The Breakdown First Five - Monday, June 10, 2024

Welcome back to The Breakdown First Five — the 5 most interesting and/or important stories in bitcoin, crypto, and markets to start your day.

 5. Busted Kitty On Stream

Roaring Kitty returned on Friday for his first livestream in three years. His Gamestop position had reached a billion dollars on paper in overnight markets, but was thrown off course by a surprise earnings report and almost $3B in stock issuance. Kitty showed up half a hour behind schedule and wearing a head bandage, making light of the price action. Beyond the joke, we now know the account hasn’t been sold and Keith Gill is trying to run it back to a billion.

4. Binance Bounces Back

After a shaky few years, Binance has returned to prominence. The world’s largest crypto exchange now boasts 200M users and $100M in assets under custody. The figures are all self reported, but any way you slice it that’s a ton of crypto ownership. Estimates suggest that more than a third of crypto owners worldwide have a Binance account. 

3. Mempool Jammed

The Bitcoin network experienced a surge of transactions on Friday with 300,000 unconfirmed transactions piling up in the mempool. Average fees spiked to $50. The rush has been linked to a wallet consolidation operation at OKX. Estimates suggest the exchange spent 254 BTC to consolidate 1738 BTC. OKX later confirmed this was a test of a new procedure, which has now concluded. It’s unclear whether they intended to spend that much, but miners appreciate the donation. 

2. Jobs Hot

Friday’s Jobs report showed 272,000 new payrolls in May, far oustripping the 190,000 expected. Below the headline, the household survey showed conditions deteriorating, with 408,000 job losses and unemployment ticking up slightly to 4%. It looks like the data is going in two directions at once, with no clear sign if any of the data are accurate. Markets are treating the numbers as hot enough to push back rate cuts until at least September. 

1. Bitcoin Down, CT Downbad

Bitcoin had a rough Friday after the hot jobs numbers, falling below $70,000. Weekend trading was in a stable range but failed to show a meaningful recovery. While Bitcoin is only down 3% from last week’s high, it seems that CT has been pushing the leverage and risk. The timeline was a warzone, with traders lamenting blown out altcoin positions. Sentiment is dire in broader crypto markets as long tail alts trade down to multi year against to Bitcoin.