Crypto Market

BTC and ETH Market Insight

The Jerome Powell speech was quite balanced, no new information other than 2% still their inflation target. FTX sought court permission for a weekly crypto sale restart to mitigate potential losses from price fluctuations, aiming for up to $200M. According to Glassnode, over 88.3% of BTC Short-Term Holder supply now was held at an unrealized loss. It might cause further downside price movement in the coming weeks. Crypto markets showed positive momentum after the release of the Nvidia earnings report, but the gains were short-lived.

Options Market

The spike in RV triggered by the selloff last Thursday turned out to be short-lived. Front-end IVs cooled off to echo the falling RVs. The term structure reverted to backwardation for both BTC and ETH after being in contango for a very short period of time. Skew for BTC also calmed down further to neutral-ish as the market stabilised. On the other hand, it is interesting to note that skew for ETH remained little changed compared to last week, suggesting a more pessimistic view on ETH. ETH/BTC vol spread stayed in the negative zone.

Altcoins and Blockchain News

• Data: The total number of users on the Base chain exceeds 1 million, and the total number of transactions is nearly 18 million.
• Bitbrowser private keys leaked, user losses total more than $410,000.
• PEPE: Former team members used multi-signatures to steal 16 trillion $PEPE yesterday, and the remaining 10 trillion have been transferred to the new wallet.
• The Yearn community has started voting on the "Start V3" proposal, and it will end on Aug 31th.
• WSJ: The U.S. Department of the Treasury issued proposed rules for crypto taxation, and exchanges may submit annual reports and total revenue from 2026.
• The Block: HashKey is negotiating with about 5 Hong Kong local brokerages to provide cryptocurrency trading services for Hong Kong stock users.
• Tether Transparency Report: Over $86 Billion in Total Assets, 100% Backed by Tether Reserves.
• According to TechCrunch, Web3 venture capital fund Vessel Capital launched a $55 million Web3 fund, focusing on Web3 infrastructure and application investment.
• Binance Labs has invested in Pendle Finance, a DeFi yield protocol, and the funds will be used to expand its presence in various blockchain ecosystems, providing retail and institutional users with access to DeFi yield opportunities.
• Mantle staked  40,000 ETH from the vault into Lido, intending to introduce wstETH and other staked ETH into the Mantle ecosystem.
  

Macro

The major indexes closed mixed as investors saw mixed signals on the economy and monetary policy: the DJIA lost -0.4%, the S&P added +0.8%, and the NASDAQ +2.3%. The long-term benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury note hit a nearly 16-year (since 2007) high level of 4.36% on Tuesday and ended the week around 4.25%. Uncertainty around inflation still remains but the Fed’s tone is evolving in a more favorable way for both equities and bonds.