Crypto Daybook Americas: Bitcoin Eyes New High as MetaPlanet Mania Builds

By James Van Straten (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)

Bitcoin (BTC) bulls inactive look to beryllium successful control. The largest cryptocurrency posted a record-high regular close connected Tuesday, astatine $106,830, arsenic it extends its beardown upward momentum with minimal pullbacks, putting the erstwhile all-time precocious of conscionable implicit $109,000 from Jan. 20 good wrong reach.

This terms enactment has importantly boosted bitcoin-leveraged equities, with Japan’s MetaPlanet (3350) lasting out—its banal has surged 160% successful 2025 alone. Strategy (MSTR), the poster lad for bitcoin buying, has added 44%.

MetaPlanet has repeatedly deed Japan’s regular limit-up threshold wrong minutes of marketplace open, efficaciously freezing upward trading for the time and fueling what resembles a slow-motion abbreviated squeeze.

Speculation astir MetaPlanet’s assertive bitcoin accumulation, arsenic indicated by metrics similar Days to Cover mNAV, is driving capitalist frenzy. Still, CEO Simon Gerovich precocious posted connected X that MetaPlanet is present the astir shorted banal successful Japan, with 25% of outstanding shares held short.

Meanwhile, macroeconomic conditions adhd to the complexity.

Japanese enslaved yields are spiking, with the 30-year output climbing supra 3.1% and the 10-year surpassing 1.5% — the highest since 2008. In the U.K., ostentation unexpectedly climbed to a 15-month high, pushing the 10-year gilt output toward the captious 5% level.

With bitcoin nearing caller highs amid rising planetary yields and persistent inflationary pressures, markets are entering a signifier of heightened volatility that demands keen attention. Stay alert!

What to Watch

• Crypto
  • May 22: Bitcoin Pizza Day.
  • May 22: Top 220 TRUMP token holders volition be a gala dinner hosted by President Trump astatine the Trump National Golf Club successful Washington.
  • May 30: The second circular of FTX repayments starts.
• Macro
  • Day 2 of 3: Canadian Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne and Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem volition co-host the three-day gathering of G7 concern ministers and cardinal slope governors successful Banff, Alberta.
  • May 21, 8 a.m.: Mexico’s National Institute of Statistics and Geography releases retail income data.
    • Retail Sales MoM Est. 0.1% vs. Prev. 0.2%
    • Retail Sales YoY Est. 2.2% vs. Prev. -1.1%
  • May 22, 8 a.m.: Mexico's National Institute of Statistics and Geography releases (final) Q1 GDP maturation data.
    • GDP Growth Rate QoQ Est. 0.2% vs. Prev. -0.6%
    • GDP Growth Rate YoY Est. 0.8% vs. Prev. 0.5%
  • May 22, 8:30 a.m.: Statistics Canada releases April shaper terms ostentation data.
    • PPI MoM Est. -0.5% vs. Prev. 0.5%.
    • PPI YoY Prev. 4.7%.
  • May 22, 8:30 a.m.: The U.S. Department of Labor releases unemployment security information for the week ended May 17.
    • Initial Jobless Claims Est. 230K vs. Prev. 229K
• Earnings (Estimates based connected FactSet data)
  • May 28: NVIDIA (NVDA), post-market, $0.88

Token Events

• Governance votes & calls
  • Arbitrum DAO is voting connected launching “The Watchdog,” a 400,000-ARB bounty programme to reward assemblage sleuths for uncovering misuse of the hundreds of millions successful grants, incentives and work budgets the DAO has deployed. Voting ends May 23.
  • Arbitrum DAO is voting connected a law AIP to upgrade Arbitrum One and Arbitrum Nova to ArbOS 40, “Callisto.” bringing them successful enactment with Ethereum’s May 7 Pectra upgrade. The connection schedules activation for June 17, and voting ends May 29.
  • May 21, 11 a.m: Maple to big an X spaces session to “unveil the adjacent section of Maple.”
  • May 22: Official Trump to announce its “next Era” at the time of the meal for the largest token holders.
  • June 10: Ether.fi to host an expert telephone followed by a Q&A session.
• Unlocks
  • May 31: Optimism (OP) to unlock 1.89% of its circulating proviso worthy $22.58 million.
  • June 1: Sui (SUI) to unlock 1.32% of its circulating proviso worthy $169.38 million.
  • June 1: ZetaChain (ZETA) to unlock 5.34% of its circulating proviso worthy $11.33 million.
  • June 12: Ethena (ENA) to unlock 0.7% of its circulating proviso worthy $15.36 million.
  • June 12: Aptos (APT) to unlock 1.79% of its circulating proviso worthy $57.91 million.
• Token Launches
  • May 21: Mantra (OM) to beryllium listed connected Upbeat and the Crypto.com app.
  • June 1: Staking rewards for staking ERC-20 OM connected MANTRA Finance end.
  • June 16: Advised deadline to unstake stMATIC arsenic portion of Lido connected Polygon’s sunsetting process ends.

Conferences

• Day 3 of 7: Dutch Blockchain Week (Amsterdam)
• Day 2 of 3: Avalanche Summit London
• Day 2 of 3: Seamless Middle East Fintech 2025 (Dubai)
• Day 1 of 2: Crypto Expo Dubai
• Day 1 of 2: Cryptoverse Conference (Warsaw)
• May 27-29: Bitcoin 2025 (Las Vegas)
• May 27-30: Web Summit Vancouver
• May 29: Stablecon (New York)
• May 29-30: Litecoin Summit 2025 (Las Vegas)
• May 29-June 1: Balkans Crypto 2025 (Tirana, Albania)
• June 2-7: SXSW London

Token Talk

By Shaurya Malwa and Oliver Knight

• Hailey Welch, aka “Hawk Tuah Girl,” is distancing herself from the failed HAWK memecoin she promoted successful December 2024, contempt initially calling it a compliant, fan-focused project.
• On her Talk Tuah podcast, Welch said she was questioned by the FBI, gave her telephone to the SEC, and was “cleared” of wrongdoing, claiming she was an unwitting participant.
• Welch present says she didn’t recognize crypto and felt “sick” that fans trusted her, contrasting her November 2024 enthusiasm, erstwhile she claimed to person “learned truthful much” astir the token.
• HAWK, launched connected Solana, reached a $491 cardinal marketplace headdress earlier crashing beneath $100 cardinal wrong hours. It’s present astatine $104,000, down 99% from its peak.
• Welch claimed idiosyncratic losses were $180,000, overmuch little than the estimated $1.2 million. Her fig excludes 10,149 token holders who ne'er sold, per Solscan.
• Commentators criticized Welch for endorsing a task she didn’t understand, with YouTube comments highlighting her deficiency of accountability.
• Welch’s squad antecedently stated the task was legally compliant with a Cayman instauration and that her tokens would vest implicit 3 years.

Derivatives Positioning

• BTC CME futures unfastened involvement continues to rise, topping $17 cardinal for the archetypal clip since February. Meanwhile, maturation successful ETH unfastened involvement has stalled supra $2 billion. However, the premium successful ETH futures is somewhat higher than BTC's.
• On offshore exchanges, perpetual backing rates proceed to flash bullish with sub-10% readings.
• BCH, TON perpetual backing rates stay negative, suggesting a bias for shorts and imaginable for a abbreviated compression should the marketplace determination higher.
• In options, flows connected OTC web Paradigm featured request for calls, particularly the $180K telephone expiring successful September.

Market Movements

• BTC is down 0.64% from 4 p.m. ET Tuesday astatine $106,257.16 (24hrs: +1.23%)
• ETH is up 0.42% astatine $2,525.16 (24hrs: +0.51%)
• CoinDesk 20 is down 0.27% astatine 2,268.01 (24hrs: +0.6%)
• Ether CESR Composite Staking Rate is down 1 bps astatine 3.03%
• BTC backing complaint is astatine 0.0088% (9.6886% annualized) connected Binance

• DXY is down 0.49% astatine 99.63
• Gold is up 1% astatine $3,313.10/oz
• Silver is up 1.02% astatine $33.31/oz
• Nikkei 225 closed -0.61% astatine 37,298.98
• Hang Seng closed +0.62% astatine 23,827.78
• FTSE is down 0.15% astatine 8,768.01
• Euro Stoxx 50 is down 0.45% astatine 5,430.16
• DJIA closed connected Tuesday -0.27% astatine 42,677.24
• S&P 500 closed -0.39% astatine 5,940.46
• Nasdaq closed -0.38% astatine 19,142.71
• S&P/TSX Composite Index closed +0.32% astatine 26,055.6
• S&P 40 Latin America closed -0.26% astatine 2,631.81
• U.S. 10-year Treasury complaint is up 5 bps astatine 4.54%
• E-mini S&P 500 futures are down 0.76% astatine 5,914.75
• E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are down 0.81% astatine 21,274.50
• E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index futures are down 0.76% astatine 42,447.00

Bitcoin Stats

• BTC Dominance: 64.01 (-0.15%)
• Ethereum to bitcoin ratio: 0.02378 (0.63%)
• Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 884 EH/s
• Hashprice (spot): $56.1
• Total Fees: 7.42 BTC / $784,400
• CME Futures Open Interest: 160,155
• BTC priced successful gold: 32.3 oz
• BTC vs golden marketplace cap: 9.15%

Technical Analysis

• BTC roseate arsenic precocious arsenic $108,000 aboriginal contiguous but struggled to support the momentum, with the hourly illustration MACD histogram turning negative.
• Prices volition apt consolidate for immoderate time, allowing a affirmative reset of the MACD, pursuing which the adjacent limb higher could resume.

Crypto Equities

• Strategy (MSTR): closed connected Tuesday astatine $416.92 (+0.85%), down 0.58% astatine $414.50 successful pre-market
• Coinbase Global (COIN): closed astatine $261.38 (-0.99%), down 0.67% astatine $259.64
• Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY): closed astatine C$30.52 (-3.08%)
• MARA Holdings (MARA): closed astatine $16.19 (-0.8%), down 1.17% astatine $16
• Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed astatine $8.93 (-0.45%), down 1.46% astatine $8.80
• Core Scientific (CORZ): closed astatine $10.92 (+0.65%), down 2.2% astatine $10.68
• CleanSpark (CLSK): closed astatine $9.7 (-1.42%), down 1.65% astatine $9.54
• CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed astatine $17.99 (-0.77%)
• Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed astatine $41.88 (-3.21%), up 2.63% astatine $42.98
• Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed astatine $34.51 (+1.77%), down 1.45% astatine $34.01

ETF Flows

Spot BTC ETFs:

• Daily nett flow: $329.2 million
• Cumulative nett flows: $42.75 billion
• Total BTC holdings ~ 1.19 million

Spot ETH ETFs

• Daily nett flow: $64.8 million
• Cumulative nett flows: $2.61 billion
• Total ETH holdings ~ 3.47 million

Source: Farside Investors

Overnight Flows

Chart of the Day

• Strategy (MSTR) has been accumulating bitcoin astatine a breakneck speed, maintaining the gait adjacent during the March-April terms swoon.
• "From GameStop to MetaPlanet to Strategy’s $60B stash, BTC is reshaping firm finance. Discover however the '42/42 Plan' could go a blueprint for others," 21Shares said connected X.

While You Were Sleeping

• Bitcoin Sets Record Daily Close With $110K arsenic the Next Level to Watch for BTC (CoinDesk): Bitcoin acceptable a grounds precocious adjacent connected Tuesday astatine $106,830 arsenic spot ETF inflows roseate and bond-market turmoil fueled concerns implicit fiscal stability, which analysts accidental could payment BTC and gold.
• SEC Charges Unicoin, Top Executives With $100M ‘Massive Securities Fraud’ (CoinDesk): The SEC alleged Unicoin misled investors by inflating spot values, overstating income claims — touting $3 cardinal erstwhile lone $110 cardinal was raised — and promoting rights certificates with exaggerated instrumentality promises.
• U.K. Inflation Jumps, Reinforcing Bank of England’s Caution (The Wall Street Journal): Annual ostentation roseate much than forecast to 3.5% successful April connected rising labour and vigor costs. Projections suggest a gradual instrumentality to people by 2027.
• 'Days to Cover mNAV': The New Standard for Evaluating Bitcoin Equities (CoinDesk): This metric estimates however agelong a institution would request to accumulate capable bitcoin to warrant its marketplace headdress based connected regular output and nett plus worth multiple.
• Morgan Stanley Strategists Say Buy America Except the Dollar (Bloomberg): Morgan Stanley strategists expect 2026 Fed complaint cuts to payment U.S. stocks and Treasuries, portion forecasting dollar weakness arsenic maturation and output advantages implicit different economies shrink.
• IMF Urges U.S. to Curb Deficit arsenic Trump Tax Cut Plan Stirs Debt Fears (Financial Times): The IMF’s archetypal lawman managing manager said U.S. fiscal argumentation should purpose to little the debt-to-GDP ratio and warned that commercialized uncertainty remains precocious contempt caller tariff relief.

In the Ether