Morning Minute: The Next Fed Chair Has a Crypto Portfolio

📊 Goldman Sachs Just Filed for a Bitcoin Income ETF

Goldman Sachs filed with the SEC on Tuesday for the Goldman Sachs Bitcoin Premium Income ETF - one of the bank’s first direct crypto product filings and its most significant Bitcoin move yet.

The structure: the fund holds exposure to spot Bitcoin ETPs and sells call options on 40–100% of that exposure, collecting premiums it distributes to investors as monthly income.

In practice, this means upside participation gets capped in strong rallies, and in exchange, investors collect yield. It’s the same covered-call playbook Goldman already runs on the S&P 500 via GPIX (~8% annual yield) and the Nasdaq via GPIQ. BlackRock just launched a similar income ETF for Bitcoin as well.

The biggest players in TradFi are finding more and more crypto products to offer their customers.

Key Details:

• Goldman Sachs filed for a Bitcoin Premium Income ETF that sells call options on 40–100% of BTC ETF exposure to generate monthly income; earliest launch late June/July 2026
• The structure: holds spot Bitcoin ETP exposure, sells covered calls to collect premiums; trades away some upside for steady yield
• Context: Goldman already holds $1.1B+ in IBIT on its balance sheet

💳 Tether Launched a Wallet

Tether, the world’s largest stablecoin issuer with $184B USDT in circulation, launched tether.wallet on Tuesday as its first consumer-facing product.

The self-custodial app lets users hold and send USDT, USAT (its US-regulated stablecoin), XAUT (gold-backed token), and Bitcoin across Ethereum, Polygon, Arbitrum, and the Lightning Network. Fees are payable in the asset being sent and no gas tokens required.

Users simply need a user name (name@tether.me instead of hex strings) to get started, and private keys stored on device.

CEO Paolo Ardoino pitched it as the “People’s Wallet,” designed for a future where humans, machines, and AI agents all transact on the same rails. Notably, Tether built the wallet on its open-source Wallet Development Kit - the same toolkit it’s been positioning for AI agent payments.

Key Details:

• Tether launched tether.wallet - a self-custodial app supporting USDT, USAT, XAUT, and Bitcoin across Ethereum, Polygon, Arbitrum, and Lightning
• The pitch: CEO Ardoino calls it the “People’s Wallet” for humans, machines, and AI agents, built on Tether’s open-source Wallet Development Kit
• The strategic move: Tether goes direct-to-consumer for the first time, with 570M wallets already on its network

📈 Circle Stocks Jumps As CEO Teases ARC Token

Jeremy Allaire dropped one sentence at Circle’s Seoul event Tuesday that moved the stock: Circle is exploring a native token for Arc Network, its Layer-1 blockchain currently in testnet.

The token would handle governance, incentives, and economic alignment, with a gradual transition to proof-of-stake.

Allaire described it as “potentially Circle’s most significant platform-level strategic move since the creation of USDC.” CRCL stock rose 7% on the news.

Circle’s Arc already has BlackRock, HSBC, Visa, Goldman Sachs, and AWS on the testnet. Allaire’s vision is an “economic OS for the internet” - institutional financial workflows moving entirely on-chain. A native token would give Arc a governance layer and an incentive mechanism for validators as it transitions to PoS.

Given the major TradFi theme for 2026, let’s just say a Circle token would have very high expectations…

Key Details:

• • Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire confirmed Circle is exploring a native Arc Network token
  • Utility: governance, incentives, and economic alignment as Allaire plans to transition Arc to proof-of-stake
  • Market response: Circle stock jumped 7% to $105

🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets

• Crypto majors fall 1-2% after recent rally; BTC flat at $74.2k; ETH -2% at $2,335; SOL -3% at $84; HYPE -1% at $44
• DEXE (+17%), APT (+2%), and ARB (+2%) led top movers
• Oil -4% at $89; Gold +1% at $4,810
• Robinhood’s HOOD stock jumped 15% after the SEC approved ending the Pattern Day Trader rule, which eliminates the $25K minimum equity requirement for day trading
• Deutsche Börse invested $200M in Kraken for a 1.5% stake at a $13.3B valuation (down from $20B in November) as Kraken confidentially files for IPO
• CowSwap suffered a front-end compromise — DeFi exchange website hijacked; users warned not to interact with the interface until confirmed safe
• Fake Ledger app on the Mac App Store drained $9.5M from crypto users before being removed; Apple store security failure with real losses
• The Ethereum Foundation put up $1M to back ecosystem security audits
• Visa backed Stripe’s Tempo payments network as an anchor validator
• JPMorgan CFO raised caution about potential regulatory arbitrage with stablecoins, arguing banks are held to stricter standards than stablecoin issuers on equivalent products

Corporate Treasuries & ETFs

• The Bitcoin ETFs saw $411M in net inflows on Tuesday; the ETH ETFs saw $53M in inflows
• STRC traded $1.5B volume on Tuesday to raise capital for 9,500+ BTC, another smashing record

Meme Coin Tracker

• Meme leaders were mostly red; DOGE -1%, SHIB -1%, PEPE -2%, TRUMP -1%, PENGU -1%, SPX -1%, FARTCOIN -7%
• **Unc (+240%),**Whitewhale (+80%),Bull (+40%), and wojak (+15%) led notable onchain movers
• TRUMP meme coin holders are getting cheaper VIP access to the Mar-a-Lago gala than original TRUMP whale offering prices

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

• Pumpcaderallied to $44M+ after news that they closed a $5M seed round led by Jump
• Nava AI announced an $8.3M seed round to build AI agent infra focused on guardrails for agentic activity
• Bitcoin devs proposed BIP-361 which would freeze early Bitcoin addresses most susceptible to quantum risk

🚚 What is happening in NFTs?

• NFT leaders were mostly slightly red, Punks continue their decline; Punks -2% at 26 ETH, Pudgy even at 4.06 ETH, BAYC -1% at 6.25 ETH; Hypurr’s +1% at 402 HYPE
• DigiDaigaku Genesis(+35%) and Ringers (+5%) led notable movers