TLDR

• Bitcoin whales bought more than 270,000 BTC worth about $16.7 billion over the past two weeks.
• U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded $4.06 billion in June outflows, marking their worst month since launch.
• The ETF outflows pushed 2026 flows negative before the funds recorded a $221 million inflow on Thursday.
• Bitfinex analysts said whale accumulation and institutional selling have appeared near past Bitcoin cycle lows.
• Solana outperformed major crypto assets after rising about 15% since early June.

Bitcoin whales bought $16.7 billion in BTC during two weeks, even as U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs lost $4.06 billion in June. The record ETF bleed pushed 2026 flows negative, but Thursday brought a $221 million inflow. Therefore, the market showed a clear split between institutional selling and whale accumulation.

Bitcoin Whales Absorb ETF Selling Pressure

Bitcoin whales added more than 270,000 BTC over two weeks, according to Bitfinex analysts. Bitcoin whales bought while U.S. funds faced their worst month since launch. The buying reached about $16.7 billion at Bitcoin’s $62,055 price.

Bitcoin whales moved against the ETF trend as spot demand stayed weak. Bitfinex said the spot premium remained negative during the buying period. That signal showed U.S. spot desks did not drive the accumulation.

Bitcoin whales often accumulate when weaker holders sell near cycle lows. Bitcoin whales also reduce liquid supply when they move coins into long-term wallets. However, ETF outflows showed institutions still cut exposure during June.

Solana Gains While Bitcoin Whales Build Positions

Solana moved in the opposite direction from most large crypto assets. SOL rose about 15% since early June despite Bitcoin hitting 21-month lows. The token gained support from upgrades and stronger network activity.

Tokenized real-world asset transfers on Solana rose 120% to $8.53 billion. That growth helped SOL outperform while Bitcoin whales focused on BTC accumulation. Bitfinex analysts called the market split a “familiar one.”

They said altcoins often fall before Bitcoin and recover before Bitcoin. Still, Bitcoin whales kept their attention on BTC during the ETF selloff. The pattern showed different groups taking different risks across crypto markets.

Optimism Falls as Bitcoin Whales Signal Market Stress

Optimism and other layer-2 tokens traded near record lows. Base dropped Optimism’s shared technology, and that move weakened the fee-capture case. As a result, traders reduced exposure to several Ethereum scaling tokens.

Meanwhile, Bitcoin whales continued to absorb supply from sellers. Bitcoin whales created a sharp contrast with institutions that exited ETFs. Bitcoin whales have shown similar behavior near past recovery phases.

The next U.S. inflation reading now carries major weight for crypto markets. May inflation reached 4.2%, although Kevin Warsh said inflation risks had eased. A softer print could change rate expectations before the Fed meeting.

The crypto market is ending the week in a healthier position than where it started, with bitcoin BTC$61,903.56 trading at $61,600 after having risen by 6.5% from Tuesday’s almost two-year low of $57,750.

Still, the largest cryptocurrency’s gains on Friday were muted in comparison with Thursday’s 2.6% advance, which benefited from weak U.S. job data that lowered expectations for a Federal Reserve interest-rate increase.

The interest-rate outlook echoed for a second day as the U.S. entered a long weekend with stock markets closed. Ether (ETH) rose for a third straight day to add 11.5% since Tuesday and 2.6% on Friday alone. Other altcoins also advanced, with ADA$0.1680, zcash (ZEC) and dash (DASH) all gaining between 2.2% and 3.1%.

Still, the broader market structure remains bearish across the majority of crypto tokens following a succession of lower highs and lower lows. For bitcoin to reverse the downtrend, it needs to trade back above $67,000 and then take out $81,000, which was the local high in May.

Derivatives positioning

• Ether replaced bitcoin as the biggest token for 24-hour liquidations. A total of $417 million worth of crypto futures bets were liquidated in 24 hours, of which $160.80 million are from the ether market. BTC, a distant second, notched $97 million. This shows just how bearish positioning on ether was.
• Ether futures’ open interest (OI) still stood at 14.31 million, the most since June 10, with annualized funding rates of nearly 10% and the highest 24-hour cumulative volume delta (CVD) among majors. The combination points to growing demand for bullish exposure in the market, a sign traders are anticipating continued price gains.
• OI in DOGE futures tallied 14.13 billion tokens, the highest since May 16. The number has been growing since June 28, a sign of renewed demand for leverage. The DOGE situation is similar to ether’s bullish picture.
• While ETH and DOGE have led OI growth over 24 hours, futures tied to HBAR and ZEC have seen the opposite. HBAR has the most negative 24-hour CVD among majors, a sign bears are becoming more aggressive in shorting at market orders than passive limit orders.
• Most tokens have positive CVD, a sign of bulls’ leadership in the market.
• Both bitcoin and ether 30-day implied volatility indexes continue to slide, reversing the June pop, signaling market calm and potential for continued bullish price action.
• On Deribit, the most traded BTC options of 24 hours are calls at strikes ranging from $60,000 to $70,000. Call options represent a bullish bet on the market. Ether options show a similar bullish mood, with the $2,500 call seeing the most activity.
• Block flows featured a large BTC long call condor, a strategy betting on a range play between $66,000 and $68,000 till July 17.

Token talk

• Uniswap (UNI) led gains in altcoins following Thursday’s announcement confirming that it will be the primary automated market maker (AMM) for the Robinhood layer-2 blockchain.
• UNI is up by more than 11% in the past 24 hours with daily trading volume doubling to $320 million, still reaping the benefits of its tie-up with Robinhood announced July 1.
• AI tokens FET, RENDER and TAO also demonstrated positive signs on Friday, rising by between 1.5% and 2.3% since midnight UTC after weeks of sell pressure.
• CoinMarketCap’s “Altcoin Season” indicator is at 46/100, still firmly in the neutral zone it has occupied for the past month as the market awaits a return to risk-on sentiment.
• Solana (SOL) is leading the rally among crypto majors. It has now surged by more than 17% over the past week, trading at $80 after dropping to as low as $68 the week before.

President Donald Trump said there is ‘nothing wrong’ with the money his family has made in crypto, responding to financial disclosures that showed he earned at least $1.4 billion from the industry last year.

Asked in a CNBC interview on Thursday at the White House whether he knew about the ventures, Trump said “I could know about it. I didn’t.” He said that there was nothing illegal about his involvement and that his goal was for the U.S. to lead in crypto.

Trump handed day-to-day control of his businesses to his two eldest sons before taking office, and did not divest his assets.

The disclosure, released this week by the federal Office of Government Ethics, made Trump the largest crypto earner in U.S. politics.

It showed about $636 million tied to his eponymous memecoin, which was launched on the eve of his return to office, roughly $594 million from World Liberty Financial, the crypto firm he co-founded with his sons and nearly $197 million from a stablecoin venture.

Quick Summary

• Bridge obtains MiCA and EMI regulatory clearances for euro stablecoin operations in the EU.
• The Stripe-backed infrastructure provider can now deliver compliant services throughout European markets.
• Regulatory approvals enable companies to create branded euro-denominated stablecoins through Bridge’s platform.
• Financial technology firms gain access to named IBAN accounts and euro banking tools via Bridge.
• MiCA framework drives stablecoin operators toward heightened European regulatory compliance.

Bridge has obtained dual regulatory licenses from Luxembourg authorities, allowing the company to scale its euro stablecoin payment infrastructure throughout the European Union. The fintech firm, which counts Stripe among its investors, received both MiCA crypto-asset service provider authorization and Electronic Money Institution registration. These regulatory clearances provide Bridge with a unified operational framework spanning all 27 EU territories.

Regulatory Clearances Open European Market Access

The Luxembourg regulatory approvals bring Bridge under the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets regulatory regime. The licenses simultaneously authorize the firm to facilitate electronic money operations throughout the trading bloc. Consequently, commercial entities can now access compliant stablecoin infrastructure and euro payment capabilities through a consolidated arrangement.

Bridge stated the authorizations encompass capital reserve requirements, asset custody protocols, and operational security measures. These provisions represent fundamental components of the EU’s emerging cryptocurrency oversight architecture. The company now operates stablecoin services within defined compliance parameters.

The regulatory milestone also bolsters Bridge’s competitive standing in Europe’s digital payments ecosystem. The platform already facilitates conversions between stablecoins and euro currency. With the new licenses, it can broaden those capabilities for software developers, fintech operators, corporate clients, and banking institutions.

Custom Euro Stablecoin Solutions for Enterprise Clients

Bridge will enable commercial clients to launch proprietary euro-denominated stablecoins tailored to their specific use cases. Organizations can deploy these digital tokens for customer rewards programs, loyalty mechanisms, on-ramp services, and application-integrated payments. This eliminates the need for businesses to establish independent reserve management and regulatory compliance infrastructure.

Financial technology providers can leverage Bridge to deliver virtual IBAN accounts issued in end-user names. They can additionally furnish euro-denominated accounts that function seamlessly across every EU jurisdiction. This capability provides firms with a streamlined mechanism for transnational monetary transfers.

Corporate enterprises can utilize custom stablecoins to transfer capital between international subsidiaries. This methodology can minimize dependence on traditional correspondent banking infrastructure. Banking institutions can similarly adopt stablecoin settlement rails to accelerate institutional transaction finality.

MiCA Framework Transforms European Digital Asset Landscape

The licensing achievement arrives as Europe implements stricter supervision of stablecoins through MiCA regulations. The framework’s concluding implementation phase commenced on July 1. Licensed cryptocurrency platforms must now exclusively support stablecoins satisfying the regulation’s established criteria.

Bridge enters a growing cohort of authorized entities pursuing expanded EU market presence under MiCA guidelines. The regulatory framework permits authorized organizations to conduct operations across member nations without obtaining individual country-specific licenses. This arrangement provides stablecoin infrastructure providers with a more transparent pathway to geographic expansion.

The company has simultaneously pursued international growth through strategic payments collaborations. Visa announced in March plans to extend its partnership with Bridge on stablecoin-enabled card products. The initiative aims to reach more than 100 nations by the conclusion of 2026.

With bitcoin BTC$61,954.71 and the broader crypto market showing signs of life, defensive positioning in the market has eased, not disappeared, a sign of continued caution.

This is evident from the BTC and ether (ETH) options markets listed on Deribit, where put options, derivative contracts offering protection against price slides, continue to trade at a premium to calls, or bullish contracts.

Bitcoin’s one-week, 25-delta put-call skew, which measures the difference in volatility for puts relative to calls, was around 16%. It showed puts outpacing demand by a 16% vol point premium. That’s still notably elevated, though significantly lower than the 25% of 10 days ago, according to data source Velo.

The one-, three-, and six-month skews also show put premiums of around 10% or more. The same is true for ether.

The message is clear. Downside fears persist, keeping demand for insurance against price declines intact even though BTC long-term holders and ETF investors appear to have returned to accumulation.

LAB price has suffered one of the steepest collapses in the crypto market this week, losing more than 60% of its value as concerns over insider holdings, token transparency, and heavy derivatives liquidations sparked a wave of panic selling.

According to crypto.news data, LAB (LAB) plunged to an intraday low of $7.50 on July 3, down more than 60% from its recent high near $20 on June 27. The sell-off erased billions in market value in less than a week as investors rushed to exit amid growing uncertainty surrounding the project’s tokenomics and insider ownership.

The biggest catalyst appears to be mounting concerns over LAB’s token distribution. Community discussions intensified after on-chain investigator ZachXBT previously alleged that insiders controlled more than 95% of the token supply, while also raising concerns over token allocation transparency, private OTC agreements, changing vesting schedules, and large insider wallet movements before major price swings.

These remain public allegations that have not been established in court, and the LAB team has disputed or not publicly accepted many of the claims.

Additional attention came from crypto community member Zetoshi, who summarized the controversy and highlighted LAB’s reported institutional backers, including Animoca Brands, OKX, Lemniscap, GSR, Amber Group, Mirana Ventures, Gate, and KuCoin, although Zetoshi’s suggestion that these relationships explain the lack of public action against the project represents personal opinion rather than verified fact.

Why did the LAB sell-off accelerate so quickly?

Once confidence weakened, technical factors amplified the decline. As LAB broke below major support around the $12 region, leveraged long positions began unwinding rapidly, triggering a liquidation cascade across derivatives markets.

Open interest dropped roughly 23% to $130.39 million, signaling that traders were closing positions instead of adding fresh bullish bets. At the same time, funding rates turned negative across perpetual futures markets, indicating that bearish traders had taken control and that demand for short exposure outweighed buying interest.

Momentum indicators also reflected the sharp deterioration in sentiment. The MACD histogram expanded further into negative territory, reinforcing the growing downside momentum as automated liquidations and stop-loss orders accelerated the move toward the $7.50 support area.

Could broader market conditions have made the decline worse?

The LAB-specific concerns also coincided with a difficult backdrop for digital assets. During late June and early July, investors broadly reduced exposure to riskier cryptocurrencies as global central banks maintained restrictive monetary policies and capital rotated away from speculative altcoins.

The broader market weakness became an additional headwind as corrections in Bitcoin and Ethereum reduced overall risk appetite. With liquidity already thinning across the altcoin market, LAB’s structural concerns left few buyers willing to absorb heavy selling pressure from early investors and whales taking profits after the token’s remarkable rally from roughly $0.10 to nearly $27 earlier this year.

For now, traders will likely watch whether LAB can stabilize above the $7.50-$7.65 support zone. A sustained recovery may depend not only on improving crypto market sentiment but also on greater transparency from the project regarding token ownership, vesting schedules, and future token unlocks.

Large bitcoin holders bought more than 270,000 bitcoin BTC$61,657.03 ($16.7 billion) over the past two weeks, stepping in as U.S. institutions pulled money out at a record pace.

U.S. spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) shed $4.06 billion in June, their worst month since listing, past the previous record of $3.56 billion set in February 2025.

The outflows pushed the funds into the red for 2026 as a whole for the first time, and these products finally recorded a $221 million inflow on Thursday.

Large wallets, often called whales, went the other way, analysts at crypto exchange Bitfinex shared with CoinDesk in a Friday note. They added more than 270,000 BTC over two weeks while the spot premium, a gauge of how hard U.S. buyers are bidding, stayed negative, meaning the buying was not coming from spot desks.

Institutions selling and large holders accumulating at the same time is the pattern that has shown up near past cycle lows, where long-term holders take coins off sellers before any recovery reaches the price.

Key Takeaways

• June saw the ECB implement a 25 basis point rate increase, marking its first adjustment upward in nearly three years
• Bank of France Governor Emmanuel Moulin indicates the ECB has reached a favorable position
• Consumer price growth in the Eurozone declined to 2.8% in June from May’s 3.2%
• Crude oil prices have returned to pre-conflict levels following diplomatic breakthrough between Washington and Tehran
• While Barclays forecasts a September rate adjustment, analysts acknowledge declining energy costs may support holding steady

In June, the European Central Bank implemented a 25 basis point interest rate increase, representing its first upward adjustment in approximately three years. This decision followed a surge in energy markets sparked by U.S.-Israeli military operations targeting Iran, which temporarily drove crude oil beyond $110 per barrel.

With diplomatic relations now stabilized and energy prices retreating, certain ECB policymakers are indicating the institution may be approaching the conclusion of its restrictive monetary policy phase.

Central Bank Officials Note Enhanced Risk Balance

Emmanuel Moulin, serving as both Bank of France governor and member of the ECB Governing Council, informed Bloomberg Television that the institution finds itself in a favorable state at present.

During remarks at the Rencontres Economiques conference held in Aix-en-Provence, he noted that declining oil price levels should contribute to moderating price pressures within the services sector. He emphasized the absence of secondary inflationary effects currently.

Moulin made it explicit that the ECB has not embarked on a prolonged tightening campaign. He stated that determinations regarding the July and September policy meetings would be addressed as those dates approach.

ECB President Christine Lagarde, addressing attendees at a central banking conference in Portugal, rejected suggestions that June’s rate adjustment was merely precautionary against price escalation. She maintained it represented the appropriate action across various inflation projections.

Lagarde refrained from providing explicit guidance on future policy direction, noting only that threats to both inflation and economic expansion have achieved greater equilibrium.

Price Growth Moderates Despite Lingering Concerns

Consumer price levels across the Eurozone increased 2.8% over the twelve-month period ending in June, declining from May’s 3.2% reading and falling short of the 3.0% consensus forecast among economists.

Energy expenses climbed 8.7% on an annual basis in June, moderating from the 10.8% pace recorded in May. Core inflation, excluding volatile food and energy components, registered 2.4%, down from 2.6%.

Brent crude prices have now retreated to approximately pre-conflict levels after the diplomatic framework agreement between the United States and Iran concluded last month.

Despite these positive developments, Barclays analysts Silvia Ardagna and Mariano Cena highlighted that selling price expectation metrics from the European Commission continue to show elevated readings, particularly within manufacturing and retail industries.

They cautioned that four straight months of heightened energy expenses may continue to exert upward cost pressure across non-energy sectors in coming weeks.

Barclays Maintains September Rate Hike Forecast

Barclays maintains its projection for an additional ECB rate increase at the September policy meeting. Nevertheless, the analysts observed that retreating oil markets and indications that inflation may have crested could justify a more measured stance.

Additional ECB Governing Council members have indicated that all policy options remain under consideration for forthcoming meetings. Market participants have already reduced expectations for additional rate increases during the current year.

Bloomberg Economics now assesses that Eurozone inflation has probably reached its maximum level.

The ECB’s upcoming scheduled policy meeting occurs in July, followed by another session in September.

Ethereum has staged a notable rebound after once again testing the heavily watched psychological zone around 1500$. Since bouncing off this support, ETH/USD has climbed roughly 13%, now trading around the $1,700 mark.

This recovery is being driven by a combination of technical and fundamental factors. On the technical side, the aforementioned support zone has once again proven its relevance, attracting buyers at a historically significant level. On the fundamental side, the latest US Non-Farm Payrolls report added just 57,000 jobs in June, well below the 110K-115K consensus and a sharp slowdown from May’s downwardly revised 129,000. Combined with a 74,000-job downward revision to the prior two months, the weaker print has weighed on the US Dollar, reducing the likelihood of near-term Fed rate hikes and boosting risk assets positioned as an alternative to the greenback — including cryptocurrencies.

Technical analysis of ETH/USD

After bouncing off the $1,500 support zone, Ethereum seems to be directed to a key test at the former support, turned resistance, around $1,800.

Bullish scenario
A confirmed break and hold above the $1,800 level would allow ETH to sustain bullish momentum and begin forming a structure of higher highs and higher lows after months of bearish price action. This potential recovery also finds support from a notable bullish divergence on the 4-hour RSI, where a sequence of rising lows on the indicator contrasts with the sequence of falling lows on price, a signal that downward momentum may be fading.

Bearish scenario
Alternatively, as price approaches the $1,800 resistance, ETH could reject the level and resume its broader downtrend, slipping back below the intermediate $1,680–$1,700 zone. Such a move would suggest the asset still lacks the strength needed to break through this crucial threshold.

Investors and traders remain focused on new Fed Chair Warsh’s statements and their impact on the DXY. Will a weaker Dollar Index prove to be the real catalyst for a bullish return across the crypto market?

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