Quick Take

• The U.S. SEC approved eight U.S. Spot Ether ETFs on 23 May, driving significant ETH price increase of +26.6% in the past seven days. However, The ETF issuers will still need the SEC to approve their S-1 registration statements before trading can commence, timing of which is unclear. Crypto markets were mostly up last week, coinciding with the news around U.S. Ether ETFs. 

• Open interest for Ether futures on centralised exchanges reached a new record high of $14.9 billion on 22 May ahead of SEC’s approval of the ETH ETFs, indicating increased trading activities.

• U.S. Spot Bitcoin ETFs had a tenth straight day of inflow, with a weekly net inflow of totalling US$1,057 million, topping last week’s $948 million net inflow. Grayscale Bitcoin Trust ETF’s (GBTC) weekly net outflow settled at $21 million last week.

• On the macro side, FOMC released its minutes last week, mentioning ‘a lack of further progress toward the Committee’s 2 percent (inflation) objective’, as recent macro indicators showed price increases higher than the target benchmark. This potentially reflects a lack of confidence to move forward with interest rate cuts. Latest data on CME Fedwatch Tool shows only a 49% probability of rate cut in September. 

• Notable updates: Aptos (APT) released Aptos Node v1.12; Fantom (FTM) raised $10 million for the development of a new L1 called Sonic; Sei (SEI) proposed a v2 upgrade; the Crypto.com App listed zkRace (ZERC).

• Notable events in the coming week: US personal consumption expenditures price index data release.

Weekly Market Index

All three crypto market indices increased last week. Price index increased by +7.04%, while volume and volatility indices increased more drastically by +46.74% and +29.89%, respectively. Volume and volatility changes were led by ETH and ARB, which rallied in association with the approval of the U.S. Spot Ether ETFs. 

Check price

Chart of the Week

Open interest for Ether futures on centralised exchanges reached a new record high of $14.9 billion on 22 May ahead of SEC’s approval of ETH ETFs, indicating increased trading activities. Open interest (OI) is used to measure the total value of all outstanding futures contracts across exchanges and indicate market activity and trader sentiment around one asset.

Weekly Performance

BTC increased by +4.1% while ETH increased significantly by +26.6% in the past seven days. The price action for other selected top market cap tokens was mostly positive. ICP (-3.5%) led the drop while LIDO (+53.1%) led the gains as it solved a security breach involving one of its node operators, Numic. 

All the selected key categories were up in terms of market capitalisation changes in the past seven days, with the meme category leading the gains.

Notable Token Updates

News Highlights

• The U.S. SEC approved eight U.S. Spot Ether ETFs, including those by VanEck, BlackRock, Fidelity, Grayscale, Franklin Templeton, ARK 21Shares, Invesco Galaxy, and Bitwise. The ETF issuers will still need the SEC to approve their S-1 registration statements before trading can commence, timing of which is unclear. 

• Bitcoin and Ethereum-based exchange-traded products (ETPs) are set to debut on the London Stock Exchange after the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority provided approval on 22 May. The ETPs, including those from WisdomTree and 21Shares will only be available to professional and institutional investors, and are expected to begin trading on 28 May.  

• Kabosu, the Shiba Inu behind the face of Dogecoin and the Doge meme, passed away last week. The crypto community expressed condolences. Dogecoin (DOGE) increased 5% after Elon Musk’s tweet honouring Kabosu and 12.5% in the past seven days.

Recent Research Reports

• Expanding Ethereum’s Frontier: Restaking And EigenLayer’s Ecosystem (An Analysis of Restaking Dynamics): EigenLayer pioneers the ETH restaking narrative, pushing the liquid restaking market to grow to $8 billion TVL. This report delves into EigenLayer’s ecosystem, its restaking mechanism, and the newly launched EIGEN token.

• Tokenisation of RWAs & Yield-Bearing Stablecoins: RWA tokenisation signifies a bridge between TradFi and the digital asset space. We explore the tokenisation of securities and its application in yield-bearing stablecoins, which have both gained much attention recently.

• Alpha Navigator: Quest for Alpha [April 2024]: Asset classes were mostly down in April. Cryptocurrency led the drop. US fighting inflation while ECB signals potential rate cuts.

Recent University Articles

• What Is Offline Staking and How Does It Work?: Did you know that you can keep your tokens in cold storage and still stake them? Here’s how offline staking works.

• What Is Bitcoin Mining and How Does It Work?: BTC is mined on a Proof of Work network — here’s how the process works in detail.

• What Is Decentralised Compute? Plus the Most Popular Projects: Decentralised compute is a rising crypto narrative. Learn more about how decentralised compute works and the most popular projects.

Catalyst Calendar

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