2024 June - Things to Look Out For 👀

The month of June heralds the midpoint of the year and also takes us to the end of Q2 2024. As ever, the space continues to move forward at a relentless pace and we’ve selected some of the key developments, events, and announcements to keep an eye on over the coming four weeks.

Key Events

This month’s key events occur within the first two weeks with Ethereum and Web3 developers, builders, and enthusiasts focused on the ETH Belgrade Conference starting on June 3, and taking place over a three day period in Serbia. Mina Protocol and The Graph are set to complete significant network and protocol upgrades while the AI trio of Fetch.ai, Ocean Protocol, and SingularityNET will finalize the merging of their respective tokens (FET, OCEAN, AGIX) into the ASI token. The final process begins on June 11 and completes on June 13 to herald the emergence of the ASI Alliance which will move forward as one single entity.

▫️ June 3 to 5 - ETH Belgrade Conference takes place
▫️ June 4 - Mina Protocol’s Berkeley upgrade scheduled for completion
▫️ June 5 - TAIKO TGE & Airdrop/allocation period & token listing on Bybit
▫️ June 12 - The Graph Sunbeam Upgrade completion
▫️ June 13 - zkSync token airdrop expected to take place
▫️ June 13 - ASI token merger fully completed

Token Unlocks

June sees a number of projects proceed with significant token unlocks and Arbitrum leads the pack in terms of token value with approximately $103M worth of ARB tokens to be unlocked on June 16. Aptos comes close with a June 12 unlock of approximately $100M worth of APT, while Space ID leads the way in terms of the percentage of circulating supply to be unlocked with 18.23% of circulating ID to be released on June 22.

▫️ June 12 - Aptos, $100M (2.59% of circ. supply)
▫️ June 14 - ImmutableX, $55M (1.72% of circ. supply)
▫️ June 15 - StarkNet, $75M (4.92% of circ. supply)
▫️ June 16 - Arbitrum, $103M (3.2% of circ. supply)
▫️ June 22 - Space ID, $56M (18.23% of circ. supply)
▫️ June 30 - Optimism, $77M (2.88% of circ. supply)

📣 June 2024 Weekly Update #1

June 3rd - 9th Recap:
▫️ Australia's first spot Bitcoin ETF with direct BTC holdings went live on Tuesday
▫️ FTX settled a $24B tax claim with the IRS for $200M in bankruptcy court
▫️ Thailand’s SEC approved the nation’s first spot Bitcoin ETF
▫️ Robinhood announced plans to buy established crypto exchange Bitstamp in $200M deal
▫️ US spot BTC ETFs post a record 19 consecutive days of positive inflows worth approximately $4Bn
▫️ European Central Bank (ECB) and Bank of Canada cut interest rates to 3.75% and 4.75% respectively

🔼 Bitcoin Weekly High: $71,713
🔽 Bitcoin Weekly Low: $67,635

🔼 Ethereum Weekly High: $3,874
🔽 Ethereum Weekly Low: $3,670

June 10th to 16th Upcoming Events:
▪️ June 12 - The Graph Sunbeam Upgrade to be completed
▪️ June 12 - Aptos, $100M token unlock
▪️ June 12 - US CPI Inflation data announcement for the month of May*
▪️ June 13 - zkSync token airdrop expected to take place
▪️ June 13 - ASI token merger to finalize
▪️ June 13 - Arweave to launch AO token
▪️ June 14 - ImmutableX, $55M token unlock
▪️ June15 - StarkNet, $75M token unlock
▪️ June 16 - Arbitrum, $103M token unlock

*Nota Bene:
Tuesday, June 12. The US CPI Inflation data announcement for the month of May may lead to overall market volatility as it is seen as a key signal regarding the ongoing inflation rate. The official rate came in at 3.4% annualized for the month of April, and anything lower than 3.4% annualized will be taken positively by the markets and viewed as a possible move towards inflation normalizing closer to the Fed's long-term target of 2%.

📣 June 2024 Weekly Update #2

June 10th - 16th Recap:
▫️ US spot Bitcoin ETFs saw $65M in net outflows on Monday, ending 19 days of continuous inflows
▫️ Lykke (UK CEX) suffered a $22M hack, halted trading and remains "inactive until further notice"
▫️ Terraform Labs agreed to pay $4.5B SEC charge to resolve civil fraud case & announced dissolution plan
▫️ Arweave released tokenomics of $AO token
▫️ VC firm Paradigm raised $850M for a third fund focused on investing in early-stage crypto projects
▫️ MicroStrategy announced a further proposed private offering of $500M of convertible senior notes to purchase Bitcoin
▫️ Latin America's biggest bank, Itaú Unibanco, opened BTC & ETH trading via its Ion app for customers in Brazil
▫️ Swiss regulator FINMA both shuts down & puts crypto friendly Flowbank in bankruptcy proceedings

🔼 Bitcoin Weekly High: $70,146
🔽 Bitcoin Weekly Low: $65,111

🔼 Ethereum Weekly High: $3,701
🔽 Ethereum Weekly Low: $3,375

June 17th to 23rd Upcoming Events:
▪️ June 17 - APE, $16M token unlock
▪️ June 17 - Tether to announce a new class of digital assets product
▪️ June 17 - zkSync token airdrop to take place
▪️ June 19 - Flow to implement a testnet network upgrade
▪️ June 20 - First Bitcoin ETF to list on Australia’s Bourse*
▪️ June 20 - Beta finance to launch decentralized lending platform Omni on Arbitrum
▪️ June 22 - ID, $44.5M token unlock

*Nota Bene:
Thursday, June 20. The listing of the First Bitcoin ETF on Australia’s main stock market will be worth keeping an eye on. While Australia isn’t known as one of Bitcoin’s primary trading market locations, the traction the VanEck BTC ETF gains may be a sign of things to come across the global market. Monday saw the U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs experience a daily net outflow of around $65M, and the $227M worth of outflow from the Bitcoin ETFs on Friday was the biggest single day outflow since May 1st. However, this was preceded by a 19 day inflow streak, amidst a greater 5 week run which saw digital asset investment products amass inflows of $4.3B. A significant uptake of the VanEck BTC ETF in Australia may help stimulate another round of inflows and help BTC solidify and build from its 4 week low of around $65,000.

📣 June 2024 Weekly Update #3

June 17th to 23rd Recap:
▫️ Tether launched new digital asset product Alloy on Monday
▫️ Consensys revealed US SEC has closed investigation into Ethereum 2.0 & its ongoing plan to sue the SEC
▫️ VanEck Bitcoin spot ETF debuted on Australia’s main stock market the ASX on Thursday
▫️ MicroStrategy announced the acquisition of an additional 11,931 BTC for $786M at $65,883 per BTC
▫️ Standard Chartered announced plans to launch spot crypto trading desk in London for BTC & ETH
▫️ Eigen Foundation announced the opening of Phase 2 of the EIGEN stakedrop
▫️ LayerZero Foundation announced the opening of claims for the ZRO token airdrop on Thursday
▫️ Nillion announced details of Community Round valued at $400M
▫️ Bitcoin miners revealed to have sold 30k BTC worth around $2B in June*

🔼 Bitcoin Weekly High: $66,968
🔽 Bitcoin Weekly Low: $63,442

🔼 Ethereum Weekly High: $3,642
🔽 Ethereum Weekly Low: $3,380

June 24th to 30th Upcoming Events:
▪️ June 25 - ALT, $19M token unlock
▪️ June 25, Stader Labs to burn 30M $SD tokens
▪️ June 26 - Nillion Community Round Launch on Coinlist ends at 17:00 UTC
▪️ June 30 - OP, $56M token unlock
▪️ June 30 - BNB Beacon Chain reaches Sunset closure deadline

*Nota Bene:
The revelation that Bitcoin miners sold around 30k BTC worth approximately $2B in June partly explains the sluggish price performance over the month. Miners have intensified their selling in order to try and recoup lost revenues as the mining block reward was slashed to 3.125 BTC in April. This led to over a 50% drop in daily miner revenues and has seen Bitcoin miner reserves fall to a yearly low of around 1.9M BTC. Alongside this, Bitcoin investment products recorded outflows worth US$630M last week, with the US accounting for $475M in outflows.These developments are worth keeping an eye on as analysts become increasingly bearish around Bitcoin’s ability to stay above $60k over the next few weeks.

📣 June 2024 Weekly Update #4

June 24th to 30th Recap:

▫️ Mt. Gox Rehabilitation trustee announced on Monday that BTC & BCH repayments will begin in early July 2024*
▫️ The US Government transferred 3,940 seized BTC worth $240M to Coinbase Prime*
▫️ Coinbase announced lawsuits against the SEC & FDIC over FOIA document requests
▫️ The German Government was revealed to have transferred 400 BTC worth $24.33M to Kraken & Coinbase*
▫️ SEC sued MetaMask owner Consensys, Lido & RocketPool over staking & violating securities laws
▫️ VanEck & 21Shares filed S-1 forms for Solana ETF applications
▫️ ETH gas fees dropped below 3 gwei for the first time since 2020
▫️ Bitcoin miner CleanSpark agreed to acquire GRIID in $155M deal
▫️ Optimism announced the SuperFest DeFi Festival feat BASE, LIDO, FRAX, UNI

🔼 Bitcoin Weekly High: $63,556
🔽 Bitcoin Weekly Low: $59,118

🔼 Ethereum Weekly High: $3,480
🔽 Ethereum Weekly Low: $3,259

July 1st to 7th Upcoming Events:
▪️ July 1 - ASI Alliance begins ASI token merger Phase 1
▪️ July 1 - Arbitrum DAO seeks snapshot approval for up to 35M ARB investment into RWA products including BlackRock/Securitize BUIDL, Ondo USDY & Superstate USTB
▪️ July 1 - SUI, $58M token unlock
▪️ July 1 - IO, $25M token unlock
▪️ July 1 - DYDX, $11M token unlock
▪️ July 6 - EthCC 2024 side events kick off in Brussels

*Nota Bene:
The revelation that the German government transferred 900 BTC with 400 BTC going to Kraken and Coinbase has sparked concerns about the negative potential market impact. With the total BTC holdings standing at approximately 46,359 BTC, the initial transfers represent less than 5% of the total amount held, leading to an overall fear of further sales. The increasingly bearish sentiment is compounded by an anticipated sell-off by the Mt. Gox Rehabilitation trustee as the estate begins distributing 140,000 BTC from the start of July.

Alongside this, the US government recently transferred 3,940 BTC to Coinbase Prime, and is known to have seized approximately 50,000 BTC associated with the Silk Road and other dark web marketplaces. With around 40,000 BTC still in the hands of the US government further sales look ominous, and this trio of large scale committed sellers look set to dampen any bullish sentiment with additional offloads. All eyes will be focused on wallet addresses associated with the three entities, however, while more sales may lead to negative short-term price action, it can be argued that these mandated sales are not only necessary but may result in a relatively swift positive turnaround as the market absorbs the sell offs and removes long term uncertainty from the space.

📣 July 2024 Weekly Update #1

July 1st to 7th Recap:

▫️ US spot bitcoin ETFs recorded around $130M net inflows on Monday*
▫️ Traders hit with over $550M worth of liquidations in 24 hrs
▫️ The German government transferred 3000 BTC worth $175M to various locations
▫️ Mt. Gox began repayments & moved 47,228 BTC worth $2.71B
▫️ SEC charged Silvergate Capital for misleading investors amid FTX collapse
▫️ AI project Bittsensor halted network after $8M wallet attack
▫️ Mantra announced plan to tokenize $500M of Real Estate for UAE’s MAG Group
▫️ Circle became first stablecoin issuer to receive a MiCA compliant EMI license

🔼 Bitcoin Weekly High: $63,599
🔽 Bitcoin Weekly Low: $53,905

🔼 Ethereum Weekly High: $3,508
🔽 Ethereum Weekly Low: $2,842

July 8th to 14th Upcoming Events:

▪️ July 8 - EthCC 7 begins in Brussels
▪️ July 9 - XAI, $70M token unlock
▪️ July 10 - Mantle Sepolia Testnet Upgrade
▪️ July 11 - US June Consumer Price Index (CPI) announcement
▪️ July 12 - IMX, $40M token unlock
▪️ July 12 - APT, $65M token unlock

*Nota Bene:
As highlighted last week, fear generated by the trio of large sellers (Mt Gox, US & German govts) led to significant negative price action with BTC dropping by over 10% across the week and other digital assets losing around 25% in value. While some near-term forecasts are signaling a drop in price to the $50,000 support level, there may be potential signs this week that the market is ready to absorb the “new” BTC supplies and lessen the adverse price action.

Spot Bitcoin ETFs had their strongest day of inflows for a month on Friday as they gained $143M which contributed to the week’s $398M of total inflows. This bucked a three-week trend of overall outflows and illustrated a change in buyer sentiment. Alongside this, El Salvador was revealed to be making BTC purchases, and ex Tron frontman Justin Sun offered to make off-market purchases of BTC from the German govt to minimize the market price impact. It’s worth keeping an eye on the overall sentiment and buying habits this week, while a kind US inflation report on July 11 following last week’s generally neutral/positive US jobs report, may strengthen the case for the Fed to cut interest rates as early as September which could result in a positive upturn for crypto markets.

📣 July 2024 Weekly Update #2

July 8th to 14th Recap:

▫️ The German government continued BTC sales & sold off all holdings
▫️ The SEC dropped investigations into Paxos & Bitcoin L2 Stacks
▫️ Cboe filed 19b-4 forms with SEC for Vaneck & 21Shares Solana ETF approvals
▫️ Bitcoin ETFs recorded $300M of inflows on Friday
▫️ Australia’s ASX stock exchange listed 2nd spot Bitcoin ETF on Friday BlackRock's BUIDL Fund hit $500M & Goldman Sachs announced plan to launch 3 tokenization projects by EOY
▫️ MakerDAO launched the $1B tokenized asset Spark Tokenization Grand Prix
▫️ Squarespace hacking vulnerability potentially affecting over 125 DeFi platforms revealed
▫️ BitMEX pleaded guilty to Bank Secrecy Act violations
▫️ US CPI made 1st monthly dip in 4 years dropping by 0.1% to a 12 month rate of 3%

🔼 Bitcoin Weekly High: $60,351
🔽 Bitcoin Weekly Low: $54,424

🔼 Ethereum Weekly High: $3,214
🔽 Ethereum Weekly Low: $2,838

July 15th to 21st Upcoming Events:

▪️ July 15 - STRK, 36M token unlock
▪️ July 15 - Pudgy Penguins “Pudgy Wizard” collectible release
▪️ July 16 - ARB, 66M token unlock
▪️ July 16 - Chromia MVP Mainnet launch
▪️ July 17 - APE, 11.5M token unlock

*Nota Bene:
As the German government has finalized selling off its Bitcoin holdings, all eyes continue to remain on Bitcoin sales and purchases. Last week saw Bitcoin record the 5th largest weekly inflows to date with $1.35B worth of inflows. Alongside this, Ethereum saw $72M worth of inflows, the largest since March which highlights the market anticipating the approval of spot-based ETFs in the US.

Ethereum ETFs could go live as early as Monday this week which could lead to further bullish trading activity. In addition, last week’s rather tame US inflation report and Jerome Powell's acknowledgement that coming rate cuts are likely provide a decent backdrop for positive sentiment and price action. With the market also reacting bullishly to the events at the weekend’s Trump rally, it seems that it would take significant adverse news regarding Mt Gox distributions to dampen the current sentiment change.

📣 July 2024 Weekly Update #3

July 15th to 21st Recap:

▫️ SEC approved Grayscale & ProShares ETH ETF NYSE listing proposal
▫️ The German government confirmed conclusion of “emergency” BTC sales
▫️ Mt Gox Rehabilitation Trustee announced BTC & BCH payments to over 13k creditors with 36% of all BTC already sent out
▫️ Kraken confirmed receipt of Mt Gox funds
▫️ FTX & CFTC reached a $12.7B settlement agreement
▫️ Bankrupt lender BlockFi announced fund distributions to begin in July
▫️ Grayscale launched decentralized AI fund with NEAR, FIL & RNDR as top weighted assets
▫️ Indian exchange WazirX & Liminal Custody suffer $230M hack
▫️ Ryan Selkis quits as Messari CEO following inflammatory posts on X regarding Trump support
▫️ Polygon announced plans for Sept 4 MATIC to POL token swap

🔼 Bitcoin Weekly High: $68,418
🔽 Bitcoin Weekly Low: $62,755

🔼 Ethereum Weekly High: $3,537
🔽 Ethereum Weekly Low: $3,361

July 22nd to 28th Upcoming Events:

▪️ July 22 - Binance 28th BNB Burn
▪️ July 23 - ETH ETFs to begin trading in the US
▪️ July 23 - WLD, $15M token unlock
▪️ July 25 - ALT. $110M token unlock
▪️ July 25 to 27 - Bitcoin 2024 Conference in Nashville, US
▪️ July 27 - YGG, $7M token unlock

*Nota Bene:

Last week saw Bitcoin rally to hit $68,000 while $1.27B of inflows into BTC ETFs were recorded. This took place during a global Crowdstrike IT infrastructure outage which caused widespread disruption to numerous industries including aviation, emergency services, banking, and financial markets. Alongside this, news of Mt. Gox moving around 140k BTC to several wallets, and Joe Biden stepping down from the US presidential race highlighted Bitcoin’s ability to ride both market and overall macroeconomic uncertainty.

Ethereum will be in the spotlight this week, with all eyes on ETH’s ability to respond to the imminent ETH ETF launches. Last week saw $45M of ETH inflows which enabled ETH to overtake SOL as the digital asset with the second highest inflows year-to-date at $103M. However, Grayscale plans to convert its ETHE trust into a spot ETF while launching a mini trust seeded with $1B from the former fund. Grayscale will also keep ETHE’s fee significantly higher than competitors, at 2.5%. Most issuers have opted for fee waivers, and as a result, ETHE could see outflows from the fund, similar to the performance of GBTC after the conversion to a spot BTC ETF. This could lead to ETH price volatility relative to initial inflow numbers while the market searches for a more “natural” equilibrium.

📣 July 2024 Weekly Update #4

July 22nd to 28th Recap:

▫️ SEC approved spot ETH ETFs to commence trading on Tuesday
▫️ ETH ETFs amassed $1B in volume on 1st trading day
▫️ US spot ETH ETF inflows exceeded $106M on 1st trading day
▫️ Kraken began & completed distributing Mt Gox BTC & BCH
▫️ Bitstamp started distributing Mt Gox BTC & BCH on Thursday
▫️ Mayor announced Jersey City pension fund to buy BTC ETFs
▫️ Galaxy Asset Management raised $113M for early stage crypto venture fund
▫️ WazirX revealed recovery plan offering 55% unlocked & 45% locked funds
▫️ DYDX Exchange website hacked & recovered
▫️ DeBridge cross chain platform announced plan to issue governance token

🔼 Bitcoin Weekly High: $69,190
🔽 Bitcoin Weekly Low: $63,740

🔼 Ethereum Weekly High: $3,530
🔽 Ethereum Weekly Low: $3,103

July 29th to Aug 4th Upcoming Events:

▪️ July 31 - Acala Network 257K ACA token burn
▪️ July 31 - OP, $53M token unlock
▪️ August 1 - DYDX, $10M token unlock
▪️ August 1 - ZETA. $32M token unlock
▪️ August 2 -GAL, $12M token unlock
▪️ August 4 - ENA, $6.5M token unlock

*Nota Bene:

All eyes were on the launch of spot ETH ETFs last week with many wondering if they would actually represent a sell the news moment. ETH ETFs generated around $1.08B of cumulative volume on their first day of trading, approximately 23% of the volume generated by Bitcoin ETFs on their debut. However, this only translated to around $107M worth of net inflows due to $484.9M worth of outflows from the Grayscale Ethereum Trust (ETHE), which amounted to around 5% of the previously $9B fund.
This theme continued across the week with US spot ETH ETFs seeing $2.2B worth of inflows, while Grayscale’s ETHE alone witnessed outflows of $1.5B, Grayscale also chose to seed its new Mini Trust ETF with capital from its incumbent closed-end trust somewhat skewing the inflow numbers, with the fall out seeing ETH ETFs record over $285M in net outflows across their opening week.

Bitcoin recorded inflows of approximately $519M which helped digital asset investment products amass $245M of inflows over the week with the prices of both BTC and ETH remaining relatively stable. The focus will stay on the market’s appetite to absorb sell offs from Grayscale ETHE while continuing to deploy capital into BTC ETFs. Bulls are currently in the ascendancy, however, price volatility relative to inflows and outflows looks set to continue.

📣 August 2024 Weekly Update #1

July 29th to August 4th Recap:

▫️ End of week market crash led to $500B market cap loss & almost $300M in liquidations
▫️ SEC amended Binance complaint rescinding need to prove SOL, ADA, FIL, MATIC are securities
▫️ The US Govt moved around 30k BTC worth $2B
▫️ Russia legalized crypto payments for international trade
▫️ Tether released Q2 2024 attestation, reported $5.2B billion H1 profit
▫️ Coinbase revealed Q2 revenue of $1.45B
▫️ Microstrategy announced 226,500 BTC holdings & plan to raise further $2B in capital
▫️ Terra blockchain tokens stolen due to IBC hook vulnerability & Montenegro rejected US request will extradite Do Kwon to South Korea
▫️ M2 exchange announced UAE residents can directly purchase BTC & ETH via bank accounts
▫️ Genesis completed bankruptcy restructuring & transferred $1.6B to pay creditors

🔼 Bitcoin Weekly High: $69,799
🔽 Bitcoin Weekly Low: $57,898

🔼 Ethereum Weekly High: $3,386
🔽 Ethereum Weekly Low: $2,689

August 5th to 11th Upcoming Events:

▪️ August 6 - Hearing on FTX Settlement
▪️ August 7 - Enso token launch postponement
▪️ August 9 - IMX, $37M token unlock
▪️ August 9 - XAI. $8M token unlock
▪️ August 12 -APT, $59M token unlock

*Nota Bene:

At the beginning of last week a portion of the macro narrative aligned around the possibility of further rate cuts both in the US and globally after the Fed kept interest rates unchanged at 5.5% & their meeting notes outlined progress made towards a 2% inflation target amongst other things.

However, the focus & sentiment shifted sharply at the end of the week as analysts witnessed stark market reactions to a perceived economic slow-down impacting global equity markets & digital risk-assets even more severely.

A perfect storm of fear around a slowdown in the US economy, mixed earnings from big tech, Japanese Yen funded carry trade sell-offs & the looming possibility of war in the Middle East caused markets to tumble. Japan's Nikkei 225 dropped over 12% in a day, the worst single-day decline since 1987 with Taiwan's stock market suffering its worst day in 57 years. US capital markets lost over $3T, the largest drop since March 2020, with the Nasdaq, Dow Jones & the S&P 500 all dipping while news of Berkshire Hathaway selling nearly half its $84.2B Apple stake circulated, further fueling stock market panic.

Alongside this, digital asset investment products saw $528M in net outflows with $400M in BTC & $146M in ETH. As a result, all eyes remain glued to the charts this week as observers remain hypervigilant to market reactions to the weekend’s carnage. In addition, economic indicators giving insight in which direction things are headed come to the fore & after last Friday's US jobs report this week sees the non-manufacturing ISM a key global services indicator announcement take place on Aug 5.

📣 August 2024 Weekly Update #2

August 5th to 11th Recap:

▫️ Traders racked up over $1B in liquidations to start the week
▫️ 5,222.45 ETH burnt on Monday, highest since March 14, day after Dencun upgrade
▫️ US judge ordered FTX, Alameda to pay $12.7B to creditors
▫️ Ripple hit with $125M fine for institutional sales violations
▫️ Russia legalized crypto mining
▫️ BlackRock & Nasdaq filed applications with the SEC for options on spot Ethereum ETFs
▫️ Celsius sued Tether for $3.5B in BTC returns, damages & fees
▫️ Brazil’s SEC approved the first Solana based spot ETF
▫️ Franklin Templeton launched tokenized money market fund on Arbitrum
▫️ Jump Crypto unstaked & moved 120k ETH worth $315M to exchanges
▫️ Starknet Foundation CEO Diego Oliva stepped down

🔼 Bitcoin Weekly High: $62,384
🔽 Bitcoin Weekly Low: $49,842

🔼 Ethereum Weekly High: $2,702
🔽 Ethereum Weekly Low: $2,226

August 12th to 18th Upcoming Events:

▪️ August 14 - US CPI Announcement
▪️ August 14 - SAND, $51M token unlock
▪️ August 15 - STRK, $23M token unlock
▪️ August 15 - SEI, starts $1.35M (5.03M SEI) per day for 365 days token unlock
▪️ August 16 - ARB, $51M token unlock

*Nota Bene:

After a brutal start to last week, the Bank of Japan’s reversal on hiking the interest rate helped to stimulate market recovery with both the S&P 500 and Nikkei closing at similar levels to the week prior. Bitcoin has recovered to trade close to $60k, and while Ethereum still lags behind its pre-drop price of $3,250 (around $2,600 at time of writing), it's evident that the correlation between crypto and global markets is currently close to 1.

With that considered, all eyes will be on this Wednesday's US CPI inflation report where a rate lower than 3% YoY will be viewed favorably by the markets and increase the likelihood of a Fed September rate cut with the most ambitious analysts calling for a 50 bps rate-cut to reverse a potential economic slowdown. As we’ve seen, favorable fiscal policy changes can have a dramatic effect on market sentiment, and this week may be no different.

📣 August 2024 Weekly Update #3

August 12th to 18th Recap:

▫️ Bitcoin miners' daily revenue reported on Monday to have hit a 2024 low of $2.5M
▫️ BitGo announced plan to move BTC backing WBTC to Hong Kong & Singapore
▫️ MakerDAO halted new WBTC-backed loans due to BitGo concerns
▫️ Coinbase, Crypto.соm, & Gemini opposed a CFTC proposal possibly banning Polymarket type US political prediction markets
▫️ NYSE withdrew application to list BTC ETF options while CBOE re-filed
▫️ Goldman Sachs reported $418M spot BTC ETF holdings for end of June
▫️ Marathon Digital revealed intention to offer $250M in convertible notes to buy more BTC
▫️ BlackRock surpassed Grayscale as largest digital asset fund manager by AUM
▫️ Former TON Foundation members raised $40M for new Web3 investment firm, TON Ventures
▫️ Dubai Court of First Instance recognized crypto as valid salary payments under employment contracts
▫️ MetaMask began rollout of self custodial crypto debit card developed with Mastercard & Baanx
▫️ Uniswap’s cumulative front-end revenue

🔼 Bitcoin Weekly High: $61,491
🔽 Bitcoin Weekly Low: $56,640

🔼 Ethereum Weekly High: $2,756
🔽 Ethereum Weekly Low: $2,540

August 19th to 25th Upcoming Events:

▪️ August 18 - ROSE, $9M token unlock
▪️ August 20 - AVAX, $196M token unlock
▪️ August 21 - Scroll to launch Darwin upgrade
▪️ Aug 22 - US Services/Manufacturing PMI Announcement
▪️ Aug 23 - Fed Chairman Powell speaks at Jackson Hole

*Nota Bene:

Powered by strong US retail sales the S&P 500 traded higher last week along with the FTSE and Nikkei. This capped another strong week for equity markets while crypto markets generally traded sideways with BTC struggling to break the $60k barrier. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell's speech this Friday should be monitored mostly to gauge the magnitude of any potential interest rate cuts.

Alongside key macro developments, the geopolitical landscape will be worth keeping an eye on over the coming week as any significant news regarding changes in relations between Iran and Israel (possibly due to an anticipated Iranian retaliation) could lead to investors taking a risk-off approach which will impact crypto markets in the short term.

📣 August 2024 Weekly Update #4

August 19th to 25th Recap:

▫️ Mt. Gox moved BTC worth over $700M & sent $75M in BTC to Bitstamp
▫️ Bitwise acquired ETC Group, issuer of Europe’s largest physical BTC ETP
▫️ Anchorage announced partnership with PayPal over rewards for PYUSD holders
▫️ California Judge rules Kraken must face SEC lawsuit over registration failures
▫️ Tether announced plan to launch a UAE dirham-pegged stablecoin
▫️ DCG announced full repayment of short-term debts as of June, crypto subsidiary Genesis.still owed $1.1B promissory note
▫️ MakerDAO announced endgame plan to optionally redenominate 1 MKR into 24,000 NGT tokens
▫️ Justin Sun’s USDD removed 12,000 BTC without DAO voting
▫️ Base announced ENS user sub-names with Dutch auction launch as over 50% of active L2 addresses revealed to be on Base

🔼 Bitcoin Weekly High: $64,666
🔽 Bitcoin Weekly Low: $58,821

🔼 Ethereum Weekly High: $2,812
🔽 Ethereum Weekly Low: $2,570

August 26th to September 1st Upcoming Events:

▪️ August 28 - NVIDIA earnings announcement
▪️ August 31 - OP, $42M token unlock
▪️ September 1 - DYDX, $8M token unlock
▪️ September 1 - SUI, $50M token unlock

*Nota Bene:

Both Bitcoin and the S&P traded higher WoW at 7% and 1% respectively with investors primarily buoyed by Fed Chairman Jerome Powells' dovish comments at the Jackson Hole Symposium. Digital asset investment products saw inflows of around $533M, the largest inflows in five weeks. Bitcoin attracted the majority of buying, amassing $543M of inflows, again highlighting its sensitivity to interest rate expectations.

However, it remains to be seen if news of an imminent rate-cut becomes a "sell the news" event over the week. In addition, any “Big Tech” moves post the NVIDIA earnings announced should be monitored as the price of BTC continues to be increasingly correlated with growth tech stocks this year alongside other pressing macroeconomic and geopolitical factors.