📉Weekly Recap: Crypto Crashes Despite Spot Ether ETF Launch

Happy weekend Defiers!

It was a bearish week for crypto markets despite spot Ether ETFs completing their long-awaited launch.

A modest sell-on-the-news event quickly accelerated into violent capitulation as the U.S. stock market suffered its worst day since 2022 and Mt. Gox transferred more than $2 billion of BTC for creditor distributions. ETH crashed alongside the broader markets despite Ether ETFs hosting more than $1 billion in volume on their debut and S&P Global touting Ethereum as a settlement layer for mainstream financial markets.

Although digital assets rallied late in the week, the majority of the top 100 cryptocurrencies posted losses over the past seven days.

The intersection between crypto and politics continues to make headlines.

Joe Biden’s sudden withdrawal from the 2024 presidential race elevated Kamala Harris to the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee, prompting calls for Harris to campaign on a pro-crypto platform.

An increasing number of politicians are pushing to invest public funds in Bitcoin. Robert F Kennedy said he wants the Federal Reserve to invest $615 billion in BTC, while Cynthia Lummis is reportedly working on a bill to add Bitcoin to the Fed’s strategic reserve assets. Jersey City’s mayor is also moving to allocate 2% of the city’s pension to Bitcoin.

Meanwhile, the pro-crypto platform from the Republican candidate, Donald Trump, comprises a hot topic at the ongoing Bitcoin2024 conference in Nashville, Tennessee.

Big things are happening in Solana’s DeFi ecosystem. Solend rallied after rebranding to Save and announcing plans to launch a stablecoin, liquid staking token, and a memecoin shorting protocol. Jito also enjoyed a bullish week after revealing plans for a restaking platform.

Atari launched an on-chain arcade on Base, the surging Ethereum Layer 2. In other Base news, the L2 is pursuing Stage 1 decentralization.

Aave’s community is mulling a proposal to redistribute protocol revenue to tokenholders through a buyback and burn program.

The celebrity memecoin moment has quickly died off. Analysis shows 24 of 30 celebrity-backed memecoins crashing more than 88% since launching.

Plus, Toyota explores automotive use cases for account abstraction and tokenization, analysts debate the merit of ICOs, Ondo introduces tokenized treasuries to Cosmos, and Avail DA goes live on mainnet.

Also, check out our podcast with Kain Warwick, the founder of Synthetix, to learn about his new Infinex protocol.

Enjoy!

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OG DeFi Pioneer Kain Warwick Aims To Transform Crypto UX With Infinex

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Friday

Trump and ‘Bitcoin Season 2’ Dominate Bitcoin2024 Trump, sidechains, layer 2s, and Ordinals are the most talked about topics at the Bitcoin2024 conference.
ArcadeXYZ Collateralizes $450,000 of Ringers NFTs NFT lending remains strong despite the general downtrend in token prices.
Nearly Every Celebrity Token Launched in 2024 Has Gone to Zero At least 22 celebrities used Pump.fun to launch memecoins, but most have since abandoned their projects.
Flurry Of Politicians Advocate For Investing Public Funds Into Bitcoin The mayor of Jersey City is moving to allocate 2% of the city’s Pension Fund into BTC, while Robert F Kennedy wants The Fed to match its gold holdings in Bitcoin.
Cardano Validators Begin Migration In Preparation for Chang Hard Fork The Chang hard fork aims to shift governance from centralized entities to ADA holders.
Were ICOs Really So Bad? Sentiment is Starting to Shift Crypto commentators are wondering whether it was rash to write off Initial Coin Offerings.
Bitcoin Bounces Back After Brutal Crypto Selloff Crypto traders get some relief as BTC and ETH rally 5% and 3%, respectively.
Monad-based DeFi Projects Unveil Flurry of Funding Rounds Kuru Exchange, Kintsu and, aPriori have raised a combined $16 million as parallelized EVM Monad gears up for its testnet launch.

Thursday

Aave Community Weighs Proposal to Distribute Protocol Revenue Among Token Holders Aave’s recent proposal is seeking governance feedback on implementing a ‘fee switch’ through a buyback program.
Solana-Based Jito Rallies After the Staking Platform Says it Will Add Restaking Jito is introducing restaking to its MEV-boosted liquid staking ecosystem.
Bitcoin Rewards Company Fold to Go Public on Nasdaq Via SPAC Merger The deal valued Fold’s valuation at $365 million ahead of its SPAC listing.
Colombia’s Largest Bank Taps Chainlink Proof of Reserves For COPW Stablecoin Users can now view COPW’s reserves using Chainlink’s PoR protocol.
Bitcoin Layer 2 Yona Network Wants to Bring Ethereum and Solana dApps to Bitcoin Yona Network integrated the Neon Stack to add Ethereum Virtual Machine to its SVM.
Clearpool Launches Institutional Credit Marketplace on Arbitrum The DeFi credit protocol has received an ARB token grant from the Arbitrum Foundation to support its growth.
Senator Lummis Reportedly Wants U.S. Federal Reserve To Hold Bitcoin Lummis is reportedly drafting a bill instructing The Fed to hold BTC as a reserve asset alongside gold and foreign currency.
Bitcoin and Ether Plunge Amid Mt. Gox Distributions $290 million worth of leveraged crypto positions were liquidated in 24 hours.

Wednesday

Proton Announces its Self-Custodial Bitcoin Wallet Early access is now open for Proton Wallet, marking the launch of the privacy company's first crypto product.
Solana’s Solend Rebrands to Save and Announces Plans to Launch Stablecoin Solend, now Save, said it wants to launch a native stablecoin, a liquid staking token, and a protocol for shorting memecoins.
ETH is Flat After Strong ETF Debut Ethereum’s ETH is flat in the past 24 hours even after ETFs drew in more than $100 million of inflows.
Kamala Harris’ Stance On Cryptocurrency: What We Know Harris has never mentioned crypto but Biden's administration was loud and clear.
Toyota Explores Ethereum's ERC-4337 To Unlock On-Chain Automotive Operations The Toyota Blockchain Lab proposed building on ERC-4337 to unlock on-chain automotive use cases.
Jeff Garzik’s Hemi Network Brings EVM Execution To Bitcoin The project introduces the Hemi Virtual Machine and leverages Proof-of-Proof consensus to inherit security from Bitcoin.
Pudgy Penguins’ Parent Company Raises $11 Million to Build Consumer Blockchain The new chain, dubbed Abstract, will leverage zero-knowledge technology and EigenDA.
Base Launches Stage 1 Decentralization On Testnet Base deployed fault proofs on its Sepolia testnet.
BlackRock's BUIDL Eyes Major Investment from Ethena Labs Ethen put out an open call for proposals for investment from on-chain real-world asset issuers.

Tuesday

Kamala Harris's Campaign in Talks to Speak at Bitcoin Conference President Joe Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to become the presidential candidate for the Democratic Party in this year's election.
Ethereum ETFs Did $1 Billion in Volume in First Day of Trading ETH spot ETF volumes are about 22% of what Bitcoin spot ETFs did on their first day.
Derivatives Traders are Going Long ETH The majority of open positions are betting the ETH will rise in price despite the market’s selloff.
Crypto Markets Dip as Ethereum Spot ETFs Make Debut Ethereum spot ETFs launch amid a downturn for major cryptocurrencies.
ETH Trades Flat Despite Spot Ethereum ETFs Going Live The web3 community is speculating on the performance of the debuting ETF asset class.
Atari Launches Onchain Arcade on Base Network The gaming giant appears to be undeterred by the recent downturn in the blockchain gaming sector, which declined 28% in June.
Is Trump Actually Good For Crypto? The Republican presidential nominee has made crypto a central part of his campaign trail. What should we make of it?
Avail Unveils DA Mainnet Alongside Native Token The project said Avail DA offers support for more than 70 chains and tech stacks.
SEC Grants Final Approval To Spot Ether ETFs The funds are expected to begin trading on Tuesday morning.

Monday

Bitcoin DeFi Platform Liquidium Distributes Surprise Airdrop Liquidium’s token generation event distributed 10% of its token supply.
Ondo Launches the First Tokenized Treasury Product on Cosmos Ondo Finance’s yield-bearing stablecoin $USDY is now available to the Cosmos ecosystem through Noble.
S&P Global Touts Ethereum as a Settlement Layer for Financial Markets The publicly traded corporation expects institutions will continue testing the waters in the Ethereum ecosystem.
Crypto Markets Dip Ahead of Ethereum ETF Launch Cumulative Bitcoin ETF inflows crossed $17 billion on Friday.
Analysts Call For Pro-Crypto Pivot From Democrats After Biden Steps Down Political memecoins suffered violent volatility after Biden bowed out of the race, with Biden-themed tokens tanking in response to the news.
Superstate Launches Crypto Carry Fund (USCC) USCC will seek to capitalize on basis trade opportunities, staking returns, and invest in U.S. Treasuries.
Ethereum's Burn Rate Slumped 67% In Q2 ETH's supply is now at its highest level since December 2023.