The Real Moves in Crypto This Week

📊 Solana gets its MicroStrategy, BlackRock’s ETF hits $72B AUM, and TON bulls are back.

Author

Cryptopolitan News
May 29, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 11 minutes

📬 Today’s Byte

• Dollar gains, Crypto holds the line

• BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF leads the way

• TON interest rises after Telegram-Grok AI deal

• Solana’s MicroStrategy moment?

Crypto stayed flat Thursday,  even as the dollar recovered after a U.S. trade court ruled that Trump’s sweeping import tariffs overstepped legal limits.

That ruling hit pause on one of Trump’s biggest economic levers. His team immediately appealed, but the temporary block was enough to send the dollar index back above 100. Gains showed up across the board: the yen, Swiss franc, euro, and even the British pound took hits. Meanwhile, the greenback rose 0.34% on average.

But here’s where it gets interesting:

Asian currencies are rising too. The yuan, Taiwanese dollar, and Philippine peso are all gaining strength, backed by improving regional sentiment and growing pushback against U.S. trade moves. A new Reuters poll shows bullish bets on Asian currencies hitting their highest since late 2020.

A stronger dollar usually cools crypto, but this time, capital is flowing east. And with Southeast Asia strengthening ties with China and the Gulf, we’re seeing a broader shift in where global capital is parking. Bitcoin may not react immediately, but that’s pressure building beneath the surface.

Quiet price action, loud accumulation

Bitcoin’s holding near $108,500, barely moving all week. But behind the scenes? Wallets holding 100–1,000 BTC have scooped up over 122,000 BTC in the past six weeks.  Large holders don’t care about daily candles. They’re positioning for something bigger. 

Are we in the profit zone yet?

Some metrics say we’re close. The Relative Unrealized Profit indicator, which tracks how much profit investors are sitting on,  just moved into euphoria territory. Historically, that’s when things start heating up.

But realized profits, adjusted for volatility, are still well below danger levels. In other words, people are in the green, but they’re not rushing for the exit.

Derivatives market? 

If the spot market looks boring, the derivatives market is screaming. Open interest in futures is up 51% since April, now sitting at $55.6B. Options are even wilder, jumping from $20.4B to $46.2B, a new all-time high.

This isn’t casual trading. It’s high-stakes positioning. And it usually means something’s coming fast.

Donald Trump is pushing every chip forward, tying his entire family’s wealth to Bitcoin while sitting in the White House during his second term. The US president, according to Bloomberg, is worth $5.2 billion, and now a massive chunk of that is about to rise or crash with the price of crypto.

🧲 BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF leads the way

On May 28, it pulled in another $481 million, extending its winning streak to 33 straight trading days without a single outflow. The last time money didn’t enter this fund was April 9.

And it’s not just consistency. It’s scale.

  • $48.8 billion in inflows since launch

  • Over 650,000 BTC held

  • $72 billion AUM, now making it the 23rd largest ETF on the planet

This thing’s barely five months old. The next youngest ETF in the top 25? Launched in 2012

What’s behind the momentum? IBIT isn’t just winning days, it’s steamrolling weeks. In the past two weeks alone:

  • It’s pulled in $3.86 billion

  • Averaged $430 million per day

  • Scored massive hauls like $530M on May 21 and $877M on May 22

Even on days when other Bitcoin ETFs saw outflows: Fidelity lost $14M, Ark 21Shares dropped $34M, IBIT kept pulling cash.

Why does this matter? Institutional investors aren’t just flirting with crypto, they’re going all in. And they’re doing it through IBIT, the easiest, safest bet with the BlackRock seal.

From inflation to trade wars to fiat fears the macro backdrop is messy.  But IBIT’s inflows suggest one thing: Big money still sees Bitcoin as a long-term play.

Metaplanet announced on Thursday that it had decided to issue the 17th Series of Ordinary Bonds to EVO FUND, a Cayman Islands-based investment firm. The company issued $21 million in zero-interest bonds to purchase additional Bitcoin.

📈 Trader’s Take: TON interest rises after Telegram-Grok AI deal

After Telegram announced a partnership with Grok AI, open interest on TON futures spiked and 75% of it is long. That’s a quick shift in sentiment for a token that’s been drifting for weeks.

TON’s price jumped 11% to $3.30, and volumes crossed $1.3B, the highest in three months.

What’s fueling the hype?

  • Telegram’s getting serious again: new VP from VISA, plans to go big on payments.

  • Grok AI integration hints at a fresh product cycle.

  • TON still sits at the center of Telegram’s crypto push, with $921M+ in stablecoins across the ecosystem.

Some traders are eyeing $3.70, maybe more but only if this move sticks.

Bottom Line: TON’s got the narrative, the volume, and Telegram’s reach.
Whether it breaks out or breaks down… depends on how many hands diamond up versus fold.

Ripple’s Brad Garlinghouse has asked Bitcoin and other blockchain technologies to set their differences aside and work together to move the industry forward as they grow more popular. This statement follows  Ripple’s gift of the skull of Satoshi to the Bitcoin community.

💰 Solana’s MicroStrategy moment?

A new wave of treasury adoption is forming and this time, it’s not Bitcoin in the spotlight.

SOL Strategies, a publicly traded Solana infrastructure company, just filed to raise $1 billion via a shelf prospectus. While they haven’t committed to issuing securities yet, the move signals one thing: they want dry powder ready to double down on Solana.

CEO Leah Wald says it’s all about staying flexible for opportunities in the ecosystem. And if their recent behavior is any clue, they’re not bluffing.

 What’s behind the move?

  • SOL Strategies already scooped up 122,524 SOL ($18.25M) last month — part of a $500M convertible note facility.

  • They now hold 349,322 SOL total and run validator services for over 5,500 institutions, managing 3.5M SOL in delegated stakes.

  • The firm’s staking platform just passed SOC 1, SOC 2, and ISO 27001 audits, locking in enterprise-grade security and compliance.

  • They’re also building a way to tokenize their own shares on Solana, via Superstate’s Opening Bell platform.

This isn’t just investment. It’s integration.

SOL Strategies isn’t alone. In the past month:

  • Janover (now “DeFi Development Corp”) bought 251,842 SOL and filed to raise $1B for more SOL exposure.

  • Upexi raised $100M for a Solana treasury.

  • Remixpoint in Japan also holds SOL as a reserve asset.

What’s going on here? Think “MicroStrategy but for Solana” multiple firms are now rotating from BTC to SOL as their long-term crypto play.

Arkham Intelligence extended its coverage of Strategy’s known wallets, making up to 87.5% of the holdings transparent. The posted addresses follow a recent refusal by Michael Saylor to reveal an on-chain proof of the company’s holdings. 

Market-moving headlines 🔥

Dubai’s Prypco Mint reported that it fully funded the first tokenized property in less than 24 hours with 224 investors from over 40 nationalities in less than 24 hours.

The announcement came after the recent launch of Prypco Mint, the first licensed real estate tokenization platform in partnership with Dubai Land Department, Dubai’s regulatory authority and powered by Ctrl Alt blockchain.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has officially started reviewing the WisdomTree XRP ETF proposal. It is the first US spot XRP ETF proposal that would allow investors to invest in XRP.

The SEC will also consider whether the XRP ETF proposal offers adequate investor protection and has methods to prevent market manipulation.

Chris Larsen, co-founder of Ripple, has clarified that the company was not behind the funding of the controversial “Change the Code” campaign.

The initiative, in partnership with Greenpeace, set out to pressure the Bitcoin community into dumping its energy-intensive proof of work (PoW) consensus model.

The SUI network community took another step toward making whole the traders and liquidity providers of the hacked Cetus Protocol DEX. The vote was initially open for seven days, though an early decision may arrive in the next two days if the trend remains. 

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