Bitcoin BTC$62,752.71 is trading at $62,800 on Monday, a notable turnaround from July 1 when it dipped below $58,000 to its lowest level since September 2024 and raised concerns of a slide toward $50,000.
Ether (ETH) staged a similar recovery, trading at $1,760 after bottoming out around $1,550 last week. The two largest cryptocurrencies spiked higher at Sunday’s futures open, but have given back around 1% of those gains since midnight UTC.
The pullback represents a divergence from traditional markets, where Nasdaq 100 and S&P 500 index futures are trading up 1% and 0.5%, respectively, following the long weekend.
The altcoin market is split. Lighter (LIT) continues to impress, now up more than 50% over the past week, while MORPHO$1.9040 and ADA$0.1823 are both nursing losses of around 4% in the past 24 hours.
Derivatives positioning
The futures market is steady, with open interest in bitcoin BTC$62,752.71, ether (ETH), solana (SOL) and XRP (XRP) largely unchanged over the past 24 hours, likely due to the extended U.S. weekend.
Open interest in LTC$44.60 has jumped to 7.14 million tokens, the most since May 12. It is unclear whether the capital inflow is bullish or bearish. Key indicators are sending mixed signals: Positive funding rates point to bullish sentiment, yet the 24-hour cumulative volume delta (CVD) has turned negative, indicating sellers have been more aggressive by hitting market orders rather than posting passive limit orders.
Open interest in Lighter DEX’s LIT token is also rising, reaching one-month highs as the bullish tokenomics overhaul supports its price.
Bitcoin’s and ether’s 30-day implied volatility indices, BVIV and EVIV, remain under pressure after double-digit weekly declines, reflecting continued supply of options. This points to expectations of calmer market conditions, which often accompany price upswings.
Still, on Deribit, BTC and ETH puts continue to trade at a premium to calls, signaling persistent downside concerns — although the gap has narrowed since early last month.
Volumes show no clear bias, as BTC’s $60K put and $70K call rank among the most traded strikes over the past 24 hours.
Token talk
Lighter’s (LIT) barnstorming rally of late continued on Monday, adding 5% since midnight UTC and taking its 24-hour gain to 13.5%, building on momentum as traders look for the next hyperliquid (HYPE).
LIT is the native token of its namesake decentralized derivatives exchange, which has racked up $40 billion in trading volume over the past 30 days, according to DefiLlama.
It was also a strong start to the week for PYTH, up by 6% since midnight UTC as traders rotate bitcoin gains into more speculative altcoin bets.
CoinMarketCap’s Altcoin Season indicator ticked up to 52/100 on Monday, the highest level in the past three months, suggesting optimism is returning to the altcoin sector.
However, that indicator is lagging as a result of poor performance from a portion of the market including JITO, BEAT and STABLE, each having lost between 5% and 13% over the past week with further losses on Monday.
European regulators and central bankers have warned that rulemaking cannot keep pace with rapid advances in agentic artificial intelligence and have called for guardrails to protect the financial system.
Bank of England deputy governor Sarah Breeden is one of several central bankers who have said that agentic AI could amplify volatility during bouts of market stress.
Breeden questioned if guardrails are needed, “analogous to circuit breakers or kill switches that would limit or stop trading market-wide if faulty AI models cause market meltdown,” she said at the European Central Bank’s annual meeting in Sintra, Portugal, on Tuesday.
US companies are leading in AI investment and frontier model development, and Europe’s financial system gives it fewer capital channels into AI compared to the US equity markets. Regulating too cautiously could widen that gap further, as AI companies may seek out jurisdictions with lower compliance requirements.
Cybersecurity and financial risk warnings
European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde, in an interview with French outlet Les Echos on Thursday, warned that AI technology poses a “major risk.”
“For about a decade now, we have been talking about cybersecurity risks, hacking, data theft, and so on,” Lagarde said. “But with the acceleration and deepening of AI models, we are confronted with a much more serious risk, because it is happening very, very quickly, and because the means of defense — and the funding required for them — have yet to be found.”
Related: Anthropic to bring back Fable 5 as US lifts export controls
Meanwhile, Nikhil Rathi, CEO of the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority, told CNBC’s Squawk Box on Thursday that traditional regulation cycles don’t work in an era of fast-moving AI development.
“Technology moves incredibly fast, and we need to think differently about some of the innovations that we are seeing on AI,” Rathi said.
“The reality is some of these technologies now move in weeks or months, and the traditional cycle of rulemaking simply doesn’t work in that way, so we need to think about new tools and a different way of working with the market in a more collaborative way.”
Central bankers, especially in Europe, have raised the same red flags about crypto, claiming that it could disrupt the traditional financial system.
Bankers warn of AI boom-bust risk
The Bank for International Settlements warned on June 28 that AI “exuberance” could have major financial consequences.
If central banks tighten policy to contain inflation, this could precipitate a “sharp pullback in [AI] asset prices after a prolonged period of exuberant risk-taking,” which could trigger “disruptive macro-financial feedback loops,” the BIS said.
Breeden said that debt financing was rising rapidly. “We therefore judged that the financial stability consequences of any fall in AI-related asset prices could well increase,” she said.
Meanwhile, Tobias Adrian, Director of the IMF’s Monetary and Capital Markets Department, said in an interview with Bloomberg on June 30 that there is a “potential maturity mismatch in between the duration of the physical assets and the duration of the debt.”
Magazine: AI is banking the unbanked in Africa… faster than crypto
But Ethereum now treats replacing every quantum-vulnerable part with a quantum-safe alternative as urgent, Buterin said, including a redesign of the cheap data storage that rollups, the layer-2 networks built on top of Ethereum, depend on.
Privacy has been raised to what Buterin called a ‘first-class goal’ rather than an afterthought. The plan calls for designing core network components so that private, intermediary-free transactions can pass through them by default.
The way the network checks itself is also changing. Instead of every node re-running every transaction, Ethereum plans to rely on recursive STARKs. This cryptographic proof method allows a node to verify a compact proof that the work was done correctly, rather than repeating it. That shift is meant to make the network faster and lighter to run.
As such, the change Buterin flagged as most disruptive is to what Ethereum calls state. State is a blockchain’s current memory, the complete snapshot of everything that exists on a network at a specific point in time.
Think of it as the running record of every account balance and all the data those contracts hold (such as who owns which NFT, how much is in a lending pool, every token ledger), as of the latest block.
Ether (ETH) led crypto majors into Monday as bitcoin held above $63,000, steadying after a week that pulled it off its lows and back to its highest in more than a month.
Bitcoin traded around $63,207, little changed on the day but up 5.5% over seven days, per CoinDesk data. Ether was the stronger performer over the week, up 12.4% to about $1,777, while BNB and dogecoin each gained around 5.5%. Solana held near $80.77 with an 11.2% weekly rise and Hyperliquid’s HYPE led the majors, up 14.6% on the week. XRP traded at $1.14, up 9.4% over seven days.
The gains held even as the backdrop turned cautious. A rebound in semiconductor and technology shares lost steam, reviving doubts about how durable this year’s AI-driven rally is. South Korea’s Kospi fell 1.4% as Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix declined, and an MSCI gauge of Asian chipmakers slipped.
Brent crude fell 0.6% to about $71.70 a barrel, easing some inflation pressure ahead of the U.S. price data due later this month.
The dollar strengthened against all its major peers, a headwind for crypto that has tracked the currency’s moves through the past quarter.
XRP finally pushed through the $1.14 level that had capped recent attempts higher, but the move did not run cleanly into the next resistance band. Buyers drove the token as high as $1.158 on heavy volume before sellers forced a pullback toward $1.146, turning the session into a test of whether former resistance can now act as support.
News Background
• XRP spot ETFs recorded a ninth consecutive week of net inflows, adding $17.19 million despite broader market uncertainty.
• The CLARITY Act missed its expected timeline after the Senate adjourned for recess without a floor vote, leaving regulatory catalysts delayed.
• Santiment data showed XRP’s 30-day MVRV near -45% and 365-day MVRV near -47%, meaning most holders remained underwater across both shorter and longer timeframes.
• Several analysts pointed to improving technical structures, including a 4-hour downtrend break, bullish divergence and a possible Elliott Wave advance.
Price Action Summary
• XRP rose from $1.1344 to $1.1454 during the 24-hour session, gaining 2.87%.
• The breakout came at 22:00 UTC on July 5, when volume reached 81.89 million XRP, about 207% above the 24-hour average.
• The move carried XRP from $1.1356 to $1.1594 in two hours, clearing resistance near $1.1400.
In the never-ending battle between bitcoin BTC$63,022.30, the digital gold, and the traditional yellow metal, veteran trader Peter Brandt has picked a side, and it’s not the one bitcoin bulls would have hoped for.
Brandt, CEO of Factor LLC and widely followed chart analyst, said on X that he is mulling liquidating some of his BTC and using the proceeds to buy gold, as he sees the yellow metal outperforming BTC.
“I am contemplating selling some of my Bitcoin and going to Gold with the money. Looks to me that Gold is going to gain substantially on Bitcoin,” Brandt told his followers on X.
Both BTC and gold have recently taken a beating, though bitcoin has fared noticeably worse than the traditional safe haven metal. The leading cryptocurrency by market value slid 20% in June to below $60,000, marking its worst monthly performance in four years. Gold, by comparison, dropped 11.7% to nearly $4,000 per ounce.
The divergence looks even starker on a year-to-date basis, with BTC down 28% in 2026 versus a 3.9% decline for gold.
Bucking the trend
Brandt’s view flies directly in the face of the popular market narrative among crypto bulls’ that anticipates a massive rotation of money back into BTC and digital assets.
India’s central bank revives push to isolate banks from crypto: Report
The Indian central bank reportedly urged lawmakers to keep banks insulated from crypto and private stablecoins while preserving room for regulated tokenization.
According to a report by The Economic Times, RBI Deputy Governor Rohit Jain and Executive Director P. Vasudevan presented the central bank’s position to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance on Thursday.
In a background note submitted to the panel, the RBI reportedly said prohibition remained a recognized policy option and recommended preventing the use of crypto in payments and settlements while restricting banking-sector exposure.
The central bank reportedly warned that applying traditional regulation to crypto could legitimize speculative assets and create a false perception of safety among users. However, it urged policymakers to distinguish crypto from tokenized government securities, corporate bonds and other regulated financial instruments so that restrictions would not hinder tokenization.
Chainalysis
Source: Chainalysis
Russia on track for digital ruble rollout on Sept. 1: Central bank governor
Russia’s central bank governor, Elvira Nabiullina, confirmed that the country was prepared to roll out its central bank digital currency (CBDC) in two months, following the timeline it laid out last year.
According to a Thursday report from Russian state media outlet RIA Novosti, Nabiullina said that “everyone is ready” for a Sept. 1 digital ruble launch. The CBDC will launch as a complement to Russia’s fiat currency, the ruble, and will initially be accepted by financial and credit institutions.
The digital ruble has already been targeted by preemptive sanctions from European Union authorities, which announced restrictions on the CBDC in April in response to Russia’s “war of aggression against Ukraine.”
SBI Crypto shuts Bitcoin mining pool after 5-year run
SBI Crypto, a cryptocurrency-focused division of Japanese financial conglomerate SBI, is shutting down its Bitcoin mining pool after a five-year run.
Data from SimpleMining shows SBI Crypto currently ranks as the 12th largest Bitcoin mining pool globally, with about 21.46 exahashes per second (EH/s) of hashrate and roughly 2.24% of total Bitcoin network share.
The company announced Wednesday that it will end mining pool operations on July 31 and will stop accepting mining shares at the same time. It did not provide its rationale for closing the pool.
SBI Crypto said miners should keep directing hashrate to the pool until the cutoff so final payouts can be calculated correctly before operations end. “We would sincerely appreciate your continued support by mining with us until the final day of operation,” it said.
The US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned 134 cryptocurrency wallet addresses identified as belonging to terrorist group ISIS-Khorasan (ISIS-K).
ISIS-K has historically solicited crypto through donation campaigns on various websites and messaging platforms. The wallet addresses were added to the OFAC’s Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list on Wednesday.
Stablecoin issuer Tether has frozen the balances associated with 131 Tron addresses, while the remaining three sanctioned addresses were on the Monero network, blockchain forensics company Chainalysis said in a Wednesday report.
The development comes over a week after the OFAC’s previous round of sanctions against ISIS-supporting financiers using cryptocurrency. On June 22, the OFAC sanctioned three individuals and six entities across Europe, the Middle East and West Africa, including Syria-based MSB Bitcoin Xchange and Turkish MSB Spider.
OFAC said the previous round of sanctions targeted “key facilitators who enable ISIS to move funds among its regional affiliates.”
Metaplanet buys 2,823 BTC, surpasses 43,000 in Bitcoin holdings
Japanese investment company Metaplanet acquired 2,823 Bitcoin during the second quarter at a price below its average purchase price, as its holdings surpassed 43,000 BTC.
The company acquired its latest trove at an average price of about 12.71 million yen ($78,850 at current exchange rates), reducing its average acquisition cost to about $95,117 per BTC from $96,258, according to a Thursday announcement.
Metaplanet now holds 43,000 Bitcoin acquired for about $4.1 billion. It also reported about $10.95 million in revenue from its Bitcoin income generation strategy in the quarter, which earns premiums by selling cash-secured options and employing other Bitcoin-related yield strategies.
Meanwhile Nasdaq-listed South Korean company K Wave Media sold its remaining 88 BTC to repay $6 million in debt, exiting the Bitcoin treasury strategy, according to a Tuesday filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
Dubai crypto market hits 50 licensed firms after new VARA approval
The Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA), Dubai’s crypto regulator, has granted its 50th virtual asset service provider (VASP) license.
On Thursday, VARA said its latest approval went to tokenized assets platform Tribe Tokenisation FZE.
The milestone provides one measure of the growth of Dubai’s crypto licensing regime, though license totals alone do not show how many firms are operational or the level of business they generate.
Against that backdrop, Dubai’s 50 licensed VASPs exceed the totals reported in Hong Kong (13) and Singapore (37).
Bank of Korea governor outlines tokenized bond vision, unified ledger plan
Hyun Song Shin, the governor of the Bank of Korea, praised tokenization for its ability to simplify the issuance and management of government bonds.
Shin said during a Wednesday panel discussion at the European Central Bank (ECB) Forum on Central Banking in Sintra, Portugal, that tokenized bonds would make it easier to verify collateral, credit the asset provider’s account and reverse transactions at the appropriate time.
“The big prize is tokenizing government bonds,” Shin said, adding that it is “much easier, much less prone to mistakes if you have everything tokenized.”
US Treasury debt is the largest tokenized real-world asset category, representing $14.6 billion, or about 46% of the $31.7 billion RWA market, according to data provider RWA.xyz.
Shin also outlined plans to bring tokenized government bonds, wholesale central bank digital currencies and tokenized commercial bank deposits on a unified ledger, as part of an extension to “Project Hangang,” a Bank of Korea-led pilot project testing a blockchain-based wholesale CBDC system.
Related: South Korea adds token securities to capital market overhaul
Taiwanese lawmakers have passed a law to establish a regulatory framework for crypto, which includes licensing and rules for stablecoins.
Taiwan’s financial watchdog, the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC), said that the Legislative Yuan passed the law requiring all virtual asset service providers, or VASPs, to get approval from the regulator to operate.
The law also says stablecoins issued in Taiwan must get approval from the central bank and the FSC, and issuers must maintain sufficient reserves with a trustee and undergo regular audits.
The law is the first to regulate crypto and stablecoins in Taiwan, bringing it in line with other governments in the region, such as Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong, that have long passed laws to regulate the sector in a bid to attract the industry.
Solana Company to back Kazakhstan’s $6B crypto megacity ambition
Nasdaq-listed crypto treasury firm Solana Company signed an agreement to support the development of Alatau City, Kazakhstan’s planned digital-first megacity.
The company signed an MOU to help build Alatau City’s blockchain and crypto infrastructure during the Alatau City Roadshow in Shenzhen and Hong Kong in June, which reportedly secured 30 cooperation agreements with a combined investment potential of over $6 billion.
“We look forward to deepening this partnership and expanding the Solana ecosystem’s footprint across the region,” said Solana Company chair and CEO Joseph Chee.
The deal further pushes Kazakhstan into Solana’s corner. Last year, Kazakhstan launched Central Asia’s first Solana Economic Zone in the country’s capital of Astana with the Solana Foundation.
The Kazakhstan Stock Exchange (KASE) launched its first Solana ETF last week, giving investors regulated exposure to Solana (SOL) through one of the biggest stock exchanges in Central Asia.
Alatau
The village of Zhetygen will become Alatau. Source: Wikimedia Commons
Features: Has Strategy’s capital overhaul put an end to ‘death spiral’ fears?
Artem Tolkachev is Chief RWA Officer at Falcon Finance, which builds collateral-first dollar infrastructure.
What actually determines whether a stablecoin gets used, not just parked, is whether the venues where people trade, borrow and hedge will accept it as collateral. Can you post it as margin on an exchange? Does it get a sensible loan-to-value in a lending market? Can it move across venues without losing so much to haircuts that it becomes irrelevant? Collateral acceptance is the line between a dollar token that sits in a wallet earning a coupon and one that does real work in the financial system.That difference, parked versus used, isn’t academic. A parked token is inert capital; a token the market accepts as collateral lets its holder trade, borrow and hedge without selling it, which is the whole reason to hold a dollar on-chain rather than dollars in a bank.
This is the variable almost no one is pricing in. We are about to add tens of billions of dollars in new stablecoin supply on the assumption that supply equals genuine adoption. It doesn’t. If that supply arrives while exchange and venue risk teams leave their collateral frameworks exactly where they are, the result won’t be adoption, it will be stranded collateral: tens of billions of dollars that are technically live, dutifully earning their 3%, and going precisely nowhere.
The president also disclosed holding north of $100 million in various cryptos, and a few smaller stakes in firms like Corewave.
Senator Elizabeth Warren, the senior-most Democrat on the Banking Committee, called for an ethics provision in the Clarity Act in a statement after the disclosure, saying, “The crypto legislation heading to the Senate floor must prevent the president, vice president, senior administration officials, members of Congress and their families from profiting off the crypto industry. If it does not, it will only turbocharge Donald Trump’s brazen crypto corruption.”
Similarly, Senator Ruben Gallego said in a post on X after the disclosure that he would do “everything I can to crack down on [Trump’s] corrupt crypto dealings.”
While Gallego was one of two Democrats to vote the bill out of committee, he said during the markup hearing in May that the bill needed “real, enforceable standards” on ethics and that he was not guaranteeing a vote on the Senate floor for the bill.
And while Trump’s disclosure gives Democrats a firm number they can point to when calling for an ethics agreement, it does not fundamentally change the argument over an that provision. Democrats — including Gallego and Senator Angela Alsobrooks, the only other Democrat to vote for the bill in committee — had already made it clear that they wanted a deal that restricts senior government officials like the President from profiting off of crypto before they agree to vote for the bill’s overall passage. Negotiators still have to come to an agreement and Trump will still need to sign off on it, regardless of the disclosure.
Bitcoin (BTC) consolidated near two-week highs into Sunday’s weekly close as traders geared up for fresh market turbulence.
Key points:
Bitcoin approaches its highest levels in two weeks, but Mondays have been “terrible” for BTC price action, a trader warns.
BTC/USD is in the process of deciding the fate of its 200-week moving average.
Crypto market analysis sees “greener shoots” on the back of the latest US macro data.
Trader: Past seven Mondays “absolutely terrible” for BTC price
Data from TradingView showed BTC/USD focusing on $62,700, the site of a key long-term trend line, the 200-week simple moving average (SMA).
BTC/USD four-hour chart with 200-week SMA. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
Bulls managed a trip to $63,450 on Saturday amid thinner exchange order books and a three-day US holiday weekend.
“Seeing stronger passive supply here pressing price from above,” commentator Exitpump wrote in their latest analysis on X.
BTC order-book data. Source: Exitpump/X
Trader Daan Crypto Trades flagged short position liquidations as the price gained, with data from CoinGlass putting the 24-hour crypto total at $167 million.
“Classic short squeeze, price grinds higher into a level everyone’s shorting until forced covering does the rest,” he commented on X.
“Now the question is whether $62.6K (Weekly 200MA) holds as support or if this was just liquidity getting cleared before rolling over again.”
BTC/USD vs. crypto liquidation history (screenshot). Source: CoinGlass
Fellow trader Killa had a word of warning, reiterating that the past seven Mondays had seen major price weakness.
“7/7 Mondays have been absolutely terrible for $BTC,” they told X followers.
“Will we repeat the exact same pattern next week?”
Bitcoin ETFs contribute to crypto’s “greener shoots”
In a new analysis published on Friday, trading company QCP Capital eyed potential tailwinds forming for crypto and risk assets.
These included renewed net inflows to the US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs).
As Cointelegraph reported, last week’s US nonfarm payrolls report came in below anticipated levels, sparking a softening in hawkish expectations of interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve.
“The clearest dovish tell was a 2% pop in gold, though that reads more as a real-rate and safe-haven hedge than growth conviction,” it acknowledged.
“Crypto, though, is showing greener shoots: BTC spot ETFs snapped a six-session outflow streak to pull in $224mn on Thursday, their first positive print in over a week and an early sign that dip buyers are stepping back in after roughly $2.4bn of redemptions.”
Fed target rate probabilities for July 29 FOMC meeting (screenshot). Source: CME Group
The latest data from CME Group’s FedWatch Tool saw a near-80% chance of the Fed holding rates at current levels at its July 29 meeting.
QCP added that before then, conducive Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation data would be needed for “broader confirmation of a front-end dovish repricing.”
