🎙️ Off Chain Weekly Recap – April 10, 2025

This week, Matt and Austin unpack one of the wildest weeks in markets this year:

🔹 Trump’s Tariff Tsunami: A 10% universal tariff turned into a tit-for-tat trade war with China, peaking at 125% tariffs on Chinese imports. China hit back hard — tariffs, blacklists, and export controls on rare earth minerals.

🔹 Global Fallout: Vietnam, India, Japan, and the EU rushed to the negotiating table. Some offered full tariff eliminations to avoid a full-blown trade war.

🔹 Apple, Inflation & $30K iPhones?: Concerns about Apple and other US companies absorbing the shock, but signs suggest they’re more resilient than during Trump’s first term.

🔹 Market Madness: Stocks nosedived early in the week, only to surge midweek after a partial tariff rollback. Crypto pumped. S&P saw its biggest 1-day gain since 2008. But uncertainty looms.

🔹 Currency Games: China strategically devalues the yuan to counter tariffs. US Treasury markets spooked. Is a dangerous feedback loop forming?

🔹 Outlook:

 * Short-term: More volatility, sideways action unless China escalates.
 * Mid-term: Q2/Q3 could be rough — all eyes on corporate earnings & the Fed.
 * Long-term: DCA and hold. Could look back at Q2 as a massive buying opportunity.

🛞 And yes — the G-Wagon is safe (for now). 🙃

It’s So Over; We Are So Back

In this week's episode we cover yesterday's Fed meeting and rate decision, discuss the macro outlook, dig into the pump.fun vs Raydium battle within Solana, and explain Strategy's recent STRF issuance.

The Fed is Dovish, While Strategy Remains Bullish

In this week's episode, we take a look at the state of the markets, as well as the recent announcements regarding the US Strategic Crypto Reserve.

The Crypto Strategic Reserve: What's Coming?

In this week's episode, we dig into this week's market volatility, looking at the impact of DeepSeek across global markets, yesterday's FOMC meeting, and the reasons behind the disproportionate sell off in alts and memes.

Buying opportunity or a reason to be cautious?

This week's episode is a bumper episode where we look back at our predictions from the start of 20245 and see how we performed. Plus, we make predictions for 2025 across the following topics:

 * What will be the highest price BTC hits in 2025?
 * What will be the highest price ETH hits in 2025?
 * How many rate cuts will the Fed make in 2025? And by how many bps will they cut (in total)?
 * Which area of crypto will get the most hype and attention/price action in 2025? And why?
 * Will inflation in the US remain sticky or will we get back to 2% in 2025?
 * What will the S&P 500 index peak at in 2025?
 * You have to pick one crypto asset (excluding BTC, ETH, or SOL) that you think will perform strongly from today to December 31, 2025. At the end of the year, we’ll see which of us picked the best gain.
 * You have to pick one publicly listed stock that you think will perform strongly from today to December 31, 2025. At the end of the year, we’ll see which of us picked the best gain.
 * What’s your contrarian prediction for 2025 (across any topic)?

2025 Predictions & 2024 Prediction Results

In this week's episode, we discuss the recent shift in approach from the Fed and how this has impacted the crypto markets.

The Fed Turns Hawkish: What's Next?

In today's episode, Matt looks at the contributing factors to Bitcoin's meteoric rise above 100k and shares his take on where we go from here. After this, he looks at the emerging winners across the wider crypto asset space and shares some thoughts on how to approach the next few weeks and months.

100k BTC: What's Next?

After a couple of months off, we're back! We dig into everything you've missed and share our thoughts on how you can play the next few months. Could this be the beginning of a golden era of crypto?

The Golden Bull

This is the second of a two-part series where Matt and Austin take a deep dive into central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). This episode focuses on the arguments for and against their use.

CBDCs: The [Dark] Future of Money (Part 2 of 2)

This is the first in a two-part series where Matt and Austin take a deep dive into central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). This episode focuses more on what CBDCs are, what they're capable of, and what their current rate of development progress is. Part two will go live next week where we dig more into the arguments for and against their use.

CBDCs: What's Coming and Why Should You Care? (Part 1 of 2)

We highlight the people, products, and protocols shaping the future of crypto, DeFi, and web3. Your hosts, Matthew Howells-Barby and Austin Knight, will take you on a journey of decrypting the various concepts related to blockchain and web3 technology, explaining them in a language that everyone can understand.

The Decrypting Crypto Podcast