Any winner is a dreamer who never surrendered! (weekly crypto updates)

What happened in crypto the past week? Ethereum ETFs are coming on July 23rd. Bitcoin and some memecoins went all up as Trump survived his latest ordeal. We may also have a pro-crypto VP in the US if Trump wins. Kucoin seems slightly better than Binance, at least in my country. What else? Read below:

• Bitcoin: Drama as usual, with BTC jumping to $63K after Trump's assassination attempt, as his campaign has a page allowing crypto donations via Coinbase. He said he wanted the remaining BTC to be mined in the US. Even Blackrock's CEO called Bitcoin a legitimate financial instrument. How the times change! Japan's Metaplanet increased its share price again by buying more Bitcoin (21.88 BTC worth $1.2M). Kraken received 48.941 BTC worth $3.1B and additional BCH from Mt. Gox trustees. The Bitcoin whales went on a shopping spree, with 71.000 BTC being bought last week. Germany has emptied its BTC piggy bank, with the last ones being sold on July 12.

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• Ethereum: The SEC told issuers that spot ETH ETFs will start trading on July 23rd. Nice! BlackRock, Fidelity, 21 Shares, Grayscale, Bitwise and Invesco Galaxy all filled for ETF ETFs with the SEC, and the fees vary from 0.19-0.20% (Bitwise, VanEck, IncInvescoesco, Franklin Templeton) to 2.5% (Grayscale). Who is that stupid to buy with 2.5% fees, ten times more than the rest?

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• Altcoins and stablecoins: Polkadot spent $87M worth of DOT in the past 6 months, double the amount of the last half of 2023, hosting events, meetups and conferences. They even made their own Twitter-like platform, Grill, where you are paid in crypto tips for publishing. Check your latest airdrops: Sanctum, Debank, Etherfi, Lava and Layer3. The on-chain stablecoins transfer volume dropped for the second consecutive month, by 7.5% in June. Euro stablecoins tumble after multiple Tether EURT delistings (its market capitalization fell by 26% in June after multiple exchange delistings). The total market for Ondo Finance's USDY stablecoin rose nearly 70% in June to $289M, as the tokens are backed by US Treasuries and bank deposits. Crypto fund issuer Valour launched the world's first exchange-traded product (ETP) for the NEAR token. Crypto open interest dropped nearly 10% in June. Some Trump-inspired memecoins got a big jump, in less than an hour after Trump was in danger. Crypto stocks also went up double digits after the same event.

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• NFTs and blockchain games: Telegram CEO praised Hamster Kombat as the fastest-growing game, with 100M monthly users in just 73 days and 4-5M new users daily. Rumor has it that there is a minimum of $1000 airdrop incoming for this silly Hamster Kombat. What a number! On Splinterlands, the sixth round of Conflicts airdrop finished, and the fourth Legendary summoner is coming, the reward system seems to be all right for now, as you get Glint tokens for every match you win and some of it at the end of the season. You can use Glint tokens to buy specific cards, Merits, potions and even 3 different titles.

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• Good news: Kucoin has a brilliant referral program if you are good at this stuff. Bitkey, Jack Dorsey's hardware wallet, partnered with MoonPay for BTC purchases. The banking giant State Street is exploring ways to create its stablecoin. Kraken expanded crypto-custody services to institutional clients in the UK and Australia. Defunct crypto lender BlockFi began processing crypto distributions via Coinbase, but non-US clients are currently unable to receive funds due to regulatory requirements. Bitforex will reopen withdrawals after a months-long halt.

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• Bad news: The SEC ended the three-year inquiry into the blockchain firm Hiro Systems, formerly known as Blockstack. The Tornado Cash developer was denied bail for the third time. Crypto trading volumes declined for the third consecutive month. The total futures trading volume dropped by 11.4% in June too, to $103B, after a strong performance in May. The Indian exchange WazirX experienced a wallet exploit losing over $230M in crypto assets.

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• Joke of the week: After all the noise about Bitcoin miners and how he will support them, Donald Trump had chosen Ohio senator JD Vance for the vice-president position. The senator holds between 100K-250K in BTC on Coinbase, while he also owns a brokerage account on RobinHood, a Gold ETF and a checking account with Charles Schwab. He has worked on legislation on how the US regulates digital assets and he is a crypto-friendly capitalist.

All the best,

George

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Why not...

...have fun and win rewards on my favourite blockchain games (Splinterlands- Hearthstone-like card game) (Mobox - GamiFI NFT platform) (Upland - real-life virtual land) (Holozing - Pokemon-like game)and (Rising Star - Music creators game)

....g ETH while writing on the Publish0x blog, using the Presearch search engine to maximize your income with PRE tokens. Use Torum instead of Twitter. I am also writing for crypto on Read.cash and Hive.

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