Bitcoin Went From $60K to $84K. Why Does It Feel Stuck?

Bitcoin’s climb from the $60,000s through the $70,000s and into the $80,000s looked constructive to Scott given the broader events, but the price was struggling near $84,000, where the notes identified a large liquidation cluster. Markets jumped after a false announcement of a U.S.-Iran peace deal and retreated when it was denied. Scott said he did not know whether Iran would escalate, and cautioned that Iran’s decisions are not driven by Bitcoin prices.

Nicola White said recent regulatory moves, including an innovation exemption and OCC action related to the GENIUS Act, are encouraging customers to build. She described the OCC action as part of the rulemaking process that follows passage of a law; Scott, by contrast, called the Clarity Act failed and likely dead in the water, with agencies advancing policy through other routes. White said SEC guidance on broker-dealers, wallets, and the innovation exemption needs to be considered together to establish infrastructure for tokenized markets.

Tokenized equities still raise basic questions, including how shareholder voting rights would work, and White expects implementation to evolve over roughly the next year. Scott expects tokenized stocks could begin trading soon, but said moving markets broadly onto tokenized rails will take longer because of operational complications such as different trading hours. Robinhood’s stated customer goals include 24/7 trading, fractional ownership, and global access; its existing stock-token offering is available in about 120 countries, and the company worked to enable dividends this year.

Robinhood is combining Bitstamp’s institutional trading technology with its retail platform and working to bring their liquidity together. Bitstamp, which has operated since 2011, added about 50 global licenses and geographic reach that Robinhood said would have taken years to build on its own. Robinhood’s smart exchange routing, launched last year, lets retail customers leave orders on exchanges used by institutional traders. The company also sees its Robinhood Chain, an Ethereum layer 2 launched in July with help from Offchain Labs and the Arbitrum team, as infrastructure for a future in which finance moves on-chain; stock tokens are available on the chain only outside the United States.

Stablecoins are increasingly useful to some medium-sized and offshore customers for transfers that would otherwise rely on slow, expensive bank wires. White put the average cost of international wires at about 6%, and the Robinhood guest said OCC guidance could accelerate stablecoin use. White said the USDG consortium aims to make stablecoins more useful and reduce friction when converting between them. Robinhood’s USDG yield product uses a Morpho vault and adds insurance to address concerns about DeFi; the interviewer cited a 7% APY but qualified that the figure might be misquoted.

Robinhood also wants to extend on-chain access to private as well as public equities. The company launched RVI 1 and RVI 2 last year to provide private-equity access, and tokenization could break investments with $50 million minimums into smaller offerings. Accredited-investor rules remain a constraint, however, and Robinhood is discussing with regulators whether qualification could depend on knowledge or education rather than net worth. The company had also been exploring a possible U.S. stock-token offering under the innovation exemption for four weeks.

U.S. perpetual-futures trading had launched for about 5% of Robinhood users roughly two weeks before the interview, following months of work with the CFTC and NFA; broader access was expected over the following weeks. Robinhood said it aims to bring perpetual futures to its app soon, while qualifying the timing with “hopefully,” and wants to offer exposure in a safe, regulated setting rather than necessarily provide 100x leverage. Scott said CME opposes broad access and is behind the CFTC’s effort, while noting the CFTC had asked how it had been harmed. The broader argument was that unclear U.S. rules pushed business offshore, whereas clearer rules could encourage innovation and bring flows back onshore.