After a strong start to the week, bitcoin dropped below $63,000 amid uncertainties stemming from US politics and geopolitical tensions. Following Donald Trump’s speech at the Bitcoin 2024 Conference in Nashville, Bitcoin briefly hit $70,000 per coin, making a new attempt at its all-time high. The former US president vowed to take concrete actions on crypto policy if re-elected, which include establishing a strategic national Bitcoin reserve, supporting stablecoin legislation, firing SEC Chairman Gary Gensler, and ending Operation Chokepoint 2.0, the coordinated effort to de-bank US crypto companies.
However, the tailwinds of Trump’s heightened crypto endorsement proved to be short-lived, as major cryptoassets suffered losses across the board despite dovish signals from the Federal Reserve. Fed Chair Jerome Powell indicated that a policy rate reduction could be considered as soon as the next meeting in September. While equities responded positively to this news, with the Nasdaq Composite index rebounding by 2.6% by the end of Wednesday’s trading, the optimism did not extend to the crypto markets. Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris’ election odds have recently hit a new all-time high with crypto betters, and it appears that crypto traders have interpreted this as a bearish signal for the market so far.
In corporate earnings, several publicly listed crypto companies reported their quarterly results this week. Coinbase (COIN) more than doubled its 2Q revenues year-over-year (yoy) but experienced a slight decline compared to the previous quarter, generating $1.45 billion in revenue while net income dropped to $36 million. Galaxy Digital (GLXY) posted a 2Q net loss of $177 million, nearly four times wider than the previous year. MicroStrategy reported quarterly losses of $5.74 per share on sales of $111.40 million and highlighted its bitcoin holdings of 226,500 at a cost of $8.3 billion, or $36,821 per bitcoin. Meanwhile, the shares of bitcoin miner MARA (formerly Marathon Digital) fell as much as 8% in post-market trading on Thursday after missing revenue expectations. The company reported $145.1 million versus an estimated $157.9 million due to operational challenges and the impact of recent bitcoin halving.
Market Overview
The global cryptoasset market capitalization currently amounts to roughly $2.4 trillion – down from $2.52 trillion last week, with bitcoin accounting for almost 53%. Among the Top 30 cryptoassets by market cap, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) outperformed, gaining about 7.6% over the week. The price of bitcoin (BTC) rose by 4.4% to $64,358 while the price of ether (ETH) decreased by 3.2% to $3,143. The total value locked (TVL) in DeFi is sitting at $95 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 $41 billion in assets.
This Week’s Headlines
- SEC amends its complaint against Binance, including with respect to the “Third Party Crypto Asset Securities” such as SOL and MATIC
- Tether generates a record $5.2 billion profit in first half of the year
- Circle said to be trading around a $5 billion valuation ahead of planned IPO, CoinDesk reports
- US Senator Lummis draft bill allows US states to hold bitcoin
- Decentralized exchange (DEX) market share surges to record high, outpacing centralized exchanges
- Montenegro to extradite Do Kwon to South Korea, rejecting US request
- SEC sues BitClout founder, says he lied to investors about the project’s decentralization
- SEC posts information page for investors harmed by Terraform fraud
- Trump Bitcoin sneakers sell out, already on EBay for $2,500
- Telegram game “Hamster Kombat’ hits 300 million players, reveals token allocation plans
Notable Deals and Fundraising
- Crypto lending firm Morpho raises $50 million in a funding round led from Ribbit Capital, Coinbase, Brevan Howard and others
- A16z Crypto leads $9 million Series A round for DePIN project Daylight
- Web3 AI firm Hyperbolic raises $7 million in seed funding
- Crypto proprietary trading firm Breakout raises $4.5 million in seed funding
- LinkedIn-style project Icebreaker secures $5 million in seed funding led by CoinFund
- NFT startup Mintify raises $3.4 million in additional funding
- JokeRace – the onchain competition platform used by Polygon and Farcaster – raises $3 million
- Crypto points trading protocol Pichi Finance raises $2.5 million in seed funding to enable price discovery pre and post-TGE
- Crypto VC Paradigm invests in MetaDAO amid prediction markets boom
