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- Bitcoin traded between $102K and $111K last week, holding its range as institutional flows remained elevated. Global crypto ETPs recorded $3.35bn in net inflows, with 91% allocated to Bitcoin. Despite muted price action, structural adoption remained the focus, supported by progress on the GENIUS stablecoin bill and Solana infrastructure upgrades. Macro conditions turned volatile following Trump’s EU tariff announcement, with the 10-year Treasury yield retracing sharply and Bitcoin declining alongside equities.
- Our Cryptoasset Sentiment Index remained constructive, with altcoin breadth improving and funding conditions stabilizing. 20% of tracked altcoins outperformed BTC on the week, up from the prior period, while Ethereum underperformed. BTC funding rates and hedge fund beta rose, though overall dispersion remained limited, suggesting a selective increase in risk appetite.
- Chart of the Week: Accumulation remains concentrated in the top half of Bitcoin wallets. The average Accumulation Trend Score reached 0.93 last week, with entities holding 100–1,000 BTC leading net additions. Whales withdrew over 124,000 BTC from exchanges, and total reserves declined to 14.9% of supply—levels last seen in December 2022—indicating continued structural demand.
Chart of the Week
Performance
Bitcoin traded between $102K and $111K this week, maintaining its broader consolidation range while institutional flows continued to dominate the narrative. Global crypto ETP inflows reached $3.35 bn, matching the peak we saw in April, with 91% of that capital directed toward Bitcoin-specific funds. This concentration reinforces Bitcoin's position as the primary institutional crypto allocation, though the price action itself remained relatively muted.
What's particularly noteworthy is the composition of this demand. Our on-chain analysis shows that larger wallets, particularly those holding 100-1000 BTC, are driving accumulation, while smaller retail wallets remain largely sidelined. This suggests the current leg of adoption is being driven by balance sheet reallocation among institutional players rather than speculative retail activity. It's a different dynamic than previous cycles, and arguably a more sustainable one.
The regulatory front saw significant movement with the Senate advancing the GENIUS Act, though not without controversy. While the comprehensive stablecoin framework provides much-needed clarity, the bill includes a provision banning yield-bearing stablecoins that appears to reflect traditional banking lobby interests more than genuine consumer protection concerns.
The clause would particularly impact protocols like Ethena, whose synthetic dollar product uses basis trading strategies that are commonplace on institutional desks. Though Ethena already restricts U.S. access and doesn't market itself as a stablecoin, the bill's language signals where domestic policy may be headed, favouring incumbent financial institutions over crypto-native innovation.
Coinbase dominated corporate headlines, confirming that over 69,000 user accounts were compromised in an extended data breach. The company rejected a $20 mn ransom demand and has offered a matching reward for information leading to arrests, while the DOJ pursues criminal charges against the alleged perpetrators. Internal remediation costs are estimated between $100-400 mn. Despite this setback, Coinbase appears on track to join the S&P 500, which would mark the first inclusion of a crypto-native company, and remains the frontrunner in acquisition talks with Circle, whose $ 5bn valuation has attracted interest from both Coinbase and Ripple.
On the infrastructure side, Solana announced several key developments. Solana Mobile will launch its second device, the "Seeker," on August 4th, introducing a native token for application incentives and governance.
More significantly, infrastructure firm Anza proposed "Alpenlow," a comprehensive overhaul of Solana's consensus mechanism that would replace Tower BFT and Proof of History with a dual-layer system targeting transaction finality times as low as 150 milliseconds. These upgrades reinforce Solana's positioning as one of the fastest blockchain networks.
Trade tensions affected the markets on Friday when Trump announced a 50% tariff on EU imports effective June 1st, though he has since delayed implementation to July 9th. Markets reacted swiftly. The 10-year Treasury yield, which had briefly touched 4.62%, retraced sharply as investors priced in renewed growth concerns. Bitcoin declined alongside equities following the tariff announcement. While Bitcoin has shown periods of decoupling to equities, this episode reinforced that it's not yet insulated from broader sentiment shifts.
Economic data presented a mixed picture. Jobless claims for the week ending May 17 came in better than expected, but continuing claims ticked higher, suggesting muted rehiring activity. Flash PMI readings surprised to the upside, though the inflation implications of new tariffs remain a concern. The CME FedWatch Tool now shows a 60.7% chance of at least one rate cut by September and 93.5% by year-end, though conviction remains fragile
While Bitcoin retraced alongside equities after the recent tariff news, this doesn't capture its broader trajectory: it outperformed both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq in arguably a more intense macro context last month, as noted in our report. That said, the sustained institutional demand we're seeing provides a different kind of support than we've had in previous cycles, even if it lacks the explosive upside of retail-driven rallies.
Adding to the near-term outlook, the Bitcoin Conference Las Vegas 2025 runs from May 27 to May 29. While expectations are measured, the event may serve as a potential catalyst for further institutional interest, with the possibility of positive announcements.
In general, among the top 10 crypto assets Hyperliquid, BNB and Bitcoin were the relative outperformers.
Overall, altcoin outperformance vis-à-vis Bitcoin increased from last week, with 20% of our tracked altcoins managing to outperform Bitcoin on a weekly basis. Furthermore, Ethereum underperformed Bitcoin last week.
Sentiment
Our in-house “Cryptoasset Sentiment Index” has continued to signal slightly bullish sentiment although it has come off its recent highs.
At the moment, 10 out of 15 indicators are above their short-term trend.
The BTC funding rate and Crypto ETP Fund Flows metrics had improved last week, while the Altseason index had a slight pull back, and the Crypto Hedge Fund Beta Index had reverted.
The Crypto Fear & Greed Index currently signals a “Greed” level of sentiment as of this morning, improving from last week.
Performance dispersion among cryptoassets remained stagnant last week, signalling that altcoins have kept their correlation with the performance of Bitcoin.
Altcoin outperformance vis-à-vis Bitcoin has increased from last week, with around 20% of our tracked altcoins managing to outperform Bitcoin on a weekly basis. Furthermore, Ethereum managed to underperform Bitcoin last week.
In general, increasing (decreasing) altcoin outperformance tends to be a sign of increasing (decreasing) risk appetite within cryptoasset markets and the latest altcoin outperformance signals a bullish risk appetite at the moment.
Sentiment in traditional financial markets as measured by our in-house measure of Cross Asset Risk Appetite (CARA) has decreased slightly, moving from 0.37 to 0.32.
Fund Flows
Weekly fund flows into global crypto ETPs have accelerated to post large net inflows last week.
Global crypto ETPs saw around +3350.0 mn USD in weekly net inflows across all types of cryptoassets, after +777.3 mn USD in net inflows the previous week.
Global Bitcoin ETPs have experienced net inflows totalling +3074.7 mn USD last week, of which +2751.9 mn USD in net inflows were related to US spot Bitcoin ETFs.
The Bitwise Bitcoin ETF (BITB) in the US experienced net inflows, totalling +42.3 mn USD last week.
In Europe, the Bitwise Physical Bitcoin ETP (BTCE) experienced net outflows equivalent to -9.4 mn USD, while the Bitwise Core Bitcoin ETP (BTC1) experienced minor net inflows of +0.4 mn USD.
The Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) has posted net outflows of -89.2 mn USD. The iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), however, experienced net inflows of around +2431.9 mn USD last week.
Meanwhile, flows into global Ethereum ETPs continued its positive trend last week, with around +311.0 mn USD in net inflows last week
US Ethereum spot ETFs, also recorded net inflows of around +248.3 mn USD on aggregate. The Grayscale Ethereum Trust (ETHE), also experienced minor net inflows of around +43.7 mn USD last week.
The Bitwise Ethereum ETF (ETHW) in the US had had inflows of around +5.7 mn USD last week.
In Europe, the Bitwise Physical Ethereum ETP (ZETH) saw minor net inflows of +0.1 mn USD while the Bitwise Ethereum Staking ETP (ET32) saw net inflows of around +22.8 mn USD on aggregate.
Altcoin ETPs ex Ethereum had experienced a reversal of flows last week, with around -25.4 mn USD in global net outflows.
Furthermore, thematic & basket crypto ETPs followed suit and experienced net outflows of around -10.3 mn USD on aggregate last week. The Bitwise MSCI Digital Assets Select 20 ETP (DA20) had experienced minor net inflows of around +0.3 mn USD on aggregate last week.
Global crypto hedge funds have increased their market exposure to Bitcoin. The 20-days rolling beta of global crypto hedge funds' performance to Bitcoin consolidated to around 0.61 per yesterday's close, down from 0.55 from the week before.
On-Chain Data
Broadly speaking, Bitcoin's on-chain activity has remained slightly bullish last week.
Bitcoin spot exchanges saw selling pressure increase, with net selling volumes increasing to approximately -$0.52 bn compared to -$0.29 bn two weeks ago.
The Spot Cumulative Volume Delta (CVD), which tracks the difference between buying and selling volumes, while increasing on Wednesday and Thursday, remained mostly negative throughout last week.
In terms of supply dynamics, we are observing a different pattern. Whales have continued to removed bitcoins from exchanges on a net basis, indicating a decrease in whale selling pressure. More specifically, BTC whales removed -124,868 BTC on exchanges last week. Network entities that possess at least 1,000 Bitcoin are referred to as whales.
Last week, the average Accumulation Trend Score was 0.93. With a score closer to 1, we can infer that on aggregate, larger entities (or a big part of the network) are accumulating. Our (Chart-of-the-Week) further breaks down this observation by cohorts and shows a confluence of whale behaviour in regard to the supply dynamics of Bitcoin.
Based on recent data from Glassnode, the overall downward trend in exchange-held Bitcoin reserves remains intact. The current level stands at 2.98 mn BTC, representing approximately 14.9% of the total circulating supply. This figure continues to reflect the broader trend of Bitcoin moving off exchanges, with current levels last observed in December 2022.
Furthermore, a measure of “apparent demand” for Bitcoin over the past 30 days has continued its positive trend, reaching levels of demand seen last in January earlier this year.
Futures, Options & Perpetuals
Last week, BTC futures open interest increased last week by +22.0K BTC across all exchanges, and by +10.0K BTC on CME Exchange. Perpetual open interest increased by around 22.9k BTC.
BTC perpetual funding rates remained positive last week, spiking to 0.009% last Wednesday, indicating a bullish sentiment among traders in the perpetual futures market.
In general, when the funding rate is positive (negative), long (short) positions periodically pay short (long) positions, which is indicative of bullish (bearish) sentiment.
The BTC 3-months annualised basis increased from around 6.2% p.a to around 7.9% p.a. averaged across various futures exchanges last week. BTC option open interest increased by around +35.7k BTC. The put-call open interest ratio had spiked to 0.6 before ending the week at 0.58.
The 1-month 25-delta skew for BTC improved significantly last week, moving from -7.61% to a peak of -2.67% before settling at -5.06%, indicating strengthening risk-on sentiment as demand for downside protection declined throughout the week.
BTC option implied volatilities remained muted last week, with 1-month realized volatility ending the week by decreasing to 29.86%.
At the time of writing, implied volatilities of 1-month ATM Bitcoin options are currently at around 48.66% p.a.
Bottom Line
- Bitcoin traded between $102K and $111K last week, holding its range as institutional flows remained elevated. Global crypto ETPs recorded $3.35bn in net inflows, with 91% allocated to Bitcoin. Despite muted price action, structural adoption remained the focus, supported by progress on the GENIUS stablecoin bill and Solana infrastructure upgrades. Macro conditions turned volatile following Trump’s EU tariff announcement, with the 10-year Treasury yield retracing sharply and Bitcoin declining alongside equities.
- Our Cryptoasset Sentiment Index remained constructive, with altcoin breadth improving and funding conditions stabilizing. 20% of tracked altcoins outperformed BTC on the week, up from the prior period, while Ethereum underperformed. BTC funding rates and hedge fund beta rose, though overall dispersion remained limited, suggesting a selective increase in risk appetite.
- Chart of the Week: Accumulation remains concentrated in the top half of Bitcoin wallets. The average Accumulation Trend Score reached 0.93 last week, with entities holding 100–1,000 BTC leading net additions. Whales withdrew over 124,000 BTC from exchanges, and total reserves declined to 14.9% of supply—levels last seen in December 2022—indicating
Appendix
Important Information
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