Crypto Market

BTC and ETH Market Insight

BTC price holds for the key psychological support of $100k, rebounding back from a quick dip under $98k over the weekend. The increasing uncertainty around Iran pushed the crude oil price over +4% for the day but the gain was soon erased, meaning traders are betting that the crude oil supply will not likely be cut off. 

Upcoming Macro Calendar - Source: Trading Economics

Options Market

Market positioning remained cautious this week, with Monday's gains gradually eroded as the week progressed. Despite this, both BTC and ETH appear to have found support at current levels. Implied volatility for BTC held steady, while ETH saw a decline in implied volatility, aligning with its falling realized volatility. Options skew steepened further, favouring puts for both assets, echoing market’s cautious positioning. The ETH/BTC ratio continued to consolidate around 0.024. ETH’s front-end implied volatility trades approximately 30 points above BTC’s, a premium justified by ETH’s higher realized volatility.

Altcoins and Blockchain News

• BlockBeats reports that on June 22, ARK Invest increased its sell-off of Circle shares, selling a total of 1.25 million shares of CRCL stock across three transactions.
• Texas Governor Greg Abbott has signed the Bitcoin Reserve Bill (SB 21) into law, officially making Texas the third U.S. state to hold Bitcoin reserves.
• The Norwegian government plans to temporarily ban cryptocurrency mining.
• The Wyoming stablecoin "WYST" is scheduled to launch on August 20.
• An Israeli hacker group attacked an Iranian crypto exchange, resulting in the destruction of $90 million in crypto assets.
• Semler Scientific has appointed a Director of Bitcoin Strategy and plans to hold 105,000 bitcoins by the end of 2027.
• Payments giant Visa has expanded its stablecoin operations to Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, and has formed a strategic partnership with African crypto platform Yellow Card.
• Ondo Finance, in collaboration with Solana and others, has launched a Global Markets Alliance to tokenize U.S. stocks and other assets.
• According to Metaplanet CEO Simon Gerovich, Capital Group has increased its stake in Metaplanet, becoming its second-largest shareholder, with holdings valued at nearly $500 million.
• Revolut is actively exploring the issuance of its own stablecoin.

Macro

The major benchmarks closed mostly flat for the week: the DJIA closed flat, the S&P 500 lost 0.2%, and the Nasdaq added +0.2%. The Chinese stocks market retreated for the week: the Shanghai Composite Index lost 0.51%, the CSI 300 -0.45% and the Hang Seng index fell 1.52%.