Original author: Terry
Original source: WeChat public account
In the past two months, although the hot events of meme and the head project Airdrop have continued, the market has been in a rather paradoxical downturn - the bear howl seems to be faintly heard, the footsteps of the cow are like leaving, and the market collapse and restart seem to be only in an instant.
The purpose of this article is to dig out some of the hidden fermentation events in the market in the past two months, and at the same time look forward to the positive factors that may be ignored in the future, and look forward to the main plot that may provoke the beam in the first half of the year.
01
BTC spot ETF inflows turned from negative to positive
Markets tend to overestimate the short-term effects of new things and underestimate their long-term impact. For the Bitcoin spot ETF, which has been launched for nearly half a year, there is a recent signal worth paying attention to:
According to SoSoValue data, Bitcoin spot ETFs have shown a new wave of inflows since mid-May, which has lasted for nearly a month, including the second-highest all-time value of $886 million on June 4 (after $1.05 billion on March 12).
Although there was a series of declines at the beginning of the week, the overall situation has turned significantly compared to April-May. As of the time of writing (June 21), the total net asset value of Bitcoin spot ETFs was $56.24 billion, the ETF net asset ratio (market capitalization as a percentage of the total market capitalization of Bitcoin) reached 4.39%, and the historical cumulative net inflow reached $14.67 billion.
02
The Crypto Regulatory Giant Turns > Ethereum Spot ETFs Suddenly Pick Up
In the context of the 2024 election year, the macro environment has been significantly improving in the near future, both at the regulatory level and at the capital level, and a new round of bullish catalysts is brewing (recommended reading: "Trump and Biden are competing to "win over Bitcoin", is the US crypto regulation going to turn around?). 》）。
First, on May 22, the 21st Century Financial Innovation and Technology Act (FIT21) passed the House of Representatives by an overwhelming vote of 279 to 136, and then the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) officially approved Form 19b-4 for eight Ethereum spot ETFs on May 24.
This means that the stance of the US regulators has shifted from being hawkish to softening, especially the expectations of the Ethereum ETF have been greatly advanced through the node, and it seems that it is only a step away from the final launch.
At least as early as near $3,000, Terry Sun and other giant whales began to accumulate ETH chips and firmly long the ETH/BTC exchange rate, which seems to indicate that individuals/institutions with a keen sense of smell are making arrangements in advance.
Most directly, ETH's performance in the secondary market has also swept away the previous decline and began to gradually strengthen. The most obvious is the change in the ETH/BTC exchange rate, which has been declining since October last year, and the ETH/BTC exchange rate ratio has fallen from above 0.064 all the way below 0.045.
Since mid-May, the ETH/BTC exchange rate ratio has begun to come out of a downward trend, breaking through the 0.05 and 0.055 marks in the past month, reaching a recent high of 0.058 at the high, which is relatively strong overall.
03
传统 Web2 玩家加速布局 Web3
On June 6, Robinhood officially announced that it would acquire crypto trading platform Bitstamp for $200 million, thereby expanding beyond the United States, and the two parties have now reached an agreement to acquire it, subject to regulatory approvals — half the $400 million purchase price of NXMH, a subsidiary of South Korean company NXC, in 2018.
Robinhood is known to be one of the most used stocks and crypto CEXs by users in the United States, with 11 million monthly active users, and even more popular in the crypto trading space than Coinbase: Robinhood's transaction-based revenue in the first quarter of this year increased by 59% year-on-year to $329 million, including crypto revenue of $126 million, a very strong performance year-on-year.
Founded in 2011, Bitstamp is considered one of the world's longest-running crypto CEXs and one of the most compliant CEXs, with operations in Luxembourg, the United Kingdom, Slovenia, Singapore, and the United States, as well as valid licenses and registrations in more than 50 countries around the world, which can help Robinhood expand into other regions for crypto business.
And that's almost a perfect complement — Robinhood's current market is primarily focused on the US, while rivals Kraken and eToro both have stronger operations in Europe, so Bitstamp's 4 million users are small but mostly in Europe, making it a huge leap forward for Robinhood's European expansion.
It is worth noting that just a month ago, Robinhood received a Wells notice from SEC staff on topics such as RHC's crypto asset listing, custody, and platform operations (RHC activities), so the acquisition of Bitstamp will expand Robinhood's global footprint to hedge against the SEC's strong regulatory impact and ensure that it never leaves the table.
In addition, Fortune predicts that the deal, in addition to adding around 4 million new crypto customers to Robinhood, will also enable Robinhood to offer a wider range of crypto products to more institutional customers:
Expanding from the 15 tokens currently available in the U.S. market and more than 30 tokens in Europe to more than 85 that Bitstamp contains, Bitstamp's diversified services such as staking, stablecoins, trading, custody, and prime brokerage will also help Robinhood attract more institutional clients and potentially accelerate its expansion in the European market.
04
The macro environment sounded the horn of easing
Although the CPI, PPI, non-farm payrolls and other data in the United States have exceeded expectations many times in the past six months, and Fed officials have also begun to "hawkish statements", causing the market to continue to adjust interest rate cut expectations, at least for now, inflation is basically coming to an end, and everyone is still cautiously optimistic about the Fed's interest rate cut bets in the second half of the year.
New York Fed President John Williams, a member of the FOMC's permanent voting committee and the Fed's "third-in-command", stressed on Tuesday that any decision on the timing or extent of a rate cut this year will depend on upcoming economic data, while Fed officials lowered their expectations for planned rate cuts this year, with a median predicting only one rate cut.
However, the Central Bank of Canada and the European Union, which are regarded as the vanguard of the Fed, took the lead in blowing the clarion call to cut interest rates:
On June 5, the Bank of Canada cut interest rates from 5% to 4.75%, the first cut in four years;
On 6 June, the ECB cut interest rates from 4% to 3.75%, the first cut in five years;
In any case, the global wave of interest rate cuts has accelerated further, and the macro level of favorable factors is indeed accumulating.
05
The return of large payments/financial institutions
In addition, BN has also allowed MasterCard users to buy crypto assets on BN not long ago, and BN-branded Visa cards have also been resumed on the trading platform, with BN saying that the withdrawal service using MasterCard will resume later.
Back in March, MetaMask also partnered with Mastercard to test the first blockchain payment card, and marketing materials show that the MetaMask/Mastercard payment card, issued by Baanx, will be "the first truly decentralized Web3 payment solution", allowing users to use cryptocurrency for everyday purchases anywhere cards are accepted.
This can undoubtedly greatly solve the cognition and entry barriers of incremental users, and move towards the direction of insensitive deposits and withdrawals (instant exchange of fiat currency and stablecoin), abstraction of the user experience to facilitate user use (account abstraction, close to Web2 payment experience), etc., especially to open up the link between cryptocurrencies and off-chain consumption scenarios, which is conducive to the anchoring of crypto assets and a wider asset pool.
06
brief summary
On the whole, in this kind of cold and warm market environment, there are still quite a lot of positive factors slowly fermenting, as long as you observe carefully, you can still see confidence.
Although the howl of the bear seems to be faintly audible and the footsteps of the ox are close to leaving, in this context, staying cautiously optimistic, always observing and actively participating may be the only thing that can be done in the current market atmosphere.