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Bailey's Nakamoto Sells Bitcoin at 40% Loss as Treasury Firms Retreat

Bailey's Nakamoto Sells Bitcoin at 40% Loss as Treasury Firms Retreat

Plus: 🏛️ Labor Dept. proposes opening $10T in 401(k)s to crypto ⛏️ Senate unveils 'Mined in America' bill for miners 🏗️ Aave V4 goes live targeting real-world credit

Juan Aranovich
March 31, 2026

Hi! In today’s edition:

📉 Nakamoto Holdings sold 284 BTC for $20 million at 40% below its average cost, as corporate bitcoin buying collapses 99% from last year's peak
🏛️ The Labor Department proposed a rule that would create a safe harbor for adding crypto to 401(k) plans, potentially opening $10.1 trillion in retirement savings
⛏️ Sens. Lummis and Cassidy introduced the Mined in America Act, creating a federal certification program for bitcoin miners and codifying Trump's Strategic Bitcoin Reserve
🏗️ Aave launched V4 on Ethereum with a hub-and-spoke architecture targeting institutional borrowers and real-world credit markets

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Bailey's Nakamoto Sells Bitcoin at 40% Loss as Treasury Firms Retreat

Nakamoto Holdings, the bitcoin treasury company founded by David Bailey, sold 284 BTC for $20 million in March at an average price of roughly $70,422, well below its average acquisition cost of $118,171 per coin. The proceeds will fund operations after Nakamoto absorbed crypto media firm BTC Inc. and investment manager UTXO Management in February.

The sale is a symptom of a broader retreat. Corporate bitcoin buyers outside of Strategy purchased just 1,000 BTC over the past 30 days, a 99% collapse from the August 2025 peak, according to CryptoQuant. Even Strategy paused its weekly purchases last week for the first time in over a year.

Nakamoto reported a $52.2 million net loss for 2025 and carries a $210 million USDT loan from Kraken at 8% interest, secured by most of its bitcoin. Its stock closed at $0.21, down 99% from its May 2025 high.

U.S. Proposes Opening $10 Trillion in 401(k) Savings to Crypto

The Labor Department proposed a rule on Monday that would give retirement plan fiduciaries a legal safe harbor for adding crypto and other alternative assets to 401(k) menus. The move carries out President Trump's August executive order and could channel a portion of the $10.1 trillion held in American 401(k) accounts into digital assets for the first time.

The numbers underscore how untapped this market remains. Only 4% of defined contribution plans currently offer any alternative investments, and just 0.1% of assets are allocated to them. Under the proposed framework, fiduciaries who document a review covering fees, liquidity, and risk would receive legal protection when offering crypto-linked funds.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren warned the rule could expose workers to losses. Supporters argue it simply levels the playing field with investments already available in taxable accounts.

Senate Unveils 'Mined in America' Bill to Back Bitcoin Miners and Lock In Trump's Reserve

Sens. Cynthia Lummis and Bill Cassidy introduced the Mined in America Act on Monday, the clearest signal yet that Washington wants to treat Bitcoin mining as a strategic industry. The bill would create a voluntary Commerce Department certification program for miners, giving certified operations access to federal energy and rural development programs.

The catch: certified facilities must phase out mining hardware built by companies tied to China and Russia. That's a tall order given that Chinese-made machines power an estimated 97% of Bitcoin's global hash rate, according to the Satoshi Action Fund, which helped draft the bill. The legislation echoes the CHIPS Act playbook of using federal incentives to onshore critical supply chains.

The bill also codifies Trump's Strategic Bitcoin Reserve executive order into law, directing the Treasury to hold seized Bitcoin rather than liquidate it.

Aave V4 Launches on Ethereum With Eyes on Wall Street

Aave rolled out V4 on Ethereum mainnet on Sunday, the protocol's most ambitious upgrade since its 2021 rewrite. The new "hub-and-spoke" architecture replaces V3's single-pool model with three liquidity hubs (Prime, Core, and Plus), each feeding credit lines into separate lending markets called spokes. Launch partners include Lido, EtherFi, Ethena, and Lombard.

The goal is real-world credit. CEO Stani Kulechov said Aave wants to channel DeFi liquidity "back into the real economy," targeting institutional borrowers, structured lending, and tokenized asset-backed credit. The protocol already controls roughly 60% of the DeFi lending market and has processed over $1 trillion in cumulative loans.

The timing is complicated. BGD Labs exits April 1 and the Aave Chan Initiative is winding down, both citing governance clashes with Aave Labs over a $51 million V4 budget request.

Today on Unchained on Air

At 12pm ET on DEX in the City, Jessi Brooks, and Vy Le are joined by Ryne Miller, partner at Morrison Foerster, to unpack a major regulatory pivot at the CFTC and SEC, rising scrutiny around prediction markets, the push toward private blockchain infrastructure, and how new legal theories around platform liability could extend to DeFi design itself.

Then at 1pm ET on Unchained, Laura Shin speaks with Alex Pruden of Project Eleven about a new quantum computing breakthrough that could accelerate timelines for breaking modern cryptography — and what that means for crypto if post-quantum migration lags behind.

Join us on X, YouTube or PumpFun.

❓ U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal questioned whether the SEC gave preferential treatment to crypto firms linked to Donald Trump, demanding records after the agency dropped fraud charges against Tron founder Justin Sun and raising concerns about internal interference and a sudden leadership exit in enforcement.
🚫 KuCoin’s parent company Peken Global was permanently barred from serving U.S. users by a federal court, following a prior $297 million criminal case, with the new order imposing a $500,000 fine and turning its temporary exit from the U.S. into an indefinite shutdown unless it fully registers with regulators.
🗳️ A new crypto-focused political group, the Blockchain Leadership Fund, launched with backing from firms like Anchorage Digital and Chainlink Labs, aiming to fund pro-crypto candidates in the 2026 U.S. elections as industry lobbying power continues to grow.
📱 Binance is testing a prediction market feature inside its wallet app through a partnership with Predict.Fun, a BNB Chain-based protocol, allowing users to bet on real-world events like elections or sports via separate accounts, as the exchange expands into the fast-growing “event trading” space.
🔒 The Ethereum Foundation added over 20,000 ETH (about $42 million) to its staking program, continuing its plan to generate passive income from its treasury holdings to fund research and ecosystem development, even as staking yields declined to around 2.7%.
🧾 Strive and Tuttle Capital filed for a new ETF that invests in yield-paying preferred stocks from bitcoin treasury companies like Strategy, offering investors indirect crypto exposure through high-dividend financial instruments rather than holding bitcoin itself.

₿ Square, the payments company founded by Jack Dorsey, began automatically enabling bitcoin payments for millions of U.S. businesses, instantly converting BTC into dollars at checkout to remove volatility risk and make crypto payments seamless for everyday commerce.

📈 Keyrock, a Belgium-based crypto market-making and trading firm that connects traditional finance with digital assets, reached a $1.1 billion valuation after a Series C round led by Standard Chartered’s venture arm, with funds aimed at expanding services, strengthening its balance sheet, and pursuing acquisitions.
💧 Midas, a startup that turns traditional investment strategies into blockchain-based tokens, raised $50 million to fix a key issue where investors can’t quickly withdraw funds, building a system that uses pre-funded liquidity to enable instant exits instead of waiting days for redemptions.
🤖 Bitdeer, a bitcoin mining company pivoting into AI infrastructure, signed a deal to build Norway’s largest AI data center to support Nvidia’s next-generation chips, reflecting how miners are shifting toward AI as crypto mining becomes less profitable.
🐋 BitMine aggressively bought 71,179 ETH (around $143 million), marking its largest purchase of 2026, standing out as the only major corporate buyer still accumulating crypto while others paused amid market weakness.

Enter Bitcoin Capital Markets