Crypto craziness

Crypto saw the chaos over in equity markets this week and said, “Hold my beer.”

Bitcoin has fallen along with the rest of the market in the wake of the ongoing tariff turmoil, dropping about 10% since Liberation Day. Although it rallied earlier today, it ended the day down nearly 2%.

But bitcoin’s latest decline is just the tip of the crypto news iceberg:

• The US Justice Department announced it will limit what kinds of cryptocurrency crimes it will investigate, only focusing on terrorism, drug cartels, and a few other specific themes. That’s a smart move, given there’s famously not much crime and scamming in the crypto industry, right?
• Ripple Labs, the creator of the XRP token (which is part of President Trump’s strategic crypto reserve), is buying brokerage Hidden Road for $1.3 billion—the company’s largest acquisition ever. It’s also one of the biggest deals in the crypto world, showing just how far digital assets have come since the long and cold crypto winter only a few years ago.
• Software company Janover is taking a page out of the MicroStrategy playbook. Its new owners are former Kraken executives, and they’re making solana the company’s principal reserve holding, a la MicroStrategy and bitcoin. Shares of Janover jumped 843% yesterday on the news, before plunging back down 17.50% today. The company plans to change its name and ticker later this year.
• Last but certainly not least, fartcoin jumped nearly 25% as equities melted down yesterday. The meme coin is up another 10.61% today.

And you thought stocks were volatile.—LB