Bullish Insights – Weekly Market Recap

The Bullish Insights Weekly Market Recap includes curated industry news and analysis from the Bullish team for the week of August 08, 2022.

Bullish Exchange

This week’s peak trade volume (24h): August 11th, 2022, $703,623,187

Crypto market highlights

• Last week, digital asset investment total flows saw $3mn worth of inflows marking the sixth consecutive week of inflows. Bitcoin saw $8.5mn of outflows and Ethereum saw inflows of $16mn, dominating among assets for the week. The increased institutional flow of funds into Ethereum coincides with greater clarity around the timing of the Merge.
• Production updates for July 2022 were released by public bitcoin miners last week and concluded that there were a notable number of miners who distributed more BTC than they mined for the period.
• ETH options activity has surpassed BTC options for the first time with traders betting on call options ahead of the Merge.
• The crypto market saw a sharp rebound after US inflation figures came in lower than analyst expectations with investors turning to a risk-on sentiment. Bitcoin climbed 7.2% reaching a 24h high of $24,660 breaking through key resistance levels at $23K, $23.5K, $24K and $24,450.
• In the month of July, BTC spot trade into stablecoins saw a significant surge versus fiat. BTC spot trade into USDT rose to 8.78mn BTC, a ~31% increase and into USDC rose by almost 36% to 415K BTC. Conversely, BTC spot trade into fiat, USD had fallen to 1.31mn BTC, down by ~9.5% MoM.

Macro market highlights

• US equity markets rallied as investor sentiment turned risk-on in Wednesday's trading session after inflation came in at 8.5%YoY versus analyst expectations of 8.7%. Chinese consumer inflation rose 2.7% in July marking the highest level in two years. The S&P 500 rose 2.1%, the Dow climbed 1.6%, and the Nasdaq Composite up by 2.9%.

Other updates

• The curve.fi site was compromised when hackers managed to execute a DNS hijack where a DNS name (IP address) is redirected to the attackers site. The hackers set up their own smart contracts so when users interacted with the malicious site they were unaware that they were signing transactions on the hijacked site. 
• Goerli testnet is now live and in its final trial before the official Merge on Ethereum’s mainnet. (Source: CoinDesk)
• Crypto exchange Hotbit has paused all trading, deposit, withdrawal and funding activities with a number of its senior executives being subpoenaed. (Source: Hotbit)
• The SEC and CFTC have submitted a proposal which would require hedge funds to disclose their cryptocurrency exposure. Efforts for tighter regulation comes as private funds’ assets are growing at a rate that is nearing the commercial banking sector with the need for increased transparency and regulatory risk control. (Source: WSJ)
• The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has launched an investigation into crypto exchange BitMart after a hack in December 2021, led to consumer losses of up to $200mn. (Source: Bloomberg)
• Ethereum developers are anticipating an earlier than expected date on the Merge bringing the Bellatrix fork to 11:34:47am UTC on September 6th, 2022 and the Merge to September 15th, 2022. (Source: Bloomberg)
• BlackRock launched a spot bitcoin private trust, citing that it has garnered substantial institutional interest as clients are increasingly looking at cost-effective ways to access these digital assets. (Source: BlackRock)

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