Bull market gone? Don’t panic, these plots in the second half of 2024 are still worth looking forward to
Written by: Terry, vernacularBlockchain
In the past two months, although there have been many hot events such as memes and Airdrops of top projects, the market has been in a rather strange and depressed atmosphere.The howling of the bear seems to be faintly audible, the footsteps of the bull seem to be close yet far away, and the market collapse and restart seem to be just a matter of moments.
This article aims to explore and sort out some hidden fermentation events in the market in the past two months, while looking forward to the positive factors that may be overlooked in the future, and looking forward to the main storyline that may take on the main responsibility in the second half of the year.
01 BTC spot ETF inflow turns from negative to positive
The market always likes to overestimate the short-term effects of new things and underestimate their long-term impact.For the Bitcoin spot ETF, which has been launched for nearly half a year, there is a signal worth paying attention to recently:
According to SoSoValue data,Since mid-May, the Bitcoin spot ETF has seen a new wave of capital inflows, which lasted for nearly a month. On June 4, it reached the second highest value in history of US$886 million (second only to US$1.05 billion on March 12).
Although there has been another consecutive decline since the beginning of this week, the overall situation has clearly reversed compared with April-May.As of the time of writing (June 21), the total net asset value of the Bitcoin spot ETF was US$56.24 billion, the ETF net asset ratio (market value as a percentage of the total market value of Bitcoin) reached 4.39%, and the historical cumulative net inflow reached US$14.67 billion.
02 Crypto regulation changes direction & Ethereum spot ETF accelerates suddenly
The wind starts from the tip of the green reed. In the context of the 2024 election year, the macro environment has improved significantly recently, both at the regulatory level and at the capital level, brewing a new round of bullish catalysts (recommended reading "Trump and Biden are competing to "win over Bitcoin". Is the US crypto regulation about to take a turn?》).
First, on May 22, the 21st Century Financial Innovation and Technology Act (FIT21 Act) was passed by the House of Representatives with an overwhelming majority of 279 votes to 136.Xiaobai Navigation On the 24th, 8 19b-4 forms for Ethereum spot ETFs were officially approved.
This means that the stance of US regulators has begun to soften from a tough stance, especially as the expected Ethereum ETF has been greatly advanced through the node, and it seems to be just one step away from the final launch.Interestingly, although the change in attitude and approval speed of the US regulators this time were much faster than expected, looking back afterwards, it seems that there are some clues:
At least as early as around $3,000, whales such as Justin Sun began to accumulate ETH chips and firmly go long on the ETH/BTC exchange rate, which seems to indicate that some individuals/institutions with a keen sense of smell have been making advance arrangements.
Most directly, ETH's performance in the secondary market has swept away its previous decline and started to gradually strengthen.The most obvious change is the exchange rate of ETH/BTC. It should be noted that since October last year, ETH has been falling compared to BTC, and the exchange rate of ETH/BTC has fallen from above 0.064 to below 0.045.
Since mid-May, the ETH/BTC exchange rate ratio has begun to fall. In the past month, it has broken through the 0.05 and 0.055 levels, reaching a recent high of 0.058, and is generally strong.
03 Traditional Web2 players accelerate the layout of Web3
On June 6, Robinhood announced that it would acquire the crypto trading platform Bitstamp for $200 million, thereby expanding outside the United States.The two parties have reached an acquisition agreement, but it needs to be approved by regulatory authorities. Compared with the acquisition price of US$400 million by NXMH, a subsidiary of South Korean company NXC in 2018, it is half lower, which is considered a big bargain.
As we all know, Robinhood is one of the most commonly used stock and crypto CEXs by US users, with 11 million monthly active users, and is even more popular than Coinbase in the crypto trading field.Robinhood’s transaction-based revenue in the first quarter of this year increased by 59% year-on-year to $329 million, of whichcryptocurrencyRevenue was $126 million, up 232% year-over-year, a very strong performance.
Bitstamp, founded in 2011, is the world's longest-running crypto CEX and is also considered one of the most compliant CEXs. It not only has operations in Luxembourg, the United Kingdom, Slovenia, Singapore and the United States, but also has valid licenses and is registered in more than 50 countries/regions around the world, which can help Robinhood enter other regions to conduct crypto business.
This is almost a perfect complementary relationship - Robinhood's current market is mainly focused on the United States, while its competitors Kraken and eToro have stronger businesses in Europe than it, so although Bitstamp's 4 million users are not many, almost most of them are in Europe, which is a huge leap for Robinhood's European expansion.
It is worth noting that just one month ago, Robinhood received a Wells notice from the staff of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regarding topics such as RHC’s crypto asset listing, custody and platform operations (RHC activities). Therefore, the acquisition of Bitstamp will expand Robinhood’s global layout, thereby hedging the strong regulatory influence of the U.S. SEC and ensuring that it never leaves the table.
In addition, Fortune magazine predicts thatIn addition to adding about 4 million new crypto customers to Robinhood, the deal will also enable Robinhood to offer a wider range of services to more institutional customers.cryptocurrencyproduct:
From the 15 tokens currently offered in the US market and more than 30 in Europe, to the more than 85 included in Bitstamp, Bitstamp's diversified services (such as staking, stablecoins, trading, custody and prime brokerage) will also help Robinhood attract more institutional clients and potentially accelerate its expansion in the European market.
04 The macro environment blows the horn of easing
Although the CPI, PPI, non-farm data and other data in the United States have exceeded expectations many times in the past six months, Federal Reserve officials have also begun to "take a tough stance",This has led to the market constantly adjusting its expectations for interest rate cuts, but at least for now, inflation is basically coming to an end, and everyone remains cautiously optimistic about the Fed's interest rate cuts in the second half of the year.
John Williams, a permanent voting member of the FOMC, the third-ranking official of the Federal Reserve and president of the New York Federal Reserve, emphasized on Tuesday that any decision on the timing or extent of rate cuts this year will depend on upcoming economic data. At the same time, Federal Reserve officials lowered their expectations for planned rate cuts this year, with the median official predicting only one rate cut.
However, the Canadian and European central banks, which are regarded as the vanguards of the Federal Reserve, took the lead in blowing the horn of change and rushed to cut interest rates:
On June 5, the Bank of Canada cut interest rates from 5% to 4.75%, the first cut in four years;
On June 6, the ECB cut interest rates from 4% to 3.75%, the first cut in five years;
In any case, the global interest rate cut trend has further accelerated, and favorable factors at the macro level are indeed accumulating.
05 Large payment/financial institutions return
In addition, BN recently allowed Mastercard users to purchase crypto assets on BN again, and BN-branded Visa cards have also been resumed on the trading platform. BN stated that withdrawal services using Mastercard will be resumed later.
As early as March, MetaMask also reached a cooperation with MasterCard to carry out the firstBlockchain支付卡测试，营销材料显示，MetaMask/ 万事达支付卡由 Baanx 发行，将是「首个真正去中心化的 Web3 支付解决方案」，允许用户在任何接受银行卡的地方使用cryptocurrency进行日常消费。
This will undoubtedly greatly solve the problems of incremental users' cognition and entry barriers, and move towards seamless deposits and withdrawals (instant exchange of fiat currency and stablecoins), abstract user experience for user convenience (account abstraction, close to Web2 payment experience), etc., especially opening up the link between cryptocurrencies and off-chain consumption scenarios, which is conducive to the anchoring of crypto assets with a wider asset pool.
06 Summary
Overall, in this market environment where things are both cold and warm, there are still quite a lot of positive factors slowly fermenting, and as long as you observe carefully, you can still see confidence.
Although the howling of bears seems faintly audible and the footsteps of bulls seem to be close yet far away, in this context, remaining cautiously optimistic, observing at all times and actively participating may be the only thing that can be done in the current market atmosphere.
The article comes from the Internet:Bull market gone? Don’t panic, these plots in the second half of 2024 are still worth looking forward to
As April comes to an end, BTC is currently at the lower end of its price range, showing significant market weakness and potentially leading to more interesting developments. Written by: Greythorn Opening Welcome to Greythorn Asset Management’s monthly market update for April 2024. We are pleased to share insights and analysis that will help…
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