Crypto’s Mainstream Moment

“It might make sense just to get some in case it catches on. If enough people think the same way, that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

–Satoshi Nakamoto

May 16, 2025 — This week saw the most bullish sign for the crypto space in over a year.

Yet most investors missed it. It’s easy to see why. This sign is really a confluence of events.

The biggest sign this week came when Standard & Poor’s decided to update the companies that make up the S&P 500, the widely-followed index that’s used as a benchmark for performance.

The S&P 500 was about to become the S&P 499, thanks to the merger of Capital One Financial and Discover.

So, a new company is joining the ranks. And S&P picked cryptocurrency brokerage firm Coinbase (COIN).

Shares soared on the news.

After all, with all the money that passively buys into index funds – like most 401k plans – being in the index means some of that money passively flows to your company’s shares.

It’s also a sign of a company that’s steadily growing, and is sizeable enough to handle those inflows.

The key point, however, is that cryptocurrency investing has gone mainstream. You can’t passively invest in an index without some exposure to this new asset class.

But the Coinbase news is just one facet of crypto’s mainstream moment.

Small Cap Companies Take the Lead

Crypto adoption continues, with companies looking to add crypto services or simply buy bitcoin as a Treasury asset.

For small-cap companies, the buy announcement can mean a big move. The Blockchain Group has soared over 1,100% year-to-date following its move to add bitcoin to its balance sheet.

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But the hits just keep coming. Canadian crypto asset manager Defi Technologies just uplisted to the Nasdaq, under the ticker DEFT. Paid-up Grey Swan Investment Fraternity members may remember that this is a company mentioned by our crypto expert Mark Jeftovic just a few weeks ago in Grey Swan Live! – before shares surged 70% on the uplisting news.

Plus, bitcoin debit card company Fold (FLD) recently went public. Full disclosure: I have a Fold debit card, which provides rewards back in the form of satoshis, the smallest divisible unit of bitcoin. They offer a simple way to passively add to your bitcoin holdings. They’re testing out a credit card, and even bitcoin gift cards.

And, of course, MicroStrategy, the original corporate bitcoin buyer, has shortened its name to Strategy (MSTR). It’s hardly micro anymore, with a market cap over $100 billion. They’re buying with a combination of share issuances, convertible preferred stock, and a little bit of debt, and today now own over 2% of all bitcoin.

Corporate America isn’t quite all-in on bitcoin yet. But the trend is in that direction. And when companies with massive cash hoards start to put just 1-2% of their assets into bitcoin, the buying will go into overdrive.

Bitcoin’s Relentless Bid

Outside of the corporate sphere, investors have poured $6.7 billion into crypto funds year-to-date.

In the past four weeks as the market has rebounded, there have been $882 million of net inflows.

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But here’s the fun part: $867 million has gone just into bitcoin ETFs.

In other words, investors, whether retail or institutional, are putting 98% of their crypto money into bitcoin.

It’s easy to see why. Bitcoin isn’t just the original cryptocurrency. Its proof-of-work structure and hard cap of 21 million coins make its scarcity powerful.

In the meantime, every four years, the new supply of bitcoin drops. And with over 93% of total bitcoin now in existence, relentless corporate and investor buying in excess of the new supply creation suggests that prices are setting up for a big move higher.

A Modest Price Prediction for 2025

So what happens next in crypto? Everything that’s happening now, just on a slightly larger scale. Companies will continue to go public, raise capital, and buy assets like bitcoin.

That means bitcoin’s price could go far higher. One prediction, made by our industry colleague Ian King, suggests a run to $140,000 this year, about double the 2021 cycle peak.

However, one contrarian indicator suggests a bigger move.

According to CNBC analyst Jim Cramer, bitcoin won’t hit $200,000 this year.

Given how Jim Cramer’s predictions are so wrong that one institution even launched an inverse ETF to do the opposite of his recommendations, $200,000 bitcoin is starting to look reasonable. Position yourself accordingly.

Have a great weekend,

Andrew Packer
Grey Swan Investment Fraternity

P.S. from Andrew: We hold a few positions in the Grey Swan model portfolio designed to profit from the rise of bitcoin. And besides my interest in bitcoin, we do tap into a fantastic network of folks knowledgeable in the space, including Mark Jeftovic of The Crypto Capitalist.

Paid-up fraternity members can get the latest crypto insights in our monthly Grey Swan Bulletin, where we’ve started including a “Crypto Corner” page.

Your thoughts? Please send them here: addison@greyswanfraternity.com

“It might make sense just to get some in case it catches on. If enough people think the same way, that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

–Satoshi Nakamoto

May 16, 2025 — This week saw the most bullish sign for the crypto space in over a year.

Yet most investors missed it. It’s easy to see why. This sign is really a confluence of events.

The biggest sign this week came when Standard & Poor’s decided to update the companies that make up the S&P 500, the widely-followed index that’s used as a benchmark for performance.

The S&P 500 was about to become the S&P 499, thanks to the merger of Capital One Financial and Discover.

So, a new company is joining the ranks. And S&P picked cryptocurrency brokerage firm Coinbase (COIN).

Shares soared on the news.

After all, with all the money that passively buys into index funds – like most 401k plans – being in the index means some of that money passively flows to your company’s shares.

It’s also a sign of a company that’s steadily growing, and is sizeable enough to handle those inflows.

The key point, however, is that cryptocurrency investing has gone mainstream. You can’t passively invest in an index without some exposure to this new asset class.

But the Coinbase news is just one facet of crypto’s mainstream moment.

Small Cap Companies Take the Lead

Crypto adoption continues, with companies looking to add crypto services or simply buy bitcoin as a Treasury asset.

For small-cap companies, the buy announcement can mean a big move. The Blockchain Group has soared over 1,100% year-to-date following its move to add bitcoin to its balance sheet.

Turn Your Images On

Bitcoin’s Relentless Bid

Outside of the corporate sphere, investors have poured $6.7 billion into crypto funds year-to-date.

In the past four weeks as the market has rebounded, there have been $882 million of net inflows.

Turn Your Images On

But here’s the fun part: $867 million has gone just into bitcoin ETFs.

In other words, investors, whether retail or institutional, are putting 98% of their crypto money into bitcoin.

It’s easy to see why. Bitcoin isn’t just the original cryptocurrency. Its proof-of-work structure and hard cap of 21 million coins make its scarcity powerful.

A Modest Price Prediction for 2025

So what happens next in crypto? Everything that’s happening now, just on a slightly larger scale. Companies will continue to go public, raise capital, and buy assets like bitcoin.

That means bitcoin’s price could go far higher. One prediction, made by our industry colleague Ian King, suggests a run to $140,000 this year, about double the 2021 cycle peak.

However, one contrarian indicator suggests a bigger move.

According to CNBC analyst Jim Cramer, bitcoin won’t hit $200,000 this year.

Have a great weekend,

Andrew Packer
Grey Swan Investment Fraternity

Paid-up fraternity members can get the latest crypto insights in our monthly Grey Swan Bulletin, where we’ve started including a “Crypto Corner” page.

Your thoughts? Please send them here: addison@greyswanfraternity.com

The narrative for BTC and other cryptocurrencies is that every government around the world has high debt-to-GDP ratios. It means they are going to print more currency. It means there is a need for alternative currency. In the past, this alternative currency was gold.

Gold is not very portable. It’s a good store of value. It’s not as great of a store of value as BTC in terms of actually storing it. BTC, you can store it on a hard drive or at Coinbase. Gold, if you have bars you have to keep them in a bank or you have to dig a hole in your backyard. And you can’t send gold around the world as easily as you can send BTC.

I still think this rally has legs. If you go back to where the breakout happened, we were really in November of 2024 that was the beginning of this bull market in my mind because that was the first time we hit an all-time high in a couple years. Then we rallied. We pulled back. We tested that level again.

The uptrend, in my mind and with what I’m seeing, is still intact. We’re just in an oversold condition right now.

Nvidia’s $900 billion round-trip this week wasn’t about some revelation in Jensen Huang’s chip factory. The business is firing on all cylinders – and may yet be one more reason for the market to soar higher into 2026.

The culprit was the macro — one gust of wind from the labor market and trillions in valuation shifted like sand dunes.

Nvidia’s earnings lifted the market at the open, but the jobs report’s undertow snapped sentiment like a dry twig. As we pointed out this morning, the S&P notched its biggest intraday reversal since April.

The first half of the move was classic Wall Street choreography: blowout earnings, analysts breathless with adjectives, and every fund manager terrified of underweighting the patron saint of AI.

In April, following the “Liberation Day” low, the indexes took off in the morning only to crash later in the day. The first and only other time in history we have seen a strong bullish opening followed by a sharp bearish close was during the 2020 recovery from the Covid shock.

In both cases, the markets were rebounding from exogenous shocks.

That’s not where we are today. The index-level charts may look composed, but underneath plenty of individual stocks are trading as if they’ve already slipped into a private bear market of their own.

We’ll see how the day unfolds. It’s options-expiration Friday — the monthly opex ritual when traders roll positions forward, unwind old bets, and generally yank prices around like terriers with a chew toy.

Every major tech shift has followed a similar pattern. As information moves faster, the money follows.

The telegraph made news global and opened up a world of investment opportunities. Radio, and then television, ignited a new wave of prosperity for investors. And the internet made communication instant, creating fortunes for those who saw what was coming.

Now standards like x402 are doing the same for AI and digital payments, potentially putting Jamie Dimon’s empire in jeopardy.

If you have Coinbase building the payment rails, Circle handling settlement and projects like Worldcoin and Particle Network solving for identity and wallets — do you really need a bank to validate transactions and keep track of who owns what?

All of these companies are helping to build a new layer of fintech infrastructure. And they’re all working toward an economy that runs continuously, without the need for corporate scaffolding.

The uptrend, in my mind and with what I’m seeing, is still intact. We’re just in an oversold condition right now.

The culprit was the macro — one gust of wind from the labor market and trillions in valuation shifted like sand dunes.

The first half of the move was classic Wall Street choreography: blowout earnings, analysts breathless with adjectives, and every fund manager terrified of underweighting the patron saint of AI.

In both cases, the markets were rebounding from exogenous shocks.

Every major tech shift has followed a similar pattern. As information moves faster, the money follows.

Now standards like x402 are doing the same for AI and digital payments, potentially putting Jamie Dimon’s empire in jeopardy.

All of these companies are helping to build a new layer of fintech infrastructure. And they’re all working toward an economy that runs continuously, without the need for corporate scaffolding.