Crypto march halted as strong US jobs data plays spoilsport

Hola folks!

Welcome to the cryptosphere. We bring you the latest updates from the crypto markets. The past week started positively for the crypto market but turned negative as the US job data came better than expected, squashing rate cut hopes. 

Steady BTC ETF inflows brought a glimmer of hope, showing investor confidence in Bitcoin as an investment asset. The crypto market also saw major price movements in meme coins, AI tokens, and other crypto assets. Read on to learn about the cryptosphere's movers and shakers. 

After a strong start to the week and consistent inflows into the spot BTC ETFs, crypto markets were in for a shocker on the macroeconomic front, resulting in a sharp price reversal. 

Market leader Bitcoin ended the week in the positive but was much below the $72k levels it had seen earlier in the week, settling above the $69k mark. Ethereum traded at a lower price and was trading at just under $3.7k levels. The overall crypto market cap was back below the $2.7trn level, with most tokens trading in the red after the US economic data around jobs came in hotter than expected. 

To be sure, the employment market in the US remained strong in May, with the government reporting the addition of 272,000 jobs, far past estimates for just 185,000 and well ahead of April’s 165,000. This suggests that the economy is operating close to full capacity, and interest rate cuts by the Fed may not be able to have the desired monetary policy effects of keeping inflation in check. However, the situation is different across the developed world, with Canada and the EU signaling a change in stance, announcing a 25bps interest rate cut last week.

However, the big takeaway from a longer-term perspective remains the steady inflows into the spot BTC ETFs, with a single-day tally of over $850mm last week, along with consistent net inflow days across the week. Such strong flows are unheard of for new ETFs without any major triggers as we continue to see a new wave of institutional capital being deployed in this asset class.

Also worth highlighting is Robinhood's $200m acquisition of Bitstamp to access crypto clients across Europe. This clearly showcases TradFi's interest in crypto as a means to explore new revenue streams for trading platforms, expect more such M&A. 

The broader crypto markets were a sea of red as most tokens fell sharply in price after the US jobs data. However, there were several pockets of exuberance due to specific triggers. As CZ's four-month jail sentence commenced, the BNB token surged to all-time highs on the back of reducing negative sentiment on the future of Binance. 

Telegram's TON token has been surging for weeks, and last week's launch of their payment system, Stars, pushed the token's price higher. 

However, most other top tokens were trading lower sharply through the week, with the ones that had recently run up a lot coming under severe profit booking sell pressure, like PEPE, AI favorite FET, and fan engagement token CHZ. 

All meme coins were down for the week except for the new entrant in the top 100, BRETT, which is being touted as the Pepe on Base, and was up 80%. Even FLOKI was trading higher in price when DWF Labs disclosed a long position. 

The major outliers from the broader markets were BTCFi-related tokens that innovate on the Bitcoin network, including Ordinal's ORDI (up 20%), as inscriptions-focused Runes projects made a strong comeback. Likewise, BTC Layer 2 scaling project Stack's STX was also up for the week. Another consistent performer that continued its surge was the Japan-focused IOT project JASMY.

• BNB  $644 ⏫ 2.37%

• TON $7.09 ⏫ 7.44%

• FET $1.72 ⏬ 20.16%

• FLOKI $0.0002691 ⏬ 3.37%

(All data here is as of 3.17 p.m., 10 June 2024)

Before we conclude, here’s a quick look at some important news from around the crypto world.

• The US spot Bitcoin ETFs experienced their second-best-ever net inflows, totaling $886.6 million, marking the highest inflows since March. The Fidelity Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund (FBTC) led with $378.7 million, followed by BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) with $274.4 million, and the ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF (ARKB) with $138.7 million. Read more here. 

• The crypto industry has so far raised about $161 million after Coinbase became the latest company to donate $25 million to its political action committee for this election. This potentially makes it among the most formidable campaign-finance operations in the US. Read more here. 

That’s it for now. Thanks for sticking around.

See you later, folks! 👋

Loving the newsletter? Make sure to spread the love and hit share!