Market Roundup
What a difference a narrative makes… and boy did the narrative change in June. The extremely negative ‘chokepoint 2.0’ sentiment ruled – until investment colossus BlackRock filed an application for a spot Bitcoin ETF. That was on June 15th. The narrative flipped from ‘they will kill crypto’ to ‘institutions will adopt bitcoin’. It ended a six-week-long correction.
The change of narrative came as a welcome relief after the onslaught from the SEC in the first week of June. While prices stayed indifferent right after the American financial watchdog SEC sued both Binance and Coinbase, altcoins started crashing a few days later, when trading app Robinhood announced it would stop listing alts like SOL, ADA, and MATIC, considered unregistered securities by the SEC. They haven’t recovered yet.
On June 8, for example, we could read headlines such as Vox’s – ‘Now might be a good time to consider quitting crypto’. But guess who had different plans? BlackRock, aka the biggest money manager in the world. BTC pumped, reclaimed the 50-day moving average, and painted the highest daily close since the Luna crash, more than a year ago.
Look, it remains to be seen if the SEC will grant the spot ETF (insane really, after they’ve recently DID approve a 2x leveraged futures BTC ETF). Most crypto watchers seem to lean towards the spot ETF being granted. Regardless, one thing is pretty certain: a spot Bitcoin ETF will come at some point and will allow institutions a safe entry into Bitcoin. At that point, Bitcoin’s ability to be allocated to institutional investment funds will be opened. Still, the launch of an ETF won’t mean instant moon – but the trickle of institutional money will support the price in the long run.
Top Airdrops of the Month
There were a few really good ones this last month. We mention Magic Square and Archimedes Finance here. But also Scroll (see #228), and Taiko are worth mentioning.
Archimedes Finance is a decentralized lending and borrowing marketplace that allows users to deposit assets and use them as collateral to create leverage positions by borrowing the protocol’s native stablecoin, lvUSD, against them. Archimedes selects battle-tested yield-bearing stablecoins and leverages them up to 10x, producing a ‘Top of Market’ APY. Archimedes just released its Zealy Questboard for users to earn reward points in the community engagement event. This includes memes, infographics, videos, blogs, threads, and other meaningful content creation.
Magic Square is a new discovery and engagement platform that offers a complete Web3 application experience for users to connect with their favorite projects. Developed as blockchain’s answer to the Google Play store. The Magic Store hosts a select group of validated DeFi applications and games from over 30 of the most active networks in one easy-to-use website. Magic Square has announced its Epic Quest Airdrop Event and will be giving away 1,000,000 SQR tokens to lucky participants who join the Zealy Questboard and complete various tasks.
Top Altcoins to Watch
Altcoins are having a tough time, suffering from the regulatory onslaught in the US. But that will probably sort itself out at some point. Plus, the world is bigger than the US. The alts that keep building in the bear market will probably come out (much) stronger. In…
