BlockByte Weekly: How Powell's Comments Ignited the Digital Asset Market

Thanks for reading The BlockByte Weekly, where we summarise the key updates in crypto over the last week and provide our perspective on what you need to know as an investor.​
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Weekly Snapshot

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• BTC: US $114,975 (~A$177,240) (+5.7%)
• Crypto Market Cap: US $4.07T (+21.5%)
• Gold: US $3,371.89/oz (+0.4%)
• S&P 500: 6,466.91 (+11.5%)
• ASX 200: 9,019.10 (+7.9%)
• 10-Year Treasury Yield: 4.26% (–0.79%)

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Key Stories This Week

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Jerome Powell's Comments Drive The Market

During his twenty-one minute speech at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Fed Chair Jerome Powell hinted at the very real possibility of a rate cut in September. One sentence in particular sent the digital asset market soaring: "With policy in restrictive territory, the baseline outlook and the shifting balance of risks may warrant adjusting our policy stance."

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The digital asset market erupted, Solana surging by ~16.8% followed by Ethereum (+12.4%) and XRP (+8.9%). Bitcoin has only had a modest gain of ~2.6% since the meeting, indicating risk-on appetite for higher volatility altcoins.

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Investors brushed aside some of Powell's other comments on the ongoing challenges of tariff impacts, restrictive US immigration policy and a slower than expected monthly jobs growth. The softening labour market can be an early warning sign of a recession if left unchecked, quickly leading to layoffs and steep rises in unemployment.

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For now the unemployment rate still remains near historic lows at 4.2% but there are enough signs of softening that Powell has all but confirmed the Fed will look at reducing rates proactively rather than letting the labour market soften further.

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Earlier in the week we shared the chart below which is worth being mindful of. Quite often, markets celebrate rate cuts, but they're often in response to a weakening economy and can precede recessionary environments. We'll continue to monitor US labour markets and S&P earnings closely as these impacts are likely to flow through to digital asset prices.

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Brian Armstrong Bets on Bitcoin Hitting US $1M by 2030

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong predicts Bitcoin could reach US $1 million by decade’s end, joining Jack Dorsey and Cathie Wood in making bold long-term calls. Ark Invest has a bull target of US $1.5 million which it said could more than double to US $3.8M by 2030 if institutions increase their rates of adoption amid a wave of corporate treasury buying.

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While we don't expect Bitcoin to reach Cathie's upper US $3.8M target by 2030, we think anything in the realm of US $0.5M-$1M is feasible. With gold's market cap currently US $22 trillion, a US $580,000 Bitcoin price would bring it to a ~US $11 trillion market cap, roughly half of that of gold's.

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Ethereum Holders Can Finally Rejoice

After three years and nine months, Ethereum holders celebrated reaching a new all-time high of US $4,881. It's been a long road for Ethereum holders that have had to contend with competition from faster and cheaper blockchains. The price surge has largely been driven by Wall Street veteran Tom Lee from FundStrat along with several Ethereum treasury companies and ETF buying large quantities of Ether.

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Lee maintains his year end price target of US $10,000 for Ethereum, with an upper range of US $15,000 on the cards as institutions including the European Central Bank weigh up options of which blockchain to host their central bank digital currency on. So far, Ethereum and Solana appear to be the leading contenders.

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US $91M Bitcoin Scam & Our Upcoming Multi-Sig Security​
Earlier in the week, a victim was tricked into handing over their private keys by a fraudster posing as a hardware wallet support agent, leading to a 783 BTC (US $91.4M) loss. The stolen funds were laundered through a wallet mixing service to obscure the trail. Losses from hacks and scams reached US $3.1B in the first half of 2025, the most recorded in a 6-month period.

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We touched on this in our Friday newsletter. For those who are only on our weekly list, we thought it would be worth sharing

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At BlockByte, security is our number one priority. This is why we use Fireblocks to custody your assets. They're one of the largest institutional grade specialised custodians, having facilitated over US $10 trillion in transactions and holding US $3 trillion assets in custody without a breach.

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However, there are still times where individuals will prefer the control of self-custody and want to take responsibility for their assets. It's also a great way of learning about what the ethos of crypto is all about - self-sovereignty. To avoid the single point of failure scams above, we will be rolling out a multi-sig custody solution in the coming months for those who want to self-custody their assets.

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Multi-sig is where you need a majority of keys to authorise transactions. For example, if a hacker stole 1 key, you'd still have a second and third key which would be held somewhere geographically separate and / or with a trusted counterparty to avoid a single point of failure attack. This can make moving funds a little slower, but offers you the greatest degree of control over your assets.

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We'll be providing more developments on this offering in the coming weeks so stay tuned and reach out if you have any questions in the meantime.

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Until next week,
James

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