A Letter to My Future Self: The Day Markets Held Their Breath

July 22, 2025

Dear Me,

By the time you read this, assuming the simulation hasn't crashed and we're still pretending fiat money means something, you'll know how today went. Right now, as I write this at 6 AM with coffee growing cold and futures bleeding red, I have no idea if the White House crypto report dropping in a few hours will be the regulatory clarity bulls have prayed for, or another bureaucratic middle finger wrapped in diplomatic language.

Bitcoin sits at $118.5k, which would have been science fiction three years ago but now feels oddly disappointing. Ethereum briefly touched $3,800 yesterday before settling back to $3,760, still chasing that psychological $4,000 level like a dog chasing its tail. The total crypto market cap has climbed to $3.94 trillion — a number so large it defies comprehension, representing more wealth than most countries' GDP sitting in digital wallets controlled by private keys that half their owners have probably lost.

You remember what happened with XRP hitting $3.53 after Trump's GENIUS Act, right? The same XRP that was trading at pennies when the SEC decided to play regulatory whack-a-mole. Now institutional money is flooding into Ethereum with $2.18B in inflows, because apparently the smart money has decided that proof-of-stake is the future, environmental concerns be damned.

Meanwhile, in the land of traditional finance, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq touched fresh record levels yesterday while Tesla and Nvidia underperformed. Funny how the meme stocks that carried us through the AI bubble are now the laggards while Alphabet, Amazon and Meta do the heavy lifting. The rotation continues, driven by algorithms that trade faster than human thought and pension funds desperately chasing yield in a world where the fed funds rate sits at 4.50 percent and Powell keeps mumbling about "data dependency" like a broken record.

Treasury yields fell alongside the dollar yesterday, which should be bullish for risk assets, but European markets opened negative across the board because apparently the continent still can't decide if it wants to embrace American-style financial capitalism or regulate it into submission.

Here's what's keeping me up at night, Future Me: The GENIUS Act requires stablecoins in the U.S. be backed by dollars or U.S. Treasuries. Do you see the feedback loop forming? Crypto drives demand for dollars and Treasuries, which props up the dollar, which makes dollar-denominated assets more attractive, which drives more crypto adoption. It's either the most elegant financial engineering of our time or the setup for the most spectacular collapse since Bretton Woods fell apart.

The White House report comes out today. Trump called some viral Bitcoin video the "greatest explanation of all time", which could mean everything or nothing — the man once tweeted that he didn't like Bitcoin and now half the country thinks he's Satoshi Nakamoto. But here's the tell: CoinMarketCap's Altcoin Season indicator is positive for the first time in months. The degens smell blood in the water.

I'm writing this because I want to remember what uncertainty feels like. Not the fake uncertainty of financial media that treats every 2% move like the apocalypse, but real uncertainty. The kind where trillion-dollar markets pivot on a single document released by bureaucrats who probably still think blockchain is just a fancy database.

The Fear & Greed Index reads 67 — greed territory, but not euphoric greed. Measured greed. Institutional greed. The kind that comes with lawyers and compliance departments and risk management frameworks that would make your grandfather's banker weep.

If you're reading this six months from now and crypto has gone parabolic, remember that it felt inevitable in hindsight but terrifying in real-time. If you're reading this after everything crashed, remember that $196.07 billion in daily volume seemed like a lot at the time.

Either way, don't let anyone tell you we didn't see this coming.

Your increasingly paranoid past self,

The Author

P.S. — Bitcoin is still consolidating near all-time highs, eyeing that $123,000 resistance. If it breaks through while you're reading this, pour yourself a drink. If it doesn't, pour yourself two.

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This letter was written before markets opened on July 22, 2025. Any resemblance to actual financial advice is purely coincidental and probably illegal in your jurisdiction.