Strategy bought Bitcoin again. It spent more on its own stock.

Bitcoin ETFs saw their largest inflow since October of 2025 and they are now in the positive on the year. But Bitcoin price still down. How do we explain this? Let's dig into it right now on the Daily Wolf. Let's go. Good morning everybody. Welcome to the Daily Wolf on Yahoo Finance. I am your host Scott Milker, also known as the Wolf of All Street. You can check me out at Scott Melker on X. You can find me Scott Melker on YouTube for all of my other content. Now, we will get into the broader story of Bitcoin price and ETFs. But since it is Monday, we have to start with this guy. We're back, baby. Michael Sailor is once again Megaade sucking up all of the bitcoins this week. Sailor and Strategy buy 1665 Bitcoin for $143 million, taking their total holdings to 847,66 Bitcoin. Now, as is always the case with any story about strategy, you have to unpack how they use their complicated machine to buy Bitcoin because buying one thing generally means selling another thing or going into the cash reserve or dipping behind the couch cushions to find some nickels to buy some more Bitcoin. So, what they did this time was they use a tiny little bit of their second cash reserve, but largely they sold 1.47 47 million MSTR shares to raise $246.2 million. Now, as I said, that money was divided. 142.7 million was used to purchase Bitcoin. Again, about 1,600 Bitcoin. I think now they've probably bought back about all that they sold at much lower prices. And they used 103.5 million repurchasing STRC preferred stock. So they used 48.1 million of their flexible USD cash pile. That's their second cash reserve to bring the total STRC repurchase to 151.7 million. So 103.5 million was with the MSTR sales and 48.1 million to a total of 151.7 million. So they actually spent a bit more money once again supporting STRC than they did buying Bitcoin. This is a very complicated machine at this point. Strategy finished the week with a 5.02 billion USD reserve and 1 billion extra in flexible USD cash. So still over 6 billion. Now remember that second fund is the one they can use flexibly to buy Bitcoin, buy back MSTR, buy STRC, basically do with whatever they want. The 5.02 billion can only be used for expenses. That's basically the backing for all of the preferred uh payments they're going to have to make over the years. Once again, this is a very very complex machine, but clearly there's major confidence in the market if strategy is choosing to once again start buying Bitcoin. Now, Strategy was not the only major Bitcoin buyer this week. Regulated funds experienced their strongest demand in nearly a year. This was what I told you about at the intro. Bitcoin ETFs record biggest weekly inflow since October 2025 at 2.4 billion. We're back, baby. 2.4 billion in a week. Now, listen, if we're being honest about this, we obviously saw a massive Bitcoin move up to, I don't remember, $88,000 before seeing some retracement here. So, obviously, when you see a major green candle in Bitcoin, the buyers sometimes lead it, but they definitely follow it. And I think that's largely what we saw last week. But this 2.4 4 billion uh was the strongest week since October 2025. And checks notes, October 2025 was when Bitcoin made an all-time high at $126,000, the largest inflows since Bitcoin hit its highest price of all time. Importantly, this pushed 2026 ETF flows back into positive territory. To break this down, of course, Black Rockck was the leader here. They accounted for approximately 1.2 billion of those inflows. Fidelity added 702 million. ARC and 21 shares attracted 295. Now, this was not just a Bitcoin rally we saw last week. Ether ETFs added 690 additional million. Now, like I said before, which kind of tracks what we're seeing in price, the ETF inflows slowed from Monday to Friday. It was 999 million on Monday and ended on Friday with 134 million. So we did see a bit of a decline throughout the week, but still very positive that while price was dropping after making that high, we still saw cumulative inflows. Now if you had read that lower third before, it would tell you that Bitcoin uh has gone up, ETF flows have gone up, but there are some macro headwinds. Of course, Bitcoin is very much fighting the tape right here right now. The 10-year Treasury yield remains above 5%. Last I checked, it was around 5.2%. Tons of pressure there from the Treasury market. Oil had surged up to about $108 before dropping back down a bit today. But clearly, oil markets are in a bit of an existential crisis right now with the war in Iran and what's happening with diesel prices. And of course, higher oil generally creates renewed inflation pressure and gives Worsh less room to his policy, which people believe is a negative for Bitcoin. We're at a very interesting point right now where Bitcoin has performed well even in the face of other assets doing poorly. I mean gold is down breaking support, bonds, TLT at a all-time low effectively. Bitcoin fighting well and still holding key levels. Now you remember as I told you we had Bitcoin breaking above the 50 MA on the weekly. That was the last meaningful MA that people were looking for. And Bitcoin also made a higher high for the first time. the technical case for a Bitcoin bare market is effectively over. Now we have two weeks of closes above that 50 MA and right now uh we've retested the level of that higher high around 82,800 twice on the daily. So looking like we have the price action that we want on Bitcoin. Let's hope that it holds. So clearly investors are returning to Bitcoin here, both strategy and institutional and retail. But another crypto exchange just reminded everyone that custody risk has nothing to do with price. I hate these stories, but here's another one. I didn't get a chance to cover it towards the end of the week. Crypto exchange BitGet pauses withdrawals after 350 million stolen in a hack. I mean, I'm old enough to remember when 350 million was a lot, but yeah, uh, Bybit did over a billion on a hack, so no big deal. Uh, yeah, but so this is just another cautionary tale. They I think they initially reported it was 351.6 million on the hack, but later the tracing identified approximately 387.5 million transferred to attacker controlled addresses. Bit saying that this was North Korea, probably the Lazarus group, although that has not been confirmed. We have a big problem in crypto with North Korean hackers taking people's money. In this case, they took the money from the hot and warm wallets on Bit. Now, Bitket has reiterated once again that their insurance fund covers this. They will be replenishing that insurance fund in the coming weeks. So, no user funds were taken. Now, interestingly, they had to halt withdrawals. I think that makes a lot of sense from a security standpoint. Uh, and those withdrawals are now uh opening again in tiers. So, people are able to get their funds. I'm actually curious to see how much deposit flight there is after this hack from the exchange or whether people have become so conditioned to this and their funds are safe so they're not really concerned about it. But the hackers here did not steal their private keys according to Bit. What happened is they allegedly compromised a wallet backend system and fed fraudulent transaction information into BitGet's authorization process. So they effectively understood what it would take for BitGet to approve a withdrawal and that's where the exploit was focused. In simple terms, the keys remain secure, but the system told those keys to approve malicious transactions. H I hate these stories. They're constant. This one I haven't really seen break into the mainstream like the Bybit hack did, which is good information, but you just got to wonder how these fraudulent transfers continued long enough for nearly $400 million to escape. It didn't go out in a single trunch. And so clearly something was missed there uh in the very short term. [sighs] Man, it is a it's it's a rough time out there in crypto for for hacks. Obviously, this is North Korea, but we've seen tons with AI. And more importantly, we're seeing novel ways to steal funds without actually hacking hacking the private keys, which is once again what we're seeing here. Crypto still has a very serious infrastructure problem, but its regulatory environment is changing almost beyond recognition. And a lot of that is due to one Hester purse. The next story here is my newsletter from this morning, which you should subscribe to because it's free and comes out five days a week. I've written literally thousands of these things. But uh I interviewed Hester Pur yesterday and at that point I think she was supposed to be leaving the SEC in November and right after we recorded the interview it was announced that she was leaving at the end of this week. She put in her resignation very very proudly. But Hester Pur is leaving the SEC. Her ideas are staying. Just an incredible story. And this woman known as crypto mom by her industry, although she would push back on that title. She says she's just for freedom and doing the right thing and it has very little to do with crypto. But she has long been an advocate for our industry and pushed very hard even in a contentious administration under the uh finger of Gary Gendler when she was a minority chairman alongside Mark UA who now will be one of the last two remaining chairman with Paul Atkins. Now there's only Paul Platkins and Oyeda. They had pur they're all Republicans right now. Nobody has been appointed to the committee. So it doesn't really probably change much. But the rules that we're seeing implemented by the regulator, by the SEC are largely based on ideas she had when she could not get them through under those contentious previous regimes. So really interesting to see it happening and she deserves all of the credit for that happening, right? Regulation crypto, the idea that there should be firm rules on fundraising and the idea of safe harbor to become sufficiently decentralized so that you're not a security. Those are all ideas that she screamed and yelled about for years when she dissented also against the policies of Gendzer. Remember Gendler liked to regulate by enforcement. They said, "Come in and talk to us, but if you came in and talked to them, you literally got sued and didn't know why because they were effectively asking you to come in and present your ideas, which they would say were against the law." She immediately pushed back against all of those ideas from the very beginning. She dissented. A very, very strong voice. It's sad to see her leave, but I'm sure she'll do exceptionally well. I mean, it's clear that crypto mom here is leaving because the kids have finally moved out of the regulatory basement, right? the crypto kids. We're we're going to college. We've graduated. Getting out of the basement. So sad to see her leave, but uh very happy for her and want to give her all the flowers for the ideas that she pushed forward that have created this favorable regulatory environment. So, uh, while the SEC clarifies what falls outside securities law, the Federal Reserve is writing the requirements here, uh, for how stable coins will operate in the future. And this is really interesting. Here you go. Fed proposes stable coin rules under Genius Act. The fact that they've done it is actually a bit surprising. They're late, first of all. They were told that they had to do it uh, according to the Genius Act. And when I had Caitlyn Long on my on my show recently, she pointed out the fact that the Fed had not done their job. Genus Act said, "We need to write rules by a certain date." The OC did it. The FDI did it. The Fed did not do it. Well, they have finally gotten in line and they are writing the rules. So, the rules are pretty obvious. They follow in line with what Genius has already told us needs to be done. full backing with permitted reserve assets, short-term treasuries and other highly liquid assets, capital requirements for credit and operational risk, risk management, reserve custody standards, stable coin activities permitted for supervised banks. And the second proposal they have establishes the application process for banks seeking permission to use stable coins. This could many people view lead to a world of have and have nots where the big banks get approved but the smaller banks struggle to find rules they can implement around stable coins certainly about launching stable coins themselves. So the big story here is that the Fed has finally sent the rules. Now Congress wrote the stable coin law. The Fed's writing the terms and conditions that nobody is going to read, right? It's like iTunes. You ever see that South Park? Why won't it read? Just like nobody reads terms and conditions for anything. You could literally be signing your life and your children away and you would have no idea. That's what's happening here with the Fed. Now, I have one more story that I need to tell you right now and it is a how not to invest. Hit it. >> How not to invest. [music] >> How to invest. >> Stop buying meme coins. It's a really simple one. 53 Robin Hood chain tokens linked to $18 million extraction basically on this launchpad called Pawns. They were able to launch tokens, extract most of the supply right at the launch by going around Robin Hood or Ponz's protections and then they were able to keep all the money, hype up the token, dump on everyone, roll that money forward and do it 53 times to make $18 million. And guess who loses money when that happens? It's you. I see you. You, the guy right back in the corner who's trading meme coins on Robin Hood. Don't do it. Don't trade meme coins. You don't need to. It's going to be an interesting week. We've got a lot of macro headwinds, but Bitcoin still performing exceptionally well. We'll see where it's at tomorrow. That's all we got for today. See you. Peace.