Several large, deliberate trades hit the tape recently, building up this concentration of open interest at $70,000 and $72,000 levels. Laevitas identified a large bull call spread structure, involving buying the $70,000 call and simultaneously selling the $72,000 call.

The bull call spread, as the name suggests, bets on a moderate upswing in prices of the underlying asset, in this case, up to $72,000.

“The structure accounts for approximately 49% and 50% of total call open interest at the $70K and $72K strikes, respectively,” Laevitas noted.

Other notable trades included calendar spreads, a strategy used to profit from volatility changes in short- and near-term expiries.

Another trader or a group of traders bought a large number of calls at $70,000, paying $3.4 million in premium to gain upside exposure.

Jimmy Yang, co-founder of Orbit Markets, an institutional digital asset liquidity provider, pointed out similar trades, saying these have been driven by Clarity Act optimism.

“Earlier this month, we saw decent demand for BTC topside calls, with the 31 July $70,000 and $72,000 strikes being particularly popular. A lot of this positioning was driven by expectations that the CLARITY Act could be passed before the end of the month,” Yang said.

Crypto markets have struggled for much of the year as weaker trading volumes, concerns over the economy and fading risk appetite weighed on digital assets. The tougher backdrop has hurt market makers, whose revenues depend largely on trading flows and providing liquidity. With spot trading volumes subdued, firms across the sector have faced pressure on profitability.

Mergers and acquisitions are expected to remain a defining theme in 2026 as digital asset firms consolidate to achieve scale, expand product offerings and meet growing institutional demand, according to industry analysts.

Exchanges, market makers, custodians and financial technology providers are looking to acquire complementary businesses to build integrated digital asset platforms, reflecting the maturation of the crypto ecosystem into a more institutional and regulated market.

SBI Financial Services, a subsidiary of SBI Holdings, acquired a 90% stake in B2C2 in December 2020, months after investing $30 million in the firm.

B2C2’s financial results are not disclosed separately. They are reported as part of SBI’s broader crypto-asset business segment. For the fiscal year ended March 31, that segment generated 89.6 billion yen ($550 million) in revenue, up 10.9% from a year earlier, while profit before tax was unchanged at 21.2 billion yen.

SBI Holdings said last month it had agreed to buy cryptocurrency exchange Bitbank for around $289 million.

The European Union (EU) extended sanctions against Russia to include four designations related to the cross-border A7 network, including its new links to Africa.

The EU is also extending its transaction ban to 14 unnamed crypto-related service platforms based in Georgia, Panama, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the Marshall Islands, Kyrgyzstan and Belarus.

Chainalysis recently noted that on the A7 network, where the A7A5 stablecoin operates, has processed nearly $120 billion to date and that it is purposely built for Russia’s sanctions evasion.

“We’re hitting over a hundred banks and crypto operators, 40+ vessels in Russia’s shadow fleet, and several oil refineries in Russia and Belarus,” Kaja Kallas, High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and chair of the Foreign Affairs Council, said in a statement.

The EU announced its previous package of sanctions against Russia in April, saying it was the “biggest package” of sanctions against the country in two years. In that statement, the EU said “Russia is becoming increasingly reliant on cryptocurrencies for international transactions.”

Perpetual decentralized exchange (DEX) Hyperliquid’s weekly trading volume in tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) exceeded that of all other asset categories combined for the first time.

RWAs generated $25.1 billion in trading volume from July 13 to July 19, accounting for 52% of Hyperliquid’s total weekly volume of $48.2 billion, according to Blockworks data.

“Hyperliquid’s RWA market alone was larger than the combined crypto perpetual volume of every other DEX,” wrote ARK Invest’s research director for digital assets, Lorenzo Valente, in a Thursday X post.

The milestone reflects growing demand for tokenized assets on Hyperliquid. Over the past month, RWA holders grew by 32% to 1.25 million users, while the total value of tokenized RWAs rose by 3.5% to $36.7 billion, according to data aggregator RWA.xyz.

Hyperliquid generated $7.6 million in revenue over the past week, according to DefiLlama. The perp DEX ranked third among crypto applications by weekly revenue, behind stablecoin issuers Tether and Circle, which generated $112 million and $45 million, respectively.

Hyperliquid: Perpetual Futures Volume, 2-year chart. Source: Blockworks

Related: Hyperliquid launches prediction markets for real-world events

Major “structural shift” for crypto markets: Circle co-founder

Crypto-native firms and traditional financial institutions have expanded tokenized asset offerings as they bring more financial assets onto blockchain networks. In March, the NYSE partnered with tokenization platform Securitize to develop blockchain-based stock trading infrastructure with 24/7 trading and settlement.

Circle co-founder and CEO Jeremy Allaire said growing RWA trading on Hyperliquid marks a “major structural shift” in crypto markets, moving “away from speculating on endogenous digital commodities,” in a Friday X post.

Earlier in July, Pantera Capital said perpetual futures could become a dominant trading instrument beyond crypto, as perps offer structural advantages over traditional derivatives, including 24/7 trading, no contract expiries, simpler position management and continuous price discovery.

Hyperliquid’s growth has drawn attention from Wall Street institutions, including NYSE parent Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), whose CEO, Jeffrey Sprecher, urged regulators to create a “level playing field” for launching 24/7 onchain perpetual futures contracts.

Magazine: How Hong Kong is turning tokenized bonds into real market infrastructure

The crypto market continues to mature with growing institutional participation, and memecoins are paying the price.

The combined market capitalization of DOGE$0.06947 and shiba inu (SHIB), the two largest memecoins by value, has fallen to $13.27 billion, the lowest in three years and down about 2% this month alone, even though market leader bitcoin BTC$64,940.05 has risen by 10%.

A more revealing picture emerges when you measure the top two memecoins against bitcoin’s market cap of $1.30 trillion.

That ratio now stands at just 1.02%, the lowest on record. That’s a dramatic reset if considering where things stood at the peak of memecoin mania in 2021, when DOGE and SHIB together accounted for 7% of bitcoin’s market cap. In other words, for every dollar invested in bitcoin, seven cents were chasing internet joke tokens. Today that figure is just over one cent.

Bitcoin has grown substantially since 2021, meaning memecoins haven’t just lost value in dollar terms, they have ceded ground against the very asset that defines the crypto market cycle.

The crypto market is closing out the week on a constructive note, with bitcoin BTC$64,988.19 adding as much as 1.1% since midnight UTC to $65,760 as the broader market held its ground despite a macro backdrop that should be applying far more pressure.

Brent crude futures are trading at $97.66 per barrel, the highest since mid-May, as the Iran conflict shows no sign of de-escalating. While previous oil spikes have rattled risk assets including crypto, digital assets are broadly green this morning.

Ether (ETH) mirrored bitcoin’s gain, rising as much as 1.6%, while the likes of HYPE and FET rose more than 2%.

Traditional markets are muted, with S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 index futures both marginally positive and gold holding above $4,000. The Dollar Index has edged slightly lower.

Derivatives positioning

• Market churn dominates activity: Volume increased by 11% to $165 billion in 24 hours while open interest (OI) held steady at around $116 billion. This shows a market that’s seen churn rather than positional interest.
• Bearish buildup in dogecoin: DOGE futures OI continues to rise and is nearing 16 billion tokens, the most since October. The continued gains come as DOGE’s spot price remains under pressure after falling to the lowest since November 2023 on Thursday. The combination of rising open interest alongside a drop in price is said to confirm the downtrend and signal trader interest in shorting the falling market.
• Mixed signals from ether: OI in ether futures is rising as well, currently at 14.53 million ETH, the highest since June 7. Other indicators paint a mixed picture with positive funding rates still pointing to bullish sentiment while the negative 24-hour CVD indicates that bears are leading the price aciton by shorting at market orders rather than placing limit orders.
• Broad-based bear leadership: With the exception of TRX and CRO, most tokens, including BTC, have negative 24-hour CVD.
• Volatility declines: There is good news for the bulls from the BVIV index, which measures BTC’s 30-day implied volatility. The measure has declined by 3% since midnight to 39%, halting a five-day streak of advances. Ether’s EVIV is under pressure too.
• Options cluster: In the Deribit-listed bitcoin options market, a massive $5 billion open interest cluster has formed at $70,000-$72,000 options, mainly driven by bullish bets, or call options. Volume rankings also show a bias for upside with calls at strikes $77,000 and $80,000 featuring in the list alongside other calls.

Token talk

• Hyperliquid (HYPE) led the altcoin market for the second consecutive session, rising 2.4% to $58.93 as it rebuilds with a series of higher lows since its July pullback from record highs.
• AI tokens FET and NEAR posted gains of 2.23% and 1.38%, respectively, offering tentative signs of stabilization after weeks of underperformance, while MORPHO$1.9571 added 1.89% to extend one of the more consistent runs in the DeFi sector this month.
• WLFI$0.05790 gave back 2.13% of Thursday’s 12% surge, a familiar pattern for the Trump family-linked token, which remains highly susceptible to sharp reversals due to thin liquidity.
• Lighter (LIT) fell a further 1.32%, extending a slide that has now unwound close to 20% from its July peak as profit-taking continues following its 200%-plus rally between May and early July.
• The broader 24-hour picture tells a more cautious story, with WLFI, AVAX, HBAR and SUI all down between 4% and 10% over the past day, a reminder that the intraday recovery masks lingering weakness across a portion of the altcoin market.