Crypto markets rebound sharply as institutional inflow remains strong

Hola folks!

Another week is here, and Valentine’s Day is upon us! BTC continues to be the beloved of investors as it gained over 13% in a week. The icing on the crypto cake is, of course, BTC re-entering the global Top 10 asset list by value, led by gold. And investors sure will love the prominent token unlocks lined up for the week, starting with the release of Aptos tokens, followed by releases from Sandbox and ApeCoin. 

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Crypto markets traded majorly in the green last week, with Bitcoin leading the charge as institutional inflow and interest continue to strengthen. The newly launched spot BTC ETFs, excluding GBTC, now hold more BTC than Microstrategy (almost $8.5bn), in less than a month of accumulation. With GBTC selling slowing down, we are now witnessing daily net inflow consistently and exceptionally high volumes even after weeks of the initial launch euphoria.

Blackrock and Fidelity are leaders in the race, with BTC holdings now above $3.5bn and $3bn respectively. It's no surprise that BTC price has reacted positively to this development and is trading back above the $48k mark, a level that was last breached during the frenzy before the spot ETF launch. Overall the crypto market cap, too, has surged towards $1.9trn in value. BTC also re-entered the list of Top 10 assets by value, where gold leads with a >$13trn market!

There is a similar upswing in ETH prices as well, now trading close to $2.5k levels as the long-awaited Dencun Upgrade is confirmed, coming on 13th March, which will result in rollups getting more efficient in scaling. One of the leading scaling protocols, Polygon is already preparing for the "aggregated layer" future, as it also released 'Type 1 ZK Prover' claiming to achieve a significant milestone. Spot ETH ETF applications have also seen recent edits to help them sail through for approvals, fingers crossed!

For the broader crypto markets, it was a sea of green as most crypto assets traded higher. There was a major scare for Solana as the network outage issue returned after months, but prices weren't affected much, and overall the Solana ecosystem tokens continue to gain investor interest. Amongst the Top 20 tokens, it was BTC that posted the strongest gains, increasing its M.Cap Dominance to 50%.

In terms of outliers that surged in prices relative to the market, we must highlight that diverse themes have been driving interest for Optimism's OP, Bittensor's TAO, Stacks' STX, and BitTorrent's BTT. Riding on the back of Farcaster's success and Frax Finance joining the "Superchain" cohort of protocols, Optimism's OP continues to gain traction. Bittensor's TAO continues to ride on the "crypto plus AI" narrative, as OpenAI founder Sam Altman laid out a $7trn plan for AI chip manufacturing, which is a problem TAO promises to solve. As a play on bitcoin network's effects, Layer2 scaling protocol Stacks' STX surged in price as Tim Draper reconfirmed his interest. BitTorrent's BTT is rising in price due to the massive surge in network usage and incoming users. On the flipside, Monero's XMR tanked in price after Binance announced a planned delisting of the privacy token.

• BTC $$48,004 ⏬ 0.37%

• ETH $$2,484 ⏬ 1.60%

• SOL $105.21 ⏬$105.21 

• OP $3.56 ⏬ 1.57% 

(All data here is as of 3:20 p.m., 12 February 2024)

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

• Only 17 days after its launch, the BlackRock iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) has become one of the top five exchange-traded funds (ETFs) of 2024 based on inflows, according to data from Bloomberg Intelligence. Read more here.
  

• Solana, the low-latency blockchain that’s seen an explosion in activity in recent months, experienced an approximately five-hour outage on Feb. 6. Solana’s SOL token slumped from around $96 before the problem began to below $94 as the incident was ongoing. Read more here.
  

• Self-custodial crypto wallet MetaMask now lets users buy cryptocurrencies through the popular online trading platform Robinhood. With the integration, MetaMask users can purchase digital assets using Robinhood’s order flow, while Robinhood account holders can fund and transfer their crypto assets to their MetaMask wallet. Read more here.

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

See you later, folks! 👋

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