Crypto Market

BTC and ETH Market Insight

During the initial 2024 U.S. Presidential Debate, there was no mention of crypto, leading to a drastic drop in PolitiFi meme coin values as Trump and Biden faced off on live television. The net inflow of US spot Bitcoin ETFs has increased by $21.5 million, continuing its positive trend. VanEck has applied for a Solana exchange-traded fund (ETF) in the United States, subsequent to the approvals for Bitcoin and Ethereum, resulting in a surge in the price of Solana. The SEC has accused Lido and Rocket Pool staking programs of being securities.

Options Market

BTC tumbled to local low that hasn’t been seen since early May on coincidental pressure from German authorities liquidating seized BTC and Mt. Gox repayment announcement. It is not unrealistic to expect IV and Put skew to shoot up either to protect the downside or to play bearish. Yet, IV only briefly moved a little higher and put skew was not driven materially higher, which suggests longs are unstressed on this correction. ETH, again, showed its resilience on the downtrend as we are getting close to the ETF launch. IV continued to trade about 10-15 vols higher than BTC across the curve.

Altcoins and Blockchain News

• Telegram mini-app devs can now earn Toncoin with Adsgram.

• On June 25, the Notcoin team announced that it had burned 210 million NOT tokens worth $3 million in a day, a move that grabbed traders’ attention and helped NOT’s price rally by up to 16.40% to reach $0.0164.

• Tether discontinues support for the Eos Network and Algorand implementations of its flagship stablecoin USDT.

• 21Shares Submits S-1 Document For Solana ETF.

• Binance Completes Metal DAO (MTL) Mainnet Swap, Reopens Deposits and Withdrawals.

• Farcaster co-founder Dan Romero unveiled Friday a new in-app payments feature using USDC stablecoins.

• Igloo Inc., the parent firm behind the popular NFT project Pudgy Penguins, acquired the on-chain creator economy platform Frame.

Marco

The major benchmarks ended the week relatively quietly while posting a strong first-half gain: the DJIA lost -0.1%, the S&P 500 -0.1%, and the NASDAQ added +0.2%. The positive economic recovery and the prospect of a Fed rate cut in 2024 boosted the market performance. The tech giants outperform the overall market for the first half of 2024.