Hotcoin Research | Market Insights: May 20, 2024 - May 26, 2024

This Week's Cryptocurrency Market Performance

Currently, the total market capitalization of cryptocurrencies is $1.34 trillion, with BTC accounting for 52.65%.

This week, the market showed an upward trend due to the net inflow of Bitcoin spot ETFs and the favorable approval of Ethereum spot ETFs. BTC reached a high of $72,000, and over the weekend, it consolidated at a high of $67,000-$68,000.

This week, the net inflow for U.S. Bitcoin spot ETFs was $1.057 billion, while Hong Kong Bitcoin spot ETFs saw a net inflow of $4.8238 million, bringing the total net inflow for Bitcoin spot ETFs to $1.061 billion.

This week, altcoins and MEME projects also saw some increases, with ENS, PEPE, PEOPLE, DOG, and others performing well. Notably, CEL, which we mentioned in our market insights two weeks ago, https://www.chaincatcher.com/article/2124562, surged due to Celsius Network officially destroying 94% of its total supply, and within 24 hours from May 24 to 25, it rose over 150%.

The "Fear & Greed Index" is at 76, indicating greed for the past 7 days.

Understanding Now

Review of Major Events This Week

1. Grayscale: CFO Edward McGee will temporarily serve as CEO until August 15;

2. LayerZero co-founder: The witch reporting process will reopen in the next day or two, changing the submission method and introducing a "margin" system;

3. Galaxy research director: The SEC may recognize ETH itself as non-security, while staked ETH is a security;

4. Fidelity submitted an updated version of its S-1 application for a spot Ethereum ETF;

5. Vitalik: Personally believes that all rollups will be ZK in 10 years;

6. Bitget appointed Gracy Chen as CEO;

7. Farcaster's total user count surpassed 380,000, with users averaging over 1.24 million casts per day in the past 30 days;

8. Mocaverse announced the airdrop details for the MOCA token, with Moca NFTs allocated 10% of the total MOCA supply, and the total airdrop cap is subject to unlocking limits from the first two batches of network incentive distributions;

9. Jupiter's third round of LFG voting is now open, with three projects including Divvy Bet and deBridge;

10. Binance Megadrop Phase 2 will launch Lista (LISTA);

11. Telegram will introduce in-app currency Telegram Stars to address payment restrictions from the Apple App Store;

12. Data: The staking rate for Ethereum has reached 27.15%, with Lido's market share at 28.54%;

13. Shen Yu predicts the timeline and market impact of the Ethereum spot ETF: S-1 may pass in early June, and institutional investors may gradually enter the market after December.

Macroeconomics

1. On May 22, Uniswap Labs responded to the SEC's Wells notice: ready to fight and will continue to build;

2. On May 23, according to the Federal Reserve's Household Economic and Decision-making Survey (SHED) released on the 21st, 7% of surveyed U.S. adults reported using cryptocurrency in the 12 months ending October 2023, down from 10% in 2022 and 12% in 2021. Only 1% of adults said they used cryptocurrency for payments or remittances, halving from 2022, while 7% purchased or held cryptocurrency as an investment.

3. On May 22, according to CME's "FedWatch" data, the probability of the Federal Reserve maintaining interest rates in June is 96.3%, while the probability of a 25 basis point rate cut is 3.7%;

4. On May 24, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved the 19b-4 forms for multiple Ethereum spot ETFs, including those from BlackRock, Fidelity, and Grayscale. Although the forms have been approved, ETF issuers need to make their S-1 registration statements effective before trading can begin. The SEC has just started discussions with issuers regarding the S-1 forms. It is currently unclear how long this process will take, but some analysts speculate it may take several weeks.

ETFs

According to statistics, from May 20 to May 25, the net inflow for U.S. Bitcoin spot ETFs was $1.057 billion;

As of May 25, GBTC had a total outflow of $17.641 billion, while U.S. Bitcoin spot ETFs held a total of $13.687 billion; Hong Kong Bitcoin spot ETFs held a total of $231 million.

Foreseeing the Future

Upcoming Events

1. The decentralized cloud computing platform Akash Network will hold the "Akash Accelerate '24" summit in Austin, Texas on May 28, focusing on the decentralized artificial intelligence (AI) field;

2. Blockchain Week Rome will take place from May 28 to 31, 2024;

3. Consensus 2024 will be held from May 29 to 31, hosted by CoinDesk, aiming to gather developers, investors, and founders to address industry challenges;

4. Bitcoin Seoul 2024 will be held from May 29 to 31 in Seoul, South Korea, bringing together the brightest minds in policy, finance, human rights, and technology, focusing on Bitcoin;

5. The U.S. Department of Justice will hold a seminar on the competition investigation in the AI industry at Stanford University on May 30, gathering industry leaders, researchers, and government officials. The event page indicates that industry leaders speaking at the seminar include DeepLearning.AI founder Andrew Ng and officials from the U.S. and UK governments.

Project Progress

1. The second Dora Vota incentive testnet for Dora Factory was launched on May 27, with the application deadline for validators set for May 24;

2. The Solana mainnet v1.18 is expected to be released on May 27 to address mainnet congestion, and all nodes are advised to upgrade to v1.18;

3. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has postponed the listing and trading of Bitcoin spot ETF options to May 29;

4. The Ethereum re-staking protocol Renzo ezPoints Season 1 reward airdrop REZ claim is open until May 30, and unclaimed tokens will be added to the Season 2 airdrop;

5. The io.net Season 2 reward program Ignition runs from May 1 to May 31, with a random snapshot on May 31, distributing 7.5 million IO to Workers. Workers must prove verification through PoW and must be active during the snapshot period to qualify for the distribution.

Important Events

1. The London Stock Exchange will launch trading of Bitcoin and Ethereum cryptocurrency exchange-traded notes (ETNs) on May 28, 2024.

2. Former FTX executive Ryan Salame will stand trial in New York on May 28 after admitting to criminal charges, with sentencing set to begin at 11 a.m. Salame pleaded guilty last September to conspiracy to make illegal political donations and conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transfer business;

3. The UK is consulting on its plans to implement the OECD cryptocurrency reporting framework, with the consultation ending on May 29;

4. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will decide on May 30 whether to approve Hashdex's application for a spot Ethereum ETF;

5. The bankruptcy court verbally approved a global settlement agreement among Gemini, Genesis, and other creditors in the Genesis bankruptcy case, with Gemini and Genesis expected to distribute an initial allocation amount to Earn creditors by the end of May or early June, approximately 97% of the digital assets owed to users, with the remaining allocation amount to be recovered from Digital Currency Group (DCG);

6. Hong Kong entities that have not applied for a virtual asset trading platform license must cease operations in Hong Kong by the end of May.

Token Unlocking

1. Acala token ACA will unlock 4.66 million tokens at 8:00 on May 25, valued at approximately $507,000, accounting for 0.48% of the circulating supply.