WuTalk Daily Selected Crypto News + This Week's Macroeconomic Indicators

1. Arthur Hayes: Altcoin Season Requires Bitcoin to Break Through $110,000

Arthur Hayes stated that the altcoin season will begin once Bitcoin breaks through $110,000 and continues to rise with increasing volume to the $150,000 - $200,000 range. He expects this to happen in the summer or early third quarter of this year, after which funds will start rotating into various altcoins. Gold accounts for about 20% of his personal investment portfolio. In the bull market over the next 18-24 months, ETH's gains may surpass SOL. Before the end of Trump's term, that is by the end of 2028, Bitcoin is expected to reach $1 million. By the end of this year, Bitcoin's target price is approximately $250,000.

2. Large Token Unlocks This Week

In the next 7 days, single large unlocks (amounts over $5 million) include PYTH, ALT, VENOM, etc. Linear large unlocks (daily unlock amounts over $1 million) in the next 7 days include SOL, WLD, TIA, DOGE, TAO, AVAX, SUI, DOT, IP, MORPHO, NEAR, ETHFI, JTO, FIL, etc. The total unlock value exceeds $618 million.

3. Strategy Increased Bitcoin Holdings by 7,390 $BTC from May 12 to 18

Strategy added 7,390 $BTC from May 12 to 18 at an average price of $103,498, with a total expenditure of about $764.90 million. As of May 18, Strategy's total Bitcoin holdings increased to 576,230 $BTC, with a cumulative purchase amount of approximately $40.18 billion and an average holding cost of $69,726.

4. BIP-177 Proposal Suggests Naming Bitcoin's Base Unit as "Bitcoin"

Recently, the Bitcoin community's BIP-177 proposal has attracted attention. BIP-177 proposes redefining the base unit as 1 Bitcoin, discontinuing the use of "satoshi" or "sat". The currency code $BTC remains unchanged, i.e., 1 $BTC = 100,000,000 base units = 100,000,000 Bitcoin. The proposal argues that this change will reduce confusion and provide a more accurate understanding of Bitcoin's fundamental design in the long term. Jack Dorsey expressed support for it in a tweet mentioning "BIP-177".

5. Vitalik Proposes Ethereum Native Node-Friendly Scaling Solution

Vitalik Buterin suggests that Ethereum L1 scaling should consider the operability of individual nodes. In the short term, EIP-4444 should be advanced to allow nodes to store only about 36 days of historical data, build a distributed historical storage system, adjust the Gas mechanism to increase storage costs, and reduce execution costs; the medium-term goal is to achieve stateless validation to further lower storage requirements; the long-term plan is to introduce "partial stateless nodes", where nodes only maintain a portion of state data configured by users, ensuring that under the context of increased L1 Gas limits, users can still locally access important state data, protecting privacy and censorship resistance.

6. Wu's Weekly Macro Indicators and Analysis: Fed Officials' Speeches, ECB Meeting Minutes

Summary

Last week's US inflation data CPI & PPI were both lower than expected; this week, focus can be placed on speeches from Federal Reserve officials, the ECB April monetary policy meeting minutes, and the Reserve Bank of Australia's interest rate decision.

Last Week Review

• US April unadjusted CPI year-over-year was 2.3%, the lowest since February 2021, below the market expectation of 2.4%.

• US April PPI year-over-year recorded 2.4%, declining for the third consecutive month, the lowest since September last year. The April PPI month-over-month was -0.5%, the lowest since April 2020, far below the market expectation of 0.2%.

• The Bank of Japan's April monetary policy meeting summary showed that although they have become more cautious about the potential impact of US tariffs, they have not abandoned the possibility of further rate hikes.

• US initial jobless claims for the week ending May 10 were 229 thousand, in line with expectations. The previous value was revised from 228 thousand to 229 thousand.

• Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell delivered the opening speech at the second Thomas Laubach Research Conference. Powell stated that the US may be entering a period with more frequent and longer-lasting supply shocks, posing a tough challenge for the economy and the central bank.

• US one-year inflation expectation in May initial value was 7.3%, expected 6.50%, previous 6.50%.

• US May Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index initial value was only 50.

Key Events & Indicators This Week

May 19

• NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang attends the Taipei International Computer Show and delivers a speech, sharing the latest progress and breakthroughs in "AI and Accelerated Computing Technology" (11:00)

• Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Jefferson delivers a speech (20:45)

May 20

• Reserve Bank of Australia announces interest rate decision (12:30)

May 21

• 2025 FOMC voter and St. Louis Fed President Bullard speaks on economic outlook and monetary policy (01:00)

May 22

• US initial jobless claims for the week ending May 17 (10000 persons) (20:30)

• European Central Bank releases minutes of the April monetary policy meeting (19:30)