🟣 Big week for ETH

EthCC and ETF news expected

Author

Macauley Peterson
July 08, 2024

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Welcome back to 0xResearch. Here's what we’ve got for you today:

  • How low can BTC go?

  • SAB121 on Capitol Hill

  • Solana DEX volume surge

  • CT: Ether vibe check

Greetings from Brussels, where I’ve just arrived for EthCC! Slide into my DMs if you want to play some blitz chess.

After crashing Friday, bitcoin and broader crypto markets once again explored the recent lows sub-$55k and bounced, establishing a new range between there and $58k.

There’s still quite some work required to undo the damage wrought from the latest downtrend. Further continuation lower remains a big risk, given the supply overhang — the German government continued to send decent chunks of BTC to exchanges and trading desks on Monday, with over 1,800 BTC transferred.

Absorbing the supply and avoiding new lows for a couple weeks would start to look very constructive, however.

Compared to BTC, ETH has been trading in about an 8% range since the surprise greenlighting of spot ETFs in May. The latest comments from prospective ETF issuers are due to the SEC today. It’s anticipated the new filings will have only minor changes, so there should be news on the ETF launch date this week or next. 

The US House of Representatives is expected to vote this week on SEC Staff Accounting Bulletin 121 (SAB121). Recall that President Biden vetoed the measure after its passage in May.

SAB121 mandates that crypto custodians record their holdings as liabilities on their balance sheets. The directive aims to increase transparency and accountability within the cryptocurrency sector, but has come under harsh criticism from the crypto industry and its political allies.

The upcoming vote determines whether the veto will be upheld or overridden, and could influence the financial reporting and operational practices of US-based crypto custodians.

— Macauley Peterson (X: @yeluacaM | Farcaster: @Macauley)

From modularity to restaking, to the intersection of AI and crypto, to the long-awaited consumer-facing apps to the most recent Bitcoin-related innovations.

We’ll be breaking down all of these and more with the help of a few of the thought leaders in crypto at Permissionless.

Solana DEX volumes:

Activity across Solana-based DEXs is off to a very good first week of July. It hit $11.4 billion, a level not seen since March.

Memecoins are apparently acting as a high-beta play on bounces, like we’re seeing today. BONK, Solana’s first billion dollar memecoin, is up 25% relative to its overnight low point (at time of writing) and almost 40% higher than its Friday low.

That’s roughly double what SOL itself has done.

Stablecoins have proven their product-market fit by effectively enabling DeFi as a financial system. Ethena is highly relevant as it strives to disconnect TradFi systems from DeFi and offer a capital efficient crypto-native synthetic dollar. USDe has reached a $3.5 billion TVL in only three months and is now the fourth largest “stablecoin” by market cap.

We acknowledge TON’s highly unique distribution relationship with Telegram, Telegram’s ambitions as a super app and developer platform rivaling the scale of WeChat as a TON growth driver, and the TON chain’s relatively high scale and speed versus popular EVM chains today. However, we believe the TON ecosystem is at a very early stage, its native smart contract language may be prohibitive to attracting meaningful developer activity, and that Telegram’s distribution is overstated and its viability as a developer platform and super app is far more challenged than the market appreciates.

Some critics dismiss RWAs as tokenized nonsense — but RWAs could truly revolutionize how we trade assets globally.

Bitcoin looks like it’s may be forming two peaks, but there are strict rules about what constitutes a double top.

The insights, views and outlooks presented in the report are not to be taken as financial advice. Blockworks Research analysts are not registered broker/dealers or financial advisors. Blockworks Research analysts may hold assets mentioned in this report, further outlined in the Firm’s Financial Disclosures.