Bitcoin is holding around sixty-seven thousand dollars as global markets reel from the escalation of the Iran conflict. Oil prices are surging, the dollar is near a three-month high, and equities are selling off across the board. Meanwhile, the U.S. is considering capping Nvidia H200 chip sales to Chinese buyers at just seventy-five thousand units per customer, sending chipmaker stocks lower. Strategy just completed its hundred and first Bitcoin purchase, pushing its total stash past seven hundred twenty thousand coins. Visa and Bridge announced plans to roll out stablecoin-linked cards to over a hundred countries. And the CFTC chief says he'll clear a path for perpetual futures trading in the U.S. within weeks. Let's get into it.
So the big tech story right now is this proposed cap on Nvidia H200 chip exports to China. The Trump administration is reportedly considering limiting sales to seventy-five thousand units per Chinese company. To put that in perspective, the previous ceiling allowed up to a million units, which was enough to build large-scale AI supercomputers. Seventy-five thousand is a fraction of what companies like Alibaba and ByteDance actually need.
This isn't just about Nvidia either. AMD's MI325 chips would fall under the same restrictions. Both stocks slid on the news, and Jensen Huang has been working behind the scenes to try to reopen the Chinese market for Nvidia.
The timing matters. There's a U.S.-China summit coming up, and this cap could be a bargaining chip, no pun intended, in broader negotiations. The idea would be to allow limited H200 exports specifically for non-military applications, but of course verifying end use in practice is notoriously difficult.
Congress is pushing back too, but from the other direction. Some members argue these restrictions hurt American competitiveness more than they slow China down. It's the classic tension: national security hawks want tighter controls, industry advocates say you're just handing the market to non-American suppliers.
Meanwhile, Nvidia did have a strong showing at CES 2026 with its Rubin architecture, which gave guidance a nice boost and calmed some of the AI bubble skeptics. But geopolitics keeps overshadowing fundamentals. If you're building anything that depends on top-tier GPU access, the supply chain picture just got murkier. The era of freely shipping the best silicon anywhere in the world is clearly over, and the new question is exactly where the lines get drawn.
Bitcoin dropped below sixty-seven thousand as the Iran situation escalated over the weekend. U.S. and Israeli strikes triggered a classic risk-off move: oil up, dollar up, equities down, and crypto came along for the ride.
But here's what's interesting. Bitcoin didn't make new lows. It had already been sliding for months leading into this, so when the geopolitical shock hit, the reaction was actually relatively contained compared to broader markets. A death cross appeared on the chart, which historically has preceded about a thirty-five percent average decline over the following month. That's not comforting. But VanEck's CEO Jan van Eck came out and said he thinks Bitcoin is forming a bottom right now, arguing the four-year cycle is the main driver and people are overcomplicating the analysis.
The most telling signal might be the ETF flows. Spot Bitcoin ETFs pulled in four hundred fifty-eight million dollars on Monday, even as the conflict widened. That's not panic. That's institutional buyers using the dip.
CryptoSlate ran an interesting analysis showing that the U.S. is basically the only market buying Bitcoin right now. International holders, the so-called smart money, have been taking profits. So you've got this divergence where American institutional demand is absorbing selling pressure from the rest of the world.
Sygnum's CIO Fabian Dori framed it well: a short-term liquidity squeeze is driving the slump, further downside is possible, but the long-term bull case remains intact. The U.S. also quietly injected three billion dollars into the banking system this week, which provides a modest liquidity tailwind. Bitcoin isn't acting like a safe haven in the immediate shock, but sixty days out from similar events, BlackRock's data suggests it tends to catch up. The question is whether you have the stomach for the volatility in between.
The corporate Bitcoin treasury trend is not slowing down, even in a drawdown.
Strategy, Michael Saylor's company, completed its hundred and first Bitcoin purchase. Three thousand fifteen coins for about two hundred four million dollars at an average price of sixty-seven thousand seven hundred. Total holdings now stand at seven hundred twenty thousand seven hundred thirty-seven Bitcoin, worth roughly fifty-four point eight billion dollars. Their overall average cost basis is about seventy-six thousand, so they're currently underwater on the aggregate, but they keep buying. That's the playbook. Accumulate through volatility, never sell.
Anthony Pompliano's ProCap Financial added four hundred fifty Bitcoin, bringing its total to five thousand four hundred fifty-seven coins worth about three hundred seventy-five million. They're also doing share buybacks, which is a slightly different angle. When your stock trades at a discount to the net asset value of your Bitcoin holdings, buying back shares is arguably even more accretive than buying more Bitcoin. ProCap's stock popped six percent on the news.
Then there's Hyperscale Data, a smaller player but an interesting one. They hold about six hundred eleven Bitcoin, and their combined cash and Bitcoin position is roughly a hundred forty-two percent of their market cap. Think about that. The market is valuing the company at less than its liquid assets. That's either a screaming buy or the market is telling you something about the operating business.
On the mining side, there's a fascinating divergence. Eric Trump's American Bitcoin is going all in, buying over eleven thousand new ASIC miners and expanding capacity by twelve percent. Riot Platforms posted record revenue of six hundred forty-seven million for 2025. But other miners like Core Scientific are selling Bitcoin and pivoting to AI infrastructure. MARA is openly considering selling coins too. The HODL consensus among public miners is fracturing, and capital is rotating from Bitcoin treasuries into AI data centers. It's a meaningful shift. The miners who stay Bitcoin-focused and the ones who don't will look very different in two years.
The regulatory landscape is moving fast on multiple fronts.
SEC Chairman Paul Atkins is making it clear he wants to reclaim ground the agency lost during the Gensler era. His language is notable. He's talking about reclaiming crypto leadership, updating rules for transparency, and collaborating with industry. This is a fundamentally different posture than regulation by enforcement. The SEC held sessions at ETHDenver, exploring innovation exemptions and pilot programs for tokenized assets. That alone tells you how much the tone has changed.
But the legislative side is messier. The CLARITY Act, which was supposed to be the comprehensive crypto bill, is stalled on Capitol Hill. The White House stablecoin deadline has slipped. Charles Hoskinson is warning that the CLARITY Act as written could actually push American crypto founders offshore, which is the opposite of its stated goal. So the Trump administration is reportedly pivoting toward executive workarounds rather than waiting for Congress.
The CFTC is moving faster. Chairman Selig said he'll clear a path for perpetual futures in the U.S. within weeks. That's huge. Perps are the dominant trading instrument in crypto globally, but they've been offshore-only for Americans. Bringing them onshore could reshape the competitive landscape.
In Europe, MiCA enforcement is deepening. BitGo just expanded MiCA-compliant crypto-as-a-service across thirty European markets, letting banks embed custody, payments, and trading through APIs. The UK is charting its own path with new digital asset frameworks.
Two other quick hits. FATF released a report warning that stablecoins now account for the bulk of illicit crypto activity, particularly through peer-to-peer transfers. And Jamie Dimon weighed in, arguing that any stablecoin issuer paying interest should be regulated like a bank. That's JPMorgan protecting its turf, obviously, but it's a position that could gain traction in Washington.
Visa and Bridge are planning to expand stablecoin-linked cards to over a hundred countries, and Mastercard added SoFi's stablecoin as a settlement option for card issuers. The payment rails are being rebuilt in real time, and the regulatory framework is trying to keep up.
Here's what I'd sit with today. The miners splitting into Bitcoin believers and AI converts, the ETF buyers stepping in while international holders sell, the regulators finally competing to attract rather than repel crypto companies. These aren't random signals. They're the market sorting itself into conviction and convenience. The next twelve months will reward the people who know which side they're on.