Crypto markets continue to sink as "bullish" sentiment fades

Hola folks!

Hope you are keeping close tabs on your portfolio as you navigate the crypto market uncertainty. The crypto market is in correction territory, aligning with a broader market downturn. The US stock market is underperforming due to concerns about higher interest rates and a likely economic slowdown. 

However, Bitcoin remains up over 50% year-to-date and continues to trade well above its 2023 lows. The resilience underlines Bitcoin’s enduring appeal to investors. 

We have summarized everything that happened in the last 7 days on the crypto front. Dig in to know more about the broader crypto market performance and how global economic developments can impact crypto price movement in the coming days. 

Crypto markets continued to correct sharply as investors recalibrated their "risk on" positions with the macroeconomic trigger of interest rate cuts no longer being pertinent. The "higher for longer" rates are justified in a heated economy, running close to full employment along with "sticky" inflationary pressures. 

All "risk-on" assets continue to remain under pressure, with crypto assets plunging across the board. Market leaders BTC and ETH led the charge with their steep price drops, dragging the broader markets with them and ending the week sharply in the red, trading close to $62k and $3.3k levels, respectively. The overall crypto market cap was impacted negatively, losing almost another $200bn over the week (similar loss in the previous week), and is now hovering around the $2.35trn level, with most tokens trading in the red for the week. 

Similarly for ETH, even though the week saw the re-filing of the S-1 forms for the spot ETF approval by the SEC, along with multi-million dollar seeding announcements. Even Consenys won its case against the SEC when the latter withdrew its against the former for offering ETH as a a security. But that could not lift prices for the second largest crypto asset, which fell 5% during the week and surprisingly remains relatively less volatile compared to BTC.

The broader crypto markets were a sea of red as most altcoin tokens recorded double-digit percentage losses during the week. Particularly hard hit were Memecoins, which saw steep selling and caused one of the largest long liquidations (>$60mm) for DOGE. Meanwhile, the prices of WIF fell by 1/3rd during the week, making it the biggest loser in the mainstream Meme coin universe.

The other major correction for the week came in the prices of recently run-up tokens as profit booking took center stage, sending Solana's SOL down by 10%, while Telegram's TON and Notcoin (NOT) fell even more sharply with NOT losing 25% in value over the week.

Airdrop season also intensified, with ZkSync's ZK and LayerZero's ZRO tokens given to thousands of early users. However, there was serious criticism of the mechanism and execution of these airdrops, with several engaged users complaining. All eyes are on this week's upcoming airdrop BLAST.

The only outliers in an otherwise "sea of red" were AI plus crypto tokens which surged in price on the back of Nvidia's robust result amid the ever-increasing need for chips to build Web3! Related tokens NEAR and FET ended the week in the green.

• BTC  $61,236 ⏬ 6.77%

• ETH $3,317 ⏬ 5.46%

• DOGE $0.1178 ⏬ 11.51%

• SOL $127 ⏬ 11.11%

(All data here is as of 4.11 p.m., 24 June 2024)

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

• MicroStrategy, the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin, has acquired an additional 11,931 BTC for $786 million. Read more here. 

• Standard Chartered is establishing a spot trading desk for buying and selling bitcoin and ether, Bloomberg reported on June 21. The new London-based desk will start operations soon and be part of the bank’s FX trading unit, the report, citing people familiar with the matter. Read more here.

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

See you later, folks! 👋

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