Plus: Congress presses Mark Zuckerberg over crypto plans

GM. This is our 200th edition, so today’s juice is on the house - hope you like it shaken with love and a twist of market dysfunction.

🤓 GENIUS Act moves forward.

🟠 One more Bitcoin treasury company.

🍋 News drops: alleged crypto kidnappers plead not guilty, Senators feeling sus about Meta's stablecoin + more

🍍 Market flavor today

Crypto Market Cap: $3.38T -2.36% (24H)
Name		Price	24H	7D
	Bitcoin BTC	$106,908.18	-2.31%	2.70%
	Ethereum ETH	$2,746.68	-2.56%	6.59%
	XRP XRP	$2.23	-3.28%	2.33%
	BNB BNB	$660.36	-0.73%	0.71%
	Solana SOL	$159.17	-4.41%	6.11%

We got some good news about inflation today: PPI came in lower than expected.

👉 Quick refresher: PPI stands for Producer Price Index, and it tracks how much companies are paying for goods and services.

If those costs go up, businesses often raise their prices too - so it can lead to higher prices for consumers (which shows up in CPI).

So when PPI stays low, it’s a sign that inflation might not be spreading, which is exactly what the Fed wants to see.

We also got new jobless claims data - aka how many people applied for unemployment benefits last week - and it was a bit worse than predicted.

Translation: layoffs aren’t slowing down, and if that continues, it could mean the job market is getting weaker - something else the Fed pays close attention to.

Put together, this kind of data gives the Fed less reason to raise interest rates, and maybe even a reason to cut them later this year = something the crypto market loves.

Plus, we’ve got the US–China trade war de-escalating, and Donald Trump and Elon Musk being friendly again… all signs pointing up.

So why isn’t crypto pumping?

Well... there’s a new problem: reports say Israel might be planning a strike on Iran.

Now, Iran is a major oil supplier, so any conflict there could mess with global oil prices.

And if oil gets more expensive, inflation could go up again, which could stop central banks from cutting rates.

So yeah, things should be looking up... if only the world would chill for five minutes.

🥝 Memecoin harvest

Just what we needed - more proof the market runs on pure vibes and animals 📈

Data as of 06:35 AM EST.

Check out these memecoins and plenty more here.

🤓 GENIUS

The US is getting closer and closer to making stablecoin rules a thing.

There's this bill called the GENIUS Act that’s been in the works for a while, and it’s meant to establish clear rules for stablecoin issuers.

If it passes, that would be a big W. Clear regulations = more trust and easier adoption.

And yesterday, the Senate voted 68–30 to move the bill past the filibuster stage, which means no more stalling - it’s officially heading into final debate.

Next up: 30 hours of discussion → then a full Senate vote, possibly on June 16 or 17 → if it passes there, it goes to the House → if the House approves it too, it heads to the President to be signed into law.

So... yeah, there’s still a chance it doesn’t make it all the way.

But honestly, the fact that the Senate is even taking the time to push a stablecoin bill this far says A LOT about where the US is heading with crypto.

(Oh, and if you want a deeper look at what’s in the bill + why some people think it sucks - check out our previous edition.)

🗣️ Another one

Just last week, we talked about a South Korean media company trying to pull a Metaplanet and rebrand itself into an all-in Bitcoin business.

And now? Another one joins the cool kids club 😎

Mercurity Fintech - a blockchain-based fintech group - announced they're raising $800M to build their own long-term Bitcoin treasury reserve.

Shi Qiu, the company's CEO, said:

"We’re building this Bitcoin treasury reserve based on our belief that Bitcoin will become an essential component of the future financial infrastructure. We are positioning our company to be a key player in the evolving digital financial ecosystem."

Translation: they saw the charts and caught a case of the Bitcoin FOMO.

And how bad’s the virus?

Well, according to a report from Gemini and Glassnode, Bitcoin treasuries now control almost a third of the total BTC supply.

(We already covered whether this much hoarding is good or bad for the rest of us, btw.)

Either way, one thing’s obvious: the institutions are here, and they’re not leaving anytime soon.

🍋 News drops

👀 There’s a way to trade on Binance without making a single decision yourself. Sounds tempting, right? Here’s what that really looks like.

🤨 Senators Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal are pressing Mark Zuckerberg for more info about Meta’s plans to launch a stablecoin. They also wanna know if Meta had any role in shaping the GENIUS Act.

🦠 Strategy CEO Michael Saylor got into Bitcoin in 2020 after seeing how the pandemic messed with the economy. Interest rates had dropped to almost zero, money was being printed nonstop, and his company was sitting on $500M in cash that wasn’t doing anything useful.

⛔️ Australia’s financial watchdog banned adviser Glenda Maree Rogan from the industry for 10 years. She’s accused of taking almost $10M from clients and secretly putting it into a crypto scheme.

😇 William Duplessie and John Woeltz, who were accused of kidnapping someone to steal his Bitcoin, have pleaded not guilty. Their lawyers claim the guy wasn’t actually being held hostage.

🍌 Juicy memes