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⌐◪-◪ → Saylor is a Bitcoin bull, bull, bull.

At the White House Crypto Summit, Saylor pitched an ambitious digital asset strategy, recommending the U.S. government acquire up to 25% of Bitcoin’s total supply by 2035, when 99% of all BTC will have been mined. His argument? A massive Bitcoin stockpile could generate trillions in revenue and act as a “perpetual source of prosperity” for Americans.

His proposal suggests the government should never sell its Bitcoin, emphasizing that a long-term holding strategy could generate $16T to $81T for the U.S. Treasury by 2045. Compared to Senator Cynthia Lummis’ previous push for a 5% allocation, this is an order of magnitude larger—and far more aggressive.

The Strategic Bitcoin Reserve is already in motion, with Trump’s executive order establishing a BTC stockpile using seized crypto. But so far, there’s no official commitment to buy more Bitcoin—only a directive for the Treasury and Commerce secretaries to develop “budget-neutral” strategies for future acquisition.

Saylor clearly thinks bigger. Whether or not his plan gains traction, one thing is certain: the conversation around nation-state Bitcoin accumulation has entered the mainstream. The real game theory is now in play.

⌐◪-◪ → Big win for banks and crypto.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) just announced that federally regulated banks can engage in crypto custody, stablecoin-related activities, and even run blockchain nodes—no prior approval needed. This is a major shift, removing the burdensome approval and control requirements that were previously in place.

Even more interesting, the OCC has officially withdrawn its 2023 statement on liquidity risks from crypto, signaling a reversal of prior concerns about the industry's impact on financial stability. Acting Comptroller Rodney Hood made it clear: banks engaging with crypto should have the same strong risk management controls as traditional activities, but there will no longer be unnecessary roadblocks in place.

Zooming out, this marks another step in the normalization of crypto within traditional finance. Expect more banks to start dipping their toes into custody and stablecoin operations, further blurring the lines between TradFi and DeFi. The great integration continues.

⌐◪-◪ → Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade just hit a roadblock.

During its final testnet run on Sepolia, the upgrade ran into unexpected issues, and an unknown attacker made things worse by exploiting an edge case to force the mining of empty blocks. The problem stemmed from the deposit contract triggering the wrong event type—a transfer event instead of a deposit. A fix was rolled out quickly, but the attacker found a loophole, sending zero-token transfers to keep the issue alive.

Ethereum developers eventually patched the problem by deploying a private fix across key nodes, preventing further disruption. Despite the setback, finalization was never lost, and the issue was contained to Sepolia due to its token-gated deposit contract, which isn’t present on mainnet.

This follows earlier testnet hiccups on Holesky, adding to concerns about Pectra’s readiness. As a result, the upgrade has been postponed for further testing. While delays are frustrating, they’re a reminder that Ethereum is optimizing for stability. Better to find the issues now than post-launch.

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