CMC Market Pulse delivers actionable market insights, giving you all the key narratives and developments you need in under 5 minutes.
Market Overview 📉
Bitcoin (BTC) continues to weaken this week, falling 0.15%, despite a strong start to the week. Ethereum (ETH) interestingly climbed higher, rising 2.73% in the same period. Total crypto market cap, however, stayed flat for the week, stalling at 2.16T.
Weekly liquidations cooled down from the week prior, resetting to usual levels of $3-400M in position liquidated daily. While short liquidations jumped at the start of the week, long liquidations caught up leading into the end of the week. Funding rates show no clear signal, as the market remains divided, with several rising over the week, and others falling instead.
📌 Michael Saylor’s Strategy announces the purchase of 1,587 BTC for $100M, bringing their total holdings to 846,842. - Link
📌 Binance is set to lose permission to operate in the EU under the new MiCA laws, after its application is set to be rejected by the Greek market regulator. - Link
📌 Blackrock launches their Bitcoin Premium Income ETF (BITA), which generates yield on Bitcoin holdings via options premium. - Link
Why does it matter?
An incredible week for traditional equities this week as markets ride the positive sentiment from the U.S.-Iran peace deal, sending oil and gold prices plummeting. Despite a strong traditional market, crypto largely failed to follow through, dragged down by the overhand created by Strategy. The S&P 500 is up 1.21% over the week, while the Nasdaq is up a whopping 3.48%.
Notable altcoin outperformers this week included Jito (JTO), Worldcoin (WLD), Aerodrome Finance (AERO), EigenCloud (EIGEN), and Akash Network (AKT).
Narrative of the Week 📰
Strategy’s Stretch preferred shares “depeg” significantly, falling under $90 to a low of $82 over this week over fears of the unsustainability of its dividends.
📌 STRC depegs to $82, with traders and analysts drawing parallels to Terra-Luna’s marketing of safe yields and its subsequent death spiral in 2022. - Link
📌 Strategy could continue to sell MSTR shares to bring STRC back to par, as MSTR is still trading above mNAV. Its other option would be to sell more BTC, which currently seems unlikely. - Link
📌 Alternatively, buying back preferred shares and conceding the unsustainability of the dividends could help to protect MSTR in the long run as well. - Link
Why does it matter?
As one of the primary drivers for Bitcoin in the market, the questionable sustainability of Strategy and yield products hangs over the market, keeping pessimism high as investors and traders wait for the other shoe to drop.
Major Project Updates 🗓️
📌 Coinbase introduces tokenized stocks to their platform, which are 1:1 backed, dividend receiving and redeemable on-chain. - Link
📌 Humanity protocol, which suffered an exploit last week, releases their recovery plan, with plans to airdrop a new token, with the same ticker, to all holders prior to the attack. - Link
📌 Swell Network begins the sunset of their L2, SwellChain. All assets must be withdrawn by 23rd June, or they will be unrecoverable. - Link
📌 Polygon zkEVM will be sunsetting on 1 July 2026, as announced in June 2025. Users must migrate their funds off the chain by then. - Link
Why does it matter?
Centralized exchanges have been heading down the tokenized stocks route in a bid to retain volumes and users amidst poor sentiment in the crypto space, especially with the regulatory front opening up for them.
DeFi Brief 🏦
📌 Pre-IPO trading venue, Ventuals, sunsets their offerings on Hyperliquid, with their trading pairs halted and settled over the coming week. VHYPE will be redeemable at 1:1 with accrued yield to stakers. - Link
📌 Tether announces plans to shut down aUSDT, their dollar-pegged stablecoin backed by gold, due to low demand. Users will need to redeem their XAUT tokens within the next three months. - Link
📌 Plasma launches Plasma One, allowing users who sign up within the first week to get Core tier free for their first year, unlocking rewards in base cashback, referral rewards, and more. - Link
📌 Morpho introduces confidential vaults with Zama and Steakhouse Financial, allowing users to deposit and earn yield, all without disclosing their balance or strategies. - Link
Why does it matter?
Crypto projects continue to wind down as sentiment fails to improve, despite a peace deal in the Middle East and stocks rallying to new highs.
Fundraises 💰
📌 Stablecoin payment infrastructure layer, Range, raises $8.3M in a Series A funding round, with investors including Maven 11, TX Ventures, SixThirty Ventures, Stellar, and more. - Link
📌 Internet reward infrastructure layer, EarnOS, raises $18.5M two funding rounds, led by 1kx, with participation from Verona, Coinbase Ventures, Circle Ventures, and more. - Link
📌 Latin American cross-border payments app, El Dorado, raises $9M in a funding round led by Paradigm, with support from Coinbase Ventures and Verda Ventures. - Link
📌 Cross-border payments infrastructure, Trace Finance, raises $32M in a Series A funding round led by CoinFund, with support from Coinbase Ventures, Hun, Paxos, Jump Capital, and more. - Link
Tweet of the Week 📝
Source: @mert
He designed STRC with what?
