Weekly Market Update: A Benign Week in Crypto News

The whiplash from last week’s change in the US political wind is a hard act to follow.  I think we all needed a bit of calm and thankfully we got it.

There were a couple of big standouts this week. The movement of MT Gox Bitcoins got the anoraks excited. Gemini repaid its Earn product holders and, in a sign of how quiet it was, Caitlyn Jenner made the news with a memecoin launch. 

In macro news, a surge in Chinese imports to the US has inflated container costs. Apparently it’s in response to the incoming US tariffs. Whatever, shipping costs are on the up. 

In the US, there appears to be a softening bias to this week’s dataset. Employment was down, PMI results were soft and PCE inflation was lower than expected. Despite this, the market just sort of shrugged. Perhaps it’s realised that all the analyst talk is meaningless until the Fed sees it the same way. 

Europe has been on its own course for a while now.  Inflation has been tracking well but this month’s reading surprised with a move to the upside. Regardless, everyone is expecting the ECB to deliver on the rate cuts they have been signalling. 

In Asia, China appears to be trying to dominate the battery mineral sector. While PMI’s for the region overall showed good growth with China and Japan posting solid numbers. Not to be outdone, India GDP growth was very impressive.  

In regional news, Australia posted its 3rd straight month of CPI increases. Not good.  Building consents are down as well as interest rates begin to bite.

The same trend is going on in New Zealand with building consents tanking year on year.  Business confidence is pretty grim according to a bank who keeps posting record profits.

Forward pricing intentions were the only good news. Finally the government’s budget was a no surprise affair mainly because there aren’t many lollies to throw around.  

The largely uneventful week means that the crypto market sentiment has barely changed, we remain holding steady in greed territory.

Highlights this week: 

• This week was a mixed bag across the top 30 assets. Around 60% posted modest gains as the market largely meanders sideways.   
• Our buy – sell ratio continued its recent trend with the number of buy orders dominating, however by order value, sell orders were weightier indicating profit taking by larger holders.  
• At the time of writing BTC is up 4% and ETH is flat for the week. BNB had a great week, up 12%. Rounding out the large caps, SOL, XRP and ADA were up ~1% for the week. 
• Arweave (AR) recouped all of last week’s losses and then some, up 32% on the week.
• PEPE was our worst performer of the week, down 12%.

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

Highlights from the crypto space

Continuing from last week’s big shift, the Biden re-election campaign is reaching out to the crypto industry like never before.

However, President Joe Biden vetoed the SAB 121 repeal resolution because “he will not support measures that jeopardize the well-being of consumers and investors.”

Chainlink looks like the big winner in the RWA trend. 

Blackrock’s ETF is now bigger than Greyscale. Staying with Greyscale, if ETHE follows the same path as their Bitcoin ETF, they could leak $110m per day. 

In ETH EFT news, Blackrock updated its S-1 application.  Best guess is a 4th of July launch. 

Someone is trying to guess what the impact of the ETH ETF will have on price. 

The XRP army has got their hopes up for a XRP ETF after the Ripple CEO guessed that they would see the ETF “probably in 2025”. Australia’s Bitcoin ETF went live, it will be interesting to see what volume it pulls.

PSA – Celebrity endorsed crypto projects just don’t perform. Just don’t. 

Caitlyn Jenner has launched a memecoin.☝️

Coins in Mt Gox wallets are moving, which is stirring speculation that disbursements might finally happen. In a similar vein, Gemini repaid $2.2bn to Earn holders. 

A judge ordered the SEC to pay $1.5m in fees in its bad faith dealings with DebtBox. 

Gnosis Pay is now linked with Visa. 

Singapore’s largest bank, DBS, has been outed as an ETH whale with over $650m in holdings. 

Charlie Bilello’s returns chart says everything is going to plan. 

The US DoJ isn’t against mixers, it’s just against identity obfuscation. Anonymity, if provided in a way they are ok with, is fine. 

Binance will move to support Europe’s MICA legislation on stablecoins by 30th June by only supporting “regulated stablecoins” which I think means Circle and a few others and not USDT. 

Coinbase wallet will allow you to txt over 100 coins to someone on Base.

What is going on in the world of Finance … 

Shipping container rates are up. Adding to the existing risks as a massive supply surge by the Chinese to beat the US tariffs. 

🌎 Macro news TLDR: …Cooling US CPI invigorates markets.

U.S. economic news

US Consumer Confidence, as measured by the Conference Board, rose in May.  Mortgage applications are down nearly 6% year on year.  Yet house prices are up 6% year on year. Weird.

Unemployment drifted up, job openings drifted down, while manufacturing PMI fell sharply in May to 48.7, down 0.5 on April catching analysts out somewhat. 

The PCE index rose 0.2% which was less than 0.3% expected. While the gap was small, combined with the other data showing a softening economy, the analysts are liking what they see. 

Meanwhile in Europe….

German CPI for May was slightly higher than April at 2.4%

Eurozone inflation surprised to the upside in May, coming in at 2.6% vs 2.4% in April. Core inflation also increased 0.2% to 2.9%. 

The culprit appears to be wages costs flowing through the services sector which are running at 4.1%.  The ECB is still expected to cut rates this Friday. 

And in Asia Pacific…

China is investing huge sums of money in Africa as the race is on for minerals to support the green revolution. Charlie Bilello’s blog says that China controls >60% of key battery metals like Cobalt and Lithium.

The IMF revised China’s 2024 GDP forecast to 5%. The Caxin manufacturing PMI reading for May was up to 51.7. 

Japan’s consumer confidence fell to a 7 month low, while their Manufacturing PMI improved to 50.4.  India’s GDP growth topped estimates and came in at 7.8%.  

Australian construction work slumped 2.9% in Q1, but is up 1.8% on an annual basis. Australia’s CPI is heading in the wrong direction, up 3.6% in April and they have now recorded their 3rd straight month of increase with February being 3.4% and March 3.5%. Rents and insurance were the big drivers. 

Australia’s minimum wage will increase 3.75% on 1 July, ahead of CPI.  The RBA has its hands full and a June rate hike is definitely back on the table.  A reminder the Australian OCR is 4.35%, NZ is 5.5%, yet the RBNZ signalled a possible rate rise?  Lol.  

In New Zealand, April’s building consents fell 23% year on year, not great with high immigration is this layman’s view. ANZ’s chief economist said their latest business confidence survey makes for ‘ grim reading”, with confidence falling 4 points to 11.

The positive news? Intentions to raise prices, an inflation indicator, have fallen. Staying with ANZ, they posted a record Q1 profit, $10m A DAY. 

The Finance Minister delivered her first budget which was largely as advertised, most people seem unhappy which probably means its ok? 

That’s a wrap for this week. 

Stay tuned for the next update.

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