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Happy Friday! Eric here.

Is Bitcoin about to rip?

Arthur Hayes, chief investment officer at Maelstrom, thinks so, estimating that the top cryptocurrency’s price will rally to $250,000 by the end of the year.

He’s even more confident after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell signalled that the central bank will allow more liquidity to flow through the American economy. .

“Stay nimble and cashed up,” Hayes tweeted.

His bullishness comes at a challenging time for the crypto industry.

Donald Trump’s zig-zagging tariff policies continue to rattle markets — the total crypto market is down 21% since the president’s inauguration. The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq 100 indexes are down about 6% and 9%, respectively, in that time.

Not even Ripple’s victory against the Securities and Exchange Commission, nor the president’s speech at the Digital Asset Summit shook markets out of their rut.

Hayes’ argument, however, is that Trump’s policies are designed to spark recession fears and force the Fed to devalue the dollar and unleash a wave of liquidity into the market. A top economist even suggests that Bitcoin could play a role in dethroning the dollar.

“They’re going to reflate and print more money than anyone’s ever printed before,” Hayes said earlier in March.

That’s bullish for Bitcoin — more money in the market means more cash to inject into risk assets like crypto and tech stocks.

Not everyone’s convinced.

“Every onchain metric signals a bear market,” said Ki Young Ju, the CEO of CryptoQuant, a crypto analytics firm.

Earlier in the week, he predicted that there will be six to 12 months of bearish or sideways price action.

Solana reels from crypto backlash after ‘infantile’ video ad

The MAGA movement has benefitted from the crypto industry’s donations, but that doesn’t mean the industry can benefit from parroting right-wing talking points. The Solana Foundation learned that lesson this week after it posted an ad that was absolutely panned online.

XRP ETF approval chances jump as SEC drops Ripple case

The chances that the SEC will approve XRP exchange-traded funds surged after the agency dropped its case against Ripple this week. JPMorgan expects XRP ETFs to see inflows of $8 billion within their first year of trading.

A16z flexes political clout with 50-page crypto screed to SEC

Venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz made another pro-crypto overture this week by urging the SEC to essentially throw out former chair Gary Gensler’s playbook when it came to digital assets.

The Solana Foundation may have taken down its ad, but that didn’t stop the memes from piling on.