GM to all of you nutcases. It’s Crypto Nutshell #954 bringin‘ the news… 🥜

We're the crypto newsletter that's more steady-handed than a pilot matching a spinning space station while the docking computer quietly resigns… 🛰️🌀

What we’ve cooked up for you today…

What’s in the Crypto Nutshell Portfolio?

BREAKING: Bitcoin Hits Highest Price Since June as $3 Billion in Shorts Liquidated

For the first time in nine months, Bitcoin is back above its 200-day average. 🥳

It cleared $72,000, a level it hadn't touched since May.

Ether came with it, holding above $2,400.

The move ran on shorts, the same force that snapped the range.

Over two days more than $3 billion of bearish bets were liquidated, the most short positions ever cleared out in one stretch.

Glassnode called it Bitcoin's biggest upside shock since late 2023.

Every one of those is a trader caught on the wrong side, forced to buy back just to get out.

A short squeeze only fires once.

You can force trapped sellers to buy into a rally a single time, and after a record two days of it, most of them are already gone.

The move that broke the range a day ago was running on a squeeze, not on fresh money, and whether it held depended on buyers who hadn't turned up.

They're starting to.

Analysts now point to real spot demand and returning ETF flows sitting underneath the move, not just the scramble to cover.

Midweek the spot ETFs pulled in more than $500 million in a single day, their biggest haul since May.

The key level analysts are watching now is $70,000.

Hold above it and the breakout stays intact, while a slip toward $69,000 is a normal test, not a reversal.

That matters more than $72,000 or the 200-day line.

The squeeze only told us who was offside.

Whether the rally lasts rests on people choosing to buy, and for the first time in weeks a few of them are finally showing up. 🚀

If you’re a decision maker at your company, you need to be on the bleeding edge of, well, everything. But before you go signing up for seminars, conferences, lunch ‘n learns, and all that jazz, just know there’s a far better (and simpler) way: Subscribing to The Deep View.

This daily newsletter condenses everything you need to know about the latest and greatest AI developments into a 5-minute read. Squeeze it into your morning coffee break and before you know it, you’ll be an expert too.

Subscribe right here. It’s totally free, wildly informative, and trusted by 600,000+ readers at Google, Meta, Microsoft, and beyond.

Will Clemente just published his first long-form Bitcoin piece in a while. And coming from someone who left the trade last year, the conclusion carries weight.

Clemente is a co-founder of Reflexivity Research and one of the most respected on-chain analysts in crypto.

Full disclosure runs through his whole article: he rotated into commodities last year, reduced his remaining Bitcoin in January when the 2022 parallel became obvious, and calls this a genuinely miserable year to be focused on the asset.

That's what makes where he lands interesting.

His read on the network first.

Hash rate has declined as public miners pivot to AI and HPC.

But the honest positive: even with nearly every listed miner shifting toward AI, hash rate has only slipped to mid-2024 levels, and node distribution spans almost 200 countries.

The difficulty adjustment handles the rest.

Conclusion?

Then valuation, where the signals stack up. Bitcoin is consolidating along its 2021 all-time high, just under the 200-week moving average, with a weekly RSI bull divergence coming out of its first oversold reading since the depths of the last bear. MVRV sits in its lower historical bounds. Trading volume relative to market cap just hit the lowest level ever recorded. Front-end implied volatility is at multi-year lows.

And that's the setup. Traders bearish in both futures and options. Volume gone. Everyone pricing more of the same. All while long-term holders are aggressively accumulating the coins those sellers are dumping.

On the 2 overhangs, his view is that both are healing.

Digital asset treasuries have stopped being the weight they were 6-9 months ago, with Bitcoin now rising on Saylor sale announcements rather than falling.

Quantum he takes seriously on a 5-year horizon, but argues a 50%-off, underperforming Bitcoin has already priced a lot of that fear, and the market will front-run any solution long before it's confirmed.

His framing of the bottom is the part every holder should sit with.

No clean catalyst. Just risks that have been grinding lower for a year, priced in by everyone who was going to panic. That, he says, is what bottoms actually look like.

His own conclusion: Bitcoin is cheap, a final leg down is possible, and he'll likely start allocating again soon. A man who sold in January, talking himself back in.

Dead money is what the best entries are called.

Right before they aren't. 💤

Today we’ll be taking a look at the amount of wallets that hold at least some Bitcoin. (anything greater than 0)

This metric offers a bird’s-eye view of user activity and adoption across the Bitcoin network.

But there’s a slight catch…

One wallet does not equal one user. A user can have many wallets.

What matters here is the trend of the chart.

59,686,035 wallets now hold Bitcoin. That's 171,919 more than two weeks ago (59,514,116).

60 million is almost in view.

Another 172,000 wallets opened this fortnight, a second strong print after the 38,000 blip two editions back, with the pace settling near 170,000 a fortnight.

That leaves the round 60 million just 314,000 wallets away, less than two prints off if this holds.

A month ago that number felt distant, and now it's one good fortnight plus change.

More people own Bitcoin than ever, and 60 million is close enough to start the countdown. 🔥

Iranian Hackers Tied to $6 Million Bitcoin Extortion Charged in Massive Cyber Campaign. Seventeen alleged members of Iran's Mabna Institute were charged over a hacking campaign spanning hundreds of universities, companies and government agencies.

Optimism-funded team's deciding vote shifts $49 million in OP tokens away from users. The governance vote reallocates 546.9 million OP from planned user airdrops to a Foundation-controlled strategic ecosystem fund.

Binance opens crypto trading to AI agents with user-set controls. Binance's new Agent OS lets AI agents pull market data, execute trades and make payments while users set permission limits.

Kraken parent Payward explores becoming a 'full bank' outside the US. Payward is expanding into banking, lending and asset management abroad, with mortgages floated as a future possibility.

Want to get even smarter? Check these out.

p.s. all completely FREE (one click subscribe link)

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: Buying the actual asset at its current market price for direct ownership 🥳

Spot trading exchanges the underlying crypto itself, unlike futures or perpetual contracts that provide price exposure without direct ownership.

Advertise with Crypto Nutshell to get your product or brand in front of the crème de la crème of crypto investors. Crypto Nutshell readers are high-income earners who are always looking for unique or interesting offers.

Get in touch today.😎

We read every comment submitted in this poll and love to hear what you guys have to say. 😁 (bonus points for suggestions 🍪)

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.