Crypto Market Update

Political developments continue to dominate investor sentiment following President Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race on Sunday afternoon. The initial market reaction saw a dip in crypto prices, with Bitcoin falling from $67.5k to $66k. However, the market rebounded after Biden endorsed Harris. Since the U.S. market opened on Monday, we have seen relatively choppy price action. BTC -0.47% is now trading slightly above $67k, while ETH 3.46% remains below $3,500, underperforming ahead of the anticipated ETH ETF launches tomorrow. In contrast, SOL -1.80% has shown significant strength over the weekend, currently trading around $180. Rates have edged higher, possibly reflecting uncertainty about the next U.S. president, and the DXY has also risen slightly over the past 24 hours. The major macro development today was China’s surprise rate cut, its first since last August. Despite the prevailing uncertainty, major equity indices are climbing, driven by strong tech sector performance.

Exchanges Receive Approval to List ETH ETFs

The NYSE Arca has received approval to list and trade spot Ethereum ETFs from Grayscale and Bitwise, according to recent SEC filings. Despite this, issuers must wait for SEC registration statements to become effective, expected on Monday, with trading likely starting Tuesday. The SEC approved 19b-4 forms in May as part of a two-step process. The Cboe exchange, where many Ethereum ETFs will trade, announced that trading for the Fidelity, Franklin, Invesco Galaxy, VanEck, and 21Shares Core Ethereum ETFs will also begin on Tuesday.

Ondo’s USDY Natively in Cosmos via Noble

Ondo Finance and the Noble blockchain have launched Ondo Dollar Yield (USDY 0.00% ) on Cosmos. USDY is a yield-bearing stablecoin product, fully backed by short-term U.S. Treasuries and U.S. bank demand deposits. Now on more than 90 application-specific Cosmos blockchains, USDY provides global (non-U.S.) individual and institutional investors access to yield, with over $300 million locked in value across multiple chains. Helix, an upcoming derivatives exchange on Injective, will integrate USDY as a spot asset and collateral pairing with the perpetual markets on their platform. This will allow their users to trade on-chain while yielding via USDY for the first time. USDY has a market capitalization of over $220 million, placing it in the top 15 stablecoins by market cap, according to Defillama.

Hong Kong to Launch Asia’s First Inverse Bitcoin ETF

Hong Kong will launch the first Bitcoin futures inverse product in Asia, the CSOP Bitcoin Future Daily Inverse Product. CSOP Asset Management, the leading asset manager in China, will provide investors with a way to earn profit from declines in the price of Bitcoin. This tool offers an alternative to shorting or buying put options on Bitcoin directly. The inverse ETF by CSOP, with HSBC as the trustee, charges a 1.99% annual fee and aims to attract $50-100 million in assets under management in 1-2 years. BITI in the U.S. has over $70 million under management so far. This represents another milestone for Bitcoin adoption in Asia.

Technical Strategy

Following a very severe four-month decline that resulted in Optimism falling nearly 75%, the rally in the last couple of weeks has provided the first real evidence of a gradual bottoming out. As shown below, OP 0.50% successfully broke the decline from early March as of 7/14/24.  This proved to be the first evidence of trend improvement since this decline got underway four months ago.  While there does look to be visible resistance near the prior lows from mid-April, which bottomed at $2.33 on daily charts, the recent three-week bounce should help to provide some stabilization to both trend and momentum.  Near-term resistance lies at 1..95 and above this would help the price push up to $2.31.  However, in order to enable OP to begin a lengthier rally back to highs, a move back over $3.05 will need to happen.  This lines up with two separate bounce attempts in the month of May.  Until then, gradual upside progress looks likely, and selloffs should likely hold July lows given the recent stabilization of the trend.

Daily Important Metrics Crypto Size Bullish signal is tied to the crypto market growing Market cap 2.46T +$22B (0.90%) BTC Dominance 54.25 % (0.08%) Stablecoins Increase in circulating stablecoins is a Bullish signal In Circulation +$114B (0.04%) In Exchanges +$19B (0.14%) BTC Metrics A decrease in Bitcoin on exchanges is bullish, indicates investors are moving coins to cold storage # BTC Exchanges +$3.0M (0.01%) Funding Rates Positive funding rates indicate traders are Bullish Aggregate +1.0472 (0.6695) Binance +0.9989 (0.0000) Bitfinex +0.8976 (0.4438) Bitmex +0.9175 (1.0433) ByBit +1.0000 (0.1318) Deribit +2.6037 (1.1156) Huobi +0.9332 (0.9332) Kraken +1.5636 (0.9552) Mean +1.0472 (0.6695) OKex +1.0909 (0.6666) Sentiment BMI : 58 (100.00%) Futures A positive spread between Futures Prices and Spot Prices is Bullish CME Price $67,615 (0.20%) Spot Basis +$192 (0.29%) Volume 488,186 (66.17%) Open Interest 294,474 (-1.01%) Options all exchanges Higher open interest change in a bull market is bullish for the sector Volume 16,665 (10.34%) Open Interest 258,716 (1.36%) Vol. Put/Call Ratio 0.4536 (9.51%) OOI Put/Call Ratio 0.4493 (-0.51%) All metrics as of 2024-07-22 12:00:24 All Funding rates are in bps Crypto Prices Symbol Market Cap Last Price Daily Change Year to Date Relative to BTC YTD BTC $1.33T $67,468 1.07% 59.75% ETH $417B $3,470 -0.14% 52.50% -4.54% SOL $84B $181 4.23% 78.19% 11.55% DOGE $377,006 $0.0004 2.73% -99.58% -99.73% All prices as of 2024-07-22 14:00:07 Exchange Traded Products (ETPs) Symbol Prem. to Nav Last Price Daily Change Year to Date Relative to BTC YTD BITW -32.38% $37 -0.56% 60.04% 0.19% ETHE -0.01% $29 -1.83% 50.44% -5.83% News Quick Bits The Block Japan’s Metaplanet buys an additional $1.2 million worth of bitcoin, shares jump 21% The Tokyo-listed investment firm said it purchased additional 20.381 BTC, sending its stock price upwards on Monday morning. The Block Mt. Gox wallet transfers small amount of bitcoin to Bitstamp: Arkham Mt. Gox transferred 0.021 BTC to a new wallet earlier this morning — a sign that it may be preparing for more repayments. The Block Blockchain security firm Veridise finds ZK audits are twice as likely to uncover critical issues Some 55% of ZK audits contained a critical issue compared to 27.5% for other DeFi audits, the blockchain security firm said. The Block The ‘perpetual-ification’ of all assets is coming onchain, says Ostium co-founder Ostium co-founder Kaledora Fontana Kiernan-Linn explains how Ostium enables onchain trading of RWA perpetuals. Market Data The Block Global crypto investment products’ inflow streak tops $3 billion as Ethereum overtakes Solana YTD: CoinShares Digital asset investment products attracted another $1.35 billion in net inflows last week, according to CoinShares. Fundraising and M&A The Block Coinbase alumni raise $21 million for web3 gaming infrastructure startup NPC Labs NPC Labs, a web3 gaming infrastructure startup co-founded by three former Coinbase employees, has raised $21 million. Product Updates and Partnerships The Block Cosmos’ Keplr wallet to add EVM support in bid to serve modular community Keplr is integrating support for EVM, aiming to strengthen its functionality as a multi-layer wallet solution. The Block Two Animoca Brands subsidiaries partner with TON Foundation MOCA Foundation and TON Foundation have also entered a token-swap agreement between MOCA and TON to encourage bolstered user activity between the two ecosystems.