Is the Bottom in?

SCOOPā€™S TL;DR

šŸ“ˆ MARKET SENTIMENT - Bitcoin ($BTC) experienced a strong rebound off the lows, indicating a potential return to all-time highs (ATHs). Recently, crypto has shown weakness compared to equities, but the Mt. Gox headline provided clarity, explaining the sell-off due to insiders front-running the news of BTC distributions to creditors.

šŸ”„ TRENDING NARRATIVE - Moonshot

šŸ‹ļø BARBELLā€™S WEEKLY PICK - $POPCAT + $SCRAT

šŸ—žļø TOP STORIES

  • Major Security Breach

  • Legal Dilemma Awaits

  • A Week From Hell

  • Crypto Total Market Cap $2.37T - 24/hour change 0.9%

  • Crypto Market Cap Total Volume $68B - 24/hour Change 24%

    Bottom Is In, New Highs Imminent

    Price Action/Market Structure:

    • Bitcoin ($BTC) experienced a strong rebound off the lows, indicating a potential return to all-time highs (ATHs).

    • Recently, crypto has shown weakness compared to equities, but the Mt. Gox headline provided clarity, explaining the sell-off due to insiders front-running the news of BTC distributions to creditors.

    • This event caused a dip to range lows and about $300M in long liquidations, a significant wipeout compared to recent months, reflecting a cooling market with reduced altcoin interest and activity.

    Sentiment/Cycle Analysis:

    • Crypto Twitter sentiment is at an all-time low despite BTC being less than 20% off its ATHs. This is due to participants from 2021 who saw altcoins outperform majors like BTC and ETH.

    • Unlike 2021, the current market structure is influenced by new money flowing primarily into BTC due to ETF anticipation and actual ETF inflows ($14.3B so far).

    • The influx of capital into BTC has not trickled down to altcoins, causing significant dilution in altcoins with numerous low float high FDV launches.

    • Current market dynamics lack the retail frenzy, leverage, and degeneracy seen in 2021, leading to a rough period for crypto natives.

    Hope for Altcoins:

    • Altcoins are expected to perform well if BTC and ETH break their ATHs, reigniting retail and fund interest.

    • The upcoming ETH ETF is anticipated to have a more positive impact on altcoins due to ETH's reflexivity.

    Fundamentals Heating Up:

    • Blackrock's $17B in IBIT, with a 25bps fee, generates ~$45M annually from the ETF, just six months post-launch.

    • Capital allocators are beginning to move, and Blackrock's push for a 1% IBIT allocation in larger funds suggests significant future inflows.

    • A paradigm shift is occurring, where not owning BTC could be seen as a career risk for fund managers.

    • Anecdotal evidence from traditional asset managers suggests a growing acceptance of Bitcoin as a necessary asset in portfolios.

    Ethereum ETF Potential:

    • The ETH ETF expectations are low, but Blackrockā€™s success with the BTC ETF indicates a strong potential for the ETH ETF.

    • The ETH ETF is likely to be a higher margin product with additional staking benefits, making it 2-3x more profitable than the BTC ETF.

    • Larry Fink and Blackrockā€™s salesforce are expected to heavily promote the ETH ETF, potentially leading to significant inflows and exceeding current market expectations.

    Conclusion:

    • Current market conditions present a strong buying opportunity, with significant potential for future gains as ETFs gain traction and institutional interest grows.

    • Stay focused on the long-term fundamentals and potential of both BTC and ETH as institutional adoption continues to expand.

THE BEST OF ā€˜Xā€™

šŸ‹ļø BARBELLā€™S WEEKLY PICK

In each issue, our Founder ā€˜Jack Barbellā€™ delivers a hot rising star crypto asset that is yet to explode.

You can Follow Jack Barbell on X - @thebarbell_

$POPCAT has shown remarkable strength off the lows, having bounced from $0.24c to $0.5c over the last few days.

$POPCAT recently achieved its listing on Bybit, and rumour has it that Binance could be on the cards. We can see that a number of large meme whales have started to post about their bull these on $POPCAT on X with one guy ā€˜Muradā€™ even thinking it has 100x from here in the tank. This is of course extreme speculation. But all in all, people are becoming majorly bullish on $POPCAT.

I recently loaded up on $POPCAT and whilst I expect it still to chop like the rest of the market, I think it has a chance to outperform over the coming weeks given its strength during this time in the market.

The Scrat meme is part squirrel & part rat, which shares the idea of a Degen forever looking for that moonbag. Bit of a weird meme, but smart money like it, I also get the feeling this could be one of those controlled supply cabal-style memes which have been performing well as of late.

The controlled supply cabal meme concept is whereby groups of insiders & teams are controlling supply and not selling helping to counteract the meeting problem we have seen on Solana. Tokens like $BRETT have been masters of controlled supply.

$SCRAT has the right influencers around it including ā€˜Overdose AIā€™ who have been exceptional with his meme picks as of late.

Scrat is defo the riskier pick out of the two, but of course, has the chance at running harder than Popcat.

Dexscreener just launched Moonshot, a competitor to Pump.fun. if you arenā€™t aware Pump.fun allows anyone to easily launch meme coins in minutes on Solana.

The Moonshot feature on Dexscreener has led to a wave of new low-cap memes being launched at a record pace. It is a smart move from Dexscreener as everyone is already so familiar to using the platform. The Moonshot feature allows you to connect your Solana wallet directly to the platform and bid on pre-launched tokens before they go on to the open market.

Is this good for the Sol ecosystem? Well, whilst the capital inflow into crypto and global liquidity is at the current rate right now, more dilution is not what we need. The environment is very player vs player, meaning the smart traders are just stealing money from the rest of the market. The bottom line is we need more liquidity to flow into the market, which we envisage coming in the next few months, giving us a roaring Q3 and Q4.

The good news is Altcoins held up particularly well over the last few days following Bitcoinā€™s sharp drop.

Memes continue to dominate the arena in terms of fastest recovery, and daily gains at the moment with Utility coins lagging.

As we expect we will see a real push in utility coins into the back end of the year as liquidity increases.

Major Security Breach - Strap In

At a glance šŸ”Ž
  • A security breach has impacted 1590 CoinStats Crypto Wallets.

  • The attack led to a suspension of user activity.

  • CoinStats is a platform that allows all users to connect all crypto wallets to be used as a portfolio tracker.

  • They published a list of all affected wallets.

šŸ•µļø Scoops take: 

Another week another security breach, the $20bn stolen sum for the industry draws ever closer.

The reaction is also a scammer dream as victims will be primed now for some phishing expedition to recoup stolen funds.

This disaster follows shortly on from CoinGecko having 1.9 million users details stolen.

One day this place will be safe.

At a glance šŸ”Ž
  • A top lawyer specialising in Crypto / Blockchain has warned Celebrities of the implications of joining the meme coin train.

  • Recent launches from Caitlyn Jenner, Andrew Tate, Iggy, Jason Derulo and Waka Flocka found themselves within the 500,000 tokens launched in the last month.

  • The issue for Celebrities is the regulators are out to get them due to their horrendous track record in the space.

  • More often than not promises are made with no chance of ever being delivered.

šŸ•µļø Scoops take: 

Normally with an attorney who specialises in Blockchain heā€™d keep a little more quiet for the clients he may end up representing.

The Celebrity meme era is one we didnā€™t expect and the gains have been nuts.

But with the gains come the dumps and investors are being drawn in at all the wrong times.

We cannot explain how timely you need to be to make the big bucks from these drops.

Creating a memecoin is now easier than ever and with 500,000 launching in the last month, how many of these have you heard about making good gains?

PNG. Line Break - Triple Scoop

A Week From Hell - Red City

At a glance šŸ”Ž

  • Bitcoin went to $60.2k

  • Solana went to $123

  • Ethereum went to $3.2k

  • The result? Over $300m in liquidations in 24 hours.

  • The highest individual liquidation was $15.36m over the day.

  • Long positions account for the majority of the liquidations at $272m

šŸ•µļøScoopā€™s take:

It is a bloodbath after one of the worst weeks of the year.

ALTs didnā€™t escape eitherā€¦is anyone even safe?

The one upside of this is as follows: Every single person who felt they missed out when prices were going up now has the chance to put their money where their mouth is!

Massive selling pressure from miners who have offloaded over $2m worth of Bitcoin, tied with the German Government disposing of $195m worth of Bitcoin and Mt. Gox FUD have each contributed to the downfall.

The only way is up.

šŸ† WEEKLY WINNERšŸ†

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