The cryptocurrency market experienced a significant selloff at the start of the week, resulting in $270 million in liquidations of leveraged positions. BTC dropped to $66k on Tuesday, briefly reclaimed $70k, but fell again to $66.5k on Thursday. Bitcoin dominance, the market cap of BTC as a proportion of the total cryptoasset market cap, reached a 3-month high of over 52% this week due to weakness in ETH and altcoins. On a positive note, SEC chair Gary Gensler mentioned that an Ethereum ETF could be approved this summer, while “individual issuers are still working through the registration process.”
Bitcoin experienced a brief rebound this week following lower-than-expected inflation data. The US Consumer Price Index (CPI) remained unchanged in May, surpassing economist forecasts for a 0.1% increase and down from 0.3% in April. Year-over-year, CPI rose by 3.3%, compared to expectations and last month’s reading of 3.4%. Earlier this year, traders expected five to six 25 basis points (i.e. 0.25%) cuts in 2024 by the end of December. However, this expectation has decreased to only one or two cuts, with the first not anticipated until September, as indicated by the CME FedWatch Tool following today’s CPI report.
Meanwhile, the 19-day streak of net inflows for US-listed spot Bitcoin ETFs ended on Monday with a combined $65 million in net outflows. By Thursday, net outflows had accelerated to $564 million, driven by over $100 million in outflows from Fidelity’s ETF on Thursday. Additionally, data from CryptoQuant shows that Bitcoin’s price was under pressure from Bitcoin miners ramping up sales in June. This was reflected in higher activity on OTC desks and transfers from mining pools to exchanges like Binance. For instance, publicly traded bitcoin miners such as Marathon Digital sold 1,400 BTC in June compared to 390 BTC in May
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Market Overview
The global cryptoasset market capitalization currently amounts to roughly $2.55 trillion – down from $2.79 trillion last week, with bitcoin accounting for about 52%. Among the Top 30 cryptoassets by market cap, Toncoin (TON) outperformed, gaining about 6.3% over the week. The price of bitcoin (BTC) fell by 6.2% to $66,974 while the price of ether (ETH) decreased by 8.5% to $3,488 . The total value locked (TVL) in DeFi is sitting at almost $110 billion, with Ethereum (excluding Layer 2s) accounting for about 61% of TVL. Arbitrum One is currently the largest Layer 2 by value locked, accounting for 40.5% of the $48 billion in assets.
This Week’s Headlines
- Ether ETFs should be fully approved by September, SEC Chair Gensler says
- Biden campaign in talks to accept crypto donations through Coinbase Commerce, despite hostile stance
- Bitcoin mining stocks rise as Trump calls mining “last line of defense” against CBDC
- Terraform Labs to dissolve, CEO asks community to take over following $4.47 billion SEC settlement
- Curve Finance founder gets liquidated for $140 million amid sharp drop in CRV token price
- Stablecoin issuer Paxos lays off 20% of staff despite solid financial position
- MetaMask launches pooled staking for Ethereum, excluding US and UK users
- Number of Ethereum NFT traders falls below 4,000 for first time since June 2021
Notable Deals and Fundraising
- Paradigm raises $850 million for its third fund dedicated to investing in early-stage startups
- Bitfarms tries to block Riot Platforms hostile takeover with “poison pill” approach
- Robinhood set to acquire crypto exchange Bitstamp in potential $200 million deal
- Zero-knowledge cryptography firm Nexus Labs closes $25 million Series A round to scale verifiable computation
- Layer3 raises $15 million Series A ahead of token launch and airdrop
- Solana-based multisig protocol Squads raises $10 million, launches retail wallet app Fuse
- On-chain data developer Irys raises $8.9 million in a strategic funding round
- Telegram tap-to-earn crypto game Pixelverse raises $5.5 million from Delphi, Merit Circle, and others
- Payment firm Kima raises $5 million of pre-seed funding through equity and token funding rounds from Mastercard’s accelerator and others
- DeFi protocol for DAOs and Web3 assets managers, Ink Finance, raises $5 million
- Berachain DeFi hub Honeypot Finance raises $1.3 million in a strategic round
- CMT Digital looks to raise $150 million for fourth crypto fund, Fortune reports
- Blockchain engineering group Equilibrium launches venture unit, raising over $30 million for first fund
- Arbitrum DAO votes to approve $215 million gaming ecosystem fund
- NEAR Foundation forms Nuffle Labs with $13 million in funding
