BTC is currently trading around $66,800 and ETH around $3,450. Notable gainers in the last 24 hours are TON, LTC, and UNI. The global crypto market cap is $2.55T, down 2.3% over the last day. DeFi Total Value Locked is ~$101b and BTC dominance is around 56%.
US markets rallied yesterday morning after a lighter-than-expected inflation report, but sold off into the close after hawkish datapoints from the Fed. Specifically, the Fed lowered its expected number of rate cuts this year from three to one and increased its estimate for inflation for both this year and next. In addition, Fed Chair Powell stated that while there has been “modest further progress” on inflation, the Fed does not yet have the confidence needed for it to lower rates. On a positive note, US wholesale prices came in lighter than expected this morning, potentially portending well for future inflation.
In regulatory/country news: Europe’s EBA published the final version of draft technical standards on prudential matters for MiCA; The European Commission selected Iota’s Web3 ID solution for its European Blockchain sandbox; US President Biden announced nominations for SEC, FDIC, and Treasury leadership positions; the Biden campaign may begin to accept crypto donations; SEC Chair Gensler provided an unclear answer when asked whether ETH is a commodity; Gensler stated that he expects the spot Ethereum ETFs to receive final approval “over the course of the summer”; and, Terra developer Terraform Labs settled with the SEC for $4.5b.
In corporate news: Fortune 100 companies increased their web3 projects by 39% year-over-year; crypto payments platform Helio updated its Solana Pay Shopify plugin, enabling Shopify merchants to accept hundreds of cryptocurrencies; Microstrategy announced plans to issue $500m of debt to buy more Bitcoin; several large South Korean retailers including Lotte and Hyundai closed their NFT operations; Texas’s ERCOT is considering integrating Bitcoin miners as a Controllable Load Resource to enhance grid stability; Bitcoin miner Bitfarms announced the development of a large-scale mining site in Pennsylvania and raised its 2025 hash rate guidance to 35 EH/s; and, P2P.org partnered with OKX to provide institutional staking services.
In protocol news: Curve founder Egorov saw his loans liquidated, but repaid 93% of the $10m of bad debt the liquidations created with plans to repay the rest shortly; Solana validators began upgrading to new software that includes a scheduler meant to improve block creation efficiency; Tether stated it will launch a new class of digital asset products next week, with details undisclosed; Arbitrum passed a preliminary temperature check to implement its BoLD dispute resolution system; Ripple announced it will use Axelar as the bridge for its upcoming EVM-compatible side chain; and, indexing protocol The Graph upgraded subgraphs from centralized hosting providers to a distributed network of data indexers.
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Author:
Brian Rudick, Senior Strategist | Twitter, Telegram, LinkedIn
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