Crypto markets take a breather; select tokens surge

Hola folks!

Hope you are all taking care of yourself in this sweltering summer heat. While the mercury is rising across India, the crypto market is holding stable, offering some cool respite.

Bitcoin had a relatively muted week, trading within the $67,000-$69,000 range. However, several reports indicate a softening of economic conditions in the United States, which could improve prospects for lower interest rates. This would provide interesting price action, as rate cut hopes might catalyze positive price movement. 

In today’s newsletter, we have summarized the page-turning moves of the global crypto markets of the past week. Read on to learn more about crypto news developments and their implications on crypto prices in the coming week.

After a historic week marked by the first crypto-related bills passing the US House and the Spot ETH ETF approvals, crypto markets took a breather last week and mostly traded sideways, in a tight range. Market leaders Bitcoin and Ethereum were almost flat in prices and are currently anchored around the $69k and $3.8k levels, respectively. 

However, the overall market had many individual positive breakouts last week, driven by specific triggers, sending the overall crypto market cap back closer to the $2.7trn level. Specifically for Bitcoin, the spot BTC ETFs continued to see steady inflow through the week, with BlackRock's IBIT displacing Grayscale to become the largest holder of BTC, with over $20bn in AUM. 

Although approved, the spot Ether ETFs are still not available for trading. However, the SEC has asked the applicants to re-submit their S-1 forms, setting expectations that trading might begin in June itself.

The big development from last week was centered around the "political angle" associated with crypto issues getting increasingly important for the US presidential elections. Republican candidate Trump has openly endorsed crypto and started receiving donations in crypto. This has spurred interest in "PoltiFi" or politics-related meme coins, with Trump's MAGA token being highly volatile last week. After the initial surge, it fell sharply on Trump's guilty verdict from a long-running case. 

Another piece of news that signifies the growing clout of crypto in US politics is the $50m in donations from a16z and Ripple to the political lobbying group Fairshake. Fairshake is focused on crypto-education for legislators across party lines!

Also worth highlighting are a couple of major funding announcements from last week. Farcaster and Babylon raised $150m and $70m, respectively. Farcaster is one of the biggest SocialFi projects, while Babylon is building a restaking protocol for the Bitcoin network.

The past week saw several pockets of exuberance in the broader crypto markets, but overall, the trading was mostly sideways. Token-specific event triggers resulted in outsized price returns, with the TON ecosystems' Notcoin or NOT token surging the most. It was up 250% last week, as trading began on Binance, and the "tap to earn" game onboarded millions of new Web3 wallets onto the TON ecosystem.

In the memecoin universe, there was heightened activity as the Gamestop mania from equities spilled over, resulting in strong gains, particularly for WIF and FLOKI.

Amid event-driven rallies in the altcoin space, JASMY token surged by 25% as the Japanese IOT-focused project announced integrations with Apple devices. Similarly, in a pump before the official UEFA Euro Cup begins, fan engagement token CHZ surged by 15%.

Highlighting the impact of social media signals, the ORDI token pumped after a famous trading account GCR was hacked and shilled the token, while several influential DeFi analysts posted in favor of Celestia's TIA. RWA asset tokenisation play, Ondo Finance's ONDO token, too continued to surge 20% last week.

The major outliers on the negative side were AI-related tokens, especially BitTensor's TAO, which fell in price as the euphoria associated with Nvidia earnings faded. Among the blue-chip tokens, Uniswap's UNI initially sharply after the foundation disclosed its balance sheet, ahead of the upcoming "fee-switch" proposal vote, but then tanked 10% for the week as the proposal vote got further delayed.

• NOT  $0.02122 ⏫ 223.17%

• JASMY $0.03472 ⏫ 23.81%

• ONDO $1.44 ⏫ 20.63%

• TAO $380.90 ⏬ 10.49%

(All data here is as of 2.54 p.m., 3 June 2024)

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

• The New York Stock Exchange plans to list index options tracking the price of Bitcoin (BTC), bringing another traditional finance giant into the cryptocurrency space. The cash-settled derivates will track the CoinDesk Bitcoin Price Index, a 10-year-old benchmark operated by CoinDesk’s sibling, CoinDesk Indices. Read more here. 

• Franklin Templeton, VanEck, and Invesco filed an amended S-1 for spot Ether ETFs. The S-1 filing is an important step in completing the necessary regulatory steps to launch an ETF product that will allow investors to bet on the price of Ethereum without having to buy the crypto directly. Read more here.

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

See you later, folks! 👋

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