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After reaching a new all-time high of $112,000, Bitcoin is now consolidating just below this level, holding strong above the key $106,000 support zone. Despite short-term resistance, the broader structure remains bullish, with analysts expecting an impulsive move once BTC reclaims higher ground. With global markets facing heightened economic uncertainty, Bitcoin continues to show resilience, thriving as a hedge and outperforming traditional risk assets.

Market sentiment remains positive as on-chain signals strengthen the bullish outlook. According to new data from Glassnode, spending by older Bitcoin holders is heating up once again. Aggregate transaction volume from the 1-year to 5-year holding cohorts has surged to $4.02 billion, marking the highest level since February. This uptick in long-term holder activity often precedes major market shifts, as veteran participants begin to reposition.

While some view this as potential profit-taking, it also signals renewed confidence and market engagement from experienced holders. As BTC consolidates near record highs, this behavior could reflect long-term investors preparing for broader market participation in the next leg up.

Bitcoin Faces Pivotal Test as Long-Term Holders Move Billions

Bitcoin is facing a critical moment as it consolidates just below its all-time high near $112,000. After rallying more than 50% since its April low, BTC now needs to hold above the $106K–$108K zone and decisively push past the $112K level to confirm a new bullish impulse. The coming days are likely to set the tone for the next leg of this cycle.

Macroeconomic tensions are intensifying, with US and Japanese treasury yields flashing signs of systemic stress. In this climate, Bitcoin appears to be thriving as a hedge against traditional financial instability. Its non-sovereign, decentralized nature continues to attract capital in times of uncertainty, and the recent price action suggests that trend is gaining strength.

On-chain data from Glassnode adds further depth to the picture. Spending by older Bitcoin holders—those in the 1–5 year cohort—has surged, with aggregate volume reaching $4.02 billion, the highest since February. The breakdown reveals notable outflows from long-term wallets:

• 3–5 year cohort: $2.16B (second-largest this cycle, behind March 2024’s $6B)
• 2–3 year cohort: $1.41B
• 1–2 year cohort: $450M

This marks the fifth-largest 1–5 year spending spike of the current cycle, driven primarily by holders with three or more years of holding time. While some interpret this as profit-taking, it may also signal conviction among experienced participants rotating capital or positioning for further gains.

With technical support holding and liquidity steadily returning, Bitcoin is on the verge of what could be a major breakout. A clean move above $112K with volume would validate the next phase of the bull market—and potentially open the door to $120K and beyond.

BTC Consolidates Below ATH As Bulls Defend Key Levels

Bitcoin is trading at $108,858 on the daily chart, consolidating just below its recent all-time high of $112,000. Price action shows that BTC is holding above the previous resistance zone turned support near $103,600, a level that provided the base for May’s breakout. The market structure remains bullish, with Bitcoin printing a series of higher highs and higher lows since its April bottom.

The 34 EMA (green) at $102,277 and the 50 SMA (blue) at $96,844 are both trending upward, reinforcing a strong medium-term uptrend. These moving averages now act as dynamic support in the event of any pullbacks. Volume has slightly decreased during this consolidation, which is typical after a strong impulse move, suggesting that the market is pausing before its next major decision.

To resume the bullish trend, BTC needs to close convincingly above the $112K mark. A breakout with strong volume could open the door to a rapid move toward $120K and beyond. On the downside, maintaining support above $103,600 is crucial to avoid a deeper retracement.

Featured image from Dall-E, chart from TradingView

Ripple Labs has fired a fresh legal volley in Washington, dispatching a 4-page memorandum to the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s Crypto Task Force on 27 May. Chief legal officer Stuart Alderoty announced the filing on X, stressing that it responds directly to Commissioner Hester Peirce’s “New Paradigm” speech of 19 May, which asked the pivotal question: “When does a non-security crypto asset that was once part of an investment contract become separated from that contract?”

Ripple Pushes SEC For Clarity On XRP

In the opening lines of the letter Ripple thanks staff for a 20 May meeting and frames its submission as a doctrinal answer to Peirce’s query. It leans on the 2022 academic treatise The Ineluctable Modality of Securities Law by Lewis Cohen et al., quoting it in full: “[T]here is no current basis in the law relating to ‘investment contracts’ to classify most fungible crypto assets as ‘securities’ when transferred in secondary transactions…” Ripple argues that the paper remains “the most accurate reflection of existing law.”

The company advances a two-pronged litmus test for determining when a token has definitively “severed” from an accompanying investment contract. Under Ripple’s proposal, any later sale of the asset is presumed not to be a securities transaction unless (i) a material promise made to the original purchaser remains outstanding and (ii) the subsequent holder retains enforceable rights arising from that promise. Examples of qualifying promises, the letter states, would include commitments to build a functional blockchain or to provide dividends—whereas “general public statements or puffery should not qualify.”

Ripple positions its framework as consistent with Judge Analisa Torres’s landmark July 2023 ruling, which found that XRP itself is not a security, even though certain institutional sales had been investment contracts. By invoking that ruling Ripple reminds the Commission that secondary-market trading of XRP—blind order-book sales in particular—has already been judicially blessed as non-securities activity.

While recognizing the SEC’s worry that bad actors might exploit legal lacunae, Ripple tells the agency that closing any genuine gap is “Congress’s—not the SEC’s—to fill.” In the interim, Ripple endorses a “well-designed safe harbor” but warns that concepts such as “fully functional” or “sufficiently decentralized” are too malleable to anchor regulatory certainty.

Commissioner Peirce’s own remarks supply the backdrop. In “New Paradigm” she conceded that “most currently existing crypto assets in the market are not [securities]” and highlighted the difficulty of “determining when a non-security crypto asset subject to an investment contract separates from the investment contract.” Peirce floated, among other options, a time-limited safe harbor. Ripple seizes on that momentum, contending that its bright-line test is superior to “decentralisation” metrics and would let functional networks circulate tokens “openly, transparently, and permissionlessly” without imposing disclosures that suggest control where none exists.

The submission arrives as the long-running SEC v. Ripple litigation edges toward final resolution. Earlier this month the Commission lodged a proposed settlement that would cap Ripple’s institutional-sale liability and lift the remaining injunction on XRP distributions, but the court has not yet approved the pact.

Market reaction has been muted. XRP continues to trade near the $2.30 zone.

The opening day of the Bitcoin 2025 conference delivered an unmistakable political signal: President Donald Trump has thrown his weight behind legislation that would require the United States to accumulate a strategic reserve of one million bitcoin. Wyoming Senator Cynthia Lummis disclosed the White House commitment during a policy-heavy session on the conference’s main stage, flanked by Senators Marsha Blackburn and Jim Justice.

Lummis Sets Timeline For Bitcoin Bill

“President Trump supports the bill and he has a team in the White House working on digital-asset issues — everything from stablecoins to market structure to the Bitcoin Strategic Reserve — and they will probably roll out in that order,” Lummis said, bringing “the BITCOIN Act to the attention of the American people and the world.”

The sequencing matters. Lummis confirmed that the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act cleared the Senate Banking Committee before the Memorial Day recess. “We’re getting close to being ready to have it on the floor,” she told the audience, noting that weeks of bipartisan negotiations produced a text the minority party could accept. “We should be voting on it the week we get back from this break. Then we’ll do market structure, and then we’ll do the Bitcoin strategic reserve.”

Modeled on the way Fort Knox anchors US gold holdings, the revised BITCOIN Act — first introduced in July 2024 and re-filed on 11 March 2025 — authorises the Treasury to purchase up to one million BTC over five years using “budget-neutral” mechanisms already available to the Federal Reserve and the Exchange Stabilization Fund. At Wednesday’s spot price of roughly $108,900, the position would be valued at about $108.9 billion, equal to 2.6 percent of the FY 2025 discretionary budget.

Lummis framed the reserve as both an energy and a security imperative. “When China forbade mining of Bitcoin, they did the United States a big favor because a lot of those mining operations came here,” she said, echoing Trump’s recent call to make “Bitcoin mining and America conjoined.” Pairing domestic hash-rate dominance with federal accumulation, she argued, would give Washington a “geopolitical advantage.”

That view, she added, is shared by senior uniformed officers. “I’ve talked to generals in our military who understand that economic power is as important as military power in addressing aggressors around the world — and there are generals … who are big supporters of having a strategic Bitcoin reserve for that reason.”

State-level momentum is reinforcing the federal push. Arizona, Texas and New Hampshire enacted their own strategic-reserve statutes this year, and lawmakers in another thirty jurisdictions debated similar measures. “The states are where the innovation is occurring,” Lummis said, positioning local initiatives as policy laboratories that can be rapidly scaled.

Abroad, the United Arab Emirates is building exposure through US-listed spot ETFs, while the Czech National Bank is studying BTC as a reserve diversifier. “That’s good for America because they’re going to build their sovereign wealth in Bitcoin through an American ETF,” she added.

Although the White House on March 7 issued an executive order directing agencies to lay groundwork for a federal Bitcoin stockpile, only Congress can appropriate funds or modify debt-management statutes — a hurdle the BITCOIN Act is designed to clear. With the stablecoin framework poised for a floor vote in early June and market-structure legislation queued behind it, Lummis told delegates to remain mobilised. “At that time we’ll be calling on you to help members of Congress in your states understand the importance,” she said, underscoring the tight legislative calendar before the August recess.

For now, the path to a trillion-satoshi reserve runs through the Senate cloakrooms. But the political optics are shifting: a sitting president has endorsed federal Bitcoin accumulation, the Pentagon is quietly blessing the concept, and three US states have already legislated partial blueprints.

At press time, BTC traded at $108,905.

At the Bitcoin 2025 conference in Las Vegas on Tuesday, Senator Cynthia Lummis, a staunch advocate for BTC and cryptocurrencies, announced that President Donald Trump supports the upcoming Bitcoin Act, which aims to facilitate the purchase of 1 million BTC and is expected to be introduced to Congress next week.

Long-Term Bitcoin Investment Strategy

Originally proposed by Lummis on July 31, 2024, the legislation seeks to establish a strategic BTC reserve for the US government, serving as an additional store of value to strengthen the nation’s balance sheet. 

The bill outlines a BTC Purchase Program designed to acquire approximately 5% of the total Bitcoin supply over a five-year period, mirroring the scale of US gold reserves. The BTC acquired would be held for a minimum of 20 years, ensuring a long-term investment strategy.

Following challenges faced by the previous administration under President Joe Biden, Lummis reintroduced the bill in March of this year, emphasizing the importance of institutional support for Bitcoin. 

A number of crypto industry leaders have also suggested innovative ways to implement this executive order, including proposals to use BTC for refinancing national debt.

US Government May Hold 200,000 BTC

One notable suggestion comes from the Bitcoin Policy Institute, which proposed the introduction of “BitBonds.” These would be structured US Treasury bonds that allocate 90% of the proceeds to traditional funding operations, while 10% would go toward BTC acquisition. 

The Institute estimates that, assuming a scale of $2 trillion in BitBonds, this initiative could generate annual interest savings of approximately $700 billion over a decade.

Matthew Sigel, head of digital asset research at VanEck, echoed this proposal during the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve Summit on April 15. 

VanEck’s plan also includes a similar 90%-10% bond structure, offering investors potential BTC gains with a cap of 4.5% annual yield. Any gains exceeding this threshold would be split equally between the government and bondholders.

While Lummis is enthusiastic about advancing the Bitcoin Act, the path to full Congressional approval remains uncertain. The success of the bill will depend on garnering support from her Senate colleagues, critical for increasing the nation’s Bitcoin holdings.

Fox journalist Eleanor Terret reported on X (formerly Twitter) that Lummis indicated the US government currently holds around 200,000 BTC. However, she noted that the information is not fully transparent due to classification following a mandated audit from the White House. 

When writing, the market’s leading cryptocurrency trades at $108,975, recording a slight retrace of 0.5% in the 24-hour time frame and 2.5% when compared to its record high of $111,800 reached last week. 

Featured image from DALL-E, chart from TradingView.com 

Over the last several weeks, Bitcoin (BTCUSD) has decoupled from the stock market and made a new all-time high while major US indexes haven’t followed. Is Bitcoin also beginning to decouple from Strategy (MSTR) shares? According to high timeframe technical signals, the two tightly correlated assets could be beginning to diverge from one another.

Saylor’s Bitcoin 2025 Conference Blunder

During this week’s ongoing Bitcoin 2025 conference in Las Vegas, Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) frontman and famed Bitcoin bull Michael Saylor shocked the audience by slamming the idea of “proof of reserves.” Saylor compared the practice to “publishing your kids’ bank account” online and warned that it could lead to hacks or worse. He outright called it a “bad idea.”

His comments are a departure from his usual Bitcoin-promoting self, prompting the cryptocurrency community to second-guess if the company holds as much BTC as they claim to.

The company’s most recent purchase of 4,020 BTC at $106,237 per BTC brought Strategy’s holdings to 580,250 BTC with a cost average of $69,979. Strategy’s holdings make the company among the top holders of BTC, behind only Satoshi Nakamoto and BlackRock’s IBIT ETF.

Proof-of-Risky Strategy

In the years, months, weeks, even days leading up to the ongoing conference, Michael Saylor has been pitched as the hero Bitcoin deserves, buying BTC at key inflection points and helping to prop up price.

Almost immediately following videos of Saylor’s response to a question from the audience, sentiment swiftly shifted against Saylor and Strategy. For example, the cover of a March 2000 edition of the Daily News is making rounds, with the headline reading “Lost $6B in a day: Hotshot tech CEO loses fortune as his company’s stock plunges 140 points.”

The headline is in reference to Michael Saylor being the biggest financial loser of the dot com bubble. At the time, MSTR share price fell by 99%.

A Correlation on the Cusp of Decoupling

Because Strategy’s growth has been directly tied to Bitcoin’s price trajectory, BTCUSD and MSTR have been closely correlated. The monthly Correlation Coefficient is currently at a reading of 0.83, suggesting an extremely strong positive correlation.

However, previously similar technical signals on both assets have started to diverge, hinting at either a potential decoupling between BTCUSD and MSTR.

The monthly LMACD is a momentum indicator. On the left, MSTR shows a bearish crossover. On the right, Bitcoin shows increasing bullish momentum. If MSTR crashes from here, and Bitcoin rallies, the decoupling event could come to fruition.

There still remains the possibility that the two assets stay tightly correlated, and MSTR’s bearish momentum could spill over into Bitcoin – pulling momentum over on the BTCUSD chart as well.

https://x.com/TonyTheBullCMT/status/1927717056754934251

Tony is the author of the CoinChartist (VIP) newsletter. Sign up for free. Please note: Content is educational and should not be considered investment advice. Featured image from Shutterstock, Charts from TradingView.com

The XRP price has shown a lot of strength recently, and through the weekend drawdown, it did not break support at $2. This has shown that the bulls have completely taken control at this point, providing the backup needed to properly surge from here. As the consolidation has continued, the XRP price has been forming a bullish channel structure. A break from here is growing more likely, and new monthly peaks would be the result.

XRP Price Holds Channel Structure

Crypto analyst VIPROSE has pointed out an interesting structure that has formed on the XRP price chart, which it continues to hold. The altcoin’s price has been trending inside a rising channel that formed with the market decline. In addition to this, the altcoin has also managed to hold the midline support at the 0.618 Fibonacci level, which is very bullish for the price.

The reason for this is the fact that the 0.618 Fibonacci level has always been a point of bullish recovery for the XRP price in the past. As the crypto analyst explained, it has frequently acted as a launchpad and holding at this level has always provided support for a strong upward move. Thus, as the XRP price continues to hold here, it is likely that it will be a bounce-off point for further price recovery.

The bullish channel that has formed is especially important, given the fact that bulls have already established strong support. From here, it is more likely that the XRP price would move to test resistance levels at the upper ends rather than suffer a decline to retest support levels.

Firstly, the XRP price would need to clear $2.4, which has been showing the most resistance, as seen from last week’s rise and subsequent bearish trend. The analyst suggests that as long as the price holds the key support levels at $2.18-$2.22, which are aligned with the important 0.618 and 0.786 Fibonacci levels, then the next step is a bullish continuation.

How High Can The Price Go?

If the bullish continuation is confirmed, the XRP price is expected to keep rising from here. An at least 10% move for a start as a trend resumption is confirmed is likely. As the uptrend continues, the altcoin’s price is expected to move toward its peaks from January.

The crypto analyst explains that based on the projected move of the height of the channel structure, a break from here would put the XRP price as high as $2.9206. This would be an over 20% move and the first step toward testing new all-time highs. “Watch for volume confirmation on the bounce — the setup remains valid as long as XRP stays above key support,” the analyst concluded.