• Trump promises the US government won’t sell their Bitcoin holdings (~205K BTC) but will instead hold them as a strategic reserve asset

• Within 48 hours of the announcement, the sitting administration mocked the announcement and spooked the market by moving $2 billion worth of Bitcoin.

• Alex Krüger suggests the recent dip is less about US wallet movements and more a reflection of Kamala Harris soaring odds of winning the election.

• Meanwhile US Federal debt officially hit $35 Trillion, up $12 Trillion since 2020

• ARK’s Innovation Fund has underperformed holding US Treasuries over the last 5 years. Ouch.

Retail (Shrimps) are buying lately, but the whales keep on selling (-8350 BTC on the week).

Google data confirms renewed retail interest with search for ‘buy bitcoin’ at its highest levels since March.

Bitcoin dipped and so goes the stocks.

🥇Blackrock

Blackrock had a massive buying day taking in 3050 Bitcoin. They started last weak with a bang before petering off towards the end of the week. Will be interesting (code: very bullish) to see if they can sustain this buying.

🧮 Total

The other ETFs delivered less than nothing with selling from Grayscale (-807 BTC), ARK (-317 BTC) and Fidelity (-88 Bitcoin) so the net flows on the day were a solid but less spectacular 1840 Bitcoin ($124m)

🔷 Ethereum

Ethereum continues to get smashed by outflows from Grayscale’s main trust (-$210m). Blackrock’s marketing machine is working (+$58.2m) and Fidelity ($24.8m) is buying but it’s not enough to avoid net outflows (-$98.3m) yet again.

Those are the Flows this Tuesday.

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you tomorrow.

— Julian

• Michael Saylor delivered the keynote at the BTC 2024 conference, predicting a $13 million Bitcoin price by 2045.

• Cory Bates summarized RFK Jr’s Bitcoin policy proposal from BTC 2024.

• Ethereum Team Lead Péter Szilágyi cast doubt on ETH’s future in a fiery tweet thread. He slams the PeerDAS proposal, which raises the size of Ethereum blobs to 32 MB. He called it "a cute charade: decentralized validation but centralized control" and warned that “Ethereum is losing the plot”.

• Former FTX exec Ryan Salame requested a delay for his 7.5 year prison sentence, citing the need for surgery after a dog bit his face!

• Coingecko’s Q2 industry report reveals Meme Coins were the most popular narrative with a 14.3% share of Coingecko’s traffic. Cat themed coins made the leaderboard at #14 (1.8% share). Dogs appear to have missed out. Perhaps they are busy dishing out justice to the FTX gang!

Whales clawed back a portion of BTC they bled over the last 7 - 10 days.

HODLer Net Position Change (chart below) tracks the 30-day changes in the positions of long-term holders. After a brief accumulation phase at the start of the year, we observed three distinct distribution phases, with the most significant occurring from March to April.

The third distribution phase now appears to be subsiding, indicating that we might see more coins transitioning into the HODLing phase as a majority of short-term positions become profitable.

Source: _checkonchain

The market sell-off eased on Friday as investors took comfort in easing inflation data, which could strengthen the case for a Fed rate cut. Fed’s key inflation gauge, the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) index, rose 2.5% in June from a year ago, in line with expectations. S&P 500 climbed 1.11%, and the NASDAQ gained 1.03%.

Among Bitcoin-related stocks, only Block Inc. posted a decline, mainly due to perceived broader business challenges, particularly with its Buy Now Pay Later offering.

🥇Bitwise

Bitwise led on Friday taking in 466 Bitcoin, their first positive flow for the week.

🥈Blackrock

BlackRock pulled in 341 Bitcoin, a slower than typical day for them, but good enough for second place.

🥉VanEck

VanEck hit the podium in third place, buying 285 Bitcoin. On a day where CEO Jan VanEck announced he has over 30% of his portfolio in Bitcoin.

🧮 Total

GBTC saw outflows as usual - selling 393 Bitcoin. Fidelity (+67 Bitcoin) had a quiet day, so net flows in total saw ETFs buying 765 Bitcoin.

🔷 Ethereum

Another day of selling for the ETH ETFs (-$162m). All driven by Grayscale (-$311.4m) which has lost 14% of it’s FUM in four trading days. The usual suspects are buying, Blackrock ($87.3m), Fidelity ($39.3m), Bitwise ($16m) but it’s not enough to stop net outflows.

Bitcoin attracts another advocate among the pension fund behemoths.

The $144 billion State of Michigan Retirement System (SMRS) disclosed in its 13F filings an allocation of 110,000 shares to ARKB, currently valued at ~$7.5 million. Though a small fraction of its total assets, this 'dip the toe' investment is a promising start.

The ETF choice in ARKB also stands out, as long-term institutional investors have typically gravitated towards BlackRock’s IBIT. BlackRock is the world's largest investment manager with a dominant institutional client base.

SMRS has a long-standing relationship with Cathie Wood and has been investing in ARK ETFs since 2016. It’s not far-fetched to think they may share some of Cathie Wood’s optimism for her $3.8 million BTC price target by 2030!

This marks the second pension fund to disclose a Bitcoin allocation. In May, the State of Wisconsin Investment Board announced a $160 million Bitcoin investment spread across IBIT and GBTC.

As the 13F filing season progresses, it wouldn't be surprising to see more pension funds revealing Bitcoin allocations before the August 15 deadline.

Those are the Flows this Saturday.

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you next week.

— Julian

• VanEck's outlines its base case for a $2.9m BTC price by 2050.

• Steven Fulop, mayor of Jersey City announced that the Jersey City Pension Fund plans to invest in Bitcoin ETFs, echoing the 2% allocation by Wisconsin Pension Fund. 

• Fold Bitcoin announced plans to list on the NASDAQ with 1,000 BTC on its balance sheet. CEO Will Reeves revealed that they intend to run the 'Saylor Playbook' aggressively.

• BlackRock's Head of Digital Assets stated that the SEC is unlikely to allow ETFs for other crypto assets following the launch of spot Ethereum ETFs.

• Marathon Digital announced a $100 million Bitcoin purchase and the adoption of a 'full HODL strategy.' The company plans to retain all Bitcoin mined and periodically make strategic purchases on the open market.

Whales, perhaps unwittingly, have been in a generous mood this week, with Bitcoin flowing from their wallets to everyone else's.

The pain trade in large-cap tech persisted, albeit with less intensity. The Nasdaq slipped 0.9%, pulling down all listed Bitcoin companies with it.

🥇Blackrock

Another day, another 1K Bitcoin scooped up by Blackrock (1093 to be precise). Since July 5 they’ve only had one day with less than 1000 Bitcoin purchased. Impressive!

🧮 Total

Otherwise it was a bit of dud day. GBTC Sold 610 Bitcoin and it was straight zeros across the board for all the other ETFs, so it’s 483 Bitcoin in net flows overall.

🔷 Ethereum

Grayscale continues to dump ETH with $346m in outflows from it’s main trust. In three days Grayscale has lost 10% of their FUM ($1B), which has to be some sort of a record. The other ETFs are buying - BlackRock ($71.4m), Fidelity ($34.3), Bitwise ($16.3m) but it’s not enough to turn the flows positive. Overall the ETFs sold $152m of ETH on the day.

Exiting an 'Exit Scam' Early

The typical setup for a DeFi exit scam looks something like this:

1. Whip up a legit-looking crypto project

2. Hype it up with flashy marketing and influencer endorsements

3. Build liquidity by collecting investor funds

4. Once enough funds have been collected, sell your tokens and remove liquidity from trading pools

5. Vanish

This playbook sorta worked well for a group that made $25m+ following it. However, their latest scam, Sorta Finance, was forced to exit early at a mere $76K Total Value Locked. Scam investigator ZachXBT caught onto them quickly:

Wonder if they’d called the project ‘Sure Finance’, Zach might not have noticed them so quickly!

The intrinsic value of an exit scam might just be in picking a name that buys you maximum time! Remember SafeMoon?

Those are the Flows this Friday.

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you tomorrow.

— Julian

• Proton, the Swiss company known for Proton Mail unveiled a self-custody Bitcoin wallet for its 100 million users. Proton Wallet will allow users to send and receive Bitcoin via email.

• Christen Ager-Hansen, an ex-colleague of Craig Wright, told Cointelegraph he recognized Wright as a fraud and tried to stop the disastrous court case before it began.

• The Block reported Google search volume for 'onchain' is hitting record highs. Decentralized exchange volumes as a ratio to centralized exchange volumes hit an all time high of 13.76% in July. 

• David Bailey updated on Kamala Harris: she won't speak at the Nashville BTC conference. No surprise. Bailey closed with, "All eyes on Trump now."

• Willy Woo outlined 5 macro signals he is looking at closely for Bitcoin: 3 are bullish and 2 are bearish for the price in the short term.

Sharks have done a great job of mopping up the offloading from Whales over the week.

Stocks had one of the worst one-day sell offs since 2022, led by large cap tech. S&P 500 fell 2.31% and tech heavy Nasdaq was down 3.64%. ARLP is the only green below, bucking the tech trend as the largest coal producer in the eastern United States.

🥇BlackRock

BlackRock led the charge, adding 1,000 BTC. They're just shy of 10,000 BTC for the week and 30,000 for the month. It’s been a chaotic FUD filled time with Germany selling and MT Gox distributions, yet through it all, Blackrock keeps buying.

🧮 Total

Aside from BlackRock, ETFs were largely quiet yesterday. Total net flows were +673 BTC, with Grayscale selling 400, Ark buying 50, and Fidelity buying 20 BTC. Investor focus seems to have shifted to Ethereum - which is in it’s first week of it’s ETF launch.

🔷 Ethereum

Day two of Ethereum’s ETF launch saw net outflows (-$133m) with massive outflows from Grayscale’s Ethereum Trust ($-327m). Who could have seen this coming? The positive for ETH investors were $148m inflows excluding Grayscale. Fidelity ($75m), Bitwise ($30m) and VanEck ($20m) led the way.

Sometimes nothing is better than something.

After the Crowdstrike meltdown and their CEO’s subsequent PR challenges last week, they somehow managed to find a way to insult all the thousands of people who missed flights, work, and otherwise had their Friday messed up — all while trying to do something nice.

Lesson: you can’t admit fault lowball for restitution.

Those are the Flows this Thursday.

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you tomorrow.

— Julian

• Brian Armstrong, Coinbase CEO, said “Bitcoin is the check and balance on deficit spending that can prolong western civilization.”

• Fox News discussed the possibility of Donald Trump announcing a strategic Bitcoin reserve in Nashville.

• Trump said that he has not been considering either Larry Fink or Jamie Dimon for Treasury Secretary — quashing rumors that have been floating around since last week.

• David Bailey disclosed that Bitcoin Magazine is in talks with the Kamala Harris campaign to potentially have her speak in Nashville too.

• Senator Cynthia Lummis released a report arguing that Biden’s proposed tax on Bitcoin miners is a bad idea.

• Ethereum ETFs launched today, and had more than $1 billion traded (details below).

Big offloading from the Whales yesterday. Sharks doing mop up duty.

Not a great day across the board. BTC was down, as well everything else. But good news for Coinbase: Citi upgraded COIN to ‘BUY’, with a target price of $345.

🥇BlackRock

A sign of the times when BlackRock buying 1090 BTC in one day is a bit boring. But that’s the story from yesterday. In fairness, it was always going to be hard to follow up Monday’s performance.

🧮 Total

Flows for the Bitcoin ETFs were negative yesterday with 1180 Bitcoin sold— after twelve straight days of inflows. BlackRock was the only gainer. Otherwise, significant outflows from Bitwise (1065 BTC), Ark (792 BTC), and Grayscale (414 BTC). Fidelity was net neutral.

🔷 Ethereum

Day one of the Ether ETFs is in the books. There was over $1 Billion in traded volume and net flows were + $106M with strong inflows from Blackrock ($266.5m), Bitwise ($204m) and Fidelity ($71.3m), but massive outflows from Grayscale. I think we’ve seen this story before…

The ‘Twitter Economic Sentiment Index’, which as the name suggests gauges how people feel about the economy from sentiment via X posts, appears to be rocketing up.

Something must have happened in the recent past to move sentiment this much. Something big…a change of some kind.

I know — I know what you’re thinking. It’s Biden. But that can’t be right, because all the most trustworthy commentators have spent the past two years making it perfectly clear that this economy is the greatest economy in the history of economies.

Must be something else then.

Those are the Flows this Wednesday.

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you tomorrow.

— Julian

• BlackRock’s Head of Thematic ETFs Jay Jacobs posted a video explaining Ethereum to investors, ahead of today’s ETF launch. He describes the network as a platform for “decentralized applications” with a “wide range of use cases.” What are these applications and use cases? Good question! I’ll let you know when anyone offers an answer.

• Fidelity’s Digital Assets team released their ‘Q2 Signals Report’ — a quarterly breakdown of key market metrics and sentiment.

• CNBC Discussed Donald Trumps’ upcoming appearance at Bitcoin 2024, and whether or not (and how) the United States could adopt Bitcoin as a Treasury reverse asset.

• Balaji Srinivasan writes that “No election can pay off America's $175T in debt”, and outlines the chronology of Uncle Sam’s fiscal meltdown from 2008 to today.

• Polymarket predicts there is a 16% chance that Joe Biden is removed via the 25th amendment before the election.

• Sarah Miller, an economist and researcher, published a paper which shows that cash transfers to low income people have minimal lasting effects on health and wellbeing.

• The Digital Chamber has written a letter to presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee Kamala Harris, urging her to adopt a “forward-looking approach on digital assets.”

• National Australia Bank, Australia’s second largest bank, says that “Bitcoin is the cleanest ‘Trump trade’ on show".”

Some early signs of appetite from the Whales, who’ve been quiet for a while.

This also also reflected on the chart below, which shows the ‘accumulation score’ for Whales turning strongly positive for the first time since April.

Source: Glassnode

And you know who’s not selling? Very-long term hodlers (3+ years), according to Ki Young Ju.

The chart below shows the ‘realized capital’ of these cohorts. Realized capital measures the value of Bitcoin (technically, individual UTXOs), at the last price they were transacted.

What that means in this case: the shaded hump on the right of the chart shows that more and more bitcoin is ‘aging into’ these older cohorts i.e. it is being held, and not transacted.

TL;DR: They’re not selling.

Almost everyone was up yesterday, except MARA. MSTR broke $1800, which they hadn’t seen since hitting their all time high (~$1919) in late March.

🥇BlackRock

You might want to sit down for this one. BlackRock bought 7759 BTC yesterday ($523m). Their single biggest day since March. Also, IBIT has now passed QQQ for net inflows, year-to-date.

🥈 Fidelity

Fidelity was a distant second, but still pulled in a healthy 350 BTC ($23m).

🧮 Total

Massive day, thanks largely to IBIT. Net inflows of 7.9k BTC ($533m) — and that’s not including Ark’s likely inflows (they’re late to report). The only loser on the day was Van Eck, who were an outlier with -570 BTC, erasing their big Friday from last week.

Most of the time in Western democracies, there’s a peaceful and orderly transfer of power.

As we learned this weekend, sometimes minor hiccups occur. Nothing to worry about — just some procedural irregularities.

Like for example the US President being quarantined with Covid and strongarmed by Nancy Pelosi into dropping out of the election and then ‘the President’ announces their resignation via a digitally signed letter posted to social media without a press conferences or speech.

Like I said: just a little speed bump.

Anyway, in politics and life there are winners and losers.

There are obvious names on the wrong side of the equation in this affair, and you know them already.

But please, save some sympathy for the most downtrodden of all: the Jeo Boden investors.

What was only a few short months ago shaping up to be generational wealth, is now a sad reminder, forever etched into the Solana blockchain, of what could have been. For their bags, and for the nation.

Those are the Flows this Tuesday.

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you tomorrow.

— Julian

• Joe Burnett, Trey Sellers, and Rocky Wold writes in Bitcoin Magazine about the parallels between Bitcoin and Golf. Including minimizing mistakes, patience, and (at least in my case) tearing your hair out.

• The Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) confirmed that spot Ethereum ETFs will begin trading this coming Tuesday, July 23.

• Binance is now allowed to invest its U.S. Treasury bills, a decision which they say will help them “manage our corporate treasury more effectively.”

• Michael Green puts to bed the idea that the current economic downturn is merely an imagined ‘vibecession’.

• Elon Musk is making the right call in fleeing California, according to the New York Post Editorial Board.

• Richard Kim, CEO of ‘crypto casino’ Zero Edge, has resigned after gambling away company funds on leveraged crypto bets. This is as close to crypto Inception as you’ll: a casino within a casino within a casino.

And thus concludes Shark Week.

Also here’s a visual aid to help you see how I think about the food chain. Not my work though — this is the ‘Sea Creatures Mosaic’, from 1st century AD Pompeii:

Congratulations to everyone on great end to the week, but particularly to Michael Saylor.

🥇Fidelity

Fidelity turned on the firehouse on Friday. Huge inflows: 2115 BTC ($141m).

🥈 BlackRock

BlackRock had another huge day to close out the week too: 1730 BTC ($115m).

🧮 Total

Total net flows for Friday: 5700 BTC ($378m). In fact — mostly likely higher than that, but Ark hasn’t reported its data for the past couple of days.

🧮 Weekly Summary

Monster week from BlackRock, who with nearly 11k BTC inflows are almost off the chart. Significant drop back to Fidelity with 3.7k BTC, but that’s less a reflection of their week (which was solid), and more that BlackRock is an unstoppable Bitcoin black hole right now.

Even without a couple of days of Ark data, this week we saw 19.1k BTC net inflows — the most in six weeks, and the second best week since March.

Can you tell what’s going on in this picture?

If you guessed: a guide to defending yourself against the Japanese mythological creature Kappa by use of flatulence — you would be correct!

Part of a comic series in ‘Woodblock’ style by Japanese artist Yoshitoshi, this piece is called Farting at Kappa at the Lumberyard in Fukagawa. Drawn in 1881, it was meant to satirize life in Tokyo, in the then rapidly modernizing Meiji era.

Those are the Flows this Saturday.

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you next week.

— Julian

• Joachim Book writes in Bitcoin Magazine ‘In Defense of Bitcoin’s Culture’.

• South Korea’s new Crypto regulation framework - the Virtual Asset User Protection Act - has been officially approved. The laws regulate exchanges, surveillance, and other things too.

• Maxwell Tabarrok at Maximum Progress asks “What were the binding constraints on a Roman Industrial Revolution?”, and explores some interesting counter-factuals around whether Rome could have industrialized, had it figured out the production of resources or acquired certain cultural traits.

• Karthik Sankaran analyzes Trump’s pick of JD Vance as a running mate, and the potential implications their administration could have on the strength of the US dollar.

• Lydia Moynihan at the New York Post looks into how the “Bitcoin crowd” has been energized by JD Vance’s nomination.

• Robinhood wants to do “more and more things” with crypto, including tokenizing real world assets.

Sharks fed at everyone else’s expense yesterday.

Rough day for everyone yesterday, as the entire stock market continues to take a bit of a beating.

🥇BlackRock

The BlackRock freight train keeps rolling. Another 1622 BTC into the coffers ($103m).

🔻Grayscale

More Grayscale outflows too. 352 BTC ($22.5m).

🧮 Total

Net flows for Thursday was basically BlackRock minus Grayscale. Came out to +1340 BTC ($85m).

Those are the Flows this Friday.

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you tomorrow.

— Julian

• Donald Trump declared in his Republican National Convention speech that he will “end Joe Biden’s war on crypto.”

• Trump is also apparently considering JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon for the Treasury Secretary gig. Dimon’s been about as consistently anti-Bitcoin as anyone in the world, but according to Trump he’s “changed his tune” recently.

• Mark Cuban argues that the recent support from Silicon Valley for Trump “is a bitcoin play”, and that “you can’t align the stars any better for a BTC price acceleration.”

• State Street is reportedly planning launching its own private stablecoin.

• Ki Yong Ju at Cryptoquant shows that the global stablecoin market cap is trending up — historically a bullish sign.

• Vitalik Buterin argues against choosing political allegiances over who is ‘pro-crypto’.

Whales were up yesterday, for the first time in a week.

Almost everyone came back down to earth after Tuesday’s euphoria, but it wasn’t just the Bitcoin stocks hit: it was Nasdaq’s worst day since 2022.

🥇BlackRock

I’m starting to think Larry Fink has disabled the sell buttons for IBIT investors. BlackRock was unstoppable yet again, bringing in 1708 BTC ($110m).

🔻Grayscale

Unstoppable is also the right word to describe Grayscale outflows. Wednesday saw another 836 BTC worth ($54m).

🧮 Total

Yesterday was much more muted than Tuesday, but still positive. Total net inflows of 821 BTC ($53m), making it nine positive days in a row. Fidelity was the only inflow other than BlackRock though - they claimed 43 BTC ($2.8m). While Bitwise chipped a bit off their stack - sending out 93 BTC ($6m).

In ‘exotic billionaire plaything’ news, hedge fund mogul Ken Griffin paid $45m today for an almost complete stegosaurus fossil.

This got me asking: what’s the going rate for dinosaur bones?

Turns out, they’re pretty expensive. Here are some of the other most expensive buys:

1. Abu Dhabi’s Department of Culture purchased a T-Rex named ‘Stan’ for $32m in 2020.

2. Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History paid $8.3m in 1997 for a T-Rex named ‘Sue’.

3. And Democrat donors paid over $1 billion to elect Joe Biden President in 2020!

Truly is amazing to see what people spend on ancient relics.

Those are the Flows this Thursday.

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you tomorrow.

— Julian

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• David Bailey at Bitcoin Magazine appeared on Yahoo Finance to discuss Donald Trump’s upcoming appearance at the Bitcoin 2024 conference.

• Nate Silver, well-known election poll analyst, has joined crypto-based prediction market platform Polymarket as an advisor.

• World Coin (WLD), the crypto project from OpenAI Founder Sam Altman that scans peoples’ eyeballs to collect biometric data in exchange for tokens, had a price spike. The reason: an early investor ‘unlock’ was delayed. Meaning that retail investors have a bit longer before the true insiders unceremoniously dump a giant steaming pile of WLD on their heads.

• Craig Wright, the proven fraudster who falsely claimed to be Satoshi Nakamoto for about a decade, and maliciously sued people who claimed otherwise, has been ordered by a judge to post publicly that he is not the founder of bitcoin. You can read the fresh new disclosure on his website here.

• Bitcoin Magazine has been invited to the Republican National Convention, to cover what will allegedly be a “very Bullish Bitcoin announcement” on Thursday.

• Brian Riedl at Reason asks why Americans stopped caring about the national debt, and lays down some harsh lessons on the fiscal state of the USA.

Similar story again yesterday: Whale balances going down, while the middle cohorts went up.

Great day to be a Bitcoin Miner investor yesterday. Look at that almost completely unblemished sea of green.

🥇BlackRock

What do you call it when BlackRock buys 4005 BTC ($265m)? We call that: “Tuesday.” They now hold more than 322k BTC. That’s about $21 billion worth, and 1.5% of the total Bitcoin supply. Yeah.

🥈Fidelity

Fidelity wasn’t quite as hot, but still pulled in another 940 BTC ($61m). They’re holding 180k BTC now.

🥉Ark

Ark slowed down after their massive Monday, but still saw inflows of 465 BTC ($30m). Not bad at all.

🧮 Total

Now we’re really starting to move. Tuesday net inflows were 6610 BTC ($429m). That’s the biggest single day in about six weeks, and means we’ve seen 16k BTC come in over the past three trading days.

Some things never go out of style. Like an Oxford button down shirt, or French cuisine, or incompetent politicians ignoring the second-order consequences of price controls.

In the year 2024, we have an aging, unpopular US President trying to resurrect his administration with populist ‘Hail Mary’s like capping rent increases at 5%.

Of course he wasn’t the first and won’t be the last to try on this timeless classic.

Let’s rewind back to 301 AD. An unpopular, aging Roman Emperor, Diocletian, issued an Edict of Maximum Prices, in an effort to curb runaway inflation.

The Edict attempted to set prices for basically everything in the economy: fabrics, precious metals, even people (i.e. slaves) and exotic animals.

One Reddit user created the below chart to illustrate the different levels Diocletian set for the priciest pets.

Those Romans loved their lions! And according to this ‘ancient money calculator’ (the veracity of which I can’t really vouch for), 150k Denarii is apparently equivalent to USD $6.5m today.

The Edict was naturally a huge failure and resulted in the shortages that anyone with a modern, high-school level understanding of economics would expect.

It would be nice if modern governments could clear that hurdle too, but alas.

Those are the Flows this Wednesday.

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you tomorrow.

— Julian

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• Ethereum ETFs will launch next Tuesday, according to Bloomberg’s Eric Balchunas.

• Larry Fink was interviewed about Bitcoin on CNBC, and said it’s an instrument to invest in “when you believe that countries are debasing their currencies.” So — it’s for everyone.

• Deutsche Bank published their June CPI Recap, saying that “With rents returning to pre-pandemic rates, the balance of the June

  inflation data are likely to qualify as a really good reading.”

• NYDIG released their Q2 report, with a detailed breakdown on everything that happened in Bitcoin this quarter.

• The American Dream is increasingly out of reach, per some somber survey data which shows that a third of the country thinks they’re missing out.

• JD Vance has been selected as Donald Trump’s running mate, and is now the Vice-Presidential Candidate. While not everyone loves the pick, he’s endorsed by Tech leaders like David Sacks and Balaji Srinivasan. Vance has a significant personal Bitcoin allocation, has previously indicated crypto-friendly views, and together with Donald Trump has formed a ‘pro-crypto ticket’.

Consistent redistribution over the past week from the Whales to the Sharks. We’ll see if that continues now that BTC seems to be catching a bid, Germany’s done selling, and the miners seem to be relaxing.

To give some more color on the miners, below is a chart showing Hash Ribbons, from Cryptoquant.

Quick explanation: when the 30 day moving average of Hash Rate dips below the 60 day moving average, it shows that hash is dropping really fast.

As in: unprofitable miners are giving up, unplugging, and liquidating their assets.

On the chart below, the ‘ribbons’ are those bright green lines, where the 30dma falls below the 60dma. As you can see, we’ve been in this period of miner ‘capitulation’ since early May.

However, if you zoom in reeaaally close, you can see that over the past five days or so, hash rate has begun to trend up again. Meaning the capitulation could be over.

Actually forget zooming — I’ll do it for you:

Great day to me a MSTR investor. And a COIN investor. Actually also a GLXY, HUT, MARA - whatever you get the idea. Everything pumped.

🥇Ark

Coming in first place on an action-packed Monday was: Ark with inflows of 1850 BTC ($117.2m).

🥈BlackRock

BlackRock was only just behind. They brought in 1840 BTC ($117m).

🥉Fidelity

Fidelity had a solid day too, with a healthy haul of 570 BTC ($36m).

🧮 Total

ETF investors have really got a head full of stream now. Monday was another blow out performance, with net inflows of 4646 BTC ($300m). Notable contributions also from Bitwise (240 BTC) and Invesco (122 BTC). Even Grayscale was net-zero on the day, managing to stave off its chronic bout of outflow-itis.

The Bagholders are back! 13F filings for Q2 are rolling in, and more of them than at the same point last quarter (still a month out from the deadline).

So, what are we learning about the ETF holders?

Here’s one: IMC Chicago. An investment firm with roughly $170b AUM. They’re traders — not ‘hodlers’. They aren’t managing your uncle’s retirement savings.

Which means they’re in the category of investor that provoked some skepticism in Q1:

• Won’t they just sell when the price goes down?

• They don’t believe in it

• They’re just here for the carry trade

And while it’s true that 13Fs don’t give us their entire position (we can’t see short positions, for example), we can nontheless see the change from one quarter to the next:

Definitely some strong fluctuations. The entire HODL position is gone, and most of FBTC. But on the other hand, massively increased in ARKB, and GBTC. With a net increase overall.

It’s too early to drawn conclusions, but they certainly weren’t scared away by the 20% BTC drawdown.

And finally, in today’s edition of ‘Reading Tea Leaves for Finance Nerds’:

The ‘market’ is now pricing in with 92% probably that the Fed will cut rates in September.

One day we’ll have a global economy that isn’t entirely predicated on what one council of unelected bureaucrats decides the price of money to be.

But until that day: fingers crossed for September.

Those are the Flows this Tuesday.

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you tomorrow.

— Julian

• Senator Cynthia Lummis was interviewed on Fox Business and laid out her three-point Bitcoin agenda.

• Natalie Brunnell was also interviewed on Fox Business, where she described Bitcoin as “the bridge between chaos and hope.”

• Spiral — the Bitcoin company inside Block that funds open-source Bitcoin development — released their Quarterly Update, announcing all kinds of cool Bitcoin projects.

• Flexport CEO Ryan Peterson details a ongoing wild story about Chicago motor carriers holding cargo hostage for ransom payments, in what appears to be a brazen “organized crime” operation.

• Andrew Singer at Cointelegraph explains how the Supreme Court’s recent decision to overrule the Chevron doctrine could “change the game” for crypto companies.

• Jash Dholani explores ten concepts from Ancient Rome that help explain the modern world. The Polybius Warning is particularly ominous given current birth-rate trends…

• Bitwise published their Q2 Crypto Market Review, in which they characterize this quarter as “The Dog Days of the Crypto Bull Market.” Which is a nice way of saying: it kind of sucked.

• Charles Gasparino at the New York Post breaks down the three-way race to succeed Jamie Dimon as CEO of JP Morgan.

Hey Whales, you okay?

I can’t tell you know’s definitely not okay: Germany. Fifty-thousand beautiful bitcoins, their entire stash, gone in just a few short weeks. But it’s all over now. No more suffering. At least until the price goes up again; then the pain really starts.

Nothing better than a chart full of green to close out the week.

🥇BlackRock

BlackRock finished off a wild week with another huge haul, bringing in 2076 BTC ($120m)

🥈Fidelity

Fidelity was right behind them, snagging 2020 BTC of their own ($115m).

🥉 Bitwise

Bitwise fought right to the finish as well, with inflows of 485 BTC ($28.4m).

🧮 Total

A massive inflow Friday, of 5360 BTC ($311m). Honorable mention to Grayscale, who have some life in them yet: securing inflows of 399 BTC ($23m). And Ark had a tidy Friday too, with 224 BTC ($13m).

🧮 Weekly Summary

Huge week overall. Net inflows of 17.5k BTC ($1 billion!). It was the second biggest week since March. And brought the total net inflows to a new all-time high of just under 270k total.

And here we can see who had the best weeks individually. No surprises, BlackRock at the top with 9k BTC, then Fidelity with 6.2k.

Data compiled from MyLifeBar shows the years of life gained per hour of physical activity done weekly, for a number of different exercises.

Nothing too outrageous in there, although I’m skeptical about the apparently quite severe diminishing returns. And I’m going to assume that the ‘Boxing’ here doesn’t actually involve getting punched in the head.

But what I’d like to see is a version of this chart, showing how many years of life you lose by trading different cryptocurrencies.

Sometimes I feel like Bitcoin alone has cost me a couple. I can only imagine what XRP and Cardano holders feel like. And if we could quantify the bodily harm done by NFTs on a weekly basis, I think the WHO might declare a global health crisis.

Those are the Flows this Saturday.

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you next week.

— Julian

• The House voted to uphold President Biden’s veto of the SAB121 withdrawal. Meaning banks still can’t custody digital assets.

• Blockworks looks into the question of whether rate cuts are bullish or bearish for risk assets.

• Bitwise’s CIO Matt Hougan wrote his weekly memo about the “key tailwinds [that] could drive Bitcoin to $100K by year-end.”

• Byrne Hobart at The Diff argues that Dave Graeber’s ‘BS jobs’ is a “Terrible, Curiosity-Killing Concept.”

• Brian Heater at TechCrunch explores the legal consequences if you happen shoot down a delivery drone.

• Allison Schrager at Bloomberg argues that the Private Equity bubble is about to pop.

• American Economy Daily explains how rising unemployment risks bringing on a recession.

Shout out to the Shrimps and Crabs today. Most days we’re focused on what the Whales are doing, but you love to see the smaller cohorts’ steady stacking.

But speaking of the Whales — let’s check in on the biggest loser this week. Our friends in Germany are nearing the end of their bout of bitcoin incontinence, and now have less than 10k BTC left to sell.

IREN got walloped, and MSTR was the biggest gainer on news they’re doing a 10-1 stock split.

🥇BlackRock

BlackRock came in hot yesterday, with inflows of 1252 BTC ($72m). That means they’ve brought in another 7k BTC just this week, and now hold more than 314k total.

🥈Fidelity

Fidelity kept their good run going too, with inflows of 570 BTC ($32.7m). They’re now back up to 176k BTC held.

🔻Grayscale

You know this one by now. Grayscale sent another 650 BTC packing ($37.7m).

🧮 Total

Another strong day for the ETFs, despite the price action not really reflecting it. Net inflows of 1373 BTC ($79m). They’ve taken in 12k BTC just this week. Which means total net inflows are up to 264k — about two thousand off the all time high from a month ago.

Fun fact: the United States government spent $140 billion in June, just on debt interest payments.

It’s pretty hard to wrap your head around that number, so I’ve prepared a few reference points:

• Going back in time 140 billion seconds would take you to the year 2413 BC, to the early bronze age. Roughly when the Great Pyramids were being built in Ancient Egypt.

• 140 billion one-dollar notes lined up end to end would extend 13,566,459 miles. That’s 500 times around the Earth, or to the moon and back 28 times, or halfway to Venus.

• As one-dollar bills, they would collectively weight 140,000 metric tons, or roughly the equivalent of 35,000 African elephants.

Hope that helps.

Those are the Flows this Friday.

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you tomorrow.

— Julian

P.S. Before you go, if you’re a Flow State fan, one thing you could do that would help us a lot is sharing this newsletter with a friend.

Or copy and paste this link to others: www.flows.heyapollo.com

Thank you!

• Santa Monica approved the adoption of a ‘Bitcoin Office’, thanks to the advocacy of several Los Angeleno Bitcoiners.

• Bitcoin Magazine announced that Donald Trump will be speaking at the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville this month.

• The SEC’s Director of Enforcement, Gurbir Grewal, gave a speech recounting his greatest hits, and detailing the various types of enforcement the regulator has taken against “straight rips, ponzi schemes, affinity frauds, and other scams.”

• Cathie Wood wrote a letter to Ark investors, telling them that “many stocks associated with truly disruptive innovation have settled into rare, deep value territory.”

• Paradigm conducted a poll of Republican ‘Crypto Voters’. There were several takeaways, including that Trump’s pro-crypto platform may help persuade ‘Never Trump’ Republicans to vote for him after all.

• CFTC Chairman Rostin Behnam said that courts have conclusively determined Bitcoin and Ethereum to be commodities, but that 70-80% of everything else is a security.

• Congressman Ro Khanna’s Washington DC Crypto Roundtable happened today. Industry leaders met with Khanna and other government representatives, including Biden adviser Anita Dunn - to whom one attendee said “You guys suck on crypto.”

Everyone feasted at the Whales’ expense yesterday.

But let’s do some quick age-discrimination (just a little). Ki Young Ju spotted some wise old Whales - the ‘permanent holders’ who never sell anything - and noted that these greedy goliaths gobbled up 85k BTC over the past 30 days.

It was a mixed day on Wall Street with no major standouts. However, Bernstein published a research note about the new trend of Bitcoin miners providing AI infrastructure, and set price targets of $26 for IREN, and $17 for CORZ.

And speaking of Core Scientific, they announced that they’ll be the first customer to buy Block’s new mining chip.

🥇Fidelity

Fidelity kept on powering yesterday. Inflows of 1019 BTC ($57.8m). That brings them to more than 5k inflows just this week.

🥈Franklin Templeton

Franklin Templeton off the top rope! Seemingly out of nowhere, they emerged with their third best daily haul yet, bringing in 550 BTC ($31.7m)

🥉BlackRock

Poor old BlackRock was bumped down to third place on the podium yesterday. They brought in just 387 BTC ($22m).

But speaking of IBIT, Eric Balchunas provided a mind-blowing stat: three quarters of ALL ETFs launched last year still have less than $121m in assets, which was IBIT’s inflow just on Tuesday.

🧮 Total

Another strong day overall, with net inflows of 2240 BTC ($127m). Honorable mention also goes to Ark ($5.7m), Bitwise ($4.7M), and Invesco ($9.5m) for all chipping in well.

One thing that’s under appreciated about late-stage fiat money debasement, is just how genuinely weird things can get.

On one hand, the price of everything becomes more meaningful. In a mundane, practical sense. You start asking questions like, “Why are my groceries twice as expensive as last year?”, and “How enraged should I be by this $6 latte?”

On the other hand, prices can become totally meaningless. Completely unmoored from the cost of production and/or labor, or anything resembling a functioning market signal.

That’s when you really start pondering how long the whole game has left. You think: is there even such a thing as intrinsic value after all?

I’m in one of those moods today. And the culprit? Trash.

Exhibit A: the fine folks at the US Department of Defense decided that Boeing should be paid fifty-two thousand American taxpayer dollars for one trash can.

Exhibit B: The leadership of New York City — allegedly the greatest the city on earth — triumphantly announced they were joining the rest of us in the 19th century by finally getting around to the use of trash cans. Hold your applause.

Yes, the news that they’d found a better solution than the status quo of piling up garbage on the street, was worthy of a press conference.

Of course, no government could responsibly foist a disruptive change like this on its citizens without first getting expert advice.

So you’ll be please to know that the big brains running the Big Apple consulted the world-leading experts on the production of industrial quantities of human waste: McKinsey & Company.

In fact, the city paid McKinsey $4m for a no-doubt immensely helpful 42-slide deck with such pearls of wisdom as:

“Cointainerization refers to the storage of waste in sealed, rodent-proof receptacles rather than in plastic bags.”

Mmm, I love the smell of democracy in the morning.

Source

Those are the Flows this Thursday.

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you tomorrow.

— Julian

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• Jerome Powell testified at a Senate committee hearing, and said both that the economy is softening (bad), but also that lowering rates risks undoing the Fed’s ‘good work’ on inflation (bad). Expert hedging, as only the Fed Chair can.

• The Chamber of Progress, a progressive Tech advocacy group, wrote a letter to Joe Biden urging him to make a pro-crypto shift because it “resonates strongly with young voters.” Personally I doubt Biden has ‘resonated’ with any young person since the Bee Gees were popular, but good luck guys.

• Franklin Templeton published their monthly Digital Assets Bulletin, in which they provide an overview of the Bitcoin, Ethereum, and NFT markets.

• Coinbase released their Monthly Outlook, in which they said, “our models identified US spot bitcoin ETF flows as the most important feature driving bitcoin performance over the past six months.”

• BlackRock released their mid-year global outlook, and said the world is “undergoing a transformation on par with the Industrial Revolution.”

• Senator Marsha Blackburn is now accepting Bitcoin and Crypto donations for her re-election campaign. The bar for giving Bitcoin away to politicians should be pretty high, though her colleague and long time Bitcoin advocate Sen. Cynthia Lummis says she’s the “real deal.”

More flip-flopping between Whales and Sharks on Tuesday.

As Ki Young Ju at Cryptoquant explains, there’s some still way to go before the miners ‘capitulate’ and will be done with their post-halving sell-off.

The chart below shows a metric called the Puell Multiple, which measures the ratio of the value of the BTC mined in one day, to the yearly average.

Historically, miner selling tends to keep going until we get to a ratio of about 0.4 (see highlighted on the chart).

Down day for the miners, with IREN, CORZ, and HUT taking the worst of it.

🥇BlackRock

BlackRock had another banger yesterday, bringing in 2134 BTC ($121m). IBIT now holds 312k BTC.

🥈Fidelity

Fidelity was fired up again as well. They had inflows of 1580 BTC ($91m). FBTC now holds 173k BTC, which is just under the all-time high they set about a month ago.

🔻Grayscale

It would have been too much to expect consecutive inflow days from Grayscale. They reversed the flow, sending out 650 BTC ($37.5m). 342.7k outflows since launch.

🧮 Total

Not sure about you, but I can sense some positive momentum gathering. The panic clouds are receding, and I think people realize that Mt. Gox and the German government aren’t so scary.

ETF buyers seem to think so, anyway. Net inflows of 3760 BTC ($216m) yesterday. Third strong inflow day in a row.

Let’s polish things off with new game I just invented call ‘Two Down, Two Up’. You’ll pick it up quickly.

First thing down: non-farm payroll figures, which for several months in a row have been revised down from the initial numbers announced.

I’m sure there’s a perfectly legitimate explanation, and that the totally-trustworthy Bureau of Labor Statistics wouldn’t be pulling any shenanigans in an election year…

Right. On to the second thing down: volume traded in Ethereum NFT markets. After reaching a high in January (people selling the monkey JPEGs they got for Christmas?), it’s been downhill since.

Now, first thing up: Crypto VC dealflow. After bottoming at the end of last year, it’s been two quarters in a row of more cash splashed on crypto startups. Those must be some high conviction bets!

And finally, the second thing up: the price of coffee! In fact, it’s now at an all time high.

I’m not usually an advocate of panic-buying, but let’s just say I’m probably heading down to Costco as soon as I hit publish today.

Those are the Flows this Wednesday.

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you tomorrow.

— Julian

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• Matthew Sigel at Van Eck offers his take on recent Bitcoin price action, and says “We continue to advocate a dollar cost average strategy to buy Bitcoin up to a target weight, seeing 6% as a reasonable position size.”

• The Republican National Committee officially adopted Bitcoin as part of their party platform, promising to protect the rights of Americans to both mine and self-custody their digital assets.

• Ron Hammond at the Blockchain Association has a breakdown of all the upcoming crypto-related action in the US Congress this week.

• Bitfinex analysts suggest that Bitcoin may be at a ‘local bottom’.

• The German Government continues selling off the stack of BTC they confiscated from a movie piracy company, sending another 1000 BTC to exchanges over the past 24 hours.

• Van Eck filed their 19b-4 Form with the SEC, seeking approval for the first spot Solana ETF.

• David Bailey discusses how he met with Donald Trump to discuss why Bitcoin is a “strategic asset of the United States.”

The back and forth between Sharks and Whales continues, with the Whales getting the upper hand over the past week.

But as you know, there are always outliers in every cohort. Right now, there’s one particular Bear-Whale bucking the trend, and that’s the German government.

Below you can see their BTC balance trending down over the past couple of weeks, and then take a huge nosedive over the past couple of days.

Slow start to the week on Wall Street. HUT and HIVE were the only real gainers.

🥇BlackRock

BlackRock buyers saw the blood in the streets, and they got busy. IBIT brought in 3320 BTC ($188m) yesterday - their biggest inflow day in a month. Their total holdings climbed up above 310k BTC for the first time too.

🥈Fidelity

Fidelity wasn’t messing around either. There was cheap Bitcoin for the taking yesterday, and they made sure to get some. 1100 BTC ($62m), to be precise.

🥉Grayscale

In case you needed any more encouragement to buy the dip, just know that Grayscale (!) is way ahead of you. They snapped up 450 BTC ($25.5m).

🧮 Total

It was a big net inflow day overall, with 5240 BTC ($297m) coming into the ETFs. That’s the best day since 5 June, and brings the total net inflows back up to 257k BTC since launch.

Want to make sure you don’t write like ChatGPT? Probably best to avoid using words like “delve”, “crucial”, and “significant” where you can.

Research shows the frequency of these words has exploded in scientific papers since LLMs became widely used a year or so ago.

And in other news, there’s been a significant fall in the number of people who believe that scientists are competent and trustworthy, over just the past year…

Those are the Flows this Tuesday.

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you tomorrow.

— Julian

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• Marc Andreessen writes that “The time has come to stand up for Little Tech”, arguing that America’s government has become too hostile to startups.

• The House of Representatives will vote next week on whether to overrule President Biden’s veto of the SAB121 repeal. Reminder: it’s a rule put in place that requires banks who custody crypto to hold it on their own balance sheet, for some odd reason.

• Joana Cotar, member of the German Parliament, has criticized her country’s government for selling off vast amounts of Bitcoin, “instead of holding bitcoin as a strategic reserve currency.”

• Sam Bankman-Fried’s family is under investigation for political donations made with ill-gotten FTX funds.

• Daniel Parris at Stat Significant asks “Is Movie Stardom in Decline?”, and digs into the data.

• Packy McCormick at Not Boring writes a tribute to America’s “Capitalist Empire.”

• Bruce Yandle at The Hill argues that you should not expect the Fed to hit it’s inflation targets this year.

It’s been a tumultuous twenty-four hours for Bitcoin, with plenty of BTC changing hands. The Whales have been on the receiving end of a lot of it.

Not a bad day on Wall Street, given the BTC price action. Somewhat surprising to see MSTR holding up so well, and a bunch of the miners even gained on the day.

🥇Fidelity

Fidelity bought the dip, big time. Inflows of 2103 BTC ($117m).

🥈Bitwise

Bitwise had some leftover Independence Day fireworks too, bringing in 540 BTC ($30m).

🔻Grayscale

Grayscale…well, do I even need to say it? Bye bye 510 BTC ($28.6m).

🧮 Total

Somehow, improbably, Friday was a strong inflow day for the ETFs. Net inflows of 2540 BTC ($143m).

🧮 Weekly Summary

Net inflows for the week of 3.9k BTC ($220m).

Breaking it down, you can see the big winner was Fidelity, hauling in 3333 BTC over the week. Bitwise was next best, with a touch over 1k BTC. And GBTC lost 1638 BTC over the four trading days.

I took a short break from watching the Bitcoin price crash yesterday to read a bit about Leonardo Davinci.

The definitive biography is probably Walter Isaacson’s, but you can find a short sketch of the quintessential Renaissance Man in Giorgio Vasari’s The Lives of the Artists, written not long after Davinci’s time in the 16th century.

Here’s the opening passage:

Leonardo Davinci, Annunciation

The list of Davinci’s pursuits is hard to believe. He mastered: painting, drawing, sculpture, architecture, engineering, anatomy, mathematics, geology, botany, music, cartography, hydrodynamics, and astronomy. According to Vasari, he even “sang divinely without any preparation.”

I don’t have a particular point to make here. Other than: if and when you need a distraction from current events, renaissance Italy does the job pretty well.

Have a great weekend!

Those are the Flows this Saturday.

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you next week.

— Julian

• ‘Bob’ proposes a controversial idea at Bitcoin Magazine: that Bitcoin HODLers, by merely hoarding their BTC are “not living up to the Bitcoin ethos” and should have to pay a fee back to the network.

• Jack Raines at Sherwood explains how Steve Ballmer came to be richer than Bill Gates.

• Andrew Singer at Cointelegraph asks, “Could a financial crisis end crypto’s bull run?”

• Joe Biden has a 63% chance of dropping out of the US Presidential election, according to the prediction / betting market platform Polymarket.

• Bitwise filed an updated S-1 application for their spot Ethereum ETF, and industry experts think the ETH ETFs could all be live as soon a next week.

• Brian Potter at Construction Physics explores the rise and fall of one of America’s greatest companies: AT&T.

Shark fin is back on the menu, the Whales rediscovered their appetite, and the Fish are feasting.

But then who’s selling??? For one, you can point the finger at those pesky Long Term Holders, still taking profits.

Source: checkonchain

And spare a thought for the miners. The revenue boost from ordinals and other on-chain shenanigans was a short-lived sugar hit, and now the post-halving crash has set in.

Source: CryptoQuant

HUT parted a red sea yesterday.

🥇Fidelity

Fidelity bought the dip yesterday, bringing in 110 BTC ($6.5m). They also happened to be the only Bitcoin ETF with any inflows at all, earning them a lonely spot atop the podium.

🔻Grayscale

Grayscale also stood by themselves yesterday, as the lone source of outflows. They sold-off 450 BTC ($27m).

🧮 Total

The total, thus, was simply the difference between the two. Net outflows of 340 BTC ($20.5m).

July 4 marks the day that 12 of the original 13 North American colonies adopted the Declaration of Independence, kicking off the Revolutionary War.

The painting below, John Trumbull’s Declaration of Independence, depicts the drafting committee (headed by Thomas Jefferson) presenting the document to the Continental Congress for the first time.

Declaration of Independence, by John Trumbull (1818)

Here is the most famous passage from the Declaration (though I encourage everyone to read the full text):

It’s probably never been easier to be cynical about America, and to doubt the strength of its institutions. There a plenty of valid reasons, and I won’t enumerate them here. You know them well enough.

But today, it’s fine to pay tribute to the oldest surviving democratic republic in the world, and the young men who founded it.

Fifty years after the Declaration, an elderly Thomas Jefferson said, “May it be to the world, what I believe it will be… the signal of arousing men to burst the chains…and to assume the blessings and security of self-government … For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them.”

Amen.

Those are the Flows this Thursday.

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you tomorrow.

— Julian

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• Jerome Powell made a few comments about the state of the US economy. And while getting the Fed Chair to say something newsworthy is a tall order, he did note that America’s penchant for massive budget deficits “should be a top-level issue. It should be a real focus going forward.”

• Charles Edwards asks “Is anyone actually using crypto this cycle?”, and adduces evidence to suggest the answer might be: no, not really.

• Jack Dorsey spoke at an exclusive celebrity tech event hosted by Rick Rubin, and suggested that Bitcoin might take 10-15 years to become the money of the world.

• Alexandre Stachtchenko wrote a two-part piece for Bitcoin Magazine on how financial surveillance threatens democracy. (Part 2)

• David Lat explains the Supreme Court’s decision on Presidential immunity for official acts (and what it means for Donald Trump).

• Thomas Pueyo asks a very important question: Why is Chile so long? (Fun fact: the country stretches the equivalent distance of London to Baghdad).

These Whales are are a true testament to trickle-down economics. And the Sharks are only too happy to be on the receiving end.

Massive day from Iris Energy, on news that they raised $413m to expand operations.

🥇BlackRock

BlackRock took the top spot on Tuesday, with inflows of 232 BTC.

🥈Fidelity

Fidelity had a modest inflow of 89 BTC ($5.4m), good enough for second place.

🔻Grayscale

The daily Grayscale dump dwarfed everyone else, as they sent out 533 BTC ($32.4m).

🧮 Total

GBTC pushed the total down into the negative for the day, with net loss of 225 BTC ($28m).

Bagholders is back! July 1 was the official start of the reporting season for 13F filings. And while we don’t expect things to heat up until closer to the deadline (August 15), there are already some teacher’s pets handing in their homework early.

Notable in yesterday’s filings was the Bank of New Hampshire, who have a little position in IBIT.

BNH is a small bank ($2.5b AUM), and the actual holding itself is a rounding error. But it’s cool to see some Bitcoin representation from the “Live Free or Die” state.

We like to poke gentle fun at generational differences here at Flow State.

But I’m not sure how gentle I can be about this. Neil Patel asked 15,000 people whether they’d rather have a million followers, or a million dollars. The results are below…

Somehow, incredibly, 53% of people aged 26-40 opted for the followers. I’m trying to picture the 38 year old elder millennial choosing an Instagram account over a house, and it makes me think my generation truly is cursed.

Of course, 79% of 18-25 year-olds opted for the social media clout too. In their defense, they don’t yet have fully formed brains. Or quite possibly may never.

Those are the Flows this Wednesday.

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you tomorrow.

— Julian

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• Joe Consorti at Theya wrote about recent Bitcoin ETF activity, including the correlation between ETF flows and BTC price.

• Coinbase announced a partnership with the US Department of Justice, to custody assets seized and acquired through forfeiture. They said: “Coinbase is proud of its history of supporting law enforcement agencies.”

• The SEC announced a new rule allowing certain investment products (e.g. potentially crypto tokens) to register with a new form, as an alternative to the traditional S-1. Commissioner Uyeda said: “Consideration should be given to allowing variances from Form S-1 for crypto digital assets.”

• Circle, issuer of the USCD stablecoin, has received a license to operate in the European Union.

• Paxos has been granted a license by Singapore’s central bank to issue stablecoins.

• James Lavish at The Informationist writes about the US Treasury’s “$175 Trillion hole” - meaning the nation’s unfunded liabilities - and what can possibly be done about it.

• Dominic Frisby wrote about the collapse of the Turkish Lira, and spoke to a couple of young Turkish professionals about how it’s affecting life in the country.

These Whales are some picky eaters. They’ve been refusing to eat all week.

Actually, it’s been longer than a week. As you can see below, the Whales have been in distribution mode for about a month. Earlier in the year, during the BTC price run-up, they were feasting.

Source: checkonchain.com

CLSK had a massive Monday, as the market continued to respond positively to its acquisition of GRIID last week. In fact it was a big day for mining stocks all round, with MARA and IREN both up double digits too.

Agrippa Investments has a detailed post about the profitability of the top miners, if you want to dig in more.

Today’s Flow State is brought to you in part by our friends over at Blockletter.

Blockletter is a free weekly newsletter with news, insights and analysis on all things crypto. Premium members get access to even more valuable newsletters, all ad free with additional market updates and insights.

Check out their latest post about US Congressman Matt Gaetz’s proposal to allow Federal taxes to be paid in Bitcoin.

🥇Fidelity

Fidelity had a banger on Monday. Inflows of 1030 BTC ($65m) - the most they’ve had since early June.

🥈Bitwise

Bitwise also had their best day in a month, bringing in 636 BTC ($40m).

🥉Ark

Ark had a tidy day too. They collected 205 BTC ($13m).

🧮 Total

The ETFs were collectively back in some winning form yesterday. Total inflows of 2050 BTC ($129m). It was really thanks to the three mentioned, though Van Eck, Franklin Templeton, and Invesco chipped in. BlackRock was a net zero on the day, and so was Grayscale.

Planning a BBQ for July 4 this year? Well, there’s good news and bad news. Let’s start with the bad: the ‘price of a July 4th cookout’ is up 30% since 2019, according to the American Farm Bureau Association.

But the good(ish) news, is that the food inflation mostly happened in 2022-23, and doesn’t make up most of the CPI inflation these days.

Those are the Flows this Tuesday.

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you tomorrow.

— Julian

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