Morning Minute: Bitcoin Clears $80K, Reverses on Iran Missile Strike

Morning Minute is simply a regular newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The investigation and opinions expressed are his ain and bash not needfully bespeak those of Decrypt. And check retired our new regular quality show covering each of the apical stories successful 5 minutes oregon less, downloadable connected Apple Pod oregon Spotify.

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Today’s apical news:

• Bitcoin passes $80K earlier selling disconnected aft Iranian rocket strike
• Clarity Act likelihood leap to 65% connected caller stablecoin output language
• Tether Q1 attestation reveals $1B successful nett for the quarter
• Hyperliquid’s HIP-4 prediction markets launch, does $10M measurement opening weekend
• NFT marketplace sees aggregate grail sales, an Art Blocks run, Fidenzas and Masks jumping and much successful different large weekend

📈 Bitcoin Clears $80,000 Amid “Project Freedom” Announcement

Bitcoin crossed $80,000 Sunday nighttime aft President Trump announced “Project Freedom”—a US subject cognition opening Monday to escort neutral overseas ships retired of the Strait of Hormuz.

Trump called it a “humanitarian gesture” astatine the petition of countries whose vessels are stranded successful the Gulf, and warned that immoderate Iranian interference “will beryllium dealt with forcefully.” Oil fell connected the quality arsenic markets priced successful the anticipation of partial Hormuz reopening for the archetypal clip since the warfare began February 28. BTC responded immediately, hitting its highest level since aboriginal February.

Notably, this Bitcoin question came connected a week of little ETF inflows ($160M successful nett inflows for BTC ETFs with $630M coming connected Friday), and zero bid from Saylor who didn’t bargain past week. That’s expected to alteration this week, with STRC apt trading backmost astatine par earlier Friday.

Then aboriginal this morning, terms reversed aft reports that Iran struck a U.S. warship with 2 missiles. Oil spiked 4% backmost to $105, Bitcoin fell from section highs of $80,400 to sub-$79LK, and banal futures flipped red. Looks similar we aren’t retired of the woods conscionable yet…

✅ The Clarity Act Just Cleared a Major Roadblock

Senators Thom Tillis and Angela Alsobrooks released the last stablecoin output compromise substance Friday night, removing what had been arguably the cardinal obstacle blocking the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act from advancing.

The latest change: Stablecoin issuers and integer plus platforms cannot connection yield, interest, oregon immoderate instrumentality simply for holding a stablecoin (a triumph for the banks). But activity-based rewards tied to transactions, level use, loyalty programs, and existent information are each inactive OK for output (a triumph for crypto protocols).

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong’s effect was 2 words: “Mark it up.” Coinbase CLO Paul Grewal said the connection “preserves activity-based rewards tied to existent information connected crypto platforms and networks.”

Polymarket likelihood of the Clarity Act passing successful 2026 jumped ~20 points to 65% connected the news. The remaining superior hurdle seems to beryllium morals provisions tied to the Trump family’s crypto businesses. If that hurdle tin someway beryllium cleared, past the Clarity Act whitethorn really walk successful 2026…

💰 Tether Posts $1.04B Q1 Profit

Tether published its Q1 2026 attestation connected Friday, with immoderate large header numbers.

The starring stablecoin supplier brought successful $1.04 cardinal successful nett net for the quarter, and excess reserves climbed to a grounds $8.23 billion—the highest successful the company’s history. Total assets came successful astatine $191.77 cardinal against $183.54 cardinal successful liabilities, with $141 cardinal of that reserve basal sitting successful U.S. Treasury bills.

That Treasury presumption makes Tether the 17th-largest holder of US authorities indebtedness successful the world, up of Taiwan, Israel, and the UAE. The remaining reserves see astir $20 cardinal successful carnal golden and $7 cardinal successful Bitcoin, unneurotic astir 14% of the reserve base, held arsenic a macro hedge.

Tether besides said it has formally begun the process of a broad autarkic audit this 4th by a "Big Four" accounting firm—its archetypal ever. Tether has operated connected attestations since 2021 pursuing its $18.5 cardinal CFTC settlement. A afloat audit, if completed by a large accounting firm, would beryllium the astir important transparency milestone successful the company’s past and would code the azygous astir communal organization objection to USDT arsenic a reserve asset.

🤖 MoonPay Just Gave AI Agents a Credit Card

MoonPay launched the MoonAgents Card on Friday arsenic a virtual Mastercard debit paper that lets AI agents walk stablecoins straight from onchain wallets astatine immoderate of Mastercard’s 150 million+ accepting merchants worldwide.

The paper is built connected the Model Context Protocol, the aforesaid unfastened modular Gemini utilized to motorboat its Agentic Trading merchandise past week. An AI cause connected to MoonPay’s level tin present autonomously implicit purchases, wage for services, and settee invoices successful stablecoins without immoderate quality successful the loop.

The merchandise is the applicable implementation of what the AI cause system has been pointing toward for 2 years. Theoretical frameworks for machine-to-machine payments person circulated since the archetypal LLM agents emerged—the missing portion was ever a walk furniture that worked successful the existent satellite without customized integrations.

MoonPay’s Mastercard concern solves that by routing stablecoin balances done existing paper rails alternatively than gathering caller merchant infrastructure. The motorboat comes 1 week aft MoonPay acquired Israeli steadfast Sodot for $100 cardinal to physique retired MoonPay Institutional, positioning the institution astatine the organization and agentic ends of the crypto adoption curve.

🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets

• Crypto majors are greenish but falling aft reports Iran struck a US warship; BTC +0.5% astatine $78.9k; ETH +1% astatine $2,335; SOL adjacent astatine $84; HYPE +0.4% astatine $41.25
• Dash (+19%), Ondo (+12%), and WLFI (+6%) led apical movers
• Oil +4% astatine $105; Gold -1.3% astatine $4,560
• Stock futures are somewhat reddish aft lipid spiked 4% connected backmost of Iran’s strike
• The Ethereum Foundation completed its 3rd OTC merchantability to Bitmine on Friday, selling different 10,000 ETH astatine $2,292/ETH (~$22.9M), pursuing an identical 10,000 ETH merchantability the anterior week; the Foundation says proceeds money protocol R&D, ecosystem development, and assemblage grants
• Circle published a quantum-resistant roadmap for Arc, its L1 blockchain, adopting phased post-quantum signatures crossed wallets, validators, and infrastructure
• Brazil’s cardinal slope banned crypto from regulated cross-border payments, removing stablecoins from its eFX framework
• SBI Holdings is successful talks to get Japanese crypto speech Bitbank as a subsidiary

Corporate Treasuries & ETFs

• The Bitcoin ETFs saw a monolithic $630M successful nett inflows on Friday, flipping the week green; the ETH ETFs saw $101M successful inflows

Meme Coin Tracker

• Meme leaders were slightly green; DOGE +2%, SHIB -1%, PEPE +1%, PENGU +1%, TRUMP -1%, BONK +1%, SPX +1%, FARTCOIN +3%
• TROLL (+50%), GIGA (+50%), Wojak (+50%) and TripleT (+65%) led notable movers; Cards +40% arsenic well
• On ETH, UPEG rebounded 20% to $18M, Wojak jumped 27% to $32M and Asteroid +12% to $147M
• An attacker tricked Grok into sending it 3B DRB tokens, which the attacker instantly sold for $150k

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

• Hyperliquid officially launched its prediction markets via its HIP-4, doing $6M successful measurement successful its archetypal day
• Sonic Labs launched USSD, a network-native stablecoin built connected Frax Finance infrastructure backed 1:1 by BlackRock Treasury assets

🚚 What is happening successful NFTs?

• NFT leaders are cooling disconnected aft different play rally; Punks adjacent astatine 31 ETH, BAYC -2% astatine 10.7 ETH, Pudgy adjacent astatine 5.6 ETH; Hypurr’s +2% astatine 354 HYPE
• Masks of Luci (+21%), Fidenza (+14%) and Luci (+14%) led notable apical movers
• A caller Art Blocks mint ‘Gift of Time’ ran implicit 50x from its 0.025 ETH mint terms to a 1.2 ETH level (0.66 ETH now)
• 2 Hoodie CryptoPunks sold overnight for $479k and $269k
• A Gold-skinned Bored Ape sold for $211,111 connected Saturday, 1 of the biggest income of the year