issue 260 - week of 10-3-25
curating the good stuff for the casual bitcoin enthusiast each week
Listen below for an succinct overview in podcast format of all items contained in this issue of the newsletter.
news
I used Google NotebookLM and Gemini to summarize the information in this week’s news links:
📈 Bitcoin’s surge to new all time highs above $125,000 this weekend is fueled by a powerful convergence of external drivers and institutional demand. The immediate surge was largely attributed to safe-haven flows during the U.S. government shutdown, reinforcing the asset’s role as a hedge against fiscal uncertainty. This momentum is supported by highly bullish price forecasts from major financial institutions, with Standard Chartered projecting $200,000 by year-end and JPMorgan citing a theoretical $165,000 target based on Bitcoin’s valuation relative to an overbought gold market. These projections are predicated on the continued, sustained capital flow from spot Bitcoin ETFs and a growing acceptance of Bitcoin as an alternative store of value.
🛠️ The internal structure of the Bitcoin market is undergoing a fundamental transformation, replacing the old, predictable dynamics. Analysts now widely agree that the four-year, halving-driven cycle is obsolete, with the market primarily dictated by global macroeconomic forces and institutional trends. This new era is characterized by lower volatility, largely due to the maturation of sophisticated derivatives markets like Bitcoin options, which act as a “volatility extraction tool.” Concurrently, the “Bitcoin Treasury Company” thesis is gaining traction, with entities like MicroStrategy and the new Bitcoin Standard Treasury Company (BSTR) professionalizing the strategy of holding Bitcoin as a premier corporate reserve asset, further cementing its long-term stability.
🤖 External tailwinds from technology and global finance are poised to accelerate Bitcoin’s adoption. The rise of Artificial Intelligence is creating immense energy demand, uniquely positioning Bitcoin miners as a crucial “AI trade” due to their role in energy grid optimization and utilization of stranded power. On the macro-geopolitical front, the global financial system is shifting as the sovereign debt model fails, forcing a return to scarce, neutral reserve assets. The United States is facing a “print or collapse” dilemma, with currency debasement becoming the most politically viable path to finance its massive domestic and geopolitical spending. Finally, Bitcoin’s fundamental utility is expanding beyond a store of value to a protocol for permissionless “value transfer,” a capability that commoditizes the movement of money and promises a new wave of application-level innovation.
Bitcoin hits all-time high above $125,000.
Summary: Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency by market value, hit a new all-time high on Sunday, October 5, 2025, surging past the $125,000 mark to trade around $125,245.57. The record rally was largely driven by continuous strong inflows into U.S. Bitcoin Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs) following their recent launch. This price movement was further bolstered by supportive market conditions, including recent gains in U.S. equities and a favorable regulatory environment from the current U.S. administration. Analysts noted that the cryptocurrency’s surge reflected a growing appetite among investors for hedge assets like Bitcoin amid heightened macroeconomic uncertainty.
Link: https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/bitcoin-hits-all-time-high-above-125000-2025-10-05/
JPMorgan sees bitcoin hitting $165,000 by year-end on retail-led “debasement trade.”
Summary: JPMorgan analysts have set a year-end target for Bitcoin to hit $165,000, arguing the cryptocurrency is significantly undervalued compared to gold on a volatility-adjusted basis. This valuation is derived from the declining Bitcoin-to-gold volatility ratio, which suggests Bitcoin currently consumes less risk capital relative to gold. To match the private investment in gold, Bitcoin’s $2.3 trillion market cap would need to increase by about 42%, implying the $165,000 price target. This bullish projection is attributed to a retail-led “debasement trade,” where investors flock to alternative stores of value like Bitcoin and gold ETFs due to concerns over government debt, inflation, and weakening fiat currencies.
Link: https://www.theblock.co/post/373241/jpmorgan-bitcoin-price-165000-debasement-trade
The Utility of Bitcoin: Moving Value Like Information.
Summary: The core utility of Bitcoin, beyond its properties as an asset, is its ability to commoditize value transfer, allowing anyone to move value anywhere without intermediaries. This shift moves society from the conventional “payment” paradigm—which involves instructions to banks and other middlemen to clear a debt—to a “value transfer” paradigm, which is a direct, permissionless act similar to handling physical cash. Unlike stablecoins and existing fintech, which are constrained by costly intermediation, regulatory compliance, and siloed structures, Bitcoin provides an open, flexible, and decentralized monetary network. By treating value as easily transferable information, Bitcoin facilitates new economic activity, with developers beginning to integrate this feature into apps, a convergence that is expected to rival the transformative impact of adding digital cameras to smartphones.
Link: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/technical/the-utility-of-bitcoin-moving-value-like-information
Bitcoin Price Soars to $122,000, Standard Chartered Projects $200,000 BTC by Year-End
Summary: Bitcoin started the fourth quarter of 2025 with a significant rally, soaring past $122,000 and climbing over 10% in a single week. Standard Chartered, through its head of digital assets Geoff Kendrick, has dramatically increased its year-end forecast, now projecting Bitcoin could reach $200,000. This highly bullish outlook is based on the cryptocurrency’s historical resilience during prolonged market stress, specifically citing the current uncertainty from a potential extended U.S. government shutdown. Additionally, historical data suggests a positive September close—which Bitcoin achieved at $114,000—often precedes strong Q4 rallies, further supporting the optimistic predictions.
Link: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/markets/bitcoin-price-soars-to-122000-standard-chartered-projects-200000-btc-by-year-end
Bitcoin ETFs rebound with second-highest weekly inflows since launch as BTC approaches all-time high.
Summary: U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs experienced a significant rebound last week, recording their second-highest weekly inflows since their launch in January 2024, totaling $3.24 billion. This robust influx of capital comes as Bitcoin (BTC) is approaching its all-time high price of about $124,000. BlackRock’s IBIT ETF led the way, securing $1.8 billion of the net inflows, with Fidelity’s FBTC following as the second-largest fund by net asset value. The surge in institutional investment followed a week of net outflows, demonstrating a $4.14 billion swing that signals strong renewed interest in Bitcoin via these regulated products.
Link: https://www.theblock.co/post/373425/bitcoin-etfs-rebound-with-second-highest-weekly-inflows-since-launch-as-btc-approaches-all-time-high
JPMorgan, Citi see Bitcoin Q4 boom: Here are their price targets.
Summary: Major financial institutions are predicting a strong Bitcoin boom in Q4 2025, with price targets ranging from $133,000 to as high as $200,000. Citigroup projects a year-end price of $133,000, driven by persistent inflows into spot Bitcoin ETFs, while Standard Chartered remains the most optimistic, forecasting BTC will hit $200,000 by December. JPMorgan strategists argue that Bitcoin is undervalued relative to gold on a volatility-adjusted basis, suggesting a theoretical price of around $165,000 if capital rotates from the precious metal. Overall, analysts agree that the momentum from sustained ETF inflows and Bitcoin’s growing correlation with gold, combined with improving global liquidity, are the key drivers for the cryptocurrency’s potential new record highs.
Link: https://cointelegraph.com/news/jpmorgan-citi-bitcoin-q4-boom-btc-price-targets
media
Podcast. The Pomp Podcast: Bitcoin Is Ready For New ALL-TIME HIGH Soon.
Summary: Jordy Visser argues that Bitcoin is the “purest AI trade” and is poised for a strong fourth quarter due to both seasonal trends and its role in solving the massive energy demands of artificial intelligence. He explains that AI-driven job disruption is creating social and economic discontent, which will push the government toward increased money printing and transfer payments to appease voters, thereby underscoring the need for a non-sovereign asset like Bitcoin. A major investment theme will be power and compute, where Bitcoin miners are set to become a solution for “grid optimization” by pairing with solar and batteries, which will provide them with a new revenue stream and transform Bitcoin’s negative ESG narrative. The rise in spending by the “MAG 7” tech companies on compute and power, combined with the democratization of coding, is expected to eventually weaken their dominant revenue streams, which Visser correlates with a weakening U.S. dollar. Ultimately, this environment, along with the increasing speed of financial markets driven by tokenization and the fast-moving retail investor community, creates a highly bullish outlook for Bitcoin as a hedge against financial instability and a beneficiary of technological disruption.
Podcast. Adam Back on Building The Bitcoin Standard Treasury Company.
Summary: This video features an interview with Bitcoin pioneer Adam Back, who discusses his role as CEO of the Bitcoin Standard Treasury Company (BSTR) and advocates for Bitcoin as the “hurdle rate” that all long-term investments must strive to outperform. Back explains that companies like MicroStrategy pioneered this concept, initially adopting Bitcoin as a purely defensive strategy to protect corporate cash reserves from inflation and quantitative easing. His own investment thesis sees these treasury companies as a way to potentially outperform a simple Bitcoin hold by leveraging the advantages of a public company structure and exploiting the MNAV premium. BSTR launched via a SPAC and successfully executed a capital raise of approximately $1.3 billion through various instruments, notably including a unique Bitcoin-denominated PIPE (Private Investment in Public Equity). The company was seeded with 25,000 Bitcoin from early investors, and its stated objective is to be an actively managed treasury that uses hedged alpha strategies to generate a yield on its substantial Bitcoin holdings.
Plan B. PlanB Bitcoin Prediction October 2025.
Summary: This video provides a technical analysis and prediction for Bitcoin’s price trajectory, noting that it has successfully closed above the psychological $100,000 barrier for five consecutive months, flipping this level from resistance to support. The underlying cause for Bitcoin’s rise, shared with other assets like gold and stocks, is the ongoing government money printing and currency debasement, which validates Bitcoin’s role as an inflation hedge. A very important bullish signal highlighted is that the realized price—the average cost basis of Bitcoin holders—has jumped above the 200-week moving average, a structure that historically marks the beginning of a strong bull market rally. Furthermore, the Relative Strength Index (RSI) confirms a solid uptrend at 69 but has not yet hit the “overbought” territory, suggesting the full FOMO phase of the cycle has not yet been reached. All on-chain realized price indicators are currently increasing in classic bull market behavior, leading the analyst to conclude that momentum is building and there are no current bear market warning signs.
Podcast. The End of Fed Control? Bitcoin & Macro Outlook | Checkmate, Joe Carlasare, Matthew Pines.
Summary: The panel, featuring Checkmate, Joe Carlasare, and Matthew Pines, explores Bitcoin’s current market dynamics, the broader macroeconomic environment, and the future of central bank control. A key point of technical analysis is the $95,000 price level, described as a “hodler’s wall,” which must be maintained, as its breach would cause significant strain for investors since 60% of total wealth invested has a cost basis above this point. The panelists argue that the long-standing “four-year boom-bust cycle” narrative is fundamentally breaking, which will profoundly change how Bitcoin trades in the future and potentially eliminate detrimental investor sentiment from the market. The conversation also examines external factors, noting the significant and hard-to-underappreciate impact of transformative AI on measuring economic statistics like inflation and GDP. Ultimately, the panel is bullish, with the consensus that Bitcoin has proven its $2 trillion market cap and the next move is to $3 trillion, projecting a price of at least $150,000 within the next 12 months.
Podcast. When Rocks Beat Bonds: Get Yourself Some Bitcoin.
Summary: The video argues that the world is experiencing a “real flipping” where scarce, neutral reserve assets like Gold and Bitcoin are replacing US Treasury bonds as the global monetary regime changes. The presenter asserts that the post-1971 era of fiat currency is ending as global demand for US debt is drying up, a problem the government is attempting to solve by increasingly printing money. He demonstrates that the current U.S. financial math is unsustainable, suggesting the only viable paths are massive spending cuts or, more likely, a process of “default by debasement” (inflation). This debasement is reinforced by the need for the US to print money via swap lines to finance re-industrialization and secure critical commodities from countries like Argentina, further weakening the dollar. Ultimately, the video concludes with an extremely bullish outlook for Bitcoin, urging viewers to protect their time, energy, and labor by holding the scarce digital asset against the coming “silent depression.”
Podcast. Unchained: The new psychology of a $2T bitcoin market with James Check.
Summary: The video features James Check, co-founder of Check on Chain, who discusses the use of on-chain data to interpret the new psychology of the $2 trillion Bitcoin market. He explains that metrics like the realized cap are a “raw distillation” of market behavior, effectively plotting investor fear and greed by visualizing the cost basis and profit/loss of different investor cohorts. Check suggests the market is currently in a later-stage cycle, noting a transition to more derivatives-driven speculation and a short-term slowdown in institutional demand from ETFs and treasury companies. He maintains that while the market has shown weakness, the unrealized losses are not yet severe enough to signal a full bear-market capitulation. Based on his analysis, $150,000 represents a major upside target where selling from long-term holders would likely begin, while a drop to the $80,000 to $75,000 range would be required to test the structural support of institutional and average on-chain cost bases.
tweets
(Substack blocking direct Twitter links at the moment)
https://x.com/saylor/status/1973068955876012433
https://x.com/saylor/status/1972758002819313902
https://x.com/BitMEXResearch/status/1972718255887335548
https://x.com/MatthewHyland_/status/1972664835314782713
https://x.com/nsquaredvalue/status/1972665008111689990
https://x.com/saylor/status/1973068955876012433
https://x.com/cbspears/status/1973031435876348223
https://x.com/blockspacepod/status/1973018682189369634
https://x.com/100trillionUSD/status/1973284541164036557
https://x.com/adam3us/status/1973318061999431904
https://x.com/BTC_Archive/status/1973378567980404765
https://x.com/BTC_Archive/status/1973386545735377390
https://x.com/jameslavish/status/1973534683385438240
https://x.com/apsk32/status/1973518754379342179
https://x.com/Vivek4real_/status/1973525614872383968
https://x.com/elliotrades/status/1973442872411406738
https://x.com/BTC_Archive/status/1973368065870946616
https://x.com/Vivek4real_/status/1973673192209486192
https://x.com/DigitalAssets/status/1973730183916961813
https://x.com/murchandamus/status/1973508327469617583
https://x.com/saylor/status/1973843191288987701
https://x.com/100trillionUSD/status/1974027734633378252
https://x.com/milesdeutscher/status/1974225470884622693
https://x.com/Vivek4real_/status/1974224477153108431
https://x.com/Vivek4real_/status/1974156055337972124
https://x.com/BitcoinNews21M/status/1974165177852674359
https://x.com/ali_charts/status/1974406639357935849
https://x.com/LeomathHeart/status/1974463450676867538
https://x.com/MacroScope17/status/1974456971559645688
https://x.com/ali_charts/status/1974519382408872189
https://x.com/btconexchanges/status/1974222482186932284
https://x.com/charliebilello/status/1974461342833680700
https://x.com/ChartingGuy/status/1974275632151384265
If you think we’ve missed something important, please send it to us and we’ll be sure to add it to next week’s newsletter… And please share!
