Happy Friday everyone! After a brutal month, the week is ending with a plot twist: peace headlines, a relief rally, and one of the biggest difficulty adjustments in Bitcoin's history queued up for tomorrow. Let's get into it.
1. Trump says the war is over and markets are buying it (again)
President Trump claimed Thursday that the war in Iran has ended and that a "great settlement" could be signed within days, possibly this weekend. Oil dropped roughly 3% on the news, and everything from stocks to silver rallied. Bitcoin opened Friday at $63,553, up 3.4%. The caveat: peace has been declared "close" dozens of times over the past month without a signed deal.
This war has been the single biggest weight on Bitcoin's price over the past 30 days, almost entirely on war-driven risk-off selling and the energy-price inflation that killed rate-cut hopes. If a deal actually gets signed, the two forces that have been crushing Bitcoin (geopolitical fear and a hawkish Fed) both start to unwind, and there's meaningful room to claw back losses. If it falls apart again, and it has, repeatedl, expect Friday's rally to be handed right back.
2. The first Bitcoin-backed Fannie Mae mortgage just closed
A couple in Ann Arbor, Michigan became the first Americans to close a government-guaranteed conventional mortgage using Bitcoin as collateral, via lender Better and Coinbase. The structure: a standard Fannie Mae mortgage plus a second lien backed by pledged BTC worth 250% of the down payment.
Two things. First, for holders: you can now buy a house without selling your coins which means no capital gains tax event and no giving up future upside. That makes long-term holding dramatically more practical for the biggest purchase most people ever make. Second, and bigger: Fannie Mae guarantees roughly a quarter of US residential mortgages. When the most conservative, most regulated corner of American finance starts accepting Bitcoin as collateral, the "it's not a real asset" argument gets harder to make and every other lender now has a template to copy. Expect this product to spread.
3. Mining difficulty is about to post one of its biggest drops ever
Tomorrow (June 13, block 953,568), Bitcoin's mining difficulty is expected to fall roughly 10.3% making it the 11th largest downward adjustment in the network's history, per Galaxy Research. The month's price slide squeezed miner margins until higher-cost operations switched their machines off, and hashrate fell with them. It's the second big drop this year after February's 11.16%.
Short term, this is the network's pain showing up on-chain: when miners capitulate, it usually means the weakest hands in the industry are being washed out, which has historically clustered near price bottoms (2020's crash, 2021's China ban). More fundamentally, it's the protocol working exactly as designed. Difficulty drops, surviving miners instantly become more profitable, and blocks keep arriving every ~10 minutes with zero human intervention.
4. The Fed meets next week with no good options
The FOMC gathers June 16–17 with rates parked at 3.50%–3.75%. At its last meeting the Fed called inflation "elevated, in part reflecting the recent increase in global energy prices" and flagged the Middle East as a major source of uncertainty. The committee is visibly split. One member dissented in favor of a cut while three others opposed even hinting at easing. Markets overwhelmingly expect a hold.
Bitcoin has traded for the past month like what it currently is in institutional portfolios: a risk asset that suffers when money stays tight. War-driven energy inflation means the Fed can't cut, higher-for-longer yields make bonds more attractive than non-yielding assets, and that squeeze has been draining Bitcoin ETF flows for weeks. The flip side: the moment the Fed signals easing, whether because peace holds and energy prices fall, or because the economy cracks, that headwind becomes a tailwind. Next week's statement language matters more than the (foregone) rate decision itself.
5. Bitcoin Weekly Concept: Wars Are Inflationary. Bitcoin Can't Be
There's a pattern stretching from Rome to right now: wars are rarely paid for honestly. Raising taxes to fund a conflict is politically painful, so governments print instead. Rome debased the denarius, the Union issued greenbacks, and Nixon closed the gold window in 1971 partly under the weight of Vietnam-era spending.
The inflation that follows is a hidden war tax, quietly paid by everyone holding the currency. This week was the pattern in miniature: conflict in the Gulf, energy prices surging, the Fed admitting inflation is "elevated." Bitcoin's answer is structural, not rhetorical. Its supply is capped at 21 million, enforced by every node on the network. There is no committee that can vote to expand it for an emergency, however justified. That doesn't make Bitcoin immune to wartime volatility (this month proved otherwise). But it's the only major monetary asset whose supply cannot be conscripted, which is precisely why people keep coming back to it when the printers warm up.
That's the week. If the peace deal holds, next Friday gets interesting.
Stay humble, stack sats.
Stephan