Ten31 Timestamp 899,220
For better or worse (probably a bit of both), the “bitcoinization of finance” theme Ten31 has been highlighting since last year kicked into another gear at this week’s Bitcoin 2025 Conference. Perhaps not surprisingly given the parabolic moves in stocks like Strategy and Metaplanet over the past year, the most frequently discussed topic at this year’s flagship industry gathering was the rise of the “bitcoin treasury company” (though it was admittedly a photo finish against stablecoins). That said, the event also saw several noteworthy announcements on new bitcoin-collateralized lending products, including Strike’s announcement of reduced minimums, increased maximums, and single-digit interest rates on its recently launched loan offering. After many conversations around the conference, we can confirm this cycle will no doubt have its share of bitcoin-affinity projects with varying levels of sustainability, but overall it’s clear that the train has left the station on broad institutional interest in bitcoin. Given the event coincided with a week of reversals on the ostensible trade progress that has buoyed market sentiment for the past month, we expect this institutional focus on bitcoin to increase through the rest of the year as allocators look to reposition portfolios for a changing world order.
Portfolio Company Spotlight
Strike is an emerging fintech and payments innovator leveraging bitcoin and the lightning network to allow consumers and merchants around the world to accumulate bitcoin while sending and receiving payments instantly and cheaply in a wide variety of settings. Strike's offerings include a consumer app – now available in nearly 100 countries including the EU – for bitcoin purchases, bitcoin-backed lending, P2P payments, global remittances, and more. Strike also offers a suite of APIs for merchants and enterprises to easily benefit from lightning’s low cost, near-instant settlement. The company has announced a variety of exciting new features over the past year and continues to have one of the most robust pipelines of upcoming launches in the bitcoin ecosystem.
As the world’s largest investor focused entirely on bitcoin, Ten31 has deployed over $150 million across two funds into more than 30 of the most promising and innovative companies in the ecosystem, and we expect 2025 to be the best year yet for both bitcoin and our portfolio. Visit ten31.xyz/invest to learn more and get in touch to discuss participating.
Selected Portfolio News
Strike CEO Jack Mallers announced several significant updates to the company’s recently launched lending product as part of a keynote talk at Bitcoin 2025:
AnchorWatch announced a collaboration with Arch to provide insured custody on Arch’s bitcoin-backed loan product:
StatMuse added new live scoring and data features to its platform:
Media
Strike Founder and CEO joined the What Bitcoin Did podcast to discuss bitcoin-backed lending and bitcoin’s growing intersection with traditional finance.
Ten31 Managing Partner Marty Bent served as a featured panelist on the news desk for day one of the Bitcoin Conference.
Market Updates
President Trump opened the week by delaying his recently proposed 50% tariffs on the EU by a month, allowing rattled investors to swap to their “we’re so back” hats once again.
However, the week progressed in a much more “it’s so over” direction alongside growing confusion around trade and capital controls, as a US federal trade court ruled on Wednesday that the Trump administration’s reciprocal tariffs are void and must be vacated, only for that decision to be immediately overturned by an appeals court.
Shortly thereafter, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent – the architect of the preliminary trade framework with China that sent markets rocketing higher a few weeks ago – suggested that trade talks with China have stalled and will require more input from both Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
To close out the week, Trump indicated he will look to double tariffs on steel imports starting in just a few days.
Meanwhile, investors and the mainstream press are starting to take note of the new provisions in Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill that will remove key tax exemptions for income on foreign holdings of US assets, a point we flagged last week that could put pressure on foreign recycling of trade surpluses into US assets.
Amid mounting global sovereign debt burdens and the disruptions accelerated by the waning of the unipolar world order, reports surfaced this week that the UK is trying to get creative in managing bond issuance, shifting toward shorter-term borrowing as the country’s Debt Management Office acknowledges declining demand for long-dated government debt.
Another noteworthy headline out of the UK this week was the government’s public acknowledgement that it plans to create a “backstop” for British assets by forcing allocation requirements onto UK pension funds to support government-mandated national interests.
At the same time, new reports indicated Japan’s Ministry of Finance will also trim issuance at the long end given recent rate spikes for maturities of 20 years and above. While these data points seemed to get less airplay than the latest tariff updates, we continue to think it’s pretty notable that two pivotal players in the post-WWII financial system are increasingly looking more like emerging markets.
Don’t look now, but after a multi-year slump, the US M2 money supply officially made a new all-time high this week for the first time since 2022.
Given the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge also came in lower than expected for April, “supercore” inflation is falling precipitously, and the US is dealing with many of the same debt dynamics as the UK and Japan, we wouldn’t be surprised to see an inflection in the M2 curve in the relatively near future.
It was a big week for traditional finance’s exposure to bitcoin, as Cantor officially launched the first loans in its bitcoin-backed lending facility, Trump Media and Technology Group announced it will raise $3 billion to buy bitcoin, and the BlackRock Strategic Income Opportunities Fund continued to add to its IBIT position.
After months of speculation, GameStop also announced its first $500 million allocation to bitcoin on its balance sheet.
Perhaps most notably, reports indicated that Masayoshi Son, CEO of massive Japanese allocator SoftBank – an anchor partner in bitcoin treasury company Twenty One, alongside Howard Lutnick’s Cantor Fitzgerald – has floated the idea of a joint US / Japan sovereign wealth fund for large scale tech and infrastructure investments.
Regulatory Update
US Vice President JD Vance headlined a very politically-tilted Bitcoin 2025 Conference with a speech highlighting bitcoin’s strategic value to the US in the growing competition with China. We’re aligned on this, but we extend an open invitation to the VP to discuss why “applications of blockchain technology” may be a misguided focus point for the administration.
Meanwhile, Senator Cynthia Lummis reiterated that President Trump supports her bitcoin strategic reserve legislation and indicated that the bill will hit the Senate floor for debate shortly.
New York City mayor Eric Adams gave a keynote address at the conference where he proposed a termination of the controversial “BitLicense” that has made business prohibitively difficult in New York for many bitcoin companies.
The mayor also suggested the city would pursue a “BitBond,” a concept pioneered by Battery Finance Founder Andrew Hohns, though others in the city government immediately poured cold water on the idea.
Nigel Farage, leader of the UK’s Reform Party, announced in a conference fireside that his party has developed a new digital assets bill that would direct the UK government to build a bitcoin reserve at the Bank of England and lower capital gains taxes on bitcoin if Reform gains power in the next general election.
An official from the government of Pakistan indicated the country will look to build its own bitcoin strategic reserve while allocating 200MW to new bitcoin mining products.
Back in the US, the Department of Labor rescinded regulatory guidance from 2022 that discouraged retirement plan administrators from allowing bitcoin-linked investment options in 401(k) plans.
Texas enacted a law that will institute age verification requirements for smartphone app stores beginning next year, potentially imposing onerous new privacy impositions on users in the state.
Noteworthy
Silk Road founder and early bitcoin pioneer Ross Ulbricht, whose multi-lifetime prison sentence was commuted by President Trump earlier this year, gave a keynote speech to close out the Bitcoin 2025 conference.
Block CEO Jack Dorsey announced a new bitcoin and ecash app at this year’s Oslo Freedom Forum, as well as an initiative to support new applications and use cases of the Nostr protocol.
Block also announced that all its Square terminals will now natively accept bitcoin lightning network payments by default.
Finally, Block’s Miles Suter announced that the company has earned nearly 10% APR on lightning payment routing activities through its lightning service provider c=, potentially a signpost for the viability of lightning routing as a business for larger players.
Ark Labs launched Arkade, a new application layer the company believes can open up new programmability options for bitcoin without any changes to bitcoin consensus rules.
Ken Rogoff, an acolyte of standard economic orthodoxy and former Federal Reserve official, indicated that he sees bitcoin as eroding dollar dominance in grey markets and the “underground economy.”
Travel
Bitcoin Jawn, Philadelphia, June 2
Nashville BitDevs, June 10
Austin BitDevs, June 19
Bitcoin Policy Summit, Washington DC, June 25-26