Crypto Market

BTC and ETH Market Insight

Binance and Coinbase were sued by the SEC, and their respective net outflows reached $491.9M and $105.3M after the news hit the market. Altcoins related to SEC lawsuits experienced a drop of approximately 15-25% during the weekend due to the forced selling, and some even were at covid lows. During the risk-off environment, we saw the capital concentrating on more liquid coins, like $BTC, $ETH, and stables. Although the news dragged $BTC to a key $25k level,  its dominance was hitting a multi-month high of 49.2%. 

Options Market

BTC dominance surged, nearing the 50% market for the first time since April 2021. From higher beta alts to majors, most cryptocurrencies shed 5-20% following the regulatory headlines. However, a large increase in realized volatility as a result of the SEC’s lawsuits against Binance and Coinbase did not see an inspired increase in ATM implied volatility for either BTC or ETH. The Saturday selloff only pushed ETH 1W ATM implied vol up to 46%.

Altcoins and Blockchain News

• On June 5th, the US SEC filed charges against Binance and its CEO CZ, listing BNB, BUSD, SOL, ADA, MATIC, FIL, ATOM, SAND, and others as securities. The document alleges that since 2017, Binance and Binance US have violated federal securities laws by illegally offering and selling securities to US investors.
• On June 7th, several ARK funds owned by Cathie Wood acquired nearly 420,000 shares of Coinbase (COIN) for a total value of approximately $21.64 million.
• According to a report from Cointelegraph, renewable energy Bitcoin mining project Volcano Energy announced that it has received an initial investment of $250 million, which will be used to launch its 241 MW power plant in El Salvador. Tether, the issuer of USDT, is one of the first-round investors.
• OKX announced the completion of its 20th OKB repurchase and burn on June 11th. The repurchase started on March 1st, 2023, and ended on May 31st, 2023. A total of 5,497,312.77 OKBs were repurchased and burned on the secondary market, with a value of approximately $258 million (based on the 90-day average price), and transferred to a black hole address.
• Circle announced that its cross-chain transfer protocol (CCTP) will launch on Arbitrum on June 27th. Native USDC was already launched on Arbitrum on June 8th. CCTP will destroy tokens on the source chain when users transfer between chains, and mint new tokens on the target chain.
• Decentralized social protocol Lens Protocol completed a $15 million financing round led by IDEO CoLab Ventures, with participation from Tencent Global, General Catalyst, Varian, Blockchain Capital, and others, according to a report from TechCrunch.
• Kava Chain announced on Twitter that it will collaborate with Rome Blockchain to launch the Hover lending protocol in the Kava ecosystem. The protocol will enable cross-chain deposits between multiple Cosmos zones and blockchain networks through Kava's seamless cross-chain interoperability, and expand the protocol's composability.
• TrueUSD, a stablecoin pegged to the US dollar, announced on social media that it has temporarily stopped minting TUSD through Prime Trust, pending further notice.

Macro

US stocks continued to close last week: the Dow rose 0.3%, the S&P 500 rose 0.4%, and the Nasdaq added 0.1%. It is notable that S&P 500 Index entered into the bull market zone, 20% up from the mid-October lows. Small caps outperformed large caps and value shares outperformed growth stocks.