Bitcoin and cryptoassets were only little changed this week, with BTC continuing to trade sideways within a fairly tight range. Despite this range bound trading, institutional investors and Bitcoin whales are demonstrating greater conviction in their purchases compared to periods when BTC neared its all-time highs in USD terms. Cryptoasset prices briefly rebounded on Thursday, in line with major equities, driven by cooler-than-expected US inflation data for June. The June CPI came in slightly lower than economists’ forecasts at 3.0% year-on-year (3.3% yoy for core CPI), reinforcing market expectations of a rate cut in September.
However, the ongoing weakness in Bitcoin, which was partly due to selling pressure from the German government, might be nearing an end. The German state of Saxony, which had seized 50,000 bitcoins from the film piracy website Movie2K, aggressively sold most of its holdings over the previous weeks and now has only about 6,150 BTC ($352 million) left to sell as of early Friday. Meanwhile, data from CryptoQuant indicated that BTC exchange reserves have slightly increased over the past week due to heightened short-term trading activity rather than government sales. Additionally, Bitcoin long-term holders are accumulating at a monthly growth rate of 6.35%, the fastest rate in over a year, with charts showing that as the bitcoin price dropped from a high of $71,000 to its current range between $58,000 and $59,000, whale accumulation has risen.
Meanwhile, US Bitcoin ETFs recorded five consecutive days of inflows, led by BlackRock, with a total net inflow of $15.5 billion since launching in January. CoinShares also noted a $441 million rebound in crypto investment inflows last week, partly driven by inflows into Solana products outside the US. Bitcoin’s correlation with the Nasdaq Composite and the S&P 500 has fallen to multi-month lows, with the 30-day Pearson correlation of bitcoin to the Nasdaq and S&P 500 at -0.84 and -0.82, respectively, representing lows not seen since November 2023. Despite the market downturn, the number of new addresses on the Bitcoin network has reached a two-month high, with a seven-day moving average recording over 317,000 new addresses on Friday, July 5, though this uptick has not led to higher transaction fees on the Bitcoin network.
Market Overview
The The global cryptoasset market capitalization currently amounts to roughly $2.23 trillion – up from $2.15 trillion last week, with bitcoin accounting for about 51%. Among the Top 30 cryptoassets by market cap, Shiba Inu (SHIB) outperformed, gaining about 19% over the week. The price of bitcoin (BTC) rose by 5.5% to $57,704 while the price of ether (ETH) increased by 5.8% to $3,100. The total value locked (TVL) in DeFi is sitting at $87.75 billion, with Ethereum (excluding Layer 2s) accounting for about 60% of TVL. Arbitrum One is currently the largest Layer 2 by value locked, accounting for 40% of the $39 billion in assets.
This Week’s Headlines
- Goldman Sachs to launch three tokenization projects by end of year, Fortune reports
- Donald Trump to speak at Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville later this month
- VanEck, BlackRock and others file amended registration statements for spot Ethereum ETFs as deadline closes in
- US House fails to meet threshold to override Biden’s veto of a resolution to overturn SAB 121
- SEC drops its investigation into BUSD stablecoin following probe into Paxos
- BitMEX pleads guilty to violating the Bank Secrecy Act in anti-money laundering case
- Jump Trading drags FTX estate to court over $264 million Serum token loan
- Vitalik Buterin pushes for the Ethereum network to be more prepared in the case of a 51% attack
- BlackRock’s tokenized BUIDL fund surpasses $500 million in market value
- MicroStrategy (MSTR) announces 10-for-1 stock split
Notable Deals and Fundraising
- Blockchain payment network Partior – backed by JPMorgan, DBS and Standard Chartered – raises $60 million Series B
- Algorithmic crypto trading platform Tread.fi raises $3.5 million in a pre-seed funding round
- On-chain credit and yield platform Idle raises $2.4 million in total strategic funding
- Hybrid Layer 2 project BOB raises $1.6 million from Ledger Cathay Fund and angel investors
- Crypto VC Hypersphere opens $130 million liquid fund, seeks $75 million for new VC fund
- Morgan Creek Digital to raise up to $500 million for new Web3 venture capital fund
- DeFi Technologies to acquire crypto liquidity provider Stillman Digital in all-stock deal
