In this week’s recap, MicroStrategy made a significant purchase of 12,000 additional Bitcoin (BTC), the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) concluded its investigation on Ethereum (ETH), and stablecoins gained prominence.
Bitcoin experienced a decline, falling below the $66,000 mark on June 18 after a few days of consolidation. This downward trend continued throughout the week, resulting in a further drop below $65,000. Market analytics firm CryptoQuant suggested that the market turbulence was due to a combination of factors, including miners capitulating, crypto ETF outflows, and a decrease in stablecoin token issuance. Despite the market downturn, 87% of Bitcoin’s circulating supply remained profitable for investors.
Altcoins like Pendle (PENDLE) and Toncoin (TON) defied the overall market trend. Pendle saw a 17% increase in value in the week leading up to June 22, with its market capitalization reaching $968 million, approaching the $1 billion milestone. Meanwhile, MicroStrategy took advantage of the market downturn and used it as an opportunity to increase its Bitcoin holdings. On June 20, the company purchased nearly 12,000 BTC for $786 million, at an average price of $65,883 per BTC.
Zksync, despite facing controversy and concerns about its procedures and Sybil filtering measures, distributed 3.67 billion tokens. On June 17, Binance listed the token. However, after the airdrop, more than 41% of the top addresses that received the tokens quickly sold off their allocations.
Spot Bitcoin ETF products saw continuous outflows last week, with $145.9 million and $152.4 million being withdrawn on June 17 and June 18, respectively. Following the negative flows on June 18, cumulative net inflows dropped below $15 billion. These outflows persisted until the end of the week, resulting in a cumulative negative netflow of over $544 million in the five days leading up to June 21. In Australia, asset manager VanEck received approval from Australia’s securities exchange AXS to launch the country’s first spot Bitcoin ETF. Additionally, asset manager 3iQ filed to list the first-ever Solana ETP, called Solana Fund (QSOL), on Canada’s Toronto Stock Exchange.
Global regulatory developments included South Korean authorities reviewing listings of over 600 assets across multiple exchanges following new regulations. In South Korea, prosecutors presented fresh evidence supporting their claims that Terra founder Do Kwon engaged in fake transactions to deceive investors. Fidelity Investments made amendments to its S-1 filings for a spot Ethereum ETF with the SEC, confirming a seed investment of $4.7 million for the upcoming product.
Binance faced regulatory challenges in the U.S., with North Dakota revoking its operational license and imposing a $2.2 million fine in India for violating anti-money laundering provisions. U.S. lawmakers French Hill and Chrissy Houlahan visited Binance employee Tigran Gambaryan, who is a U.S. citizen, in a Nigerian prison, advocating for his release after he was charged with AML violations.
In a victory for the Ethereum community, the U.S. SEC announced that it had closed its investigation into whether certain Ethereum sales constituted unregistered securities offerings. However, Consensys confirmed that it is still in conflict with the agency regarding whether user interface offerings for functionalities like Swapping and Staking on MetaMask should be considered securities.
Stablecoins took the spotlight this week. Tether, the issuer of USDT, revealed plans to launch a new asset class backed by gold on June 17. Uphold discontinued support for USDT and other “unauthorized” stablecoins in anticipation of the implementation of stablecoin regulations by the end of the month. Tether also faced criticism in the U.S. through a campaign ad accusing the stablecoin issuer of money laundering and corruption. The National Australia Bank closed its stablecoin project last week.
Read more: The end of stablecoins? Why exchanges are abandoning stablecoins in the EU.