Has Crypto Already Bottomed After the 6% Selloff?

After crypto took a negative turn last week, this week is off to a hot start — with Ethereum already erasing more than half of the peak-to-trough losses over the weekend.

A lot of that is due to a rebound in stocks — but not to be overlooked as one potential booster is a massively bullish speech from SEC Chair Paul Atkins. The Trump appointee unveiled what he’s calling “Project Crypto,” or an agency-wide reassessment of how traditional markets can and should be tokenized.

It’s a complete 180-degree turn at the SEC and somewhat staggering considering his predecessor Gary Gensler always purported to be merit neutral and always fell short. Now, you have the head of the SEC openly calling to embrace blockchain technology as a first principle. That’s massive.

Here's why that could be setting the backdrop for a very strong finish to 2025:

Treasury Companies Back to Buying

In retrospect, last week’s selloff probably should have been obvious. If you were paying attention, you would have noticed one of the biggest bulls took a pause from buying ETH, and did the unthinkable. Bitmine Chair Tom Lee actually announced a raise of up to $1 billion to buy back his own stock.

That meant that last week the company took a very noticeable break from buying Ethereum and actually did do quite a bit to prevent what may have been an otherwise nasty dip in the stock through the selloff. Instead, Bitmine got back to its buying ways this Monday to once again snatch the crown back from Sharplink Gaming as the largest Ethereum treasury company with more than $2.9 billion in total ETH holdings.

Bitmine also announced it added billionaire investor Bill Miller III as an investor, alongside Cathie Wood. To be honest, it puts Bitmine in a league of its own when it comes to institutional firepower. By extension, that alone might be enough to ensure ETH maintains its position in the driver’s seat.

But, not to be outdone on the fringes, the challenger to Solana that was spawned when Meta shut down their blockchain project years ago has just won a backer of its own.

We caught up with Mill City Ventures CIO Stephen Mackintosh who explained why being the first SUI treasury company with a direct relationship with the Sui Foundation will be valuable.

“We aspire to be great custodians of their brand in the public markets,” he told Coinage today. “The time is now and the demand is insatiable. So we are seeing institutions buying into Sui's vision in a safe, compliant institutional grade wrapper.”

If Sui does indeed replicate Solana’s run with the added juice of a treasury company thrown into the mix — keep your eyes on MCVT.

The SEC Sounds Like Coinbase

On Friday, SEC Chair Paul Atkins delivered a speech that should have your ears perking up. In it, he unveiled “Project Crypto” — essentially an agency-wide endorsement of crypto and looking ensure tokenization happens.

“America must do more than just keep pace with the digital asset revolution, we must drive it,” Chair Atkins said. He also walked through various ways the SEC should help if President Trump wants to make the U.S. the crypto capital of the world. One of those ways is helping companies like Coinbase or Robinhood who not only want to sell crypto assets, but also want to sell tokenized stocks.

Suddenly, that seems way more likely given Atkins point-blank said the push should enable “America’s financial markets to move onchain.”

The Creator Economy Onchain

The reason that sounds a lot like Coinbase is because moving the creator economy and everything else “onchain” has been the rallying cry of Coinbase and Base founder Jesse Pollak for over two years now. And since then, Base has been pushing for each one of its aligned companies to bring more creators onchain.

Zora has been doing just that, with its recent creator coin launch starting to explode. The company lets creators post on a platform (much like Instagram) but also enables creators to launch tokens in themselves.

It’s not too dissimilar from what Base is already doing from inside its own app, but interesting to see the experimentation grow. Coinage just launched our own creator coin today, and we must say the process was relatively smooth.

Count Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko among the critics, though. He continues to point out that none of these creator coins carry upside in any future revenue streams from creators (something we pointed out in an earlier episode.)

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