purview are "perfectly able to serve crypto customers as long as they understand and can manage the risks and it’s safe.”
He added: "The threshold has been a little higher for banks engaging in crypto activities and that's because they're so new. We’re not against innovation, and we certainly don’t want to take actions that would cause banks to terminate customers who are perfectly legal just because of excess risk aversion."
The crypto community responded with glee as a recent era of stealth "de-banking" policies unfairly impairing growth seems emphatically done. “Banks will be a major catalyst for crypto in 2025," Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley posted on X. "Mainstream era beginning.”
Meanwhile, in tech stock news, Meta shares rose as high as 5% in off-hours markets after the social media platform slayed analysts' expectations, reporting annual revenue up 21% to $48B, a record.
On a conference call, Meta's founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he expects that 2025 is the year "when a highly intelligent and personalized AI assistant reaches more than one billion people."
Despite this week's shocking revelation about a seemingly game-changing Chinese AI breakthrough — achieving Generative Pre-Trained Transformer greatness but at a fraction of the capital expenditures — Meta insists it will not slow capex spending, set to exceed $60B in 2025.
What's down
AI Biggie Barely Quivers
Decentralized AI technology marketplace Bittensor (TAO) has endured a raucous past few months, surging amidst hype surrounding chatbots, flailing when crypto at large falls out of bed, but consistently rebounding. Just in the past six months, TAO has been as low as $250 and as high as $700.
Between this past Sunday and Monday, with news that a Chinese AI startup, DeepSeek, had developed a way to train its large language model (LLM) at a fraction of the cost of the efforts put forth by the likes of OpenAI, TAO took a tumble from $455 to $386. It shot back up as many in the industry interpreted news of inexpensively produced AI tech as over-archingly boding well for the sector in the long run.
TAO, native token of the Bittensor platform, has a market cap of $3.8B, making it the 44th-largest digital asset, per CoinGecko. It's the third-largest token in CoinGecko's AI coin category, behind Near Protocol (NEAR) and Internet Computer (ICP).
Bittensor's claim to intelligent machine facilitation fame is in its role democratizing access to, and ownership of, AI systems, via a decentralized network. "The launch of DeepSeek’s AI model highlights the power of open-source technology," said researchers at Grayscale, which offers the Grayscale Bittensor Trust. "At the same time, the news highlights risks associated with centralized AI development."
Such risks, such as data security, biases and censorship, potentially could be addressed by blockchain-based AI platforms, Grayscale said in a research note.
TAO has stayed green this week over last week. And it has been some week. Although, as of this morning, TAO was $468, down about 2% in 24 hours.
What's next
Czech Mate?
Speaking to the Financial Times, Ales Michl, head of the Czech National Bank, confirms he plans to propose the creation of a Bitcoin stockpile to stash up to 5% of the nation's reserves.
Part of the inspiration was the year-long success of spot BTC ETFs, Michl explained, pointing also to recent action by U.S. President Donald Trump, who last week ordered the issue of creating a national stockpile of crypto be looked at.
"For diversification, Bitcoin seems good," said Michl, who used to run an investment fund and is not averse to risk.
"Those [Trump] guys can now kind of create some bubble for Bitcoin," he added. "But I think the trend would be an increase without those guys."
He apparently isn't so sure his idea will fly when he meets with his six other fellow bank board members today.
"If you compare my position with other bankers, then I'm the pioneer," Michl said. "I'm the pioneer, the one entering the jungle."
