Ever heard of the rope-a-dope?

Kinshasa, October 1974. 60,000 people watching Muhammad Ali lean on the ropes looking like he’s standing in the last place on Earth he wants to be.

George Foreman is 25, unbeaten in 40 fights, and hits like a freight train. You’d have backed him too, and the bookies had Ali at 4/1.

But Ali kept soaking it up, round after round, taking shot after shot, covering up and letting Foreman punch himself out of gas.

In the clinches he leans in and asks, “That all you got, George?”

In the eighth, Ali floored him and Foreman didn’t beat the count…

In the last week the entire crypto market has been performing its own version of the rope-a-dope, and covering up taking punches…

And now it’s primed to knock out its attackers and sceptics.

The first punch landed last week.

The CLARITY Act needed 60 Senate votes to move through the Senate… and it got 49.

Dead on arrival.

The second came the next day, when the US Federal Reserve lifted rates a quarter-point to 3.75% to 4%, its first hike since 2023.

Bitcoin fell as low as $74,944 on the CLARITY vote.

Yet, as I write it’s at $86,546, about 14% above where it closed that day and at its highest in eight months.

I expect by next week we’ll be back over $90,000.

This is where Bitcoin now turns and wins it all (again).

When was the first cryptocurrency-like digital money proposed?


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The SEC said “stuff you” and cracked on

Two days after CLARITY died, the SEC decided it was going to get on with business.

Its “Innovation Exemption” opens the door for tokenised US-listed shares to change hands in permissioned liquidity pools, the same automated trading design DeFi runs on.

It’s very much a framework to allow crypto platforms to innovate, grow, deliver growth to the US, and build out the next 1,000 years of global on-chain, digital finance.

It’s a significant and important step towards a future where every asset is tokenised.

Then on Tuesday, BlackRock, the world’s biggest asset manager, published a paper called “The Machine-Native Economy.”

It’s saying the thing that unlocks the full potential of crypto is AI… and vice-versa. An agentic economy on crypto infrastructure.

You don’t say…

Machines choose crypto

We’ve been telling you that for a long time now, but it’s nice to see the big players inTradFi cotton on to the inevitable.

The best bit is deep in BlackRock’s paper…

It ran simulations to see which money AI models would pick.

What did the machines choose?

Per BlackRock,

Model outputs across controlled simulations generally favored stablecoins for everyday payments and bitcoin for long-term value preservation.

The robots picked crypto. So would I.

AI agents need money a machine can hold and send for fractions of fractions of cents. The only thing that really works for that is crypto.

And this comes as the SEC is starting to put shares on-chain for those agents to buy, and Bitcoin to park their dormant capital.

Put it all together and I reckon you get a bull market bigger than any we’ve seen.

Crypto copped the two hardest hits Washington could throw at it in 48 hours, and Bitcoin is higher now than it’s been in months.

A platform has been set, and the direction from here is up. We’re just waiting for the hype and FOMO to kick in next.

Until next time,


Sam Volkering
Investment Director, Southbank Investment Research

PS AI agents choosing their own money is one thing. I’ve been using AI to make investment decisions of my own. My Hyperion system scans every tradeable stock across the UK and US markets and ranks them from worst to first.

It’s just found one with an Ignition Score of 89 out of 100. I reveal the ticker in the first 10 seconds here – grab a pen and get it on your watchlist.