US Ethereum ETFs recorded $52.08 million in net outflows, abruptly ending a five-consecutive-day inflow streak that had built momentum throughout early July.
The reversal came after a strong run that began on July 1, when Ethereum ETFs attracted $14.89 million in fresh inflows from investors.
Inflows continued steadily on July 2 with $29.08 million entering the funds, followed by $20.66 million on July 6 as buying pressure held firm into the new week.
The streak gained further steam on July 7 with $26.93 million in inflows, before peaking on July 8 when Ethereum ETFs pulled in a notable $70.48 million.
The sudden $52.08 million outflow day sharply reversed that momentum, dragging cumulative net inflows back down to $10.96 billion across all US Ethereum ETF products.
Total net assets held by Ethereum ETFs settled at $9.34 billion following the outflow, reflecting the significant shift in short-term investor sentiment.
Trading volume also contracted sharply, with total value traded coming in at $234.92 million, well below the prior session’s $483.21 million.
For the full week, Ethereum ETFs shed $13.67 million, marking their eighth consecutive week of net outflows and underscoring persistent selling pressure around the asset class.
Year-to-date losses for Ethereum ETFs have now climbed to $1.44 billion, a significant figure that highlights how challenging 2026 has been for ether-based fund products.
Altcoin ETFs bucked the bearish trend, finishing the week in positive territory, with XRP ETFs leading gains at $17.19 million, followed by SOL ETFs at $5.75 million, HYPE ETFs at $4.32 million, and LINK ETFs at $915,000.
The divergence between Ethereum ETF outflows and altcoin ETF inflows suggests that institutional capital may be rotating away from ETH toward emerging alternative assets.
Bitcoin ETFs have also experienced their own flow dynamics this year, though the continued weakness in Ethereum-specific products raises questions about longer-term demand among institutional allocators.
The European Union has added cryptocurrency exchange HTX to a new sanctions package targeting Russia and Belarusian nationals, alongside 17 other crypto-related entities.
HTX, formerly known as Huobi and founded in China, is considered one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency trading platforms by volume.
Hong Kong-based billionaire Justin Sun acquired a controlling stake in the exchange back in 2022, cementing his influence over one of the industry’s most prominent platforms.
The EU listed 18 companies providing crypto services that it said helped Russians evade existing international sanctions, with that list made public on Friday.
EU officials stated: “The Union has repeatedly taken measures to identify financial institutions, credit institutions or entities providing crypto-asset services or payment services that facilitate a continued financial lifeline for Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine.”
The bloc specifically targeted those “providing crypto-assets services or payment services established outside of the Union that are significantly frustrating the purpose of the prohibitions” against Russia.
Russia has faced sweeping international sanctions since its military invasion of Ukraine in 2022, with subsequent packages progressively targeting financial workarounds.
The EU’s latest package also takes aim at banks, oil traders, the so-called shadow fleet, and Russian energy revenues beyond the crypto sector.
HTX was first sanctioned by the UK in May as part of a package focused on what London described as “shadow financial systems” underpinning Russia’s war economy.
That designation was widely seen as a landmark moment, with analysts noting it was the first time a major exchange of HTX’s scale had faced such a designation.
The UK previously sanctioned Huobi Global S.A., the Panama-based entity behind HTX, froze its assets, and barred British firms from handling any payments involving the company.
UK authorities linked HTX to Garantex, a sanctioned Russia-connected exchange that shut down after Tether froze approximately $28 million in USDT in March 2025, with blockchain forensic firms later identifying Grinex as its likely successor.
Notably, the EU’s sanctioning of HTX does not constitute a full designation and does not include an asset freeze, distinguishing it from the UK’s earlier action.
HTX previously told Cointelegraph that “regulatory compliance remains [its] absolute top priority” and that the exchange will “proactively monitor and strictly adhere to regulatory frameworks in all jurisdictions.”
Meanwhile, EXMO, another firm sanctioned by the UK in the same package, has reportedly begun winding down operations after the sanctions disrupted its access to custodians and banking partners.
HTX did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent via email.
Three major cryptocurrency advocacy groups have written to Senate leaders urging immediate floor consideration of the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act.
The Crypto Council for Innovation, Digital Chamber, and Blockchain Association sent their joint letter Friday to Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
Republican lawmakers have been pushing for a Senate vote on the CLARITY Act before the chamber breaks for state work periods in August.
The bill has already advanced through the Senate banking and agriculture committees, though some lawmakers are withholding support until specific provisions are addressed.
“[We] recognize that constructive bipartisan negotiations remain underway to secure and expand support for this critical piece of legislation,” said the letter from the three groups.
The CLARITY Act requires 60 votes to clear the Senate, where Republicans currently hold only a 52-47 majority over Democrats, making bipartisan support essential.
Senate Republicans released a 616-page version of the bill this week, marking the first major legislative effort to oversee the digital asset industry at a federal level.
The bill includes ethics provisions barring public officials from issuing or sponsoring cryptocurrencies, but many Democrats have called those measures far too weak.
Senator Ruben Gallego expressed sharp frustration with the current ethics language, saying: “Whatever piece of s— they sent back to us, that was not a serious effort.”
Political pressure has intensified following President Trump’s financial disclosures, which revealed he generated more than $1 billion in crypto-related income last year, including more than $600 million from his TRUMP memecoin.
Senators Ruben Gallego and Angela Alsobrooks, the two Democrats who voted to advance the bill out of the Senate Banking Committee in May, have conditioned their continued support on a strong ethics agreement.
Progressive organizations including Indivisible, Demand Progress, and the Revolving Door Project sent letters to Democratic Senate offices targeting Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who has been attempting to broker a compromise on the ethics provisions.
BitGo CEO Mike Belshe pushed back against the ethics proposals, arguing any such rules should apply equally across all asset classes because the problem is politicians’ conduct, not crypto itself.
Major banks have also weighed in against the bill, arguing it fails to adequately protect deposits from competition posed by stablecoin rewards programs.
Whether the CLARITY Act can attract sufficient Democratic votes to reach the 60-vote threshold remains highly uncertain given the deepening dispute over ethics guardrails.
Investors are increasingly rotating capital out of overstretched AI stocks and into crypto assets, according to market analysts tracking the shift.
Franklin Templeton’s Sandy Kaul argues that agentic AI systems will require low-cost, programmable payment rails designed specifically for machine-to-machine micropayments.
Kaul says blockchain networks are better suited than traditional financial infrastructure to handle the transactional demands of autonomous AI agents operating at scale.
The rotation thesis is supported by cooling AI and IPO-driven momentum that had previously diverted significant institutional capital away from digital asset markets.
A softer US inflation backdrop has also tempered Federal Reserve tightening expectations, creating a more favourable macro environment for risk assets including cryptocurrencies.
US spot Bitcoin ETFs have now recorded seven consecutive days of inflows, a streak not seen since early October 2025, when Bitcoin was trading near its all-time high.
Daily inflow figures tracked from July 14 through July 21 ranged from $79.15 million at their lowest to $226.92 million at their peak, as Bitcoin climbed above $66,000.
Despite the encouraging run, 2026 ETF flows remain net negative at approximately $5.2 billion, meaning recent buying is recovering lost ground rather than establishing new highs.
The CLARITY Act has simultaneously returned to the centre of Washington’s crypto agenda, with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent declaring lawmakers are at the “1-yard line” on the landmark legislation.
Bessent urged Congress to pass the bill before the August 7 recess, signalling strong executive branch support for resolving the long-pending market structure debate.
The CLARITY Act would divide digital asset oversight between the SEC and the CFTC, establish disclosure requirements for certain tokens, and extend anti-money-laundering rules to crypto exchanges.
Bitcoin rose as much as 2.5% following Bessent’s remarks, pushing toward $67,000, while shares of Coinbase (COIN) surged as much as 13% on the news.
The convergence of improving ETF flows, regulatory momentum, and the AI rotation narrative is giving crypto markets a rare alignment of tailwinds heading into the second half of 2026.
Hyperliquid’s native token HYPE has broken into the top ten cryptocurrencies by market capitalisation, briefly surpassing Dogecoin (DOGE) to reach as high as ninth on global rankings. The token hit a new all-time high of $75.51 on June 2, capping a week that saw it post gains exceeding nine percent and attracting fresh attention from institutional participants and prominent industry voices alike.
HYPE’s market capitalisation ranged between $15.4 billion and $18.5 billion across late May and early June, with the token trading in the $69 to $75 range depending on intraday moves. Daily trading volume on the Hyperliquid protocol has routinely exceeded $1 billion, while cumulative protocol revenue has now crossed $1.16 billion since the platform launched. Both metrics represent all-time highs for the project.
Hyperliquid operates a high-performance Layer-1 blockchain built specifically for decentralised perpetual futures and spot trading. Its architecture delivers sub-second transaction finality, an on-chain central limit order book, and gasless trading, allowing it to compete with centralised exchange speeds while remaining fully decentralised. Nearly all trading fees are channelled into an Assistance Fund that conducts continuous HYPE buybacks and token burns, creating a direct link between platform usage and token value accrual.
Four factors are driving the current price momentum. The first is a regulatory shift in the United States. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission recently approved the first regulated perpetual futures contract for the US market, historically a product that regulators had viewed with deep scepticism and effectively forced offshore. That decision materially widens the addressable market for Hyperliquid’s core product. The second catalyst is the launch of spot exchange-traded funds, including Bitwise’s BHYP product, which has brought new institutional inflows into the token. Third, the platform has now accumulated more than two million wallet addresses, a user growth rate that validates demand beyond speculative trading. Fourth, the deflationary buyback mechanism ensures that rising revenue translates directly into reduced circulating supply.
BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes stated publicly on June 1 that HYPE should at a minimum overtake Solana’s market capitalisation before the current bull market cycle ends. At the time of his comments, Solana’s market cap stood at approximately $47.7 billion against HYPE’s roughly $15 billion, implying a potential tripling in value if his thesis proves correct.
The token’s rise signals a broader shift in market preferences. Dogecoin, which HYPE has now surpassed, is a meme-driven asset with no protocol revenue, governance function, or deflationary mechanism. The fact that a decentralised exchange token has overtaken it in value ranking is being interpreted across the industry as evidence that the 2026 market cycle favours assets with clear revenue streams and on-chain utility over legacy meme coins.
Looking ahead, a significant supply event is approaching. Data from Tokenomist shows that approximately $684 million worth of HYPE tokens are scheduled for unlock on June 6, part of a broader week of over $700 million in token releases across the market. How HYPE absorbs that supply event will be closely watched as a test of whether the current momentum has fundamental depth behind it.
The legal cannabis industry operates under a peculiar financial handicap. Despite generating billions in legitimate taxable revenue across multiple US states and a growing number of international jurisdictions, many dispensaries and cannabis businesses remain shut out of conventional banking.
Federal prohibition in the United States means most major banks refuse to offer merchant accounts, business loans, or standard payment processing to cannabis operators, forcing much of the industry to function as a cash-only business. That cash dependency creates security risks, operational inefficiencies, and compliance headaches that cost merchants an estimated 10 to 15 percent of total sales in handling costs alone.
It is against this backdrop that Dash has positioned itself as a serious candidate to become the marijuana industry coin of choice. Dash, originally launched in 2014 as a fork of Litecoin, has distinguished itself from the cryptocurrency crowd through a focus on practical payments utility rather than speculative investment narratives. Its InstantSend mechanism enables transaction confirmation in under a second, giving it a functional edge over Bitcoin and many other cryptocurrencies that require waiting periods incompatible with retail point-of-sale environments.
The most significant early proof of the concept came through a partnership with Alt Thirty Six, a Phoenix-based digital payments platform that integrated Dash as its preferred payment method for cannabis dispensaries, vendors, and customers across the United States. The collaboration was designed to address the cash problem head-on, enabling merchants to receive and settle payments digitally using Dash rather than handling large volumes of physical currency. Alt Thirty Six subsequently secured $10 million in Series A investment to scale the platform, a sign that institutional money saw merit in the cannabis-crypto payments thesis. Dash also partnered with VegaWallet, another fintech startup targeting the underbanked cannabis sector, deepening its presence in the vertical.
The practical benefits for cannabis merchants are tangible. Digital payments via Dash eliminate the cost and security risk of transporting and storing cash, remove card processing fees charged by traditional networks, and provide instant settlement without the delays associated with bank transfers. For customers, the experience is similar to a contactless card payment at existing point-of-sale terminals, which removes a meaningful adoption barrier.
The argument for Dash as the marijuana industry coin also draws on its governance model. Ten percent of all Dash mining income is allocated to a decentralised treasury controlled by masternode holders, creating a self-funding system for community-approved projects and partnerships. That structure has enabled the Dash community to fund cannabis-specific integrations and industry event participation in ways that less organised cryptocurrency projects cannot replicate.
Critics of the thesis point to several genuine obstacles. As traditional banks and credit unions have gradually begun serving cannabis businesses in some states, the original urgency that made Dash’s pitch compelling has partially diminished. Cryptocurrency volatility remains a concern for merchants who price their products in dollars and cannot afford to absorb significant exchange rate swings between the moment of sale and conversion. Widespread merchant adoption is still limited relative to the scale of the industry, and competing payment solutions from stablecoins and fintech operators are competing for the same market.
One assessment of the current situation concludes that while the original cannabis thesis has not fully materialised on the scale early advocates projected, Dash’s broader payments infrastructure remains functional and relevant. The coin’s real opportunity may lie less in any single industry vertical and more in its demonstrated ability to process fast, low-cost transactions wherever traditional finance is slow to arrive.
Whether Dash ultimately becomes the definitive marijuana industry coin or a more general-purpose payments layer across underbanked sectors, the argument it presents is rooted in a genuine problem that has not been fully solved. As cannabis legalisation continues to expand and banking access remains inconsistent, the space for a proven crypto payments solution remains open.
Ethereum is working through a serious structural debate about its staking reward model, with asset manager Grayscale publishing research that explicitly backs proposals to cap how much validators can earn above certain staking thresholds, arguing the change would be “positive for the price of ETH” over time.
The report, authored by Grayscale’s Head of Research Zach Pandl, identifies two compounding problems that have quietly shifted Ethereum from a deflationary to an inflationary token since its peak burning period.
The first issue is the collapse in Layer 1 transaction fee revenues. As more activity has migrated to cheaper Layer 2 networks, the base fee burned on every Ethereum transaction has declined substantially. Annual gross inflation now sits at approximately 1 million ETH, with the token burn rate failing to keep pace. The second structural problem is that the marginal cost of staking ETH has fallen to near zero. When Ethereum first introduced proof-of-stake, staked assets were locked with no withdrawal option, imposing a genuine liquidity premium on validators. With withdrawals now enabled and liquid staking tokens, ETFs, and corporate treasury vehicles all competing to stake at minimal cost, that risk premium has essentially disappeared. The consequence, Pandl warns, is that if current incentives persist, virtually all ETH could eventually end up staked, creating unnecessary dilution and dangerous centralisation risk if a handful of large validators control the majority of staked supply.
The Ethereum community is currently discussing proposals including EIP-7917, which would introduce tiered or capped reward curves. Under these models, validators staking beyond a defined threshold would receive diminishing or zero additional rewards, structurally reducing the incentive to over-stake. Grayscale’s research points out that capping issuance above certain staking ratios would slow supply growth and enhance ETH’s scarcity characteristics. The firm draws an analogy to commodity markets, where constrained production typically supports long-term prices. A record 32% of all ETH is currently staked, with the base staking yield sitting at approximately 3.0-3.2%, down roughly 40% from levels above 5% in late 2022.
As of Friday morning, ETH is trading at approximately $2,255, up around 1.4% over the past 24 hours and maintaining a market capitalisation of roughly $272 billion. Whale wallets have been accumulating heavily in recent sessions, with on-chain data indicating purchases of over 140,000 ETH in a 96-hour window earlier this month. The upcoming Glamsterdam upgrade, targeting June 2026, is expected to significantly increase Layer 1 throughput and is viewed by some analysts as a catalyst that has not yet been fully priced into the market. Whether the staking reward debate ultimately results in a protocol change will depend on community consensus, a process that on Ethereum tends to move slowly, though Grayscale’s public backing adds weight to the reformist camp.
Bitcoin (BTC) is entering May 2026 having delivered one of its strongest monthly performances of the current cycle, gaining approximately 13 percent across April from lows near $68,000 in early February to the current trading range of $76,000 to $77,500, while simultaneously struggling to break above the $80,000 resistance level that has now rejected the cryptocurrency on multiple attempts and become the most watched technical threshold in the digital asset market.
The Federal Reserve’s decision to hold interest rates steady at the April 29 meeting while signalling a “higher-for-longer” trajectory was the most significant domestic macro event of the week for Bitcoin, removing what would have been a near-term positive catalyst in a rate cut while also limiting the downside risk of a hawkish surprise, leaving the cryptocurrency in the same range-trading environment that has characterised the past two weeks.
Prediction markets on Kalshi are pricing a 64 percent probability that Bitcoin will hold above $76,000 entering May 1, with contracts tied to a recovery above $77,000 showing only a 37 percent implied probability, suggesting the market-implied view among active traders is one of stable consolidation at current levels rather than either a decisive break higher or a meaningful pullback in the immediate term.
The liquidation data adds texture to that cautious consensus, with more than $110 million in Bitcoin leveraged positions being wiped out across the most recent reporting period as the market cleared out the most aggressive bullish positioning that had built up during April’s recovery, a deleveraging episode that has historically served to create a cleaner base from which more sustainable upside moves develop once the overleveraged speculative positions are removed.
The $76,200 level, aligned with the 23.6 percent Fibonacci retracement of the move from the February lows to the April high of approximately $79,500, has emerged as the key near-term support that technical analysts are watching, with a sustained hold above that level expected to produce continued consolidation in the $76,200 to $79,000 range while a break below it risks a sharper move toward $73,500 if elevated oil prices from the Iran conflict continue to weigh on risk appetite broadly.
The Iran conflict remains the most persistent macro headwind for Bitcoin’s recovery, with oil prices holding above $100 per barrel following Trump’s rejection of Iran’s offer to end the US naval blockade and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, and the associated risk aversion flowing into crypto markets through the modest 18 percent correlation with the S&P 500 that characterises Bitcoin’s current positioning.
Strategy’s 815,061 BTC holding, accumulated at an average cost of $75,528 per coin, sits in positive territory at current prices and represents a commercial vindication for Michael Saylor’s accumulation model that is not lost on the institutional community watching how the world’s largest corporate Bitcoin holder has navigated one of the more volatile quarters in recent digital asset market history.
Bitcoin ETF inflows have remained constructive through the consolidation period, with US spot Bitcoin ETFs extending their pattern of sustained net positive flows that has been one of the defining structural features of the 2025 to 2026 market cycle and that provides a more reliable floor beneath prices than the purely speculative capital that drove previous cycle highs.
The broader crypto market is showing the classic consolidation pattern that follows a significant recovery rally, with the CoinMarketCap altcoin season indicator sitting in neutral territory and capital concentration in Bitcoin and Ethereum rather than the broader altcoin space suggesting that the most sophisticated money is not yet confident enough in the macro environment to extend into higher-beta positions.
Looking forward into May, the catalysts that could break the current range in either direction include any meaningful development in the Iran ceasefire negotiations, any shift in the Federal Reserve’s communication about the rate path, further Strategy Bitcoin purchases that Saylor has pre-announced through his characteristic social media tracker posts, and the continued conversion of the White House’s Strategic Bitcoin Reserve framework from conceptual to operational.
Bitcoin is trading in the $77,000 to $78,000 range on Saturday April 18, posting a gain of approximately 2.8 to 3% over the previous 24 hours as the Strait of Hormuz reopening sparked a broad shift in market sentiment that carried risk assets higher across equities, commodities and crypto simultaneously.
The move builds on a week of gradual recovery from lows near $70,000 in early April, when Trump’s blockade order sent investors into defensive positions across all major asset classes. The total crypto market capitalisation has reached $2.70 trillion, up from $2.63 trillion the previous day, with Bitcoin’s dominance holding at 57.3% as the largest digital asset continues to attract the most institutional interest in a period of elevated uncertainty.
US spot Bitcoin ETF inflows have been one of the more remarkable data points of the current cycle. A single-day inflow figure of $663.9 million was recorded in the days prior to Friday’s session, driven primarily by BlackRock’s IBIT and Fidelity’s FBTC. That figure represents the kind of institutional commitment that structurally changes Bitcoin’s demand profile compared with earlier market cycles, where retail momentum was the primary driver of price swings.
The liquidation dynamic has added further fuel to the move. Approximately $820 to $826 million in total crypto liquidations were recorded in recent sessions, with Bitcoin short positions accounting for more than $350 million of that total. When extended bearish positioning meets a macro catalyst that forces rapid position unwinding, the resulting short squeeze amplifies the directional move well beyond what fundamentals alone would produce.
Bitcoin is now testing a key resistance band in the $77,000 to $79,000 area that aligns with a Fibonacci extension zone and has acted as a ceiling multiple times over the past two months. A clean break above $79,000 on sustained volume would shift the technical picture materially and open conversation about a return to the $80,000 to $85,000 range. The Fear and Greed Index sits at 26, still firmly in the Fear category, which means the sentiment backdrop has not yet shifted to the kind of euphoric positioning that typically precedes meaningful corrections.
Several analysts have noted that the 46-day stretch of negative funding rates on Bitcoin perpetual futures, even as prices moved higher, is a historically unusual configuration that typically precedes sharp upside moves as short sellers are eventually forced to cover. Whether the Hormuz reopening and ETF inflows are sufficient catalysts to force that squeeze is the question the market is working through this weekend.
There are bad days to be sitting on a leveraged crypto position, and then there is quadruple witching Friday, and then there is quadruple witching Friday during a Middle East war, a hawkish Fed and a four-week equity selloff.
According to Goldman Sachs, more than $7.1 trillion in notional options exposure expires simultaneously, the largest quarterly derivatives expiry ever recorded, with roughly $5 trillion tied to the S&P 500 index alone and a further $880 billion linked to individual stocks.
Bitcoin was holding around $69,800 as those contracts began expiring, with Ethereum at $2,134, XRP at $1.43 and Solana at $88.93, each of those figures sitting well below where they were when the year began and well below where most investors had positioned for them to be by now.
The Fear and Greed Index for crypto markets registered 30 going into Friday’s session, firmly in fear territory and barely recovered from the reading of 23 recorded earlier this week following the Federal Reserve’s hawkish rate hold.
Quadruple witching matters to crypto investors because Bitcoin no longer operates in a silo separate from traditional finance.
The asset increasingly trades alongside equities and other risk assets, meaning institutional liquidations, portfolio rebalancing and derivatives settlement in the stock market create direct ripple effects in digital asset prices, often within the same trading session rather than with any meaningful lag.
Cole Kennelly, CEO of Volmex Finance, said the event is already showing up in digital asset volatility metrics: “Quadruple witching could trigger a spike in cross-asset volatility as large derivatives positions expire. This may already be showing up in crypto, with the Bitcoin Volmex Implied Volatility (BVIV) Index trending higher into the event.”
The historical pattern from 2025 provides limited comfort for anyone hoping Friday itself will pass quietly.
Bitcoin tended to show muted or flat performance on the day of quadruple witching events themselves, but consistently followed with weakness in the days and weeks after, sometimes sharply so.
In September 2025, a post-witching decline took Bitcoin from $177,000 all the way to $108,000, while the June event was followed by a local bottom just two days later.
Analyst Max Crypto noted on social media that BTC has dropped between seven and eight percent before bouncing during three of the last four quadruple witching events, a pattern that, combined with the current macro backdrop, suggests the path of least resistance remains downward rather than upward in the near term.
Today’s derivatives expiry does not even represent the end of the week’s event risk for crypto specifically.
A separate $13.5 billion in digital asset derivatives are set to expire on Deribit on March 27, just six days away, and positioning data from that exchange shows traders leaning into volatility strategies rather than building directional bets, which signals a market bracing for continued turbulence rather than any clean directional resolution.
Bitcoin ETF outflows over the past two days have compounded the selling pressure, with BlackRock’s IBIT posting $38.25 million in outflows on Thursday, Fidelity’s FBTC shedding $26.02 million and Bitwise contributing $17.18 million to net outflows of $90 million across the day, a continuation of the $163.52 million in net outflows recorded on Wednesday.
The combined weight of geopolitical uncertainty, a Fed that has signalled one rate cut for the entirety of 2026, oil above $100 and now the mechanical pressure of the largest derivatives expiry in financial history arriving in the same week is as challenging a set of conditions as the crypto market has navigated since the October 2025 peak.