GM to all of you nutcases. It’s Crypto Nutshell #957 bringin‘ the news… 🥜

We're the crypto newsletter that's more transformed than a mild chemistry teacher swapping the classroom for an empire cooked up in a desert camper… 🧪🎩

What we’ve cooked up for you today…

What’s in the Crypto Nutshell Portfolio?

BREAKING: Crypto Market Flips From Fear to 'Extreme Greed' for First Time Since 2024

Bitcoin climbed past $80,000 this week for the first time since May.

And the crowd picked that exact moment to turn euphoric.

The Crypto Fear & Greed Index just hit "extreme greed" for the first time since 2024.

It reads 81 today, up from a fearful 36 a month ago, one of the fastest swings the gauge has ever made.

Then the price it was cheering slipped back.

Bitcoin topped out near $81,000, couldn't hold the line, and drifted to around $78,600.

Two things turned at once.

Gold cooled off its own three-month high and Treasury yields fell, draining the macro tailwind that carried the run.

And the traders sitting on the biggest gains started cashing out.

CryptoQuant clocked short-term holders taking roughly $1.2 billion in profit over three days last week, a record $614 million of it in a single day.

At the same time about 53,000 bitcoin moved onto exchanges, the most since June and usually a sign coins are lining up to sell.

By CryptoQuant's own scoreboard, this isn't a confirmed bull market yet.

That needs a weekly close above the 365-day average near $83,000, and this week's high near $81,000 fell short.

Extreme greed tends to show up right as the easy money's been made.

It doesn't guarantee a top.

But when everyone turns greedy at resistance while the early buyers head for the exit, the burden of proof sits with the bulls. 🚀

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Larry Lepard is calling time on the oldest knock against Bitcoin.

Lepard is a veteran hard-money investor and author of "The Big Print," one of the bluntest voices on where the dollar is heading.

Here's what he posted:

Bitcoin was never real money, the argument went, just a leveraged bet on tech stocks that sold off harder every time the Nasdaq did.

For years the price mostly agreed.

Bitcoin and the QQQ (the ETF that tracks the Nasdaq's big tech names) traded like the same bet with different leverage.

This week they parted ways.

AI-chip funds cooled off their summer run while Bitcoin pushed up to $80,000, notching daily closes above its major moving averages against the dollar, gold, the S&P and the Nasdaq all at once.

Lepard's "oh wait" is the whole point.

The correlation the skeptics leaned on just broke in front of them.

A Bitcoin that trades on its own drivers, and not as a high-beta tech proxy, is a different asset to own.

It doesn't have to be the first thing dumped the moment equities wobble.

The leash the skeptics kept pointing to isn't attached to anything right now. 🔗

Today we’ll be taking a look at the overall stablecoin supply.

Stablecoins are the backbone of crypto liquidity, used for seamless trading and instant cross-border transactions.

The chart below tracks the aggregate change in the total stablecoin market cap.

$261.62 billion in stablecoins now sit on-chain. (Two weeks ago: $260.25 billion)

Up $1.37 billion in a fortnight, and the direction flipped again.

Last print supply gave back $2.87 billion and we said the bleed looked far from over.

This print it clawed back nearly half of that drop.

The pattern is choppy, a small green print, then a steep red one, now green again, all inside a tight band.

Stablecoin supply grows when fresh dollars are minted onto exchanges to deploy, so real capital did come back this fortnight.

Step back a month, though, and the pool is still down about $1.5 billion across the three prints, the drain interrupted rather than reversed.

The money is sloshing in and out, waiting for a reason to commit. 💵

Dozens of Fake Firefox Wallet Extensions Linked to Crypto-Stealing Malware. Forty extensions were confirmed malicious, impersonating OKX, Rabby and TronLink to harvest recovery phrases from anyone who types one in.

Crypto custody firm Copper has potential buyers. But offers are way below its $500 million asking price. Copper, once valued at $2.5 billion, is being marketed by Cantor Fitzgerald at around $500 million, and bids are coming in lower.

Solana transactions hit record 4.2B as SOL rallies 40%. Solana processed a record 4.2 billion transactions as SOL rose about 40% and tokenized real-world assets on the network neared $4 billion.

Galaxy expands retail crypto lending with new BTC, ETH and SOL-backed credit line. GalaxyOne clients can now borrow cash against Bitcoin, Ether and Solana holdings through a new portfolio line of credit without selling.

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Because what would the crypto world be without its share of memes?

Trivia Answer: 50 🥳

The original block subsidy was 50 BTC and has halved roughly every four years, dropping to 3.125 BTC after the 2024 halving.

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DISCLAIMER: The content of this newsletter is not financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice. Please be careful and do your own research.