What happened in crypto in the past week? Bitcoin may go up for another 2 years, and more and more institutions are buying it, but some stopped mining and went towards ETH staking instead. Solana and XRP are fighting to flip ETH from the second place, and there is a lot of talk about tokenised shares. Justin Sun and Trump want more of the American people's money, and they will probably get it. What else? Read below:
- Bitcoin: Bernstein called their $200K BTC target a high-conviction but conservative one, pointing to real companies building products on ETH and stablecoins creating utility. Some even predicted seven figures by 2028. Eric and Donald Trump Jr.'s company, American Bitcoin, purchased 215 BTC worth $24M, following Michael Saylor's strategy. The US spot BTC ETFs hit the $1 trillion in cumulative volume in under 18 months. Coinbase's new credit card offers up to 4% cash back in BTC, beating the Gemini card's 3% maximum rate. BTC ETFs experienced a $1.3B inflow amid escalating Middle East conflicts. Over 93% of the total BTC supply has been mined, and institutional demands decrease the constrained liquid supply pool. Public companies holding BTC jumped to 151 this year, a notable 135% increase. Over 30% of Bitcoin's supply is now controlled by 216 centralised entities. The Bitcoin Power Curve Cycle Cloud model is projecting a $200K peak by late 2025, with most of the forecasts hinting at $150K -$200K. Side note, 95.32% of the BTC addresses are currently in profit. But Scaramucci warns that companies issuing debt to buy BTC could damage the asset when the trend reverses. Yet, transactions over $100K now dominate 89% of the network volume. All nice and trendy, until geopolitical tensions spiked, sending Bitcoin to %98K. Then Donald throws words around like 'ceasefire' and so, and BTC surges again up to $105K. Metaplanet raised another $515m in one day to buy more Bitcoin, surpassing Coinbase's stash. Kraken added native Bitcoin staking through Babylon. The US Federal Housing Agency is exploring whether digital assets could help Americans qualify for a mortgage.
- Ethereum: ETH derivative volume beats BTC for the first time, $110B versus $84B. Spot ETH ETFs have seen 16 consecutive days of positive inflows. SharpLink Gaming bought 176.271 ETH for $463M, making them the largest public holder of ETH. ETH whales added more than 1 million ETH in a week, with 871K ETH in just one day. The whales bet big when ETH went down to $2200, buying millions worth of it. We have 800K-1000K new wallets added to the ETH network every week now. And the horror, Bitcoin mining company Bit Digital shutter down its BTC mining and became an ETH staking operation. Tether goes the other way, planning to become the world's largest Bitcoin miner.
- Altcoins and stablecoins: The Coinbase-Nodal Clear partnership is making USDC the first regulated stablecoin collateral for American derivatives markets. Memecoins are showing technical patterns that usually precede explosive moves. Watch on Fartcoin, Dogfiwhat and Pepe! The SEC announced an innovation exemption for DEFI projects, leading to Uniswap, AAVE and SKY to increase by 23%, 16% and 15%. They may approve multiple crypto ETFs, with Solana being the leading individual altcoin. ACX is doing well as Across Protocol added BSC bridge and Pancake Swap integration. Sonic announced the Airdrop Season Two, starting on June 18. HYPE token outperformed all top cryptos, with 12.40% weekly gains and 67% monthly gains, trading at $41.31. USDC goes live on the XRP ledger. X partnered with Polymarket, making it their official prediction market partner. Daily active addresses on XRP just hit 295.000 past week, and there are 2700 whale wallets holding more than 1 million XRP right now. Well, 78.8% of the XRP wallets are in profit too. Even Canada had launched its first North American XRP ETF. Meanwhile, in the US, the SOL and XRP ETFs got delayed by the SEC again until late 2025. We are told that eventually, Solana will flip Ethereum. Good week for the DeFi projects, leading to Uniswap, AAVE, and SKY, increased by 23%, 16%, and 15%, respectively. Global tensions sent memecoins into freefall, with the entire sector losing billions. A platform called ArenaDotTrade lets people mint tradable tokens directly from Twitter posts, making Avalanche hit one million daily transactions, just compare this to 296K early in May. Coral Capital is copying MicroStrategy's playbook, but with BNB. Chinese chip company Nano Labs plans to raise $500M to buy BNB too.
- NFTs and blockchain games: I have enjoyed playing Golem Overlord lately on Hive, and it is quite profitable, I would say, with some significant updates lately. On Splinterlands, we have had the Land NFT new update and improved tokenomics on March 18. The presale of its latest Conclave Arcana collection has started, and two new promo cards are on sale. Check my Holozing article to learn about a new blockchain game that looks full of potential.
- Good news: Mastercard users can now buy crypto directly on DEX via a Chainlink partnership. Circle stock jumped 10% after the WorldChain integration, $116, nearly 4 times more than the starting $31 price last week. After Circle, Gemini, and Peter Thiel-backed exchange Bullish both filed for an IPO. DEFI Development Corp secured a $5B credit line to accumulate Solana tokens, becoming one of the largest institutional holders. In Hong Kong, MemeStrategy is the first HK Stock Exchange company to invest in Solana, buying 2440 SOL for $370K. Tether used $89M to buy 32% of Elemental Altus Royalties - a company that profits from Gold discoveries without mining operations. Stripe acquired a wallet infrastructure protocol, Privy, its second buy this year after Bridge. The GENIUS Act governing stablecoins passes in the US Senate. Republic will tokenise SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic shares. Coinbase has asked the SEC for permission to offer tokenised equities.
- Bad news: Brazil implemented a flat 17.50% tax rate on all crypto gains, removing its previous exemption for monthly trades below $6300.
- Joke of the week: Trump again, of course, and his "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" promising to cut $1.6 trillion, while his ex-best buddy Elon said that this will explode the deficit to $2.5 trillion, while the good news is that maybe it will create a crypto price surge. What will be? Trump Media filed with the SEC for a joint BTC and ETH ETF, with a 75%/25% percentage. Dodgy stuff with Tron, after Justin Sun made it public through a reverse merger with Florida-based SRM Entertainment, involving Trump-connected investment bank Dominari Securities. SRM stock exploded, up 580%, but there are so many red flags in there, I pity the fools losing their money to make Donald and Justin richer. Trump Media announced a $400M stock buyback program while the $2.3B target for BTC is unchanged. Donald published a new financial disclosure, showing $57M earned from crypto.
All the best,
George
Why not...
...have fun and win rewards on my favourite blockchain games (Splinterlands- a Hearthstone-like card game) (Golem Overlord - a Play2Earn game on Hive) (Upland - a real-life virtual land) (Holozing - a Pokemon-like game)and ( Chain of Legends - with a hint of Heroes of Might and Magic).
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