Morning Minute: What’s At Stake with Trump in Beijing

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:

• Crypto majors are red after hot CPI; BTC -1.5% at $79.3k
• BTC ETFs see $630M in net outflows, most since January
• Schwab officially began rollout of spot crypto trading
• Claude helps user find $400k in BTC lost for 11 years
• Myriad adopts Chainlink as it moves deeper into real-time markets

🇨🇳 What’s At Stake with Trump in Beijing

Trump landed in Beijing on Wednesday for his first visit to China since 2017, a two-day summit with Xi Jinping that carries more weight than any U.S.-China meeting in nearly a decade.

The agenda covers five interconnected crises simultaneously:

• the Iran war and Hormuz blockade,
• the trade relationship and tariff truce,
• Taiwan,
• rare earth export controls, and
• AI governance.

Any one of those issues could move global markets on its own. Stacked in the same two-day window, the Beijing summit is the most consequential diplomatic event of the year.

Iran is the session that matters most for crypto and oil markets. China is Iran’s largest oil customer and has the deepest leverage over Tehran. Any joint Trump-Xi statement signaling China will facilitate a ceasefire or press Iran toward negotiations would immediately crater oil prices, potentially back toward $85-90/barrel. That’s the scenario that reopens the June rate cut conversation and clears BTC’s path toward $84K and beyond.

The second market-relevant issue is trade. Bessent and He Lifeng met in Seoul on Wednesday ahead of the summit to lay the groundwork. Analysts expect a limited deal involving tariff pauses, purchase commitments, and rare earth arrangements rather than a comprehensive reset. But Trump has quite the delegation with him, including Elon Musk, Larry Fink, David Solomon, Tim Cook, and 12+ CEOs. If there are deals to be made, he’s got the right folks in the room to make it happen.

💸 Charles Schwab Just Gave 35 Million Clients Direct Bitcoin Access

Charles Schwab ($12T AUM) began the U.S. retail rollout of spot crypto trading on Wednesday.

An initial group of Schwab clients can now trade Bitcoin and Ether directly through the Schwab Crypto platform, with a wider rollout planned through 2026. The launch had been telegraphed since July 2025, when CEO Rick Wurster said the company planned to introduce crypto trading in the first half of 2026.

Schwab has roughly 35 million active brokerage accounts. Morgan Stanley has 8.6 million through E*Trade. Together with Fidelity, these three platforms now offer direct spot crypto access to a combined client base of well over 50 million U.S. investors—the largest distribution network that has ever existed for direct Bitcoin access outside of dedicated crypto exchanges.

The era of needing Coinbase, Kraken, or Robinhood for spot BTC exposure is effectively over for most American retail investors…

⛓️ Myriad Adopts Chainlink as Its Oracle Infrastructure for Real-Time Prediction Markets

Prediction market platform Myriad adopted Chainlink as its official oracle on Wednesday, powering BTC, ETH, BNB, and SOL markets at launch with RWA markets to follow.

The Chainlink Runtime Environment gives Myriad a unified orchestration layer that automates market creation, resolution, and settlement powered entirely by Chainlink Data Streams. This enables faster payouts and settlement for markets, more accurate price tracking, and more.

The Myriad deal is the latest in a rapid Chainlink consolidation across the prediction market sector. Polymarket adopted Chainlink’s data standard for all its crypto price markets earlier this year, and those Chainlink-powered 5 and 15-minute markets have already surpassed $3.4 billion in trading volume.

Myriad COO Ilan Hazan said the Chainlink integration “significantly increases the speed at which we can launch new markets and diversify our catalog” and enables the platform to “expand beyond crypto price predictions into equities, indices, commodities and other event-driven markets.” The adoption comes as Myriad prepares to scale following a recent seed investment round and builds on its roots as the prediction market layer for Decrypt’s media ecosystem.

💰 Man Recovers $400K in Bitcoin With Claude’s Help

X user @cprkrn went viral Wednesday after claiming Anthropic’s Claude AI helped him recover a Bitcoin wallet containing 5 BTC (~$400,000) that had been inaccessible for more than 11 years.

The wallet dated back to the user’s college years. They reported losing access after changing the password while intoxicated and later forgetting the updated credentials.

The recovery hinged on a specific technical problem. The user had an old mnemonic phrase (reportedly “lol420fu*thePOLICE!:)”) but it no longer unlocked the current wallet file because the wallet had been re-encrypted with a forgotten newer password. As a last resort, he uploaded the full contents of his old college computer into Claude. The AI located an older wallet.dat file that predated the password change and identified why the mnemonic no longer worked: the password was being processed incorrectly as a concatenation of sharedkey + password. Once the correct decryption logic was applied, the private keys were extracted and the wallet opened.

What a win for cprkrn—and likely a source of renewed hope for others who have lost private keys over the years…

🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets

• Crypto majors are red after a PPI beat and big ETF outflows; BTC -1.5% at $79.3k; ETH -2% at $2,250; SOL -4% at $91; HYPE -1% at $38.94
• CC (+8%), QNT (+6%) and XDC (+4) led top movers
• Oil -2% at $97; Gold even at $4,700
• Stock futures are green with the Nasdaq up 0.2% as Tech continues rally
• U.S. Core PPI came in very hot, rising 1% in the past month (biggest gain since March 2022), up 5.2% on the year
• Kevin Warsh was confirmed as the 17th Federal Reserve chair Wednesday in a 54-45 Senate vote, the most partisan confirmation of a Fed chair in the modern era; only Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) crossed party lines
• UK Economic Secretary Emma Reynolds told Parliament that digital assets could bring a “transformation of markets” as the government prepares to implement its crypto regulatory framework; the UK is advancing stablecoin and crypto asset legislation separately from the EU’s MiCA framework, aiming to attract crypto firms post-Brexit while maintaining consumer protections
• Ledger put its U.S. IPO on hold due to market volatility, pausing plans for a listing that had been explored at a $4 billion valuation; the French hardware wallet maker joins Kraken and Consensys in reassessing timing due to market conditions
• Fireblocks CEO Michael Shaulov argued Wednesday that quantum-proofing Bitcoin is a coordination problem, not a technical one; the post-quantum signature schemes exist and work, but getting the fragmented Bitcoin ecosystem (miners, wallet providers, exchanges, node operators) to upgrade simultaneously is the actual unsolved challenge

Corporate Treasuries & ETFs

Meme Coin Tracker

• Meme leaders were red; DOGE +1%, SHIB -3%, PEPE -4%, PENGU -4%, TRUMP -2%, BONK -5%, SPX -10%, FARTCOIN -9%
• CTO (+110x), Troll (+30%), Bull (+37%) and Burnie (+20%) led notable movers

📈 Myriad Market of the Day

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

🚚 What is happening in NFTs?

• NFT leaders were mostly red again; Punks even at 29.6 ETH, BAYC -2% at 9.9 ETH, Pudgy -4% at 4.99 ETH; Hypurr’s -3% at 280 HYPE
• Normies (+20%) led notable movers
• New Art Blocks mint Geophylla minted for 0.018 ETH and ran to a 0.1 ETH floor (now 0.08)
• The Node Foundation announced new limits on Beeple packs, only offering 2 packs per customer and 50 packs per day total (and they’re only open Fri-Sun)