Public Keys is a weekly roundup from Decrypt that tracks the key publicly traded crypto companies.
Wings of a Dove
Crypto stocks (and the rest of the crypto and stock market) are soaring thanks to a big boost from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s dovish speech at the Jackson Hole Symposium on Friday morning.
Crypto and stocks tend to get a boost when the Fed lowers rates because it triggers a rotation of funds from treasury bonds and into risk-on assets.
During his remarks, Powell said the “shifting balance of risks may warrant adjusting our policy stance.” In other words, he opened the possibility for a rate cut when the Federal Open Markets Committee meets again in September.
Crypto exchange Coinbase’s shares gained about 6% and Bitcoin hoarding behemoth Strategy rose 5% on the day—a nice reversal from earlier in the week.
But it’s Bitcoin miners and Ethereum treasury companies that won the day. The two largest Ethereum treasuries—former Bitcoin miner BitMine Immersion and online gambling marketer SharpLink— gained 12% and 15.6%, respectively.
Bitcoin mining rig manufacturer Canaan’s stock gained 12%, and Bitcoin miners Riot Platforms and Iris Energy picked up 7.7% and 9.3%, respectively.
Katalin Tishhauser, head of research at Sygnum Bank, noted that while crypto markets had a “swift and positive” reaction to the news, she flagged that the underpinning economic data still shows signs of trouble.
“Even if a September cut does not materialize, the market has proven resilient in digesting past disappointments while still setting new highs. Momentum may continue, albeit with higher volatility,” she told Decrypt. “Meanwhile, spiralling debt and rising inflation remain unresolved structural issues—factors that strengthen the case for safe-haven assets over the longer term.”
$1 Billion Bleed
Bitcoin ETFs just spent five days in the red and shed $1 billion—even as their Ethereum counterparts staged a turnaround. On Thursday, Ethereum funds stopped the bleed and pulled in $288 million worth of net deposits.
The dominance of Ethereum in the current market narrative is very much warranted, according to the latest note from M31 Capital.
The private equity and venture capital fund pointed out that infrastructure, DeFi, L1 and L2 networks, and Web3 companies were all in the green—and all came out ahead of Bitcoin.
But nothing short of another all-time high for BTC was going to top last week’s record-setting run to $124,128.
Figure on the runway
Just as Bullish makes its $1.15 billion debut, there’s a new crypto company ready to test its wings.
Blockchain lender Figure Technologies has filed paperwork for an initial public offering.
Now, it’s important to make a distinction about what Figure does given the history of crypto lenders in the space: Figure uses its platform to enable lending outside the traditional scope of the crypto industry, such as real estate.
The company says that its the largest non-bank provider of home equity lines of credit in the U.S. and that its software has been used for more than $16 billion worth of home loans.
Illia Otychenko, the lead analyst at CEX.IO, told Decrypt earlier this week that the company “dominates the tokenized private credit space, with more than 70% market share and over $11 billion in active loans on its Provenance blockchain.”
Figure is co-founded by SoFi co-founder and former CEO Mike Cagney, who left the bank in 2017 amid sexual harassment allegations. The IPO would mark his return to leading a publicly traded company.
“The IPO is one step in a long process to bring blockchain to all aspects of capital markets,” he said in the company’s SEC filing. No word yet on share pricing, though.
Other Keys
Timber: Nasdaq has delisted drug developer Windtree Therapeutics, which announced last month that it would buy $700 million worth of Binance’s BNB token. The company said in an SEC filing that its shares stopped trading on the Nasdaq for failing to maintain the $1-per-share minimum bid price required by the exchange.
USA Made: Bitcoin miner Bitdeer confirmed it’s going to begin manufacturing mining rigs in the U.S. this year. That news came as two of its competitors—Iris Energy and CleanSpark—have been hit with letters from U.S. customs asking for millions in tariffs on Chinese-manufactured rigs purchased in 2024.
