Bitcoin price action, macro indicators, diesel prices, Iran tensions, and Robinhood memecoins
A solo Digital Asset News episode covering macro economic signals, geopolitical risk, memecoin speculation, and crypto security scams.
Summary
The host, Rob of Digital Asset News, covers a range of topics affecting Bitcoin and the broader crypto market. He opens with the Friday jobs report, which came in at 162,000 new jobs — nearly triple the forecast of 53,000 — and explains why strong employment data is being read as potentially bad news for markets, as it raises the likelihood of a Federal Reserve rate hike. He then pivots to record diesel prices and breaking news of a US military strike on Iranian oil tankers, flagging both as inflationary risks. On the bullish side, he highlights the explosive growth of real-world assets traded on crypto rails, now approaching $778 billion in quarterly volume. He also covers Robinhood's memecoin ecosystem, specifically the Ponds token and a new Ponds Equities token that distributes tokenized stocks to holders. The episode closes with an extended Q&A covering crypto security scams, the Trezor and Coinbase data breaches, and how to use AI tools to investigate potential class action lawsuits.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Friday Jobs Report and Fed Rate Hike Fears
Rob: Bitcoin is staying pretty steady as we move across the continuum, and it's an interesting prospect. As of Friday, we took a look at some macro effects. There was good news which turned out to be bad news for the market. We'll take a look at what that is, and then also be prepared for the next macro indicators coming as they pertain to the Federal Reserve and whether or not they decide to do a rate hike. There's also some negative stuff, but there's also a big bunch of positive around here. And I have to tell you, things are starting to feel a little bit higher, especially when we take a look at — and this is going to sound weird — Robinhood memecoins. So let's just break into it.
Yesterday, on Friday, the jobs report came out — the employment report — and we crushed it. It was a massive win for the economy itself. The forecast of what we thought it was going to be was 53,000. The previous was negative 23,000. And what came in was roughly a tripling of expectations at 162,000. Now because of that, people are speculating that as jobs and employment start to kick up, that is just too much growth too fast, and we have too much inflation — too much money in circulation, which, let's be honest, we do. And because of that, there's going to be a Fed chair Powell on the 16th saying, "You know what, we're going to have to have a little rate hike." Because of that, people were flipping out. But that's not the big thing.
Key Macro Indicators for the Coming Week
I think Powell has made it very clear that he wants to take a look at data that is present and current, and not just some of the things that are a little bit retrospective. So moving forward into the coming week, what do we have? We've got consumer credit, the index, small business optimism — it was 99 before, which sounds pretty good. We'll take a look at the jobless claims, which I find interesting because the previous was 26,000 and the expectation is there's going to be more jobless claims at 28,000, which isn't a big deal. We'll see where it comes through.
But the big one is of course the Producer Price Index — PPI — which is a precursor to the Consumer Price Index, or CPI. Producers have to pay so much, then they pass that off to the consumer. The consumer says, "Hey, I'm going to have to buy these things." That's what we call inflation. And because of that, it's going to give us a pretty reasonable expectation of where the inflation rate is going. That's big news for Powell. So as of next week, if the PPI comes in super hot — they're looking at an increase of 0.4% after essentially nothing the previous period — if we go above that 0.4%, and the PPI year-over-year percentage comes out the same day, then we can say to ourselves, okay, rate hikes might be on the table. And if that's the case, maybe a little bit of movement in what you want to do for your portfolio.
S&P 500 and Bitcoin React to Jobs Data
So what happened on Friday? The S&P 500 over the past five days was up and up and up, hitting all-time highs, and then it took a little bit of a tumble. Again, it's a weird thing, but sometimes good news is bad news for the market. And of course, the market is not the economy — that's not how it works. But we took a little tumble on September 4th after the numbers came out: 7,750 dropping to 7,710. In the last 24 hours, markets are closed, and we're looking at 38 basis points — not even a percentage. That's how it is.
Bitcoin also took a little bit of a dive. We can see on the chart — and I'm just going to guess this is when the report came out — there it goes: a nice little drop from 81,000 down to 78,000. But this is stuff that we really dive into and look at. In the grand scheme of things, it's not a big deal, but it kind of helps us determine where we are going in the long term.
Record Diesel Prices and the Inflation Ripple Effect
We have all that, but I think if we expand out and see where we're at as far as the economy — because Powell has made it very clear that the Fed has a dual mandate: employment and inflation — we have to look towards gas and diesel and what's going on in Iran.
I don't know if you realize this, maybe you have at the pump, but regular gas is becoming quite expensive. But we had an all-time high for diesel. Take a listen to this:
News Clip: "But it is diesel that everyone is watching after the national average hit a record $5.85 today. Futures were down on the day, so perhaps we'll see a bit of a break in the march higher, but the spread between crude and diesel is growing as Russia extends its ban on diesel exports, while product tanker transits through the Strait of Hormuz have not picked up significantly. Tom Kloza from Gulf Oil noting that while total US refinery runs are above last year, the US is actually producing 127,000 barrels per day less distillate than in 2025, thanks to an abundance of lighter and sweeter crudes rather than more medium and heavy grades. Looking across the country, a number of states are seeing record diesel prices today, including Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Texas. That's problematic as the harvest season gets underway."
And that's the big thing, because you have to understand it's not just about us — it's not about retail having to fill up our gas tanks. Diesel for semis, big trucks, flatbeds — they're going to use that to move things around the entire country, and of course across the world as well. If shipping costs go up, where does that leave the actual consumer product? If producers have to pay for that to be delivered, they're going to pass that on to us. And because of that, that's why everybody's taking a look at this, because that is then inflation.
US Military Strikes Iranian Oil Tankers
So we just have all-time highs for diesel, especially looking back at 2022 and before. This is okay as long as everything's going well in Iran and we don't have any issues — which I don't think much is going on. Just kidding.
Two hours ago: US military just destroyed three Iranian oil tankers after Iran fired ballistic missiles at two US Navy warships. A US aircraft carrier and a guided missile destroyer evaded the attacks — good. With no American personnel harmed — even better, that's the most important part. And they wiped out three ships. CENTCOM says the tankers funded a multibillion-dollar shadow network for the IRGC and its proxies.
We'll see how the traditional markets respond to that on Monday, but I don't know if we're just becoming numb to these types of things moving back and forth. I'm just going to guess this probably isn't good for talks. Let me know what you think in the comments section.
Fed Watch Tool and Rate Hike Probability
And then, of course, leading all the way up to this, the big question is: are we going to raise rates? We looked at the Fed Watch tool. Just last week it was 66% to 34%. Now we're at 59.4% to 40%. We'll see where things go, but it really does come down to what Powell wants to do. He said at Jackson Hole he had pretty much a hawkish stance. So we'll see where it goes.
I expect tumbles. And hey, if we get tumbles, that means the price of Bitcoin goes where? Down. That means the risk levels go where? Down. That means Rob buys how much more? So, as long as we're taking a look at this, maybe we can get below the 150-week moving average, which is sitting right around 77,000–78,000. That'd be something. And then, of course, as a reminder, the best time was below the 200-week moving average. Those were sweet days. Remember those days? 64,000, 62,000, 58,000.
So here's a reminder: if something goes wrong and World War III breaks out, do not shirk away from your responsibilities of buying in the bear market. I can't give you financial advice — not a financial adviser — but buying below the 200-week moving average has been pretty darn good for me and you. Just throwing it out there. Let me know what you're going to do in the comments section.
Real-World Assets on Crypto Rails Approaching $1 Trillion
The thesis remains strong. As long as America keeps printing money — which we can see we're very good at — and as long as we have massive debt because we are debasing the dollar, that means it is more important to buy those assets and hold on to them because good things are coming. And that's not just assets like precious metals and real estate and of course Bitcoin, but it's also assets like equities.
Some good news here. This is from Coin Bureau. Wall Street is making massive inroads into real-world assets and using crypto rails for equities. Take a look at this — the volume of stock and commodity perps traded on crypto exchanges by quarter in USD. As far as real-world assets go, these are moving at an astronomical rate. Q1 2025 was only $30 billion. Now we're almost at a trillion. Let me do some quick math here: $778 billion. Yeah, almost a trillion. We will take this win as we start to move things on-chain. Hopefully the SEC and the CFTC can keep pushing forward. This is a move in the right direction. I like to see these things. It makes things quite bullish.
Robinhood Memecoins and the FOMO Cycle
And that will lead me on to the crazy bullishness that's out there: Robinhood chain memecoins. And these are ridiculous — let's just be honest. They're goofy. They're ridiculous. But let me tell you, it's fun and you can't deny that. Some people look at this and go, "I would never get into that because that's just gambling." Yeah, I know. It's exactly why we do it. Have you ever watched a football game? And have you ever watched a different football game where you bet some money on it? You are way more into that game.
This is not gambling advice, obviously, but I'm just going to tell you: there's going to be a lot of people making a lot of money on these memecoins. On the flip side of that, there's going to be even more people losing a boatload of money. That's pretty much how it goes. I'm not telling you what to do. I'm just saying that if you want to gamble a bit, throw like 20 bucks at it, maybe $100 or whatever you want to do.
And look at these rates — it's crazy. The people that are on Robinhood are going to learn about memecoins and they're going to think they're the greatest investors of all time, just like all memecoin investors do. And at some point it will go down. But before it goes down — since you know it's going to go down, and you know this isn't the future of finance, and you know it's not like that guy who said, "Yeah, this is the best thing of all, this is where things are actually going, this is where crypto should be, this is the real utility" — that was dumb. This is just gambling, and as long as we know it, nothing wrong with that.
The 30-day, 7-day, and 24-hour numbers are pretty good. But the thing that gets me is this: if you want to take a look at why I think altcoins are going to rip, it's because of two reasons — speculation and a pinch of utility. We talk about this all the time.
Ponds Token: Robinhood's Version of Pump.fun
Ponds is that pinch of utility. Ponds is essentially the Pump.fun of Robinhood memecoins. That's how you have to think about it. Pump.fun was available for Solana — you were able to put a bunch of memes on it, make your own, and it was a big thing. Now Robinhood players are figuring out the same thing, but there's a catch.
With Ponds, you can see here over the last month or so — wow. August 28th it was 13 cents. And then today, roughly a week later, it's almost at a dollar and it's in the top 100. Is that going to happen again? Probably not. But I will say this: everybody thinks things are over. They also said the same thing was over with all these other memecoins and they still ripped. Does that mean it's a guarantee? No.
But I will tell you, you know who did a good job of this? Ivan on Tech and his Bull Mania line. Take a look at this for Ponds on the daily — they even called it six days and 18 hours ago, the exact time this thing ripped. I've got to start paying attention to this. It's up over 300%. Not too bad.
Ponds — well, it's just like Pump.fun. The same thing. You can create your own stuff and it's pretty great. But the catch is this: there's something that just came out recently called Ponds Equities.
Ponds Equities: Tokenized Stocks via Memecoin
Essentially, Ponds Equities is not a memecoin — it's just a coin on Polygon, or excuse me, the Robinhood chain. And when you hold this token, it gives you tokenized equities. It puts into your wallet tokenized Apple stock, tokenized Nvidia stock, tokenized Google stock. All you've got to do is hold Ponds Equities.
Now, this just came out and you can't even buy it on exchanges — it's only on DEXs. That means it's super risky. But I'm just telling you right now, I bought some Ponds, and I'm going to buy some of this. It ain't much — let's say like 50 bucks, 100 bucks, something like that. Something to watch and see if I can double it, just for the giggles. But it's looking quite interesting how they're actually doing this and how it relates to the equities being used on these specific rails. They're saying, "Grab a memecoin and we'll even give you some tokenized equities just for your troubles." I'll take that. It's better than what some of my banks do.
There's the contract address. And then also, I'm going to show you something that's going to be super risky. This is from an insider — I can't tell you who it is, and I'm not even going to talk about it. I just linked this website, hatchfi.io, and how they're burning 80% of their supply and how it's going to launch on Monday. Look at the website, decide for yourself.
Q&A: Finding the Right Ponds Contract Address
Now let's get into a little Q&A and answer all your questions to the best of my abilities.
Jeff says, "If Ponds is on Phantom, it's not the Ponds you're looking for." So yeah — Ponds on Phantom would be the Phantom wallet if you're looking for Solana. The real one is on the Robinhood chain. Ponds is number 93 on the list.
And here's a good practice and rule of thumb: when you're buying this — I'm not telling you to buy it — but if you're using a decentralized exchange or a wallet that can connect like Uniswap, this contract address is the correct one. Because if you type in "Ponds," you'll get 30 versions of Ponds and 29 of them are of course scams. So if you just copy this contract address and do a search by contract, you'll get the right one as opposed to getting scammed. And again, don't put your life savings into this unless you are insane. Put like 10 bucks and just see what happens.
Yeah, you need ETH to move stuff — I found that out. I had forgotten about that. I was like, "Wow, I've got to buy ETH." Good news is the transaction fees are quite low because we're in a bear market and nobody seems to really want to do much. Although it is interesting how well Ponds and some of these different memecoins have done.
Pepe in a Roth IRA: Tax-Free Memecoin Gains
Rob, do you hold Pepecoin? Does that coin have any utility?
So what I did was I bought some memecoins and I put them in my Roth IRA. Just stick with me. With the Roth IRA, it is your retirement account. The great thing about your retirement account — especially in the States, depending on where you're at; I don't know every country's jurisdiction and legalities of retirement accounts — but in the United States, if you have a Roth IRA and you want to trade within your Roth IRA, there's no capital gains tax. So I bought some Pepe, and I did not sell at the all-time high because I'm just not that good. But I made a little bit of profit and I rolled that into gold and Bitcoin within my iTrustCapital Roth IRA. So I don't have any more of that. It probably will go up at some point, but you can only win so much. If you're up like 20%, hey, fantastic — be happy, as opposed to losing everything like those poor people back in the days of Luna and FTX and stuff like that.
Technical Analysis: Golden Cross on the CME
Blue Mountain says the super trend indicator flipped green on the weekly for the CME. We are close to the golden cross on the daily, I think. Yeah — the 50-day moving average is supposed to be crossing over the 150, and that's like the golden cross. I'm not a TA guy; I just saw it in passing. I'm sure there'd be a lot of happy people out there.
Trezor Data Breach and Physical Mail Scams
Blue Mountain says, "I never moved any Bitcoin to my Trezor. I do use a Ledger though." Yeah, that was a sad story about Trezor. They had their data leaks from 2020–2021, and I want to say thousands of customers got their name, address, and social security number leaked to hackers.
People say, "Well, it's okay, it's not a big deal." But the problem is, if you have that information, hackers can very easily profile you and say, "Well, this person lives in zip code 86058, which is a very wealthy and influential zip code. The average annual income there is $350,000. I bet this guy's got some money. Maybe we should wrench attack him. And he ordered a Trezor, so he probably has some crypto. That's even better. We can just rip him off, move it into some wallets, go through a mixer, and no one will ever know." You would think as smoothly as I just explained that I'd done it myself, but no — I just hear the stories. It's very awful.
Someone says: "Hey Rob, I got a highly suspect letter in the mail allegedly from Trezor. It says my wallet may be compromised and I need to scan it — there's a QR code in the letter to migrate my wallet." Yes, I'm glad you're here. Every single one of those is a scam.
Somebody else sent me an email with official-looking IRS letterhead which says, "Hey, you owe us some back taxes. Use this QR code where you can get discounts and we can discuss your case — just scan this and we'll take care of it." He sent me the email. I said, "No, that is a definite scam."
Another thing you can do if you're ever curious — like, maybe this is the IRS, they're pretty sneaky, maybe they have something on me — you just look up the actual IRS, or you look up Kraken's phone number, or you look up Kraken's real website, and go to the source and say, "Hey IRS, did you contact me because I have some kind of back taxes owed?" And they'll say, "No, we did not." So just ignore that. Or they'll say, "Yeah, that was us." But whatever it is, with the QR codes, it's all a bunch of scams.
And if you're ever curious about a link that's in an email — you don't want to go to the source, you just want to check it — copy the link and put it into your favorite AI agent, whether that be Grok or ChatGPT or my personal favorite, Claude, and stick it in there and go, "Hey, where does this go? Is this a malicious website and should I be concerned?" They'll do all the investigation for you. Nine times out of ten, every time I've done it, it's always a scam. And usually those scams come to me like, "Hey, we'd like to partner with you, Dan." I'm like, "Well, first of all, you haven't watched my show." But I'll just run it through Claude and see what it says, and it's always the same thing: that's trash, don't go there.
Using Claude AI to Find Crypto Data Breach Lawsuits
Somebody had a really good comment. They said, "As time goes on, why are we not suing these companies that screw up?" That's a good question. We could do a class action lawsuit against all these different places, especially the ones that have leaked our data, because they should be better at it. It's not like the South Park meme where they're like, "We're sorry. So sorry that happened to you." And you go, "Oh, really? You're sorry? We're all going to sue you. So now you're going to be sorry and you're going to be broke." I was thinking about that — that's not a bad idea. The next round we should think about doing that.
Let me just go to Claude real quick and share my screen. Let me throw this in:
"Claude, I have a quick question. Let's say we have an issue where we have a bunch of organizations — crypto exchanges, cold storage devices — and our data gets leaked. Is there any class action lawsuit going on currently that I could join, to put my name on the list to hopefully get paid for these companies losing my personal data and putting me and my family at risk?"
And I've got to tell you, I don't know why people don't use AI a little bit more. It's searching the web now — Coinbase 2020 data breach class action lawsuit, how to join the claim. This ought to be good. And I also like the fact that Claude pretty much dissects and takes a look at the stuff that I don't have time to. It's great because I don't want to go through all the Google ads and a bad assessment.
There we go. Short version: yes, there are active cases, but putting your name on a list to get paid isn't quite how it works. Here's the real picture: if your data was breached, you're usually automatically part of the class — you don't opt in up front. The money comes later if there's a settlement. Signing up with a law firm now mainly gets you on their notification list.
And this is a good point: never pay anyone to join. Legit class counsel works on contingency. Sites demanding a fee, your seed phrase, or a verification deposit are scams — and breach victims get targeted with exactly those.
Crypto-specific: Coinbase. We should all be a part of that. May 2025 breach — I remember this one. Overseas customer service support for Coinbase were bribed by hackers and scammers to give them personal information. They stole names, addresses, partial social security numbers, bank information, and transaction history. That would suck if they're like, "Hey, guess what — Rob here just bought 10 Bitcoin yesterday, and here's his address."
Consolidated complaint filed January 2026. Coinbase has moved to compel arbitration — that's the user agreement arbitration clause. Brief through spring 2026 and still pending. If that motion wins, this becomes thousands of individual arbitrations instead of one class, which is why firms are actively signing people up. If you got a Coinbase breach notice, register with one of the firms. I will go so far as to say: if you've used Coinbase, I would reach out to Coinbase and go, "Hey, I know there's a lawsuit. Am I part of that?" And if they say yes, you say, "Okay, now I'm doubly angry because you didn't send me a letter."
Ledger's got one — a $500 million class action was just filed August 27th, 2026, Kim versus Ledger, over the 2020 e-commerce database leak plus later incidents.
There are also non-crypto ones sweeping a lot of people: Comcast Xfinity, AMC, American Income Life. And this is the beauty of using Claude and AI — it'll tell you what to do, give you real legitimate links, and you can go from there. The big reminders: don't sign up for anything that asks for fees, don't give any seed phrases, and don't give any wallet addresses to verify stuff — they're just scamming you.
Diversifying Crypto Storage
JC says, "Everyone used the ETF. These self-custody solutions are not it. How many examples do we need?" And it's a good question. We don't need many examples — we have plenty. This is why only the paranoid will survive. And it's why I'm always talking and preaching and begging you guys to diversify your storage. If you're going to diversify your investments, why can't you diversify storage? A little iTrustCapital here, a little Roth IRA there, a little ETF this way, a little Kraken, a Ledger, an Unchained — everything else. Anyhow.