Bitcoin blew past 76,000 dollars on a massive 650 million dollar short squeeze, fueled by softer-than-expected US inflation data and growing hopes of a diplomatic breakthrough with Iran. Strategy just dropped another billion dollars on Bitcoin, pushing its stash close to 781,000 BTC. TSMC posted record first-quarter revenue of 35.7 billion dollars, up 35% year over year, proving that AI chip demand is not slowing down. The CLARITY Act faces a 14-day window in the Senate, with Treasury Secretary Bessent publicly urging Congress to get it done. And Tether launched a self-custodial wallet that lets you send stablecoins and Bitcoin without gas tokens. Let's get into it.
TSMC just reported first-quarter 2026 revenue of 35.7 billion dollars, beating expectations and marking the strongest quarter in the company's history. March alone was up 45.2% year over year. To put the trajectory in context, TSMC was doing about 20 billion a quarter in 2024, 26 billion in Q1 2025, and now 35.7 billion. That acceleration is almost entirely driven by AI data center demand, with Nvidia, Broadcom, and Apple as the biggest customers.
And here's the thing that most people overlook: TSMC controls roughly 90% of the world's most advanced chip manufacturing, anything at 3 nanometers and below. That is an extraordinary concentration of capability. Full earnings details including gross margin and Q2 guidance drop on April 16, so that's worth watching.
Meanwhile, the packaging side of the equation is becoming its own bottleneck. Advanced packaging is the step where you stack and connect multiple tiny chips into the larger modules that power AI workloads. Nvidia has locked up most of TSMC's cutting-edge packaging capacity, which tells you how tight supply is. TSMC is building its first advanced packaging plants in Arizona and accelerating two more in Taiwan, but capex needs to keep pace or packaging becomes the constraint that limits AI infrastructure buildout. Intel is also competitive here, doing packaging work for Amazon, Cisco, SpaceX, and Tesla.
On the policy side, there's a quiet but important mess at the Bureau of Industry and Security inside the Commerce Department. About 20% of BIS licensing staff have turned over, license reviews are taking roughly 25% longer, and there are billions in AI chip export backlogs. The administration pulled back a Biden-era chip export framework and hasn't replaced it with anything concrete. Meanwhile, a top Republican lawmaker is pushing for stronger accountability and better port monitoring to catch export control violations. The irony is that while Washington debates tariffs and tax incentives to boost domestic chip production, the bureaucratic machinery for approving exports to allies is grinding to a halt. US competitiveness depends on both making the chips and being able to sell them.
Bitcoin surged to a 4-week high, blowing through multiple resistance levels and topping 76,000 dollars during early US trading on Monday. The catalyst was a one-two punch: US producer price index data came in well below expectations, and oil prices dropped below 90 dollars a barrel for the first time in a while on optimism around potential US-Iran negotiations. The result was a 650 million dollar short squeeze that liquidated bears across the board.
Derivatives data adds some interesting texture here. Funding rates have now been negative for 46 consecutive days, a streak last seen after the FTX collapse in late 2022. That prior episode marked the absolute bottom of the crypto winter. It doesn't guarantee a repeat, but historically, extended negative funding has been a reliable signal that bearish positioning is exhausted.
The bulls are eyeing 77,000 as the next target. But not everyone is convinced this holds. Some analysts point to miner sell pressure and the fact that spot Bitcoin ETFs actually recorded 291 million dollars in outflows on Monday even as the price climbed. That divergence between ETF flows and price action is worth watching. And on the more cautious end, LVRG Research's Nick Ruck sees 50,000 as a possible final flush before any sustained recovery.
Meanwhile, the halving cycle is now past its halfway mark, and price gains trail prior cycles significantly. Bitcoin is up about 25% from the halving versus triple-digit gains at this point in 2017 and 2021. That slower trajectory fits the narrative of Bitcoin maturing as an asset class, but it also means the explosive upside some people are counting on may require different catalysts this time around.
On the institutional front, Goldman Sachs filed for a Bitcoin income ETF that would invest in Bitcoin exchange-traded products and sell call options to generate yield. It's following BlackRock's lead into options-based crypto products. And the next Fed chair nominee, Kevin Warsh, disclosed holdings in DeFi protocols, Ethereum scaling networks, and a Bitcoin Lightning startup, all of which he's promised to divest. Interesting that the person who may set monetary policy for the next few years has personal exposure to the assets most affected by that policy.
Strategy just completed another billion-dollar Bitcoin purchase, acquiring about 13,927 BTC at an average price around 71,900 dollars per coin. That brings Strategy's total holdings to approximately 781,000 BTC, with a total cost basis of about 59 billion dollars. For context, BlackRock's spot Bitcoin ETF holds roughly 790,000 BTC, so Strategy is now within striking distance of the world's largest Bitcoin fund.
The purchase was funded entirely through STRC, Strategy's perpetual preferred stock, which pays an annualized yield of around 11.5%, distributed monthly. STRC itself just hit a record trading day with over 1.1 billion dollars in daily volume. Saylor noted it closed at par with just one penny of volatility. The instrument is designed to attract income-focused investors and provide a steady pipeline of capital for Bitcoin accumulation without diluting common shareholders. Strategy estimates the next STRC-funded purchase could be around 7,800 BTC, potentially the largest single-day addition since the preferred stock launched.
Saylor remains, as always, maximally bullish. He's now publicly claiming Bitcoin could eventually reach 21 million dollars per coin. His thesis rests on several pillars: wider recognition of Bitcoin as a long-term store of value, adoption by the banking system as collateral, growth in Bitcoin-backed credit networks, and reduced rehypothecation as more Bitcoin moves into long-term custody.
Meanwhile, Metaplanet hit a milestone of its own, crossing 40,177 BTC in its corporate treasury. That's 40% of its 100,000 BTC target for 2026. Their latest purchase was 5,075 BTC at about 79,900 dollars per coin. Metaplanet now ranks as the third-largest corporate Bitcoin holder, behind Strategy and Twenty One Capital. Their stock is up roughly 1,489% from prior lows.
The broader corporate Bitcoin landscape shifted in March though. MARA Holdings sold over 15,000 BTC to retire debt, dropping below Twenty One Capital on the leaderboard. And GameStop pledged nearly all its 4,709 BTC as collateral for a covered call with Coinbase Credit, leaving just 1 BTC in direct holdings and cratering from number 21 to near 190 on the corporate treasury rankings. The divergence in strategies is striking. Some companies are doubling down. Others are using Bitcoin as a financial tool or exiting positions entirely.
The CLARITY Act, the crypto market structure bill that would finally give digital assets a coherent federal framework in the US, has about 14 working days to clear the Senate Banking Committee before midterm politics swallow the calendar. If Chairman Tim Scott doesn't announce a markup date this week, the bill risks sliding past Memorial Day recess and into campaign season, which could push any vote to 2027 or later.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is publicly urging Congress to move. His argument is straightforward: the current regulatory ambiguity has driven crypto development to places like Abu Dhabi and Singapore, and the US is losing ground. The House passed its version last July. The Senate has bipartisan interest. But the details are where things get sticky. Banks are fighting over whether stablecoins should be allowed to pay yield, which the American Bankers Association says would trigger mass deposit outflows from smaller community banks. DeFi treatment and ethics provisions are also unresolved.
On a parallel track, the PARITY Act is circulating as a discussion draft that would make everyday stablecoin payments tax-free. Right now, the IRS treats stablecoins as property, meaning every time you spend USDT or USDC, you technically trigger a capital gains event. The PARITY Act would create a carve-out for regulated payment stablecoins that stay near a dollar, treating them like cash for tax purposes. That alone would remove enormous friction from using stablecoins for actual payments.
The FDIC also proposed rules to regulate stablecoin issuers under the GENIUS Act, imposing capital, liquidity, and custody standards. Notably, stablecoins would not be eligible for traditional deposit insurance, and issuers cannot claim that holding a stablecoin yields interest just for possession.
And then there's JPMorgan's CFO Jeremy Barnum warning during earnings that stablecoins risk becoming a regulatory arbitrage play unless they face the same oversight as bank deposits. That tension between traditional banks and stablecoin issuers is the fault line running through all of this legislation.
Meanwhile, Tether launched tether.wallet, a self-custodial wallet that lets users hold and send USDT, tokenized gold, and Bitcoin across multiple blockchains without gas tokens. Users control their own keys, transaction fees are paid in the asset being sent, and addresses look like name at tether dot me. It's a direct-to-consumer play from a company that previously operated purely as infrastructure. Paolo Ardoino calls it the People's Wallet. Whether regulatory clarity arrives to support products like this is now a question with a 14-day countdown.
Here's the thing to sit with. The next 2 weeks may matter more for crypto's regulatory future in the US than the past 2 years. The CLARITY Act either gets markup this week or it drifts into political limbo. Meanwhile, Bitcoin is testing key levels with exhausted bears, corporate treasuries are diverging between conviction buyers and opportunistic sellers, and TSMC's numbers confirm that the AI buildout is accelerating faster than almost anyone projected. The infrastructure for the next financial system is being assembled right now, in chip fabs, in Senate committee rooms, and in self-custodial wallets. Pay attention to the boring stuff. That's where the real moves are happening.