Weekly Market Update: Institutional Waves Push Prices Afloat

The continued wave of institutional crypto announcements continue to bolster market prices and we appear to have stabilised at new levels. Staked Ethereum achieved a major milestone, overtaking ETH sitting on centralised exchanges. 

Meanwhile, the forced sale by Robinhood and Celsius of potential securities hurt some assets this week. But overall the mood is picking up. 🚀

The central bankers of most major economies have met in Europe and are united in their chorus. They believe they are yet to beat inflation and most of them are predicting that more rate rises are on the cards.

Australia had a pleasant surprise with their CPI dropping significantly. While at home consumer confidence has crept up a little and there is growing commentary that the housing market has bottomed. 

The sentiment in the crypto market has improved slightly this week and now sits in greed territory since last week. Interestingly, we have shown significant improvement from a month ago, which, considering the US regulatory weight on the sector, is quite an achievement. 💪

A late midweek rally means we have quite a lot of green on the 7 days. Trend highlights this week:

• At the time of writing BTC was having a belter, up by 1%.
• Ethereum (ETH) and Binance Coin (BNB_ were all up by 3.2%.
• This week’s biggest gainer was Compound (COMP) up by 53%.
• ApeCoin (APE) was our biggest loser of the week, down by5.5%. 

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

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Highlights from the crypto space

Continuing last week’s flood of institutional news, Fidelity, the asset management giant, officially filed for BTC ETF.

The Block did a decent piece on what a spot ETF might do for the market. TLDR it expands the potential addressable market.

In addition to this, JP Morgan has started using its own coin, JPMcoin to facilitate Euro payments for its corporate clients. And HSBC has turned on BTC and ETH ETFs for its Hong Kong Clients, direct from their banking app. 🤯

In a surprise to no one, Coinshares reports that inflows to its institutional products are way up.

The IMF has come out saying that banning crypto may not be the best strategy long term… 🤯

Nansen and Kaiko are joining forces to bring us even better holistic data as they now cover on-chain and centralised venues.

The amount of ETH staked has flipped the amount of ETH sitting on exchanges. Since the Shapella upgrade, a massive 4 million ETH has been staked while supply on centralised exchanges has reduced.

In a similar vein, Bitcoin sitting on exchanges is now at a 5 year low.

Other notable highlights from around the crypto space:

• In FTX news, Alameda wants its $700m back that it spent buying up super influencers. SBF lost in a bid to have most of the charges dismissed and there is also continued rumbling of a reboot, FTX 2.0 😰
• Bitcoin Bull, Microstrategy has acquired another 12,333 Bitcoins in the last quarter.
• Brazil’s central bank is working with the largest exchange to test its CBDC. This is the first time we are aware that this has happened.
• Japan is a possible beneficiary of the US regulatory crack down. They’ve had crypto rules since forever and are open for business.

• Robinhood and Celsius look like they are dumping assets the SEC deemed as securities, this is putting price pressure on assets like Matic and SOL.
• Greyscale’s Bitcoin trust seems to be benefiting from all the ETF buzz. 
• In Binance news, they have signalled they are exiting Cyprus and Belgium as local regulators ramp up actions. Reports are out that they have lost their current Europe banking partner from the 25th of September. 
• Binance’s market share of global volume has slipped due to all the regulatory uncertainty.

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

Starting off with global news 

🌎 Macro news TLDR: Inflation is not beaten yet.

The Bank of International Settlements has said the inflation battle isn’t done globally and it’s not time to go soft.

U.S. economic news

This week saw the large US banks do their annual health checks, on the face of it, they have ample capital… but, you know, so did SVB.

Consumer confidence has rebounded in June; led mainly by optimistic young people. And manufacturing of durable goods showed its 3rd straight month of increases. 

Existing House sales in the US hit a record low of 1.37m. If you have a low interest, 30 year mortgage, there is simply no case for selling if you don’t have to.

In an even more staggering graph, commercial real estate occupancy is down 50% on pre Covid levels in many major cities.

This is important because banks carry $2.4 Trillion in commercial real estate debt. Ohhhh boy.

Canadian CPI for June fell a whole percentage point to be 3.4% in June on lower energy prices.

Meanwhile, in Europe

ECB President Legarde said this week that she expects the bank to raise interest rates again in July and that more tightening is required.

German business confidence has fallen for the 2nd straight month, while inflation data for May showed increases in 5 economically important states. 

In the UK, the Bank of England governor signalled more tightening to come as they will do what is necessary to tame their inflation which is the highest in the G7 countries. In a clear sign of incoming distress, Thames Water, who serves 27% of the UK population may need government help to service its debt burden. 

No new economic news on Ukraine, however last week’s events have stirred up a lot of conversation in NATO about what happens next. 

And in Asiapac…

Standard and Poors cut their growth forecast for China as consumer spending is way down on expectations.

They are battling a citizen trend who prefer to save money, not spend. The flow on effects are that Industrial profits are down 18.8% year over year. Manufacturing PMI is still in contraction territory for June, coming in at 49. 

Japan’s revival continues, this week they posted great retail sales data.

Singapore Manufacturing performance for May disappointed, down 11% on last year. 

In Australia, their CPI for May was 5.6%, way down on April’s 6.8% and primarily driven by an 8% decline in fuel. Interestingly, retail sales also rose 0.7% in May.

Here in New Zealand, the Westpac employment confidence survey showed a small decline in May. However, consumer confidence overall increased in May. Echoing Australia, ANZ economists are saying they expect property prices to increase 3% in the 2nd half of the year. 

In more inflationary news, the removal of fuel price subsidies will push up prices ~10%. 

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

Stay tuned for the next update.

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