⬇️Weekly Recap: Crypto Markets Crash To Four-Month Low

Happy weekend Defiers!

Crypto markets were a sea of red this week, with Bitcoin on track to post its heaviest weekly percentage drawdown in more than 10 months.

The combined crypto capitalization dipped to its lowest level since February as investors panicked in response to Mt. Gox transferring billions of dollars worth of Bitcoin. Despite the size of the transfers, Mt. Gox only distributed $148 million to Bitbank users in its first creditor repayment.

Leverage traders suffered heavy liquidations, with crypto markets driving $570.5 million in margin calls in 24 hours on Friday. However, many analysts are unperturbed, with past bull cycles including numerous violent retracements.

Experts also revised their timeline prediction for spot Ether ETFs entering the markets. While analysts initially tipped July 2 for the funds’ final approval, the SEC requested revised filings from prospective issuers by July 8.

While memecoins have suffered heavy retracements in recent weeks, pundits continue to use meme tokens as a vehicle for punting on politics. KAMA rallied 125% in a day as onlookers anticipate Kamala Harris may take the reigns of the U.S. Democratic Party.

Ethereum continues to dominate the web3 landscape by smart contract activity, DeFi TVL, and fee revenue. However, Ethereum’s annual fee revenue is on course to drop by 40% over the next 12 months, setting the stage for Tron to overtake it with a 275% gain.

We checked out the ETHChile conference in Santiago to get the latest on Latin crypto adoption. South America is the fastest-growing region by cryptocurrency ownership, with the Argentinian peso emerging as the most popular crypto pairing among Latin currencies after a 400% jump in volume this year.

Symbiotic has quickly emerged as the second-largest restaking protocol with more than $1 billion in TVL one month after launching. Symbiotic’s TVL tripled in less than one day after raising its deposit limit.

Pendle’s TVL crashed by $2.7 billion or 45% this past week. The move was triggered by a heavy volume of Pendle’s pools expiring on June 27, with the project’s CEO asserting the dip is a sign of Pendle working as expected.

Polkadot is attracting backlash after its treasury spent $37 million on marketing in the first half of 2024. While onlookers are concerned about the marketing budget exerting heavy sell pressure on the DOT markets, Polkadot’s treasury says annual DOT inflation poses a much greater threat to investors.

Q2 hosted a new all-time high for web3 dApp users, with 10 million active wallets. Centralized exchanges suffered a sharp increase in losses to exploits over the same period, with hackers making off with $572 million from CEXes in three months.

Plus, ZKsync unveils Elastic Chain, Aave Labs to begin building Aave v4, Circle complies with Europe’s new MiCA regulations, and another U.S. court says secondary crypto trades aren’t securities.

Plus, check out our podcast with Daniel Fogg, the CEO of RootstockLab.

Enjoy!

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Friday

Maple Finance TVL More Than Doubles Leading Up to New Retail Arm Maple boasted record high revenue and TVL in June.
Celsius Aims To Recover $100 Million From Users Who Withdrew Funds Before Bankruptcy Celsius’s bankruptcy administrator filed legal action against users who withdrew funds during the 90 days prior to the firm’s demise.
Is This the End of the Crypto Bull Market? History Says No Heavy pullbacks are littered throughout past bull cycles.
Pendle's TVL Drops 45% as Key Markets Mature Several of Pendle’s liquid restaking pools matured on June 27, precipitating a $2.7 billion drop in TVL.
Bankrupt 3AC Capital Buys NFT Thanks to 3-Year Bid Authorities Overlooked Three Arrows Capital snapped up Neon Village with a three-year-old bid of 20 ETH.
U.S. Court Rules Two Obscure Altcoins Are Commodities A U.S. district court judge ruled that OHM and KLIMA qualify as commodities in a fraud case.
Bitcoin Price Crashes To Four-Month Low As Mt. Gox Makes Initial Repayments Crypto markets crumbled in response to sizable Mt. Gox asset movements.
Web3 Apps Reach All-Time High of 10 Million Daily Active Users A record 10 million unique wallets interacted with web3 dApps in Q2.

Thursday

Bitcoin Mining Difficulty Set for Second Biggest Drop Since FTX Collapse Miners continue to suffer following the fourth Bitcoin halving in April.
Flare Network Leverages LayerZero to Connect with 75 Blockchains More than 50,000 dApps can now access Flare’s data.
Crypto Markets Bleed Amid Massive Liquidations The bearish momentum coincides with continued BTC sales from the German government.
Symbiotic TVL Triples To $1B Within 24 Hours Of Raising Deposit Limits Symbiotic is now the second-largest restaking protocol.
‘Lower Before Higher’ Say Bitcoin Analysts James Check, the former lead analyst for Glassnode, flagged that short-term holders are sitting on billions in unrealized losses.
Bittensor Halts Network After Users Fall Victim To Malicious Python Software Victims who downloaded the software and decoded their keys suffered roughly $8 million in losses.
Tron Poised To Threaten Ethereum's Revenue Dominance Ethereum’s annual fee revenue is on course to drop to $1.65 billion in the next year, while Tron is trending toward $1.72 billion.
Rising Dominance Of Arbitrum and Base Defies Liquidity Fragmentation Narrative Arbitrum and Base account for roughly half of Layer 2 TVL, users, transactions, and DEX volume.

Wednesday

New Kamala Harris Memecoin KAMA Soars on U.S. Presidential Race Speculation KAMA surged 125% as pundits tip Kamala Harris may assume leadership of the Democratic party.
Argentine Peso Crypto Trading Volume Grows by 400% This Year Argentina's local currency is the fastest-growing crypto pairing in Latin America.
Blast Token Tumbles as Layer 2 Unveils Season 2 BLAST crashed 30% in one week despite the project announcing its Season 2 eligibility criteria.
Centralized Exchange Losses to Hacks are Up 1,000% This Year: ImmuneFi Hackers stole $572 million in Q2, up from $345 million in the previous quarter.
Memecoin Infrastructure is Taking Over DeFi Memecoin projects were among five of the top 15 web3 projects by revenue last month.
Bitcoin Drops Below $60,000 as Mt.Gox Fears Resurface Some analysts believe that fears concerning Mt Gox’s upcoming creditor payouts are overblown.
Bitcoin Miner Genesis Digital Reportedly Eyes U.S. IPO Alameda Research, the sister trading firm of the failed FTX exchange, invested $1.15 billion in Genesis Digital in its 2022 funding round.
Data Contradicts Narrative: Ethereum Continues to Dominate Layer 1 Sector Ethereum continues to dominate the web3 sector by smart contracts, Layer 1 revenue, and DeFi TVL.
Polkadot Community Unhappy With Heavy Treasury Spend Critics argue that Polkadot’s marketing expenses are exerting significant selling pressure on the DOT markets.
Chainlink Powers NAV Data For Sygnum's On-Chain Fidelity Fund Chainlink is now providing NAV data for Sygnum’s on-chain representation of Fidelity’s Institutional Liquidity Fund.

Tuesday

Ethereum ETF Approval Delayed Until July 8 Analysts are extending their predicted timelines for spot Ether ETFs entering the market.
Crypto Markets Drop as Powell Holds Firm on Interest Rates Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said that the U.S. central bank was not ready to cut interest rates yet despite encouraging inflation data.
Aave Launches GHO Stablecoin On Arbitrum The launch marked the first deployment of GHO's cross-chain expansion.
ZKsync Unveils Vision For Elastic Chain Ecosystem After 3.0 Upgrade ZKsync aims to foster an interconnected ecosystem of ZK Stack-based Layer 2 rollups.
Bitfinex Securities and Mikro Kapital Announce Second Tokenized Bond Offering The number of tokenized bond products is surging in 2024.

Monday

Mantle Launches Incentives Campaign for its Liquid Staking Protocol Mantle is getting in on the bubbling restaking sector.
Circle Becomes Europe’s First Compliant Stablecoin Issuer USDC and EURC are now compliant with Europe’s MiCA regulations.
ETHChile Highlights Triple-digit Growth In South American Crypto Ownership South America was the fastest-growing region for crypto adoption in 2023.
Crypto Markets Rally Ahead of Anticipated Ethereum ETF Approval The markets opened the week with a short-lived rally.
Crypto Celebrates Court Dismissing SEC Claims That Secondary BNB Sales Aren't Securities Legal experts describe the ruling as a significant victory over the SEC for the web3 sector.
Aave Labs Receives Grant To Develop V4 Iteration Over 12 Months The Aave DAO greenlit a grant distributing $12 million GHO to Aave Labs over 12 months.