00:00 Speaker A

2025 is shaping up to be a booming year for crypto, as regulatory tailwinds and forecasts of mass adoption send Bitcoin and stablecoin related companies higher. We’re joined now by senior markets reporter, Ines Ferre, with an important recap on digital assets. Hi Elena, Ines.

00:19 Ines Ferre

Hey Josh. Yeah, and if we just take a look at where Bitcoin is at year to date, it’s up 13%. Since President Trump won the White House last year though, it is up roughly 50%. So you really see the boom that has happened in the Bitcoin space, uh, given President Trump’s promises for, uh, crypto-friendly, uh, crypto-friendly framework. So you’ve had a lot of regulatory tailwinds, uh, this past half year, uh, you’ve had also the executive order that President Trump, uh, signed to start a strategic Bitcoin reserve, and you’ve had companies that have really benefited from this. I’m going to pull up a year to date chart so you can see the biggest beneficiaries. Robinhood up 122%, the trading platform. Also, you’ve got Coinbase that is up more than 40%. I do want to mention that even though today we saw Coinbase pulling, pulling back from its record close, this stock has seen a turnaround that is impressive. You’ve had this stock that was at its lows in 2022, it has emerged from those lows up more than 900% since then, and you’ve had a lot of bullish calls around Coinbase with one analyst earlier this week calling this company the Amazon of crypto financial services. Also want to mention that Coinbase is a minority, uh, stakeholder of Circle. This is the company that went public earlier in June, on June 5th. And Circle is up year to date, well since, since its IPO, almost 500%, 480%. This is the issuer of stable coins, and, uh, the stable coins are digital tokens that are backed by assets like the US dollar. And Wall Street is very bullish on this entire stable coin market because they are seeing a large, uh, addressable market. They are saying that this is going to revolutionize the way that payments are made, especially when it comes to cross-border payments. And we’ve seen a lot of deal making in this space as well. We’ve seen companies that have wanted to get involved in the stable coin space. And it’s interesting because issuers of stable coin, you’ve got Circle, and then you’ve got Tether, which is privately owned that you, as far as Circle is concerned, it is a pure play when it comes to stable coins, and they’re a big buyer of short-term debt, US Treasuries. So this is a very important link between, uh, between the government and also these, uh, issuers of stable coin because they, they also drive some of this demand for US, uh, treasury bills, short term.

05:20 Speaker A

Ines, before I let you go, what, what can you tell us just quickly about the risks that we should think about associated with adopting stable coins?

05:31 Ines Ferre

Yeah, I mean, you’ve had a couple of, uh, analysts that have talked about these risks that is that are, uh, you’ve got increasing competition, uh, on the heels of the Genius Act that was passed in the Senate. It’s expected to be finalized by the end of this year, so it’ll pass through the house and also will be signed into law. And so that’s expected to go through, um, but then with that you’re going to have increased competition. And then on top of that, the other risk is, is that if you have interest rates coming down, then that is going to impact the reserve income that, uh, a company like Circle makes because, uh, it invests those dollars into US treasuries for its stable coins. So, uh, that’ll have some type of an impact. Some analysts that I’ve spoken to say that this means that they are going to have to get, gain more market share, grow faster, and perhaps go into other products as well.