GM to the winners club. Crypto Nutshell Pro #71 comin’ in with a bang… 💥🥜

If you’re new here, each Crypto Nutshell Pro is broken down into 2 sections:

The goal?

Help you understand exactly where we are in the cycle.

By now, you should have read through the following page: Read This First

(Click the button at the bottom of the page to continue the welcome series - there are 4 pages in total to read)

These give you a broad overview of the Crypto Nutshell Pro Portfolio and how we’re looking to play the second-half of this bull run.

And in case you missed last weeks Nutshell Pro, you can check that out here.

Now, let’s jump in…

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This week, Bitcoin is hovering around $70,500. Ethereum is at ~$2,100, boosted by the BlackRock staked ETH ETF launch. Oil remains elevated at ~$100.

The vibes are still bad. The war is still raging. Oil is still climbing.

But underneath the noise, three things happened this week that matter far more than the headlines suggest.

The Fed just confirmed it's trapped. The CLARITY Act just cleared its biggest hurdle. And Bitcoin continues to outperform every traditional safe haven since the war began.

Let's unpack it. 👇

The Fed Just Confirmed What We Already Knew

The Fed held rates steady this week. No surprise there.

But the press conference told us everything we needed to know.

Powell was asked repeatedly about the war, oil, and what the Fed plans to do about it. His answer, over and over: "We don't know."

He said it so many times it became the theme of the entire meeting.

"If we were ever going to skip an SEP, this would be a good one because we just don't know."

*SEP = Summary of Economic Projections, where Fed members forecast economic data points.

"The economic effect could be bigger, they could be smaller, they could be much smaller or much bigger. We just don't know."

The dot plot stayed unchanged from January: one cut this year, one cut next year. But Powell himself admitted that nobody on the committee has any conviction in those projections.

Here's what the market heard: no cuts coming anytime soon.

Before the war started, markets were pricing 2.5 rate cuts for 2026. That's now been slashed to barely half a cut. Some traders are now pricing in zero cuts for the entire year.

And the math is simple.

With Brent crude oil over $100, inflation expectations have surged. One-year inflation swaps have jumped to 3.2%, up from 2.2% at the start of the year. The Fed simply can't cut into that.

But at the same time, the labour market continues to deteriorate.

February's jobs report showed the economy lost 92,000 jobs. Unemployment is at 4.4% and rising. The Fed can't ignore that either.

Powell tried to push back on the stagflation framing. He said current conditions "do not resemble a true stagflation regime like the 1970s."

Maybe not yet…

But the direction of travel is clear. And the Fed's own actions, or lack of them, confirm it: they're stuck.

They can't cut. And they can't hike.

They're watching and waiting while both sides of their mandate deteriorate.

Two weeks ago we called this checkmate. This week, the Fed confirmed it.

The CLARITY Act Just Cleared Its Biggest Hurdle

While everyone was focused on Powell, the most important crypto development of the year went under the radar.

The Senate and White House reached a deal on the stablecoin yield issue that had been blocking the CLARITY Act for months.

This is a BIG deal.