🐂Weekly Recap: Markets Turn Bullish

Happy weekend Defiers!

Digital assets are mounting a comeback, with Bitcoin trading at its highest level in four weeks. However, the move follows a choppy week for price action, with the markets bracing for what turned out to be positive U.S. inflation data earlier in the week.

The crypto markets were buoyed by disclosures from more than 900 leading U.S. financial institutions revealing spot Bitcoin ETF holdings exceeding $100 million each for a combined total of $10.7 billion. Institutional exchange-traded products also posted their weekly inflow in five weeks.

Meme assets also went on a tear after RoaringKitty, the trader and influencer credited with kicking off the GameStop short squeeze in 2021, returned to Twitter after a three-year hiatus.

However, one segment of the markets that is suffering is NFTs. Many Ethereum-based collections suffering heavy drawdowns as Season 3 of Blur’s airdrop campaign comes to a close, prompting farmers to offload their inventory.

The surging growth of Pump.Fun briefly came to a halt after the protocol lost around $2 million worth of SOL in an exploit leveraging flashloans. A post-mortem attributed the attack to a rogue former employee.

The U.S. Senate passed a resolution rejecting the SEC’s anti-crypto accounting rule targeting custodians with bi-partisan support, following its passage through the House of Representatives last week. While President Biden may still veto the bill, lawmakers are urging him to take stock of the resolution receiving bi-partisan backing.

In other regulatory news, an indictment charging two brothers with money laundering relating to a $25 million heist targeting an MEV bot may have legitimized Maximal Extractable Value in the eyes of the law.

Enterprises continue to embrace tokenization, with the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation tapping Chainlink to pilot bringing financial data on-chain and Deutsche Bank joining the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s Project Guardian. S&P Global Rankings also published a report praising the efficiency benefits of tokenization.

Lido is moving to take action after steadily losing market share restaking protocols in recent months. Lido’s community is currently voting on whether to launch the Lido Alliance to promote the development of a restaking ecosystem centered around its stETH token.

Plus, Blast delayed its long-awaited airdrop, Avara announced it is developing a Lens Network Layer 2, Solana overtook Ethereum by network revenue amid high fees, and MakerDAO plans to replace DAI with two stablecoins.

And don’t miss our coverage of the recent ETHDenver hackathon event!

Enjoy!

THANKING OUR NEWSLETTER SPONSORS
| NEWSLETTER CONTINUES BELOW |

NEAR is the chain abstraction stack, empowering builders to create apps that scale to billions of users and across all blockchains.

ALPHA INTEL

Boost Your Portfolio with Yield Loops on Summer.fi

Our resident DeFi degens walk you through how to use Summer Fi to access curated strategies for yield generation. Plus, they walk you through all of the latest market action and share what they are doing in the markets right now.

PODCAST & INTERVIEWS

Meet The Gigabrains Shaping The Future Of Web3

The Defiant interviewed more than 50 builders, hackers, and founders at ETHDenver — the leading Ethereum event combining hackathons, workshops, and discussions to foster innovation, community, and development.

ETHDenver attracts developers, entrepreneurs, and enthusiasts from around the globe to collaborate and shape the future of decentralized technology.

VIDEO & TUTORIALS

What Are DeFi Derivatives? | Crypto101

Our explainer walks you through the exciting world of DeFi derivatives, which offer high leverage and enable advanced trading strategies without compromising on decentralization.

Friday

Deutsche Bank Says Tokenization Is The Future Of Financial Innovation Deutsche Bank is launching a new tokenization pilot after joining the Monetary Authority of Singapore's Project Guardian initiative.
MakerDAO Founder Unveils Two New Stablecoins MakerDAO plans to replace DAI with two new stable tokens as part of its Endgame overhaul.
Crypto Markets Surge on Positive ETF Inflows Bitcoin rallied above $67,000 for the first time in nearly a month, while ETH jumped 5%.
Did U.S. Regulators Just Legitimize MEV Extraction? An indictment charging two brothers for hiding $25M stolen from MEV bots may have legitimized Maximal Extractable Value in the eyes of the law.
Pump.Fun Identifies Ex-Employee in $1.9M Breach The Memecoin launchpad said a former employee was responsible for a $2M exploit that rocked the protocol on Thursday.
U.S. Senate Rejects SEC’s Crypto Accounting Rule But Biden May Veto The Vote The resolution received bipartisan support in both the Senate and House of Representatives.
DTCC Leverages Chainlink for Smart NAV Pilot The pilot program explored the feasibility of delivering mutual fund price and rate data using Chainlink’s CCIP.

Thursday

Sei Token Pops on V2 Roadmap SEI spiked 25% after the team revealed deployment plans for its Ethereum-compatible V2 upgrade.
Memecoin Launchpad Pump.Fun Loses Nearly $2M In Exploit The platform redeployed its contracts after a hacker made off with roughly $2M worth of SOL.
Crypto Markets Drop After US Jobless Claims Report Crypto stocks slid as the U.S. share market pushed into fresh all-time times.
Solana Surpasses Ethereum By Revenue After Parabolic Fee Spike The Solana community is celebrating surging network revenue, but the milestone is a sign users are paying high transaction fees.
Bitcoin Price Bounces After 900+ Institutions Reveal $10.7B In Spot ETF Buys More than 900 institutional entities disclosed spot Bitcoin ETF shareholdings worth at least $100M each.
Blast Delays Token Launch But Increases Airdrop Allocation Blast postponed its token generation event (TGE) and airdrop until June 26.

Wednesday

Circle to Relocate Legal Domicile from Ireland to U.S. The move comes ahead of the USDC issuer’s potential IPO, with Circle filing paperwork with the SEC in January.
Ethereum NFTs Dip as Blur Season 3 Winds Down Many popular NFT collections have posted double-digit percentage losses in the past week as BLUR airdrop farmers offload their inventory.
Crypto Markets Bounce Back as Core U.S Inflation Hits 3-Year Low Digital assets rallied in response to better-than-expected U.S. inflation data.
Degen Chain Back Online After 50-Hour Outage The price of DEGEN crashed 22% amid the prolonged downtime.
S&P Global Rankings Urges Asset Managers To Embrace Tokenization The esteemed credit rating agency argued tokenization offers significant efficiency benefits over legacy financial architecture.

Tuesday

Sonne Finance Suffers $20 Million Exploit The Optimism-based lending protocol paused operations after losing more than half of its TVL.
Infinex Attracts $60 Million of Deposits in Two Days Users can deposit USDC to Infinex deployments across multiple chains to earn Governance Points.
Avara Announces Lens Network L2 Leveraging ZK Stack Avara’s upcoming Lens protocol will host a new deployment of the Lens Protocol.
Crypto Markets Drop Ahead of U.S. Inflation Data Digital assets dropped on Tuesday morning as traders braced for fresh macroeconomic data from the United States.
Lido Proposes Alliance Promoting stETH-Based Restaking Ecosystem Lido has suffered multiple months of sustained outflows as capital flows into liquid restaking protocols.
Institutional ETPs Post First Inflow In Five Weeks Despite Bitcoin Price Pullback However, weekly ETP trade volume is down 53% compared to April.

Monday

Gamestop and Memecoins Rally as RoaringKitty Returns GameStop stock is up 69% on the day as related meme assets soar.
Pudgy Penguins Puts Toys In Target Stores The NFT company has sold over one million Pudgy Toys since launching last year.