Ether and trading stocks take the crypto spotlight as Congress passes historic stablecoin bill
The price of ether was last higher by 3.6% at $3,558.68, according to Coin Metrics, trading at highs not seen since January.
On Thursday, ETFs tracking the price of ether saw daily inflows top those of bitcoin ETFs for the first time ever. The funds logged $602 million in net inflows, led by BlackRock's iShares Ethereum Trust (ETHA). Bitcoin ETFs on the same day saw inflows of $522 million. A day earlier, the ETH funds saw a single-day record inflow of $726.7 million.
Stocks tied to crypto trading gained as well, with Coinbase and Robinhood each rising more than 4%. Ether treasury stock Bitmine Immersion continued its rally, jumping 12% Friday.
Meanwhile, the price of bitcoin slipped 1%. Bitcoin treasury giant Strategy, formerly MicroStrategy, fell 4% and Mara Holdings, the mining company and bitcoin proxy, hovered under the flat line.
Ether has advanced 19% this week, bringing its two week gain to about 43.6% — its strongest two-week period since August 2021. Bitcoin is down less than 1% for the week.
On Thursday, BlackRock also filed with the SEC to include staking to its ETHA ether ETF, which also boosted sentiment for crypto's second largest coin.
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What does Trump's college sports executive order mean? Breaking down the impact
'President Donald J. Trump Saves College Sports.' If only it was that simple. The 176th executive order President Trump signed in the past seven months was announced Thursday with an audaciously headlined statement from the White House. We don't know how this will play out long term. But these are the key facts surrounding the executive order and the questions that need to be answered. What's happened in college sports that brought it to the federal government? The NCAA has been under attack on numerous legal fronts for more than a decade, particularly when it comes to paying athletes. Its policy for decades was strict amateurism — any compensation athletes received beyond their scholarships would render them ineligible. The model began cracking through a series of antitrust cases brought by former athletes, most notably Alston vs. NCAA in 2021. The Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that schools must be allowed to provide additional academic awards. By then, states began passing legislation allowing athletes to earn money from their name, image and likeness — i.e. endorsement deals — in direct opposition to the NCAA's longstanding ban. On July 1, 2021, the NCAA relented and began allowing NIL payments, which touched off another antitrust case, House v. NCAA. A class of former athletes sued for back pay for missing out on NIL opportunities. The defendants agreed to a $2.8 billion settlement, part of which allows schools to pay athletes directly for the first time, up to $20.5 million. A judge approved the settlement on June 6, 2025. But the lack of an organized NIL system has led to chaos, with boosters exploiting the lack of enforcement. And with other legal challenges forcing the NCAA to eliminate its longstanding rules about transfers, athletes now routinely hop from one school to another in search of their next payday. Desperate for regulation, college sports leaders have been lobbying Congress for help in the form of a federal law for years, but not until recently has there been any significant movement on a bill. What are the key takeaways of the executive order? The order essentially makes recommendations for how college athletic departments should operate and directs several government agencies to weigh in on issues that will shape the future of college sports. It also delivers the NCAA and conferences much of what it has been lobbying for on Capitol Hill. However, the order's ability to turn ideas into action is questionable. The order: Gives a nod to protecting women's and Olympic sports by setting benchmarks for scholarships and opportunities based on the amount of money an athletic department makes. Bans 'pay-for-play' to athletes by schools, a bedrock principle of the NCAA and college sports that leaders are still clinging to. The order does try to carve out exceptions for endorsement and sponsorship deals with third-party businesses. Calls on the Secretary of Labor and the National Labor Relations Board to clarify the employment status of student-athletes. Under a Republican administration, that likely decreases the chances athletes would have the right to organize. Directs the Attorney General and the Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission to find ways to hand rule-making power back to the NCAA, conferences and other college sports governing bodies and away from courts and state legislatures. Who benefits from this? Considering how much it falls in line with what college sports leaders have been asking for, it would be difficult to call it athlete-friendly. Yes, it tries to protect non-revenue programs and force schools to fund a wide-range of teams for athletes to participate in college sports, but limiting compensation by regulating NIL compensation and banning pay-for-play has been at the root of problems for decades. 'Looks like an NCAA press release,' said Marc Edelman, professor of sports law at Baruch College and antitrust expert who has been a critic of NCAA policies. Several ideas for student-athlete compensation have emerged over the years to help relegate the market, from collective bargaining agreements to defining student-athletes as university employees. Though how much athletes actually want those things is hard to say; with more than 190,000 athletes competing in Division I sports, gauging consensus is tricky. Will this actually change anything? In the short term: no. In the long term: maybe. The biggest possible downside of the executive order is it could create more uncertainty for college sports, creating policies that may or may not hold. 'It very much depends on how this gets enforced moving forward, and whether it gets enforced moving forward,' said Sam Ehrlich, assistant professor at Boise State's college of business and economics. 'Maybe this could just end up being just a statement that goes absolutely nowhere.' What can the executive order do? It's not so much what an executive order can do as what it can't. It can't make a law, it can't provide an antitrust exemption and it can't override state laws. Congress can do that. And that's what college sports needs. Any policies that come from an executive order can either be challenged in court and reversed by the next administration, which means college sports continues to operate under a blanket of uncertainty when it comes to defining the relationship between schools and athletes. That's exactly what college sports leaders are trying to stop. What power does the government have in these situations? The executive branch does not have the authority to provide straightforward solutions to college sports' problems, most importantly some form of antitrust exemption. That has to come from Congress, and right now will require bipartisan support. The president's involvement could prioritize the issues in a way that motivates lawmakers to build on recent momentum in the Republican-controlled House, where a college sports bill made it out of committee for the first time earlier this week. Or maybe pervasive political divisiveness makes Democrats recoil from the idea of giving the president a symbolic victory. While the complicated problems facing college sports now are not quite a matter of life and death, it remains to be seen if presidential involvement makes finding solutions easier or harder. What is The SCORE Act? The SCORE Act is a House bill that would provide the NCAA and conferences some antitrust protection, pre-empt state laws related to NIL compensation and bolster the terms of the House settlement. The SCORE Act made it through two Republican-led House committees on partisan lines earlier this week. No college sports bill has ever gotten so far. When Congress returns for the fall session, the bill could go to the House floor for a vote and it will probably pass. That's meaningful and a positive sign for many in college sports after years of inaction by lawmakers. The bill also has little support from Democrats in the House and stands very little chance of making it through the Senate, where seven Democrats would have to vote with Republicans to get the 60 necessary to pass. What divides Republicans and Democrats? The debate over college sports legislation on Capitol Hill is akin to a labor dispute. Republicans, who currently control both chambers and the White House, are focused on ways to shield the NCAA and college sports conferences from litigation and state laws that make it impossible for them to effectively govern national competition. Democrats are demanding greater protections for the workers (the athletes) and are hesitant to provide the antitrust protections college sports leaders have been lobbying for. The NCAA and conferences want a law that would prevent college athletes from being deemed employees. Democrats want that option left open, along with athletes' rights to organize and maybe even join unions. What precedents are there involving federal legislation and higher education in sports? The president's EO is the most significant and direct entry by the executive branch into college athletics since Teddy Roosevelt's calls for safety reforms in football led to the creation of the NCAA in 1906. Lyndon Johnson's executive order signed in 1967, led to the passage of the federal Title IX gender discrimination law, which has been credited with paving the way for an explosion of opportunities for women in college sports. What does this mean for the NCAA? The NCAA as a governing body is ceding power to conferences and the newly formed College Sports Commission. However, it played a pivotal role in lobbying for federal legislation and has been much better received by lawmakers since former Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker took over as NCAA president two years ago. The NCAA's future will ultimately be determined by college sports stakeholders, not politicians. Why is the president getting involved? The White House's announcement hailed Trump's long-held interest in college athletics, including preserving Olympic and women's sports amid the changing landscape. Until now, Trump's engagement with higher education has been adversarial, threatening federal funding and litigation against schools for Title IX violations or allegations of antisemitism and discrimination through the promotion of diversity at universities. Trump came away from a meeting with former Alabama football coach Nick Saban in May motivated to get involved. The formation of a presidential commission led by Saban and billionaire oil businessman Cody Campbell, a former Texas Tech football player and current board chair, was considered then put on hold as lawmakers worked on legislative solutions. This article originally appeared in The Athletic. College Football, Men's College Basketball, Women's College Basketball, College Sports 2025 The Athletic Media Company
Yahoo
6 minutes ago
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Hedge Funds Scooped Up Spot Bitcoin ETFs in Q1, Filings Show
Hedge funds Citadel LLC and Point72 Asset Management scooped up shares of spot Bitcoin ETFs during the first quarter as cryptocurrency prices surged, recent filings show. Citadel, founded by CEO Ken Griffin, bought a mix of shares and put and call options in spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds, including the largest, the $88 billion iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), according to 13-F filings. It also owned smaller Bitcoin funds such as the Bitwise Bitcoin ETF (BITB), the ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF (ARKB) and the Fidelity Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund (FBTC) among a range of international and domestic equity ETFs during the first quarter. Overall, its IBIT holdings rose by 2.1 million shares from what was reported in its fourth-quarter 13-F. The purchases and sales of shares and options are included in the hedge funds' latest 13-F filings, which summarize first-quarter investments. They don't provide dates or details of the purchases. Point72 and IBIT Point72, founded by New York Mets owner Steven Cohen, boosted its IBIT holdings during the first quarter by 1.4 million shares, or about $47.2 million. The hedge fund manages $37.7 billion, according to its website. Bitcoin recently charged to an all-time high of just over $123,000, more than doubling over the last year and jumping 27% so far in 2025. It has since settled back to around $116,000. One-Year IBIT Flows Source: & FactSet Data So far this year, amid a push by the Trump administration to treat cryptocurrencies as mainstream assets, investors have poured $19.4 billion into spot Bitcoin ETFs. Since the funds began trading in January 2024, investors have poured in $54.6 billion, according to Farside Investors in the U.K., and price gains have pushed fund values even higher. Citadel, which manages $54 billion according to the Financial Times citing data from LCH Investments, also bought the Franklin Bitcoin ETF (EZBC), the Invesco Galaxy Bitcoin ETF (BTCO) and others. It sold off its stakes in the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust ETF (GBTC) and the Grayscale Bitcoin Mini Trust ETF (BTC). Citadel slashed a nearly $1 billion holding in SPDR S&P ETF Trust (SPY) late last year to $13.6 million, while Cohen's Point72 raised its SPY holdings to $26.9 million during the first quarter from $3.5 | © Copyright 2025 All rights reserved Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
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Is Elon Musk to blame for Tesla's struggles? Experts weigh in
Tesla, the electric carmaker led by Elon Musk, suffered a sharp drop in profits over a recent three-month period as car sales slowed and tariffs hiked costs, the company said this week. Shareholders envisioned a different outcome when Tesla stock surged more than 50% in the aftermath of the November 2024 election of President Donald Trump, then a close ally of Musk. Since a recent peak in December, the majority of those gains have been erased. Musk, the company's chief executive and the world's richest person, draws attention due in part to his outspoken presence on social media and divisive stint in the White House. The recent struggles at Tesla have coincided with increased competition in the electric vehicle (EV) industry, posing a question for analysts: Is Musk partially to blame? MORE: Tesla profits drop 16% as Elon Musk faces continued backlash Experts who spoke to ABC News acknowledged the surge of EV competition and credited Musk with pushing the company into potential growth areas like humanoid robots and self-driving taxis, the latter of which are being tested in Austin, Texas. The company's downturn in part reflects a transition from EVs to those new products, which have yet to generate meaningful revenue, they added. Still, the experts said, Musk bears some of the blame for the company's difficulty fending off other EV makers as well as a delayed rollout of alternate products. They also pointed to losses suffered as result of some of Trump's policies, which Musk struggled to mitigate while serving in the administration. "Musk is CEO -- the buck stops with him. As a CEO in a competitive environment, he's the one who has to have the vision and lead the troops," David Meier, a senior investment analyst at The Motley Fool, told ABC News. "But there's a lot going on in the world that impacts Tesla's business." Tesla did not immediately respond to ABC News' request for comment. Speaking on an earnings call on Wednesday, Musk said the company faces "a few rough quarters ahead." He added that, ultimately, humanoid robots and driverless taxis would make Tesla "the most valuable company in the world by far." The company's profits fell 16% over a three-month period ending in June that overlapped with the end of Musk's tenure in the White House and his ensuing public clash with Trump, an earnings release on Wednesday showed. Total revenue decreased by 12% from one year earlier, to $22.4 billion, while revenue derived from car sales dropped 16% over the second quarter of 2025 compared to a year ago, the earnings showed. In a statement, Tesla touted a "strong balance sheet," but acknowledged a "sustained uncertain macroeconomic environment resulting from shifting tariffs." The company also faces "unclear impacts from changes to fiscal policy and political sentiment," Tesla said. The company has faced heightened competition from domestic and foreign carmakers rolling out electric vehicles. Chinese EV-maker BYD outperformed Tesla in total car sales for the first time ever last year. BYD vehicles are essentially unavailable in the U.S. due to sky-high tariffs on Chinese EVs. "Part of it is outside of Tesla's control," Seth Goldstein, an analyst who studies the EV sector at research firm Morningstar, told ABC News. Goldstein cited an apparent dropoff in sales earlier this year among consumers awaiting a refresh of the company's popular Model Y. However, Goldstein added, the company has been slow to release an affordable EV model in response to a flurry of low-cost options among its rivals, which include China's BYD and traditional carmakers like Nissan and Hyundai. "Looking at Elon Musk, he's the leader of Tesla. It's fair to wonder if he was a little distracted with his political action in the first half of the year and that caused some production to slip, including production of an affordable model," Goldstein said. Musk's position at the White House, which ended in May, appeared to yield few benefits for Tesla. The company faces a pinch from several Trump policies, including the end of tax credits for EV buyers, the nixing of regulatory credits purchased from Tesla by other firms, as well as tariffs on cars and car parts. The CEO's political role also set off demonstrations at Tesla dealerships worldwide in protest of his effort to slash government spending as leader of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). "It was a dark chapter and investors are glad to put it in the rear-view mirror," Dan Ives, a managing director of equity research at the investment firm Wedbush and a longtime Tesla bull, told ABC News. As car sales have slowed, Musk has touted a future autonomous car service, dubbed robotaxis, as a growth area for the business. Last month, Tesla launched a limited version of what it claimed is a self-driving taxi service in Austin, Texas. MORE: Trump admin live updates: Trump does not rule out pardon for Maxwell The rollout marked a milestone for the company's self-driving taxi aspirations, but limitations placed on the vehicles and a series of apparent miscues suggest the technology remains far from wide adoption, some analysts previously told ABC News. Musk has also touted humanoid robots as a future growth area for Tesla. While the product remains in an early phase, Musk expects the company to eventually produce more than a million robots each year, he said on this week's earnings call. Goldstein, of Morningstar, applauded Musk's effort to move Tesla away from the highly competitive auto market toward nascent tech sectors. "Musk's long-term goal is to transition from an automaker to an AI robotics company -- that's still on track and making progress," Goldstein said. "That's where it has greater opportunities to grow a competitive advantage." The ultimate outcome for Tesla's forthcoming products remains unclear but Musk has earned the benefit of the doubt, according to some analysts. "It might not be the conventional way but there's only one Elon Musk," Wedbush's Ives said. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
