Bitcoin Price: US$ 62,798.26 (+0.20%)
Ethereum Price: US$ 3,442.20 (+0.12%)
The Bitcoin hashrate drawdown, a measure of the Bitcoin network’s computing power, has dropped to levels unseen since December 2022, indicating a potential price bottom for the asset and signalling potential buying opportunities for Bitcoin as several indicators suggest that miners are beginning to capitulate. This comes in anticipation of the April 2024 halving event, where a report by Cantor Fitzgerald highlighted the challenges miners would face, identifying 11 mining companies, including Marathon Digital, Hut8, and Argo Blockchain, potentially at risk of becoming unprofitable due to high mining costs and lower rewards. Meanwhile, Ethereum exchange-traded products recorded the highest outflow since August 2022 in the final week of June, with investors withdrawing $61 million between June 24-29, making Ether funds the worst-performing asset year-to-date in terms of net flows, despite the approval of Ether exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in May by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). This led to a decline in the cryptocurrency’s price over 8.7% in June. Ether’s outflows pushed the overall performance of digital asset investment products down over the past week, totalling $30 million in outflows, however, in contrast to prior weeks, the majority of Bitcoin ETF providers saw modest inflows, according to CoinShares. On July 1, Circle became the first stablecoin issuer in the European Union to gain regulatory approval under the EU’s sweeping Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulatory framework, leading several exchanges to announce changes to their stablecoin policies and product offerings in preparation for the European Union’s regulatory shift.
The Aptos Foundation, known for its layer-1 blockchain designed for scalability and user-friendly development of decentralised applications (DApps), has proposed to introduce Aave Protocol v3 onto the Aptos mainnet. This marks the first time Aave’s open-source liquidity protocol would move beyond Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-compatible blockchains, as Aptos uses its own architecture and virtual machine. Despite facing a five-hour network outage in October 2023 that disrupted onchain transactions, Aptos recently hit an all-time high in user transactions, surpassing Solana’s transactions, largely driven by the popularity of the Tapos Cat game. Meanwhile, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin is exploring ways to speed up transactions on the Ethereum network, proposing a shift from Ethereum’s current epoch-and-slot mechanism to a single-slot finality (SSF) system to potentially cut layer-1 (L1) confirmations from a few seconds to milliseconds. In parallel, the German and United States governments have drawn significant attention after transferring millions of dollars of crypto holdings, with the German government making substantial Bitcoin transfers and the U.S. government transferring Ether from seized funds.
In the second quarter, the sale of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) experienced a 44% drop, falling from $4.14 billion in Q1 to $2.32 billion in Q2, primarily due to a crypto market downturn and the rise of memecoins. Despite this setback, NFTs made a minor comeback in the last quarter of 2023, with sales exceeding $3 billion, hinting at a potential resurgence in 2024. Meanwhile, Bitcoin, which saw a nearly 7% fall in June, is predicted to rebound strongly in July. However, this rebound might be challenged by factors such as the sizable sale of Bitcoin by the German government and the upcoming Mt. Gox repayments, as several analysts have noted. Amid these market fluctuations, Amber Japan, a company operating under the Sony Group, rebranded itself as S.BLOX on July 1. As part of its rebranding strategy and in an effort to expand its crypto trading efforts, S.BLOX plans to collaborate with various Sony Group businesses and has announced significant renewals to its WhaleFin service, including an overhaul of its user interface and the release of new applications.
Source: https://cointelegraph.com
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