GM to all of you nutcases. It’s Crypto Nutshell #894 clip-cloppin‘ on in…🐴🥜

We're the crypto newsletter that's more observant than a diagnostician catching the one bad note before the orchestra misses the cue… 🩺🎼

What we’ve cooked up for you today…

What’s in the Crypto Nutshell Portfolio?

BREAKING: A massive $1.26 billion sale of BlackRock’s IBIT was likely a rapid exit by a large investor

Someone just sold a very large chunk of Bitcoin exposure in a hurry…

And it wasn’t Bitcoin sitting on an exchange.

They unloaded their IBIT shares.

On May 26, $1.26 billion block of BlackRock's spot Bitcoin ETF changed hands off-exchange last week at a 2.3% discount.

NYDIG's Greg Cipolaro thinks the discount is the clue.

He said the size of the trade, the discount, and the lack of matching CME futures activity all "weigh against" the basis-trade explanation.

Plain English: this looked less like a tidy hedge cleanup and more like a big holder wanting out fast.

Bitcoin is still below $75,000 while Wall Street and the AI trade are ripping higher.

So the IBIT sale lands at a pretty awkward time.

The U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs have now lost $2.97 billion across ten trading days, the longest outflow streak on record. Total spot Bitcoin ETF assets fell from $107.75 billion on May 14 to $94.17 billion by May 29.

And yet Santiment said Bitcoin social sentiment is now the most lopsided positive it's been all year.

Bitcoin can survive bad headlines.

It struggles more when everyone says they're bullish while the actual buyer channel is leaking.

But there is one useful counterpoint…

Bitcoin is still defending short-term holder cost-basis support near $71,400, and a recovery toward roughly $78,200 remains possible if that level holds.

If the biggest Bitcoin ETF can see a billion-dollar block exit at a discount, while the broader ETF streak keeps bleeding and BTC can't get back above $75,000, the next question is simple:

Who is stepping in?

SpaceX's IPO is coming, and when the official IPO filing drops, allocations will vanish fast.

Join our free notification list and we'll alert you the moment the filing hits — plus send our pre-IPO playbook covering backdoor plays you can buy today and expected valuation ranges.

Join the IPO List

The biggest mistake in crypto isn't picking the wrong coin.

It's touching the right one too much.

That's the lesson Raoul Pal just laid bare in his latest Journeyman episode, using the most painful example he could find: himself.

Pal is a former Goldman Sachs macro trader and founder of Real Vision. And he walked through his biggest blunder in brutal detail.

He bought Bitcoin at $200 in 2013. Brilliant entry.

His thesis? It could hit $100,000 over a decade. He was right.

But then he traded around it. He sold at $2,000 thinking he was a genius after a 10x. It ran another 10x without him. He bought back during COVID around $8,000 to $9,000 and told himself he'd been smart.

He hadn't.

That's the takeaway.

The original bet, left untouched, makes $100 million. The trading, the selling into strength, the buying back into weakness, all of it was suboptimal.

The chart kept climbing because Bitcoin is a network adoption asset.

So zoom out. Ignore the hourly charts. Buy quality, self-custody it, and let it compound.

Even one of the sharpest macro minds alive says the move was to sit on his hands.

The hardest trade is the one where you do nothing. 🪑

Let’s kick off the week with a look at the Bitcoin HODL Waves - one of the clearest snapshots of market conviction.

Each coloured band represents the percentage of Bitcoin that last moved within a specific time frame.

The warmer the colour, the younger the coins - with red showing Bitcoin that has been held for less than one day.

Today, we’re focusing on short-term holders (STHs) - defined as coins held for less than six months.

Here's how the supply breakdown looks today compared to two weeks ago:

TL;DR: 21.07% of all Bitcoin is in the hands of short-term holders.

Down from 25.49% two weeks ago. That's a 4.42% drop - by far the largest two-week contraction we've seen this year.

The 3-6 month band tells the story. It collapsed from 13.51% to 9.04% as a massive wave of coins crossed the six-month threshold into long-term holder territory. That single move accounts for most of the decline and directly mirrors the explosion we saw in the 6-12 month LTH band.

Meanwhile, the front end is heating up. Both the <1 day and 1 day to 1 week bands grew meaningfully - fresh buying is returning. The 1-3 month cohort also expanded as coins aged forward from the shorter windows.

But the 1 week to 1 month band contracted sharply, and the outflow from the 3-6 month group dwarfs everything coming in at the front.

The result? Short-term supply just fell below 22% for the first time. At the start of the year it was closer to 30%. That's a dramatic compression in the pool of reactive, panic-prone Bitcoin over just a few months.

New buyers are arriving at the front door. But the back door is wide open, and coins are graduating into long-term holding faster than they're being replaced. 💎

Florida Candidate Liquidates $800K in Bitcoin to Bankroll Congressional Bid. A Republican candidate sold 10 BTC for USDC to fund a congressional run while campaigning on a pro-crypto stance.

XRP Ledger's design blocks the flash loan attacks costing DeFi hundreds of millions. A proposed XRPL AMM upgrade highlights that flash-loan attacks are structurally impossible on the network.

Circle freezes $12.6M of USDC linked to privacy protocol Zama. Circle froze confidential USDC in a court-linked case, showing how centralized controls still shape onchain assets.

Cardano Foundation cancels 2026 summit after treasury funding vote falls just short. Cardano’s flagship event was cancelled after an onchain treasury vote won majority support but missed the two-thirds threshold.

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Select your answer below and you’ll be redirected to the results page. (answer explanation can be found after “Meme Corner”)

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

Trivia Answer: It introduced a base fee that gets burned as part of Ethereum's fee system 🥳

EIP-1559 changed Ethereum's fee market by adding a base fee that rises or falls with demand and is burned rather than paid directly to validators. Users can still add priority fees when they want faster inclusion.

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