← Coin Stories with Natalie Brunell
Coin Stories with Natalie Brunell
News Block: Jack Mallers Shares Vision for "The Bitcoin Company," CLARITY Clears Hurdle, Paul Tudor Jones Picks Bitcoin Over Gold
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Welcome to the Coinstories news block, powered exclusively by LEDN. I'm Natalie Brunel and in about 10 minutes or less, I'll provide you with insightful updates on bitcoin, financial markets and the global economy. Everything you need to know in one block. Let's go. Hey everyone. We are back from Las Vegas. And what a week it was. Bitcoin 2026 brought thousands of bitcoiners back to the Venetian Hotel. And I had the honor of hosting the fifth annual Women of Bitcoin Bash and speaking on several pan. The links to those conversations are in the show notes. The Women of Bitcoin Bash was a huge success. We had the privilege of honoring Senator Cynthia Lummis with a lifetime achievement award for her leadership as one of Washington's most important bitcoin advocates. She told us she wants to be remembered as a spark for her work on bitcoin policy and education. And she urged the hundreds of women in the audience to chase their dreams without letting doubt distract them from their calling. She was truly inspiring. So thank you so much, Senator Lummis. And thank you to Callie Bailey, who I've been hosting this event with for five years. I also want to say thank you to every single person who came out and stopped by my book booth and got a copy of Bitcoin is for everyone and got some of my fix the money merch. Your support means the world to me. Now here's what struck me most about Bitcoin 2026. The sentiment was, I would say, more subdued than last year, which is you'd expect after a major price drawdown. But it was also more focused. When the price drops, what's left are the builders and the high conviction investors. They're not glued to every four hour candle. They are building products, raising capital and stacking through the cycle. And that building was on full display. On Wednesday, Jack Mallers took the stage and announced a proposal from tether to merge strike, 21 capital and a bitcoin mining company called Electron Energy into one publicly listed entity. The pitch is ambitious. Creating what Mallers called the bitcoin company, a single platform that brings together a bitcoin treasury, financial services, lending and mining, all under one roof. And here's why that matters. 21 Capital is already the second largest public corporate holder of bitcoin in the world with more than 43,000 bitcoin on its balance sheet. Strike is Mallor's bitcoin financial services company operating in more than 100 countries. And earlier that same day, Strike announced a $2.1 billion credit facility from Tether to power its bitcoin backed loans. And then there's Electron, a private mining operator running roughly 50 Exahash, or about 5% of the entire Bitcoin network. With all in Production costs below $60,000 per coin. These are not small pieces. If this deal gets done, you'd have a public Bitcoin company that owns the treasury, the lending platform and the mining operation all at the same time. Mallor's goal for the M and A ARM is simple. He said he wants to give every dollar of operating income one job, buy more bitcoin. And that line stood out to me because it captures the broader shift. Much of the last cycle was about hype, tokens and speculation. But this cycle is about balance sheets, cash flow infrastructure and long term bitcoin accumulation. Now this is still just a proposal. No final terms, no clear timeline. And three way mergers can be complicated. You have multiple stakeholders to align even. You also have an SEC review, a shareholder vote and another item, mallers is currently CEO of both 21, the potential buyer and strike, one of the potential targets. So he's sitting on both sides of the table. In situations like that, companies typically put independent protections in place for minority shareholders, though that has not been disclosed here yet. So the vision is bold, but the path forward from proposal to close can be long. A year or more. And speaking of Tether, they had a very busy week on Friday. They announced around $1 billion in net profit for Q1 in 2026. But what's most notable is what they're doing with it. They appear to be recycling those profits directly back into the Bitcoin ecosystem. Just before the conference, Tether announced a partnership with Kanan and Acme Swiss Tech to build a new class of modular bitcoin mining hardware. They funded the $2.1 billion credit facility for strike and they're a key player behind the proposed merger. So Tether is generating massive profits and deploying capital across the entire Bitcoin stack. Hardware, mining, software, financial services, credit, and the Bitcoin balance sheet itself. That is a capital flywheel this industry did not have two years ago. So yes, this year we're in a bear market, but underneath the surface, the industry is becoming much more serious, more capitalized and more vertically integrated. LED and just introduced their lowest rates ever. The larger the loan, the lower the rate. These new rates apply to all new loans, refinances and renewals. With Leden's gold standard protection, your Bitcoin stays custodied, never lent out. You can activate auto top ups and alerts so you're never caught off guard and you can repay anytime with zero penalties. Don't choose between a great rate and the safety of your bitcoin. Get both at leadn and a quarter percentage point off your first loan at leadn.IO Natalie all right, While the energy in Las Vegas was focused on capital allocators and entrepreneurs, another important story was developing in Washington. The Clarity act appears to be gaining some momentum again. For months this has been one of the biggest pieces of unfinished business and digital asset policy. The goal is to create a clearer market structure framework for the industry in the United States. In plain English, it's meant to tackle which digital assets are securities, which are commodities, which agency has jurisdiction, and what rules apply to exchanges, brokers, defi, tokenized assets and stablecoin issuers. Without clear rules, capital will continue to sit on the sidelines. But one of the major sticking points appears resolved. The debate was over stablecoin rewards and yield. Banks were concerned that crypto platforms could offer yield on stablecoin balances in a way that looked like bank deposits without being regulated as banks. But the crypto industry pushed back, arguing that Americans should benefit from innovation when all they're getting is peanuts on their savings accounts. The compromise draws a line. Stablecoin issuers and third party platforms, including crypto exchanges, would not not be allowed to pay yields solely for holding stablecoins. No deposit like interest on idle balances, but activity based rewards tied to actual use of crypto platforms would still be allowed. With the new language public, the path appears clear for the Senate Banking Committee to schedule a markup. Senator Lummis said at Bitcoin 2026 that lawmakers are going to mark up the Clarity act in May and hopefully push it across the finish line. Now to be clear though, this bill is not done. It hasn't passed the Senate, it hasn't passed both chambers, but the process is moving again. If the market gets more clarity, I'd expect Bitcoin to be the primary beneficiary given that it's the largest, most liquid and most established digital asset. But to be precise, the Clarity act is probably more consequential for digital assets outside of Bitcoin. Stablecoins, tokenized assets defi For Bitcoin specifically, the bigger policy priorities are really different. They include codifying the strategic bitcoin reserve into law, protecting the right to self custody, preserving the ability to run nodes and use open source software, and creating a de minimis exemption so people can Use Bitcoin for everyday payments without triggering a taxable event every time they buy something small. Those will likely need separate legislation. But if the Clarity act moves forward, it would still be significant. Another sign that the United States is moving away from regulation by enforcement and toward a more constructive framework for digital assets. And that's the bigger story. After years of uncertainty, the conversation in Washington appears to be shifting from whether this industry should exist to how it will be regulated. All right, now to the final story of the week. Paul Tudor Jones, the billionaire trader and one of the most respected macro investors of the past several decades. He gave a rare long form interview with Patrick o'. Shaughnessy. When the conversation turned to Bitcoin, he was very clear. He said, quote, bitcoin is unequivocally the best inflation hedge there is, more than gold. Because bitcoin is finite, Bitcoin has the greatest scarcity value of anything. Now, that is a remarkable statement from someone who has successfully traded through inflationary periods, currency volatility, financial crises, and multiple market cycles. What I found especially interesting was how he framed the risks. When he talked about bitcoin, he mentioned quantum computing and the possibility of a global cyber attack taking down the network, which are highly theoretical tail risks. By contrast, when he talked about gold, the risk was concrete. Gold supply increases every year. Not in theory, in reality, at roughly 1.7% annual supply growth. So your share of the total gold stock is gets cut roughly in half every 40 years unless you keep buying more. That's structural dilution. As the price of gold rises, miners have more incentive to explore, finance new projects and bring more supply to market. Bitcoin doesn't work that way. Bitcoin doesn't respond to higher demand with more supply. The issuance schedule is fixed. The supply cap is fixed. No matter how high the price goes. No miner company or government can create more than 21 million bitcoins. That is the key difference. Gold may be scarce relative to fiat money, but bitcoin is absolutely scarce. When one of the most respected macro analysts alive says bitcoin has the greatest scarcity value of anything, he is giving institutional investors a framework for understanding why bitcoin is different. And when you put this whole week together, you see a much bigger theme. In Las Vegas, builders were launching products and making deals. In Washington, lawmakers appeared to be moving toward clearer rules. And in the investment world, Paul Tudor Jones was making the case that bitcoin is the best inflation hedge. So we may technically be in a bear market, but there is so much to be bullish about. That's it for the news block. Your weekly Bitcoin and economic news update. Powered exclusively by ledn. I'm Natalie Brunel. Make sure you're subscribed to Coin Stories so you never miss an episode. This show is for educational purposes and should not be construed as investment advice. Until next time. Keep stacking, Sam.