Morning Minute: Bitcoin Recovers After Fall Below $60k

Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt. And check out our new daily news show covering all of the top stories in 5 minutes, downloadable on Apple Pod or Spotify.

GM!

Today’s top news:

• Bitcoin rebounds to $63.5k after falling sub-$60k on Friday
• ZEC rebounds 50%+ after Ironwood proposal allowing independent verification
• Congress brings 7 crypto tax bills to hearing this week
• SpaceX IPO set for Thursday, June 12, priced at $135 per share
• Yuga Labs whitehats step in to save NFTs during Flooring Lab exploit

📉 Bitcoin Falls Below $60k Before Recovery

Bitcoin fell below $60,000 for the first time since October 2024 on Friday, hitting a low of $59,227 before recovering to around $63,000 as dip buyers stepped in.

There were over $1.6 billion in liquidations as ETH touched $1,500, SOL hit $63.75 and multiple recent alt movers lost double digit percent. In sum, crypto has erased ~$2.5 trillion in total market cap since the October 2025 all-time high.

As for the drivers, 3 are jumping out:

• The jobs report and rate hike repricing. The US economy added 172,000 jobs in May, crushing expectations of 85,000. April’s figure was also revised up by 64,000. The problem—this means rate hikes. CME FedWatch shows 42.7% chance rates will be higher by December. CPI comes this week and then Warsh’s first FOMC meeting is June 16-17—hopefully we will gain more insight then.
• The AI capital vacuum. Google raised $84 billion this week. Meta is planning “tens of billions” more in equity to fund AI. SpaceX’s $75 billion IPO lists Thursday. Saylor, Mati Greenspan, and Jameson Lopp all publicly blamed the AI spending cycle for draining capital that previously flowed into crypto.
• The Saylor narrative break. Strategy’s first Bitcoin sale in four years shattered the market’s most reliable institutional anchor. The “never sell” thesis was never contractually binding, but its behavioral consistency was pricing support.

Of course the question now becomes—when (and where) does the selloff end?

The AI vacuum will run for the next few weeks at a minimum, so expect more pain there. On the rate hike front, we should know more after CPI this week and after Warsh’s first FOMC on the 17th. As for the Saylor narrative, that will likely just take time to restore trust, but today’s buy (or sell) print will be very telling.

But there are signs of hope as well. Gold is now trading below its 200-day moving average for the first time since October 2023, which could trigger a BTC rotation. The AI trade cooling off could also set up a rotation, and pushing through the Saylor FUD will also reinstill confidence.

So don’t give up hope yet. But it may still be a very bumpy summer…

📈 Zcash Bounced 45% After Team Proposed Ironwood

ZEC surged 45% Monday after Zcash’s core development teams proposed the Ironwood network upgrade in a direct response to last week’s disclosure of a four-year counterfeiting vulnerability in the Orchard privacy pool that sent the token crashing 38%.

ZODL, working alongside Tachyon, Valar Group, the Zcash Foundation, and Shielded Labs, proposed a new shielded pool designed to restore every user’s ability to independently verify that Zcash’s circulating supply is sound, targeting activation by end of July 2026. The core mechanism is a Turnstile where all existing Orchard funds must migrate through a verifiable checkpoint into the new pool. This design allows users to independently verify the total circulating ZEC supply by running a node and summing balances across active pools, immediately upon Ironwood’s activation. Any counterfeited ZEC that might have been created during the four-year vulnerability window either reveals itself during migration or stays permanently trapped in the deprecated pool.

The upgrade is backed by formal verification, independent audits, and AI-assisted security review—a significantly more rigorous assurance framework than what underpinned the original Orchard pool.

As for the potential Orchard exploit, Polymarket bettors are giving just an 11% chance that it was actually exploited. So perhaps a lot more panic out there than was truly warranted.

💰 SpaceX Set for IPO Thursday

SpaceX will be priced at $135 per share for its June 12 Nasdaq debut under SPCX, setting the stage for what would be the largest IPO in history by a wide margin.

With more than 555 million Class A shares set to be listed at $135 each, SpaceX is targeting a raise of roughly $75 billion at a valuation near $1.75 trillion. And 30% of the offering goes to retail investors (three times the industry norm) distributed through Robinhood, Schwab, Fidelity, and E*Trade.

The timing is rough for crypto. The $75 billion capital raise is the single most cited reason for the current market selloff—funds liquidating risk assets to make room for SPCX allocation. The Nasdaq-100 fast-entry rule means index funds must buy SPCX within 15 trading sessions of listing, injecting $15-30 billion in mechanical buying. The question is whether that mechanical demand starts flowing in immediately after listing or whether it amplifies the capital rotation out of risk assets in the near term before becoming a tailwind.

🏛️ Congress Brings 7 Crypto Tax Bills To Hearing

The House Ways and Means Committee circulated seven crypto tax discussion drafts this week ahead of a hearing today at 2pm ET.

This marks the first time congressional leadership in either the House or Senate has moved forward with tax-focused crypto legislation, and the bills address nearly every pain point the industry has complained about for years. Chairman Jason Smith deliberately circulated seven separate bills rather than one omnibus package, making it easier to build coalitions around individual provisions without forcing all-or-nothing votes.

Here is what each of the seven bills does:

1. De Minimis Exemption for Small Transactions. Right now, using Bitcoin to buy a coffee and realizing a $0.37 gain is technically a taxable capital gains event requiring IRS reporting. The de minimis bill would create a threshold—the current proposal targets a $10 exemption for crypto network transaction fees, though broader exemptions for everyday purchases remain under discussion.
2. Tax Clarity for Mining and Staking Act. This bill would exempt crypto generated through staking and mining from a holder’s taxable income at the moment of receipt. Currently, staking rewards are taxed as income the moment they’re earned—even if never sold. The proposal defers taxation until the point of sale, which is the industry’s longstanding demand.
3. Stablecoin Transaction Treatment. Regulated dollar-backed stablecoins would be treated similarly to cash for tax purposes. Small gains or losses from routine stablecoin transactions would no longer require complex reporting.
4. Wash Sale Rules Applied to Crypto. This one applies the wash sale rule to digital assets and would prevent the common practice of selling a losing position to harvest a tax loss and immediately repurchasing the same asset. Currently legal for crypto (unlike stocks), closing this loophole is a concession to tax fairness that many in the industry accept as necessary for broader reform.
5. Mark-to-Market Accounting for Crypto Traders. Professional crypto traders could elect mark-to-market accounting (the same treatment available to securities traders) which would simplify tax reporting and remove the need to track individual lot cost bases across thousands of transactions.
6. IRS Safe Harbor for Prior Failures to Report. This would provide an IRS safe harbor for taxpayers who previously failed to properly report crypto gains, offering a clean slate to millions of crypto holders who navigated unclear guidance and may have underreported without intent to evade.
7. Charitable Donation Appraisal Relief. Currently, donating crypto to charity above a certain threshold requires a qualified appraisal, the same burdensome requirement applied to physical property. The bill would remove or streamline that requirement, making large crypto charitable donations less administratively expensive.

Today’s hearing will serve as the venue for refining these proposals before any formal markup. The deliberate separation into seven discrete bills signals a tactical approach designed to pass what can pass, rather than waiting for comprehensive reform.

Taken together, they represent the most substantive crypto tax overhaul proposal Congress has ever advanced simultaneously with market structure legislation.

🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets

• Crypto majors are green and rebounding from Friday’s selloff; BTC +1.4% at $62.9k; ETH +4% at $1,670; SOL +3% at $66.20; HYPE +7% at $61.54
• DEXE (+16%), HASH (+13%) and NEAR (+12%)
• Oil +4% at $94; Gold -1% at $4,326
• Stock futures are mixed with the DOW flat but Nasdaq up 0.7%
• Gold fell below its 200 day moving average for the first time since October 2023
• Crypto shorts lost over $500M on Sunday in the worst day for bears since April
• JPMorgan analysts said that Bitcoin’s H2 performance is dependent on how Saylor will fund his $1.7B in annual debt obligations
• Bybit launched IPO Express and a tokenized SpaceX subscription in partnership with xStocks, allowing users to subscribe to SPCX ahead of the June 12 Nasdaq listing

Corporate Treasuries & ETFs

• The Bitcoin ETFs saw $325M in net ouflows on Friday, marking $1.72B in net outflows on the week; the ETH ETFs saw $6M in outflows (and $174M on the week)
• The HYPE ETFs saw $2.9M in net outflows on Friday, the first time net outflows have occurred

Meme Coin Tracker

• Meme leaders were green; DOGE +3%, SHIB +2%, PEPE +3%, PENGU +3%, TRUMP +4%, BONK +3%, SPX +3%, FARTCOIN +5%
• Bountwork (+130%), Worldcup (+35%) and Pippin (+36%) led movers on Solana
• Base movers included Velvet (+40%), SERV (+25%) and Nock (+15%)

📈 Myriad Market of the Day

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

• ZEC bounced 45% after the team formally proposed the Ironwood network upgrade as a new shielded pool targeting activation by end of July 2026 that would allow anyone to independently verify ZEC’s circulating supply by running a node and summing pool balances
• Syscoin’s bridge was seemingly exploited with 5B SYS moved while unauthorized

🚚 What is happening in NFTs?

• NFT leaders were mostly green over the weekend; Punks +7% at 32.7 ETH, BAYC +20% at 9.15 ETH, Pudgy +3% at 4.28 ETH; Hypurr’s +2% at 264 HYPE
• NPC (+97%) and Brainrot (+50%) led notable weekly top movers
• Yuga Labs executed a white hat rescue of dozens of NFTs as the Flooring Protocol exploit was playing out yesterday