Something to remember: 

“Progress that is both rapid enough to be noticed and stable enough to continue over many generations has been achieved only once in the history of our species. It began at approximately the time of the scientific revolution, and is still under way.”

Week Ahead

What’s driving markets?

• ARK Spot BTC ETF decision gets delayed by the SEC. Consensus is that the SEC will push other decisions as well, lining up for a November/December approval

• Core CPI for July comes in slightly low, CME FedWatch prices in 90.5% chance the Federal Reserve keeps rates steady at the next FOMC. Bank of America Research pushes up expectation for final 25bp hike of this cycle to November

• As predicted by GC Jim, the SEC has appealed the ruling in Ripple Labs’ case that certain XRP sales did not constitute sales of unregistered securities

• Paypal received regulatory approval to launch PYUSD, a stablecoin issued by Paxos Trustco

• Next ETF decision date: iShares Bitcoin Trust on September 2nd

Charts

• Despite BTC surging by 75%, trade volume has continued to fall in 2023 with nearly all exchanges registering double-digit declines in July relative to the year before. This has been accompanied by a collapse in long-term volatility and suggests overall market participation remains low.

• U.S. exchanges (orange) have seen the strongest drop in volume (80% on average).

• Bitcoin perpetual futures open interest in increased by 13% to 289k BTC since the start of July as spot prices fell by 5% over the same 

• period. The increase was driven by Binance and Bybit, whose open interest rose 19% and 12%, respectively.

• Open interest growth has outpaced volume growth, suggesting a large presence of hedging. Funding rates are at their highest level in the past six months, indicating a positive sentiment in the market.

• Bitcoin spot to derivative trading ratio is at all time lows.

• Suggests market participants are short-term oriented.

Research Content

• Federal Reserve initiates program for overseeing crypto banking activities

• SoFi bank discloses over $170 million in cryptocurrency holdings (BTC, ETH, LTC, SOL, DOGE)

• CME FedWatch

• Paypal launches stablecoin

• US Treasuries see record inflows in 2023

• Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has allocated $150m in the next 3 years to explore web3

• Kucoin implements stronger KYC policy

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