Sign in Subscribe
Asset Allocators

Market Recap: Crypto Stabilizes with Robust ETF Demand & Public Policy Spotlight

Our market recap offers a concise overview of key blockchain categories and their recent price action within the broader market context, providing valuable insights for investors and industry practitioners.

Gabriel Selby, Mark Pilipczuk

• 2 min read
Market Recap: Crypto Stabilizes with Robust ETF Demand & Public Policy Spotlight
Click Here to Explore

Key takeaways for the month:

  • ETF Demand, Political Endorsements, and Macro Signals: Robust demand was observed for the anticipated launch of spot Ether ETFs, with over $1 billion in fund flows accumulating into the newly launched products. Concurrently, U.S. presidential candidates and policymakers have publicly advocated for Bitcoin to be adopted as a strategic reserve asset for the U.S. Treasury, reflecting the growing focus on digital assets in public policy. Meanwhile, cooling inflation and labor market data, coupled with recent Fed commentary, indicate potential interest rate cuts starting as early as September.
  • Index Gains and Sectoral Shifts: Last month's portfolio index performance was broadly positive. The CF Free-Float Broad Cap Index, our broadest gauge of the institutionally investible market, recorded a 6.1% gain. Mega-cap tokens, represented by the CF Ultra Cap 5 Index, emerged as top performers, rising by 6.7%. The CF Diversified Large Cap Index led the pack with a 7.7% increase. In contrast, the CF Digital Culture Index continued to face challenges, declining by 6.7%, while the CF Blockchain Infrastructure Index lagged the rest with an 8.3% decline.
  • July's Crypto Movers and Shakers: Ripple's XRP token (+31.6%) and Solana's SOL token (+17.3%) were the top performers in July. XRP surged on settlement hopes with the SEC after an amendment was filed in the SEC’s case against Binance. Solana saw record on-chain activity, surpassing Ethereum in daily fee revenue for the first time in late July. Fantom's FTM token (-28.2%) and Uniswap's UNI token (-21.8%) were the month's bottom performers. The Fantom foundation announced that it would be committing 200M FTM tokens, valued at $120M to fund strategic grants to developers creating apps on Fantom.
  • Bitcoin's Dominance and Spot Ether Debut: Net monthly inflows continued in July, with Bitcoin accounting for $3,426 million in inflows. Following the launch of the spot ETFs, Ether saw $334 million in outflows. From a regional perspective, the majority of the inflows were concentrated in North America (+$3,021 million).
  • Bitcoin's Mining Difficulty Hits All-Time-High: Bitcoin's network hash grew significantly in the past month, gaining 20.7% to reach 495 exahashes per second. The mining difficulty, which measures how hard it is to find a new block and thus adjusts to maintain a consistent block creation time, increased by 4.5% during the month. The next difficulty adjustment will likely be in the second week of August and is trending towards a 2.0% increase.
  • Ethereum Fee Fluctuations and Network Activity: The Ethereum network saw total fees paid decrease 49% from the prior month to $66.2M. The average fee per interaction with the Ethereum network fell by 27.5% over the period, indicating that overall transaction volumes were down for the month.
Source: CF Benchmarks, Bloomberg, as of July 31, 2024

To read the complete report, kindly click on the provided link (or click here to view a PDF version). Additionally, please do not forget to subscribe to our latest news and research for the most relevant institutional insights on digital assets and the top digital assets by market cap.

The information contained within is for educational and informational purposes ONLY. It is not intended nor should it be considered an invitation or inducement to buy or sell any of the underlying instruments cited including but not limited to cryptoassets, financial instruments or any instruments that reference any index provided by CF Benchmarks Ltd. This communication is not intended to persuade or incite you to buy or sell security or securities noted within. Any commentary provided is the opinion of the author and should not be considered a personalised recommendation. Please contact your financial adviser or professional before making an investment decision.

CF Benchmarks Ltd (“CF Benchmarks”), a company registered in England and Wales with company number 11654816 and authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Information about us can be found on the Financial Services Register (register number 847100).

Registered Office: 6th Floor One London Wall, London, United Kingdom, EC2Y 5EB.

You agree not to, and have no rights to, use the CF Benchmarks Data to create, calculate, issue, settle, maintain, support or develop any financial instruments (including but, without limitation exchange traded products, certificates, warrants, contracts for difference, swaps, binary options, structured products), indices, products, services (including but without limitation, portfolio management services, pre- and post-trade risk management services, or valuation services) or any other derivative works without the express written consent of CF Benchmarrks.

You agree not to analyze, reverse-engineer or disassemble any CF Benchmarks data and not to insert any code or product to manipulate the Website content in any way that affects any user’s experience. Unless CF Benchmarks gives you prior written permission, use of any Web browsers (other than generally available third-party browsers), engines, scripts, software, spiders, robots, avatars, agents, tools or other devices or mechanisms (such as crawlers, browser plug-ins and add-ons, or other technology) to navigate, access, copy in bulk, retrieve, harvest, index, search or analyse any portion of the Website is strictly prohibited.

No part of this information may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of CF Benchmarks Ltd. Use and distribution of the CF Benchmarks data requires a license from CF Benchmarks or its authorized licensing agents.

All information is provided for information purposes only. All information and data contained on this website is obtained by CF Benchmarks, from sources believed by it to be accurate and reliable. Such information and data is provided "as is" without warranty of any kind.

CF Benchmarks, nor its directors, officers, employees, partners or licensors make any claim, prediction, warranty or representation whatsoever, expressly or implied, either as to the accuracy, timeliness, completeness or merchantability of any information or of results to be obtained from the use of the CF Benchmarks indices or the fitness or suitability of the same indices for any particular purpose to which they might be put. Any representation of historical data accessible through CF Benchmarks indices is provided for information purposes only and is not a reliable indicator of future performance.

No responsibility or liability can be accepted by CF Benchmarks nor their respective directors, officers, employees, partners or licensors for any loss or damage in whole or in part caused by, resulting from, or relating to any error (negligent or otherwise) or other circumstance involved in procuring, collecting, compiling, interpreting, analysing, editing, transcribing, transmitting, communicating or delivering any such information or data or from use of this website or links to this website.

CF Benchmarks and its respective directors, officers, employees, partners or licensors do not provide investment advice and nothing accessible through CF Benchmarks, should be taken as constituting financial or investment advice or a financial promotion. Charts and graphs are provided for illustrative purposes only. Index returns shown may not represent the results of the actual trading of any assets.

CF Benchmarks is a member of the Crypto Facilities group of companies which is in turn a member of the Payward, Inc. group of companies. Payward, Inc. is the owner and operator of the Kraken Exchange, a venue that facilitates the trading of cryptocurrencies. The Kraken Exchange is a source of input data for certain CF Benchmarks indices. Payward, Inc. is the owner and operator of the Staked, a venue that operates the block production nodes for decentralized PoS protocols on behalf of institutional investors. Staked.us is a source of input data for certain CF Benchmarks indices.

Please refer to the individual product family documentation for more information about applicable input data sources.