Institutions Rush to Bitcoin as Trump Mounts Pressure on the Fed

Happy Monday Bitcoiners - it’s Bam with another weekly update!

Each week, we condense the most impactful news releases into a concise, easy-to-read update so you’re always in the know!

Notable events this week include 👇

• College is back in session and Bitcoin is on the syllabus

• Tether tests Bitcoin rails

• El Salvador splits Strategic Bitcoin Reserve to guard against quantum risk

Let’s dive in⚡

Weekly Live Stream 🚨

Join Rob Wallace today for a live conversation with Julian Figueroa, Co-Founder of Get Based, as they break down the biggest headlines in Bitcoin and explore the Bitcoin media landscape.

Latest News 📰

🙌 Adoption

• University of Tampa is launching its first Bitcoin course this year, taught in partnership with the local Bitcoin Bay Foundation.

• Tether launches USD₮ on Bitcoin using RGB, enabling users to hold and transfer USD₮ alongside their bitcoin in the same wallet. This allows for private transactions and the ability to send/receive value offline.

• Nunchuk adds Miniscript support to its Bitcoin mobile wallet, allowing users to create customizable spending policies like timelocked inheritance plans, business treasuries with layered approvals, and more.

⚖️ Legal

• CFTC to clarify FBOT registration rules, giving non-U.S. exchanges like Binance a path to let Americans trade and potentially bringing back crypto activity that left under Biden’s regulation-by-enforcement.

• US Commerce Department begins distributing GDP data on open-source blockchains including Bitcoin, seen as a US government seal of approval on the technology.

• Investors drop their lawsuit against Strategy, which alleged the firm exaggerated the benefits of valuing bitcoin at market price instead of purchase cost.

📈 Markets

• Sygnum arranges a $50M BTC-backed syndicated loan for Ledn, with part of the structure tokenized on its issuance platform.

• Institutions add over 57,000 BTC through ETFs in Q2, with nearly every investor class boosting exposure.

• El Salvador is redistributing its National Bitcoin Reserve from a single address into multiple unused ones to strengthen security, improve long-term custody, and prepare for future risks like quantum computing.

🏦 Treasury

• Strive Asset Management CEO Matt Cole argues that ETH is a poor choice for treasuries and that Bitcoin is the only digital asset suitable for a digital asset treasury at Bitcoin Asia 2025

• Metaplanet plans to raise $880M through an international share sale to buy more BTC. Pending a Sept. 1 vote, it may issue up to 555M new shares, increasing total stock from 722M to 1.27B.

• NAKA launches a $5B at-the-market equity offering with TD Securities and nine other banks to fund its Bitcoin Treasury strategy, acquisitions, and new projects.

⛏️ Mining

• The UAE has quietly built one of the world’s largest government bitcoin treasuries, not through seizures, but by mining via Citadel Mining, a public company linked to the Abu Dhabi royal family.

• Bitcoin total hash rate hits a new all-time high, with the 7-day average nearing 1 zettahash (1 sextillion hashes per second).

• Australian miner IREN declares 2025 its “breakout year”, projecting $1B in annualized bitcoin mining revenue. Revenue rose from $187M to $501M YTD and net income swung from a $29M loss to an $87M profit.

🗳️ Politics

• President Trump fires Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook over allegations she committed mortgage fraud, the latest escalation in the US president’s attack on the central bank’s independence.

• France’s PM François Bayrou, facing removal next week, admits on live TV that younger generations will carry the debt built to guarantee the “comfort of the boomers.”

• Hong Kong SFC official Eric Yip and legislator Johnny Ng withdrew from the city’s Bitcoin conference after being advised to avoid Eric Trump’s appearance, to prevent the optics of aligning with Trump’s son.

🧠 Bitcoin Trivia 🧠

Bam’s 2 Sats 🧢

Trust the Signal, Ignore the Noise

It’s interesting how Bitcoin has become more “normalized.” I rarely have to explain why it matters or defend it against scam claims anymore. Now, most conversations focus on its real potential.

With growing support from institutions and politicians, and a thriving industry around it, Bitcoin’s permanence and its “right to exist” are debated less and less.

On the value proposition side, investors like Ray Dalio now suggest allocating 15% of a portfolio to Bitcoin, while Michael Saylor argues it could appreciate about 30% annually for decades.

In a strange way, people seem more cautious after the last bull market fell short of expectations. That’s likely why we don’t see the wild forecasts of four years ago. Still, the historical data holds some real gems.

Over different time horizons, the likelihood of negative Bitcoin returns drops sharply after just one year.

Buying Bitcoin carries a 46% chance of being down in a single day, 23% over one year, and nearly 0% after three years or more.

Historically, Bitcoin has posted one losing year out of every four, but with a long enough time horizon, profits have been the norm.

Sentiment reflects this shift. Many who bought after the last bear market and simply kept stacking are now in profit, a stark change from late 2022. The average coin is now held for 4.4 years, underscoring Bitcoin’s role as a long-term store of value.

Markets are catching on. Strategy, the first company to adopt a Bitcoin Treasury and move to a Bitcoin standard, has accounted for 12% of all US IPO activity in 2025 YTD, raising $5.6B to buy Bitcoin as a long-term store of value.

Other companies are following suit. NAKA is launching a $5B at-the-market equity offering with TD Securities and nine other banks to fund its Bitcoin Treasury strategy, acquisitions, and new projects.

Institutional adoption is accelerating against a backdrop of economic uncertainty. Trump’s attempt to fire a sitting Fed board member over alleged mortgage fraud (before any conviction) shows his push to control an institution meant to be independent.

It may not be a coincidence that Trump already owns the 8th largest Bitcoin treasury company.

What was once fringe is fast becoming an institutional standard, with the writing on the wall: they’re going to print an unbelievable amount of money.

Stay safe and keep on stacking!
-Bam