Week aggregation of daily reviews
Markets run daily, but here is your weekly review
We started the week with Maduro’s ouster. It looks like it happened a long time ago, but people are still celebrating it. Our week went from Maduro being out of Venezuela, Bitcoin ripping, and major Monday crypto ETF inflows, to rapidly slowing down and a price correction. CES was an event with critical AI information, new politically enforced actions from Trump, and a few proposals. ZEC FUD and privacy problems arose in Europe with DAC8. Geopolitical tensions keep growing. Oil is up, not down.
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Monday was defined by the opening of the markets after Maduro was out of Venezuela. Bitcoin ripped. Multiple sources of information give positive future outlooks for crypto-related businesses, including improving the COIN rating from neutral to buy from Goldman Sachs.
Tuesday CES took place, and we had a lot of information from it. It was a canonical event as always; every year we have the same feelings, this year is different. But I have to say, that this year it fell different, because of the fast relevancy from AI development, the AI bubble, and AI disruption. A consensus was reached, with the majority of actors saying that we need more compute, from Dr. Fei-Fei Li to Lisa Su. Not only is compute relevant, but our GDP is driven by the amount of compute that we have. The key takeaway from CES is not the importance of compute, but the possible scenario that user adoption will take longer than the exponential curve believers expect; Robert Playter gave the talk. On CES notes, not only were compute and robots relevant, but we have new innovative products: smart Lego testing a new industry: AI-integrated toys. More competition, with the Lucid robotaxi going live on Uber.
Nvidia made further announcements: A new stack of robot foundation models and Vera Rubin upgrades. AMD is betting on AI-powered personal computers.
Wednesday Major announcement for DATs, especially regarding strategy, with MSCI concluding its review into DAT index inclusion. This event was crucial for the drive of Saylor. Morgan Stanley announced BTC ETFs and an ETH trust with the SEC. John D’Agostino noted they are not seeing any institutional slowdown on crypto. These announcements highlight two realizations: First, the market is much bigger than expected; Second, it is as socially important as it is financially important to offer to clients. On the other side of the spectrum, we have big banks trying to close the loophole in the GENIUS Act, allowing stablecoin issuers to indirectly fund payments to holders via exchanges.
Thursday The daily was filled by the ZCash fire; ECC resigned to form a new company. The market reacted aggressively on the ZEC price. Later in the day, the ECC team announced that they are basically only building a new wallet, a profit-driven wallet, and will keep using ZCash as the protocol layer. On the other side of the spectrum, we had Trump doing everything he can to win the mid-terms, and that’s including lowering the oil price and pushing the real estate market down, creating QE. He announced a new $200b mortgage bond purchase. Arthur Hayes quickly commented, “Run it fucking hot! (…) BTC to 1 million.” Everyone wants power; Trump aims to keep it. A $1.5T military budget in 2027 has been expressed loudly.
Friday On this day, the ETF flows on BTC and ETH reverted entirely from the Monday inflows. SOL outperformed BTC and ETH during the week. Investors get louder with the shift from growth to more value companies. From Triple-B to Triple-A organizations. And a clear shift from AI enablers to actually applying AI. Geopolitical tension is expanding, with multiple tensions going through Venezuela, Iran, Ukraine, Taiwan, and Greenland, giving upside to the defense industry and pushing the risk curve into new stores of value. Positive labor market numbers came in; the unemployment rate is slowing down. With more jobs in the private sector and lowering in the public sector. “Economy is booming,” as Trump said.
Saturday Trump is trying to enforce a 10% cap on credit interest rates for one year. This order kills companies like “buy now, pay later,” and it will be curious to see the market reacting to it on Monday. And a new bill: the Public Integrity in Financial Prediction Markets Act of 2026 is trying to pass, prohibiting government insiders from profiting off their inside information on political bets. This comes after what happened with the Venezuela betting predictions.
Biggest stories of the week
Venezuela being the first nation to manage a large share of its public finances in crypto, using Tether and Binance for their operations. This shows the real sign of adoption, payment, and transaction adoption using stablecoins.
The men’s beauty industry is growing at a huge pace. Over 68% of Gen Z men ages 18 to 27 used facial skin care products in 2024. Men are forming routines that usually start at skin care and then expand further. TikTok influencers and YouTubers are the drivers.
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