The Breakdown First Five - Wednesday, July 17, 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. Craig Wright Is Not Satoshi

Feels so nice to write that. The judge has delivered written orders requiring Craig Wright to explain that he is not Satoshi across his personal website, Twitter and Slack channels. More than £12.5M in costs have been ordered, his assets are frozen and he appears to be on the run. The judge has referred Wright to prosecutors for criminal perjury charges. It’s finally over. 

4. ETF Flows Rip Higher

Bitcoin ETFs keep accelerating, with inflows hitting a six-week high of $422.5M. This is now 8 days in a row of positive flow and three consecutive days above $300M. Blackrock was the outperformer on Tuesday, hoovering up a quarter billion to bring their total NAV above $20B. Last week was the sixth largest week on record. This week’s pace is double that, but still well short of the March highs. 

3. USA Bitcoin Mining #1

US listed Bitcoin miners have hit record highs in network share, with 26.6% of global hashrate. While international miners were capitulating, well capitalized US miners were building, adding 17 Eh/s in capacity in June. Overall hashrate is also back on the rise after bottoming at the beginning of the month. It’s still 7.5% below record highs, but it seems as though the worst is over in the mining industry.

2. $3M in Crypto Donations

The Trump campaign has reported their second quarter donations including $3M in crypto. This was a small portion of the $331M raised for the quarter and was dominated by large donations from crypto founders. Still, over 100 individual crypto voters chose to send Bitcoin and Ethereum. The larger donation will come from the Bitcoin Conference fundraiser, with reports suggesting $15M is expected. 

1. Mt Gox Distributions Begin

The bulk of the Mt Gox distributions have begun with 48,600 BTC transferred to Kraken yesterday morning. Kraken says that creditors will have the assets in their accounts within 14 days. A further 42,600 BTC has been moved to a segregated wallet, presumably ready to send to Bitstamp. In total it looks like $6B worth of Bitcoin will be returned to creditors in this tranche. Surprisingly the market is done worrying about Gox FUD and marched higher on the day.