Morning Minute: Bitcoin at $65,000 as Iran Deal Wobbles

Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt. And check out our new daily news show covering all of the top stories in 5 minutes, downloadable on Apple Pod or Spotify.

GM!

Today’s top news:

• Crypto majors hold steady over the weekend despite Iran deal wobbling; BTC at $65k
• STRC fell to a record low of $83 on Thursday before rebounding to $88
• CME sues the CFTC, says crypto perps are swaps not futures
• Franklin Templeton filed for ETF that funnels US stock dividends into BTC
• Charles Schwab plans to enter prediction market space

📊 Bitcoin Holds Near $65,000 as the Iran Deal Wobbles

Bitcoin rose to $65,000 Monday morning, recovering part of Friday’s drop below $63,000 but finishing roughly flat on the week.

Other crypto majors held steady alongside it:

• ETH +1% on the week to $1,750
• Solana +1% on the week to $73
• Hyperliquid’s HYPE flat on the week at $68

Fairly uneventful price action, but maybe that’s a win in a week that saw Saylor’s STRC fall to record lows of $83, the ETFs saw $227M in net outflows and the Fear and Greed Index spending the entire week squarely in the Fear zone.

As for macro drivers, the Iran War ceasefire saw a setback. Permanent U.S.-Iran ceasefire talks opened in Switzerland after the deal was signed Friday, a deal that sent oil down 9%. Then Iran ordered the Strait of Hormuz closed again over the weekend, reviving the exact supply risk the agreement was meant to remove. Add the hawkish Warsh Fed and the STRC selloff from last week and Bitcoin / crypto is certainly in a precarious position to start the week.

For now, Bitcoin is consolidating rather than trending, holding above the low $60,000s but unable to reclaim the week’s highs. Until the Iran picture and the Fed path clear up, the range likely holds.

⚖️ CME Sues the CFTC, Arguing Crypto Perps Are Swaps, Not Futures

CME Group, the largest US derivatives exchange, filed a lawsuit against the CFTC on Thursday. They are asking a court to vacate the agency’s approval of Kalshi’s perpetual futures, the first such product cleared in the US back in late May.

CME makes two arguments:

• The procedural one is that the CFTC failed to properly weigh Kalshi’s application or the consequences of approving perps before granting it, which CME says violated Dodd-Frank
• The substantive one is that perpetual futures are actually swaps under Dodd-Frank rather than futures, a distinction that would subject them to different and stricter rules.

Underneath the legal language is a competitive motive, since CME argues these perps threaten its long-dated futures business, which is the core of what it does.

The case matters well beyond CME. It lands alongside a Michigan ruling that sports prediction markets aren’t swaps and fall outside the CFTC’s jurisdiction, so the agency is being challenged on two fronts at once, both attacking the Dodd-Frank basis it used to expand into crypto perps and prediction markets.

If CME wins and perps get reclassified as swaps, the approvals that let Kalshi and Coinbase offer regulated US perps could be reopened, and the prediction-market clearances could follow. With the courts split, the question is headed for appeals and likely the Supreme Court, making it one of the bigger market-structure fights of the year.

🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets

• Crypto majors are mixed this morning; BTC +1% at $65k; ETH +2% at $1,750; SOL -1% at $73.50; HYPE even at $68.25
• DEXE (+26%), ENA (+5%) and OKB (+6%) led top movers
• Oil +1% at $77; Gold -0.5% at $4,225
• Stock futures are flat and unchanged since Thursday
• Franklin Templeton filed for ETFs that reinvest US stock dividends into Bitcoin, a novel structure that funnels the dividend income from equity holdings into Bitcoin accumulation instead of paying it out in cash
• Strategy’s STRC fell to an all-time low of $83 on Thursday before rebounding to $88
• The Federal Reserve proposed customer identification rules for stablecoin issuers, moving to require issuers to verify who their customers are as the federal framework for dollar-backed tokens takes shape
• Jaredfromsubway.eth, Ethereum’s most notorious MEV sandwich bot, was drained of more than $7.5 million after an attacker spent weeks luring it into approving fake trading routes built from spoofed tokens and pools, then used those approvals to siphon out its WETH, USDC, and USDT and wash some through Tornado Cash

Corporate Treasuries & ETFs

Meme Coin Tracker

• Meme leaders were mostly green; DOGE +1%, SHIB +1%, PEPE +1, PENGU -1%, TRUMP +1%, BONK +1%, SPX +3, FARTCOIN +5%
• Solangeles (+180%), three (+30%), and GTAVI (+65%) led movers on Solana
• Base movers included GITLAWB (+15%) and Nock (+12%)

📈 Myriad Market of the Day

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

🚚 What is happening in NFTs?

• NFT leaders were mostly red; Punks -7.5% at 31 ETH, BAYC -3% at 9.2 ETH, Pudgy +6% at 4.8 ETH; Hypurr’s -2% at 227 HYPE
• Trolls (+12%) and Axie (+8%) led top movers