Weekly Market Update: Altcoins gain on the back of the Ripple win

The impact of the Ripple Labs case is impacting asset prices, with Bitcoin’s dominance hitting a 4-month low as Altcoins gained ground relative to BTC. 

In big news, local player Futureverse, the leading AI & metaverse tech company, has announced a successful fundraising. Adding to this CME research suggests institutional interest in digital currencies remains strong, and while VC activity is down because of AI hype, two large VC funds have launched new funds.

Globally, PMI indicators are reinforcing the trend of softening economic conditions. These indicators are down in Europe, Australia, the US, and China. Europe and the US both have rate decisions coming out later this week and both are expected to raise rates, signalling a watch and see approach beyond that. 

As expected, China is trying to reinvigorate its economy, whilst in other Asian countries inflation looks to have turned and is following a similar downtrend to the US and ANZ. 

The sentiment in the crypto market has pulled back to neutral territory ending a month long foray into mild greed. 

There was a lot of red in the markets this week, with only a small handful of the top 30 assets having a positive week.

Trend highlights this week:

• BTC and ETH had a relatively quiet week, both down 1.7% with many guessing the big rate decisions in the US and Europe are weighing on markets.
• Last week’s gainers XRP and SOL both retraced 8% on the week.
• Notable mentions go to DOGE up 20% on the back of some Elon rumours off the back of Twitter rebrand and XLM had a strong week up 11%. 
• MKR was our biggest gainer this week, benefiting from its token buyback program, up 26%.
• Compound (COMP) was our biggest loser of the week, down 12%. 

View all top gainers: Visit the top gainers page to find out more. 

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Highlights from the crypto space

The effects of the Ripple SEC court case will be felt for a while yet. At the moment, the SEC is still deciding if it will appeal the decision.

There is speculation that the SEC may not appeal, because they have more to lose than to gain. 

Kaiko data suggest that Altcoins have had a big jump on the back of the Ripple news, with Bitcoin’s crypto dominance at a 4-month low.

Uniswap launched a beta of their new UniSwapX interface. Here is a breakdown of the features and some of them are damn right cool. 

Vitalik explains how Ethereum plans to make wallets as simple as email.

Solana is becoming more accessible to the huge Ethereum developer community with the launch of Solang, a Solidity compiler. 

MakerDAO implemented a token buyback program this week taking a bunch of MKR out of supply.

The Arbitrum Foundation is treading a well-worn path with the launch of a grant program to ‘foster its ecosystem’. 

Crypto VC Polychain has raised $200m for its 4th fund. Coinfund also raised $158m. However, Crunchbase has reported that VCs are chasing the latest shiny new thing that is AI and as a result, crypto VC investment is way down. 

Bucking that VC trend, local player Futureverse, has successfully raised $54m for its AI/Metaverse platform growth. Congrats!

Coinbase CEO, Brian Armstrong is having a closed door session with House Democrats to talk about crypto regulation. Coinbase is also sunsetting its Bitcoin borrow program in November. 

Binance share of international trade has fallen from 90% to 73% since the beginning of the year with OKX, Houbi and Bybit being the major gainers.

CME group reports that Institutions are still hot on digital assets. Contrary to this, Nasdaq has pulled the pin on its crypto custody service. 

A new bipartisan bill in the US wants to regulate DeFi projects like banks, including forcing KYC. And presidential candidate Robert Kennedy wants to back the dollar with Bitcoin. 

In the UK, the government has rejected a plan to regulate crypto like gambling. 

Ecoinometrics analysis shows that BTC is showing a clear trend of decreasing correlation with other assets. TLDR; This is perceived positively because when other assets zig, BTC will zag as it moves according to its own unique drum.

Other notable highlights from the crypto space:

• Gnosis is launching a prepaid debit visa card. 
• Chainlink has launched a “Cross chain interoperability protocol” to help with bridges and bring TradFi and crypto closer together. 
• NAB in Australia is blocking payments to ‘high risk’ crypto exchanges.
• A syndicate of investors is close to buying Coindesk for $125 million.
• Here is a good round up of the ETHCC conference in Paris last week. 
• Lot’s going on with crypto, so now let’s look at other macroeconomic news and developments from around the globe.

With that said, we’ll continue to dive deeper into other macroeconomic news and developments from around the globe.

Starting off with global news 

Adding to the global food supply pressure, India has halved its export of non-Basmati rice in order to manage domestic food inflation caused by recent bad weather events affecting this year’s harvest.

U.S. economic news

US retail sales data increased 0.2% in June, indicating the economy is plodding along. Conversely, industrial production for the year ended June 23 fell 0.4%.

Analysts were expecting a 1.1% increase! A leading indicator of economic activity, the conference board Leading Economic Index, fell 4.2% on last year, its 15th straight fall.

This is widely interpreted as a flashing red on economic growth. 

Meanwhile, in Europe

An ECB member has said that a July raise is a certainty, but after that…the data will tell us.

This is backed by a CPI print of 5.5% for June, inflation is trending down, but more work needs to be done.

European consumer confidence improved this month, but is still deep in negative territory at -16.1.

German producer prices were up 0.1% year-on-year in June. 

In the UK, inflation fell more than expected in June coming in at 7.9% vs a forecasted 8.2%, core inflation also beat expectations coming in at 6.9% vs 7.1%.

The end of the Russia-Ukraine wheat deal sent wheat futures up 9% almost immediately.

In addition, there are reports of Russian attacks on Ukraine grain harvest and storage facilities, further impacting supply. This will have knock on effects to global food supply as Ukraine was the world’s 5th largest producer. 

And in Asiapac…

In a gauge for potentially how bad things are in China, Reuters penned a piece asking if they will ever become a rich nation citing a number of big issues.

“These include the burst of a bubble in the property sector, … one of the deepest imbalances between investment and consumption; a mountain of local government debt; and the Communist Party’s tight grip over society, including private businesses”.

In response, China’s top economic state planner said they would restore and expand consumption. 

Japanese exports rose slightly less than expected for June, up 1.1%. And the Japanese Manufacturing PMI slipped slightly to 49.4 for June.

Taiwan cannot get a break, their exports to June are down 25% on last year. Industrial production is also down, so any turnaround won’t be quick. In Singapore, their CPI is trending down and is at a 16 month low. There is a similar trend in Malaysia, at a 14 month low. 

The Australian labour market is showing continued strength, with unemployment decreasing in the last month. Analysts are worried this could mean more rate hikes. Australian Manufacturing PMI improved from 48.2 to 49.6 in June, while services PMI moved into negative territory. 

In New Zealand, we managed to eke out an $8.8m trade surplus in June, which was better than some were forecasting.

That’s a wrap for this week. Thanks for reading!

Stay tuned for the next update.

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