Bitcoin ETFs rake in $1.9 billion

In today's episode of 'The Daily Wolf' podcast, host Scott Melker discusses how the digital asset landscape is undergoing a massive institutional transformation as $1.9 billion pours into bitcoin ETFs, Morgan Stanley launches its MSNXX fund to back stablecoin reserves under the new GENIUS Act, JPMorgan’s warnings over a $20 billion DeFi exploit, the DOJ charges against a soldier for Polymarket insider trading, and Coinbase finally releasing a roadmap to neutralize the 'quantum panic' threatening long-term encryption.

'The Daily Wolf with Scott Melker' airs on Yahoo Finance every day at 12:00 p.m. ET. Tune in for your daily dose of all things crypto.

Make sure to also check out Yahoo Finance's new crypto hub to find the latest crypto-related news."

Bitcoin institutional inflows are absolutely exploding right now through ETFs and of course through strategy. The Bitcoin side is looking very, very healthy. Now, on the crypto side, we have some problems. JP Morgan and Jeffries both offering significant warnings about Dfy. We're going to talk about that hack, all the other news in the cycle right now on the Daily Wolf. Let's go.

What is up everybody? Welcome to the Daily Wolf on Yahoo Finance. I am your host Scott Melker, also known as The Wolf of All Streets. And as usual, we're going to spend the next 15 minutes digging through a mountain of noise to try to find some signal. Now, there is a lot of noise, but one thing where there's a lot of signal and where there's a lot of smoke, which usually means there's a fire, is prediction markets. Now, yesterday, obviously, I broke down quite a bit of the accusations about insider trading and everything else that's happening in prediction markets that's been problematic, I would say for that industry in general. Well, the gods gave us a massive story surrounding that because it seems that we're not the only ones talking about insider trading. We've got this headline right here, US Special Forces soldier made $400,000 betting on his mission to capture Maduro. Now, I

told you yesterday that somebody had made some insider bets about Maduro and we laid out all of the other insider bets that have been happening around Trump truths and other information that maybe people would have for prediction markets, but this is the first glaring example of somebody actually getting caught and getting in trouble. Now you might ask why this is a crypto story. Well, Polymarket itself was built on crypto rails. And for a very long time, the only way that you can make prediction market bets was utilizing crypto. But in the story we're talking about here, this guy actually, knowing, presumably that what he did was wrong, took his money, sent it to foreign cryptocurrency vaults, and then got caught when he tried to bring it back to a brokerage account that he had just opened in his own name. Now, there's a lot to parse here. Obviously,

I would say your average person who's making a prediction market bet and has a bit of information that they think is an edge, probably has no idea that they're breaking the law. Insider trading rules have long applied to Wall Street, and I would imagine that every person who works at a hedge fund or who is a trader has had the risk management department come down a thousand times and tell them exactly what they can and cannot do. Now, I'm not saying that in the case of this guy, he did not know what he was doing was wrong, but we even have some people on Capitol Hill jumping in with some pretty aggressive takes about how this was handled. We have Congressman Jimmy Patronis here saying, I think this guy should be pardoned.

The DOJ isn't prepared to go after every member of Congress who's profiting off insider trading, then this feels like selective enforcement, not just justice. Of course, he goes on to say that what he did was wrong, but we need to also prosecute all the people acting on insider information everywhere else. So,

This guy should definitely be in trouble. He knew he was do something wrong. He made a lot of money off of it. That money came from other people and he tried to hide it, which basically shows exactly how much guilt he had.

He should not be pardoned just because other people are doing it. The other people should also be prosecuted, which is a huge problem that we have in this country. Obviously, we know that the people in positions of power and the wealthy generally live by a different set of rules than the rest of the population. And that is very, very clear here. We've seen Nancy Pelosi's stock portfolio, right? I mean, she's like the Warren Buffet times 10, the most genius investor of all time. We know that she has profited from insider information and so have countless senators and Congress people on Capitol Hill. So, I don't think there's anything new here or that this guy should not be punished because they are. But we do have actually a very interesting video here from Donald Trump himself being asked about allegations of insider trading around his truths. Here's what he said.

that are being placed as well on the Iran conflict too and there have been some trackings where people suspect that there's insider trading happening on these prediction markets around the war. Are you concerned?

Well, you know, the whole world unfortunately has become somewhat of a casino. And you look at what's going on all over the world in Europe and every place they're doing these betting things. I was never much in favor of it. I don't like it conceptually, but uh, it is what it is.

The real story here is that Donald Trump watches the Daily Wolf. I said that all week, the whole world is a huge casino. I told you why that's such a big problem and what that that is a signal of. But I absolutely agree with the President here. Like, whether he's complicit or not, I have no idea. I think it's outrageous to think that the President himself is trading around his tweets or truths. I think that other people have knowledge of what he's going to say and are making money on them, which is a problem. But he said all the quiet parts out loud. The entire world has become a casino. Everybody is gambling and it's a huge problem. We're going to be watching this story, but I think it is a huge signal that somebody's actually getting in trouble for this and will probably stop a lot of the action just when they see just how hard the hammer of justice comes down on him. Now, another story I mentioned in the intro is the massive inflows that we're seeing into Bitcoin products. You can see some of it right here.

We've got GM from Switzerland, US Spot Bitcoin ETFs have purchased 18,991 Bitcoin over the past five trading days. Checks numbers. That's nine times the new supply in that period. That's not it. BlackRock drive 7-day Bitcoin ETF inflow streak as Bitcoin nears 80,000. US listed spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded a 7-day inflow streak totaling 1.9 billion with a B dollars. Now, we've been talking about these ETF inflows for quite a while. What I find interesting this time is that we have this chicken and an egg debate in the Bitcoin space and markets all the time, which is does price lead inflows or do inflows lead price?

1. I didn't mean to do it. Um, in this case, I think they were having steady inflows regardless of what the price does. And that is a departure from the past. Usually whichever one's leading, they track one another. But we have had up and down days and volatility in Bitcoin price, even though we are once again pushing towards the high in this period. But what we've had is sustained inflows in the background. And I I've told you many times, it's not just the ETFs that are going to keep consuming Bitcoin. We've got this guy. Michael Sailor as Mega Maid. I don't even know if it's funny, but I like it and I'm just going to keep showing it.

I'm going to keep showing it. Spaceballs. It's great. Michael Sailor, buying billions of dollars of Bitcoin almost every single week and those are tracking MSTR, we'll see that it's back up to 99.7, meaning it's just short of par. Once that stock is trading back above 100, he will be buying billions and billions and billions of Bitcoin a week until that premium disappears. So what we have here is we have very transparent, structural buying of Bitcoin on a daily basis that you can see on chain and you can see through institutional flows. Now, the question is, when people run out of Bitcoin to sell, which I've told you is already happening based on supply on chain and what the biggest wallets are doing,

what happens when there is no balance, 67, in in demand and supply. Supply down, demand up, price goes up. I still think that's what's coming for Bitcoin, not financial advice, but I would not be surprised to see this popping up above 80,000 very, very soon. Now I've been talking quite a bit about stable coins and the battle between cryptocurrency companies and the banks surrounding the genius Act and the clarity Act that's coming. Well, now we have a deft move by Morgan Stanley. This is the headline right here.

Morgan Stanley is positioning itself as the reserve manager for the stablecoin industry. So Morgan Stanley is launching effectively a mutual fund called MSNX. Say that 10 times fast. MSNXX, which will act as a Treasury management tool for stable coins. So if you don't know how stable coins work, here's the layman's description. Let's say you're tether or circle, circle with USDC,

every time that you want to create a token, there has to be a dollar to back it. Black Rock in the case of USDC manages that treasury for them. Tether, we don't necessarily know who manages the treasury. And then for Circle, BNY Melon custodies those assets. And every time someone wants to redeem a coin, they sell some of those assets or they take some of the cash on hand and they give those people the money back and that's how the supply of stable coins is basically managed. And they're backed largely by treasuries which are earning