Here are some of the major developments in the world of crypto over the past few days.
The US government still owns over 183,000 Bitcoin BTC $66,537, worth over $12 billion, making it the largest geopolitical owner of the digital currency. On July 29, the US government-controlled wallets moved over 28,000 BTC. Although noteworthy, the identity of the receiving wallet is unknown.
The Wyoming legislator advocated purchasing 5% of Bitcoin's production and holding the digital currency as a Treasury asset. Lummis described the idea as a 21st-century "Louisiana Purchase," referring to the French acquisition of the American Midwest for $15 million in 1803. Senator Lummis suggested Bitcoin as a strategic reserve asset for the United States on July 27.
Former President Donald Trump has also suggested building a Bitcoin strategic reserve. During his keynote talk at the Bitcoin 2024 conference, the Republican presidential candidate pledged not to sell any of the US government's Bitcoin assets. An independent presidential candidate vows to transfer U.S. Bitcoin assets to the Treasury.
The Grayscale Ethereum Trust (ETH), a freshly converted Ether ETF is expected to see significant outflows slow down by the end of this week, pushing up the price of ETH, according to Steno Research Senior Analyst. A total of approximately $1.7 billion has been lost from ETH since its conversion.
The spot Ethereum fund managed by BlackRock has received the most total inflows, totalling $500 million. Bitwise's fund has received $276 million, while Fidelity has received $244 million. Eberhardt believes that the significant early outflows are a cause for short-term optimism. In a post on X, Evanss6 contrasted the introduction of the Ether ETF and Bitcoin on July 30.
He pointed out that, Grayscale's Ether ETF had a deeper overall fall in the price of ETH compared to BTC at the time, and it was sold considerably faster than GBTC, reaching 17.3% in just four days. By year's end, crypto ETFs will be included in model portfolios, according to Samara Cohen of BlackRock, who also mentioned the robust institutional demand for ETH.
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are expected to have their lowest monthly sales volume since November 2023. On July 29, CryptoSlam announced that the monthly volume of NFTs had topped $393 million. With daily volumes below $14 million, July might be the lowest or second-lowest month for NFTs this year.
NFTs fell 45% quarter over quarter. In the first quarter of 2024, we generated $4.1 billion in revenue whereas the second quarter produced only $2.24 billion. According to CryptoSlam statistics, there were 9.9 million NFT transactions in July, a 73% increase over June's 5.7 million transactions.
While some NFT applications spurred by earlier enthusiasm cycles may never return, the executive believes that NFTs are far from dead. According to Wasinger, certain use cases have reached their peak and may not return to their earlier levels. However, the CryptoSlam creator believes that increasingly powerful Web3 apps will require NFTs.