August 27, 2026 4:15 pm

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Eighty.

Remember that number while reading today’s essay.

And I’ll explain why in a moment, but first…

Last Wednesday afternoon, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, Brian Armstrong from Coinbase (Nasdaq: COIN) was standing shoulder to shoulder with Vlad Tenev from Robinhood (Nasdaq: HOOD). Next to them were the Winklevoss twins from Gemini.

Behind them, the bosses of the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq, along with the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) chair and the CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission) chair.

At the front of them all, US President Donald Trump, telling the room he had ended the war on crypto once and for all. He was very self-congratulatory about how much he’d done for crypto.

Mmm. Ok.

To be fair, while a lot of promises have been made, some have actually been kept.

Four years ago, the government was suing most of those people in that room. Now they’re having a chinwag in the Oval Office.

I’m never the biggest fan of politics getting involved with an industry like crypto, but there has been a decisive change in attitude towards the whole industry, and this is a good thing.

I’ve been in this market since 2010, and the idea of the US President “bigging himself up” over what he’s done for crypto is quite the trajectory!

The regulator that stopped waiting

The reason for this crypto love-in at the White House was twofold.

The day prior, the SEC did something I also didn’t think would happen for some time, if ever.

It voted through a proposal called Regulation Crypto Assets.

It’s a start-up exemption allowing up to US$5 million to be raised over four years… a bigger route allowing up to US$75 million a year to be raised with financial disclosures filed… and a safe harbour that says a token stops being a security once the team has finished the work it promised.

In short, it sets parameters for ICOs (initial coin offerings).

That’s right, the ICO boom of 2017 is now legally and freely allowed to come back, with proper frameworks in place to weed out the shadiness.

And the statements coming from the SEC are… well… they’re just full of common sense!

Chair Paul Atkins called it the “minimum effective dose, maximum freedom to build, and durable clarity.” This is from the agency that was applying Operation Choke Point 2.0 to try to cut off the air supply to the whole industry just a couple of years back.

Astonishing stuff.

The corner has been turned

Back to that “eighty.”

Eighty is the current Fear & Greed Index score.

It’s 80 – extreme greed.

At the start of July, it was about 18, or extreme fear.

In February this year, it was eight.

Yep, just eight.

In the last 24 hours, Bitcoin went through US$80,000, up more than 25% on the week. Ethereum was back near US$2,500, up about 32%.

Solana took back US$100 for the first time since February, up about 35% in seven days.

And Zcash, the privacy coin everyone had written off, hit an eight-year high above US$880 as Grayscale’s spot ZEC ETF started trading on NYSE Arca under the ticker ZCSH.

Was it all Washington, though?

Yes.

And no.

The rally kicked off amid all this and the same day the Treasury doubled its long-end bond buybacks. That’s a way of saying the Treasury kind of turned the money printers back on again.

I saw a great quote: “Bitcoin has no top because the dollar has no bottom.”

That’s pretty much what’s playing out too.

From the very start of Bitcoin in 2009, through the 2010s and into the mid-2020s, the rules were stacked against us.

Now, in 2026, that’s changing for the better.

And all this comes as entire markets move towards tokenisation and the proliferation of stablecoins through the financial system gathers steam.

It’s a great time to be alive in crypto, and the next big bull market is going to be wilder than all the others that came before!

Until next time,

Sam Volkering
Investment Director, Southbank Investment Research