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Wall Street giant Wells Fargo revealed massive crypto holdings via exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and stocks. The banks revealed exposure to Bitcoin, Ethereum (ETH), Solana, Strategy (MSTR), Bitmine (BMNR) and other crypto stocks.

Wells Fargo Reveals Bitcoin, ETH, Solana ETFs Exposure In its latest SEC filing, $2.5 trillion AUM Wells Fargo disclosed 6.5 million shares in BlackRock Bitcoin ETF (IBIT). It also revealed a new call position and an increase in put position in IBIT amid growing uncertainty during the US-Iran war.

IBIT holdings dropped by 75,102 shares compared to the Q4 quarter. Moreover, the Wall Street giant cut its exposure to the Invesco Galaxy Bitcoin ETF (BTCO), Ark 21Shares Bitcoin ETF, and the Fidelity Bitcoin ETF (FBTC).

While Wells Fargo decreased holdings in IBIT, Bitcoin exposure increased in Grayscale Bitcoin Mini ETF, Bitwise’s BITB, and GBTC. Notably, BITB holdings climbed 24% quarter-on-quarter.

Meanwhile, Wells Fargo boosts Ethereum ETF holdings with a 65% rise in BlackRock Ethereum ETF (ETHA) shares. The bank now holds more than 1.10 million ETHA shares worth $17.56 million.

In addition, the banking firm holds 257,157 Bitwise Ethereum ETF, 4,637 Grayscale Ethereum Staking ETF, and 623 VanEck’s ETHV shares.

Also, Wells Fargo disclosed new exposure to Solana ETFs. It scooped 13,280 in Grayscale’s GSOL and 1,638 in Fidelity Solana Fund (FSOL).

Holding in Strategy’s MSTR, Bitmine, and other Crypto Stocks On the crypto stocks side, Wells Fargo significantly ramped up its position in Michael Saylor’s Strategy (MSTR). The bank boosted its MSTR shares by 125% to almost 726,000 shares, adding an estimated $41.5 million in exposure. Notably, Strategy plans sell Bitcoin, but Grayscale claims Strategy’s Bitcoin sales are good for markets.

It also revealed new holdings in the Trump family’s American Bitcoin Corp (ABTC) and Strive (ASST). This move highlights a preference for established Bitcoin treasury companies over direct mining or trading firms.

The bank significantly increased its holdings in Bitmine Immersion’s BMNR from 2,323 to 21,547 stocks. This makes an 828% rise in Ethereum treasury exposure to $426K.

Robinhood (HOOD) shareholdings jumped from 65% to 2.56 million shares. Wells Fargo also opened put option positions for almost $116K. As CoinGape reported earlier, Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev sold HOOD shares earlier this week.

In contrast, the bank sharply reduced its stake in Galaxy Digital by about 97% and 25% in Coinbase (COIN). This signals a strategic shift away from certain crypto stocks.

Also Read: 11 Best Crypto Copy Trading Platforms in July 2026

Key Highlights Ethereum has rallied approximately 10% throughout July, yet underlying demand signals remain subdued Binance holdings expanded by 221,000 ETH from late June onward, adding to tradable inventory Large holder transaction volumes have fallen to “Whale Left” territory according to CryptoQuant metrics Spot Ethereum ETFs in the United States recorded consecutive inflows over four sessions, accumulating $91.5 million A decisive move above $1,803 resistance (the 50-day EMA) is necessary for ETH to target $2,400 Ethereum has managed to climb roughly 10% since July began, yet the upward momentum appears increasingly precarious. Evidence from various market indicators suggests buyer participation exists but lacks conviction.

Ethereum (ETH) Price The Net Unrealized Profit/Loss (NUPL) indicator has improved from -0.46 to -0.30, signaling that while holders remain underwater on their positions, losses have contracted somewhat compared to previous levels.

Spot Ethereum exchange-traded funds in the United States experienced their first streak of positive net flows since early May, recording four straight days of capital entry. SoSoValue data confirms these combined inflows reached $91.5 million.

While encouraging on the surface, historical patterns indicate sustained ETF capital influx over extended periods is required to catalyze significant price appreciation. Current activity falls short of that threshold.

Crypto analyst Ash Crypto noted on X that ETH has retreated 6% from recent peaks following rejection at the 50-day moving average. He highlighted critical support zones at $1,670 and $1,500, emphasizing that reclaiming the MA 50 and breaking through $1,850 are essential steps toward reaching $2,400.

$ETH down 6% from recent high after rejection from resistance and the daily MA 50.

Next Supports:
– $1,670
– Strong support at $1,500

ETH needs to jump back above the MA 50 and $1,850 for further bullish momentum toward $2,400. pic.twitter.com/eCWlrcEBhO

— Ash Crypto (@AshCrypto) July 8, 2026

Large Holder Activity Contracts Data from CryptoQuant reveals that average whale transaction size declined from approximately 1,500 ETH per trade in mid-May to roughly 1,000 ETH currently, entering territory the analytics platform designates as “Whale Left.”

This retreat by institutional and high-net-worth participants reduces the volume of substantial orders flowing through markets. The resulting environment leaves pricing more vulnerable to smaller transactions, potentially amplifying near-term price swings.

Addresses containing between 10,000 and 100,000 ETH did absorb approximately 100,000 ETH during the previous week. However, total balances in this cohort have remained essentially unchanged across the past three weeks, indicating accumulation has not intensified.

Growing Supply on Trading Platforms Binance’s Ethereum reserves expanded from 3.64 million ETH to 3.87 million ETH since late June concluded—a notable addition of 221,000 ETH representing one of the more substantial reserve buildups observed in recent months.

Source: CryptoQuant Expanding exchange inventories signal greater availability of ETH for immediate market transactions. While this doesn’t guarantee imminent selling, it introduces additional supply-side pressure into a market already demonstrating fragility.

The Coinbase Premium Index, which measures sentiment among United States-based traders, has recovered from -0.169 to -0.076. Despite improvement, the negative reading indicates American buyers continue transacting at discounts relative to international markets.

ETH currently trades in the $1,740 to $1,777 range, maintaining position above the 20-day EMA situated at $1,714. Open interest in derivatives markets has remained stagnant, suggesting leveraged participants are adopting a wait-and-see approach.

A crypto user has lost nearly $1 million after approving a malicious Ethereum transaction that gave scammers access to drain almost the entire wallet balance, adding to hundreds of millions of dollars in phishing losses recorded this year.

Summary

A crypto user lost nearly $1 million after approving a malicious Ethereum transaction that allowed scammers to drain the wallet. Phishing scams caused $723 million in losses across 248 incidents in 2025 as approval based attacks continued targeting crypto users. The latest theft follows another multimillion dollar onchain loss, highlighting separate risks from phishing approvals and flawed transaction routing. According to blockchain security platform Scam Sniffer, the victim lost 999,999 Tether (USDT) in an Ethereum phishing token approval scam on Wednesday after signing a malicious approval request.

— Scam Sniffer | Web3 Anti-Scam (@realScamSniffer) July 9, 2026 On-chain data showed the attackers first attempted to withdraw a rounded $1 million through multicall transactions, but the transfer failed because the wallet held slightly less than that amount.

Seconds later, the attackers adjusted their script and successfully withdrew the wallet’s exact remaining balance.

“The script recalculated and pulled the exact remaining balance,” Scam Sniffer said.

Phishing approvals continue draining crypto wallets Security researchers say approval phishing remains one of the most common social engineering attacks in crypto because users unknowingly grant unlimited spending permissions while believing they are approving a harmless transaction.

According to blockchain security firm CertiK, phishing scams caused $723 million in losses across 248 incidents during 2025. In these attacks, victims are typically tricked into signing malicious token approvals, allowing attackers to move funds from their wallets without requiring another signature.

The latest incident follows another major wallet compromise reported earlier this month. In that case, a crypto holder lost about $1.65 million after connecting to a fake exchange and signing a malicious smart contract.

“The approval gave attackers unlimited access, enabling an automated sweeper to drain funds,” researcher Ryan Coleman said on Friday.

A wallet holder lost $1.65M after connecting to a fake exchange and signing a malicious contract. The approval gave attackers unlimited access, enabling an automated sweeper to drain funds. Always verify contracts and revoke unused token approvals. pic.twitter.com/MbwJx2CHSe

— Ryan C. Coleman (@RyanColeXBT) July 3, 2026 The latest phishing loss comes only days after another high-profile onchain incident highlighted a different risk facing crypto users. Earlier this week, a trader lost nearly $2 million after a decentralized exchange routed an Ether swap through a low-liquidity pool, allowing a same-block arbitrage trade to extract most of the transaction’s value. 

According to GoPlus Security, the loss was caused by transaction routing rather than phishing, prompting researchers to urge users to review execution paths carefully before confirming onchain transactions.

Scam Sniffer advised users to carefully review every signature request, avoid rushing approvals and use scam detection tools or browser extensions before signing wallet transactions.

Ethereum just got its own lobbying arm for the suit-and-tie crowd. On July 1, Ethereum Institutional launched as an independent nonprofit designed to do one thing: make it easier for banks, asset managers, and financial giants to build on Ethereum’s blockchain.

The organization is funded by contributors including Bitmine Immersion Technologies, Sharplink, and Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin. Its board features Thomas Lee of Bitmine, Joseph Chalom of Sharplink, and Executive Director David Walsh. The mission is straightforward: take the institutional engagement work previously scattered across the Ethereum Foundation and consolidate it under one roof with a broader global mandate.

The numbers behind the push Ethereum currently holds between $161 billion and $180 billion in stablecoins, representing over 50% of the global supply. In the world of real-world asset tokenization, where traditional financial instruments get minted as blockchain tokens, Ethereum commands roughly 53% market share.

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Ethereum Institutional claims connections with over 500 institutions and has hosted what it calls the Institutional Ethereum Forum, a gathering of executives collectively managing around $250 trillion in assets under management.

Who’s already building BlackRock has deployed over $122 million in AUM through on-chain products via Securitize, built on Ethereum’s infrastructure. Visa has been experimenting with Ethereum-based settlement. Coinbase, already one of the largest crypto exchanges globally, continues to expand its Ethereum-native products and services.

The network itself has been running without interruption for over a decade now.

Complementing the Ethereum Institutional launch are other recent ecosystem developments. Ethlabs, a separate entity focused on research and development, has been established to handle the technical side. Ethereum’s protocol has also undergone significant upgrades in 2026, including the Glamsterdam and Hegota updates, which have improved network performance and scalability.

What this means for investors When institutions tokenize real-world assets on Ethereum, they need ETH for gas fees. When stablecoin issuance grows on the network, it deepens Ethereum’s liquidity moats. Every new institutional product built on the chain creates structural demand for the underlying infrastructure.

Ethereum’s 53% share of RWA tokenization and its dominance in stablecoins suggest that institutions prioritize security, liquidity, and track record over raw speed.

Traders and long-term holders should monitor stablecoin supply growth on Ethereum as a leading indicator. If Ethereum Institutional succeeds in its mission, the $161 billion to $180 billion in stablecoins currently on the network could grow substantially.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.

Aave’s GHO stablecoin has always needed distribution to matter. The DAO’s approval of a native Arbitrum deployment is a step in that direction, giving the asset a clearer path into one of Ethereum’s busiest scaling ecosystems.

The useful way to read this is not as a guaranteed price signal, but as a fresh piece of information in a market that is trying to sort real developments from noise. The proposal also shows how mature DeFi projects are thinking about expansion now. It is less about launching a token and more about placing that token into the right liquidity venues with the right technical rails.

For more details, visit the official Governance platform.

TL;DR Aave DAO approved a proposal to deploy GHO natively on Arbitrum.The plan expands GHO beyond its original environment and deepens Aave’s stablecoin strategy.The move shows DeFi protocols are still trying to solve cross-chain liquidity and distribution. Why Arbitrum matters for GHO Stablecoins live or die on usefulness. If GHO is going to compete for real DeFi activity, it needs to be available where borrowing, lending, and trading already happen. Arbitrum gives it access to a deeper layer-2 user base and more places where liquidity can circulate.

The proposal also shows how mature DeFi projects are thinking about expansion now. It is less about launching a token and more about placing that token into the right liquidity venues with the right technical rails.

The Market Read Explain the Chainlink CCIP role without making it too technical.

That is the balance readers need to keep in mind. Crypto markets are quick to turn every update into a single-direction trade, but most durable stories are more layered than that. They matter because they change positioning, incentives, infrastructure, or regulation over time.

What Comes Into Focus Now From here, the important thing is follow-through. If the source data, company update, filing, or on-chain record continues to move in the same direction, this can become part of a larger trend. If it stalls, it is still useful as a snapshot of where attention is sitting today.

For traders and readers, the cleaner takeaway is to separate the confirmed development from the speculation around it. The confirmed part is what deserves coverage. The speculation is what needs caution.

For DeFi readers specifically, the story is useful because it gives a clearer frame for the next few sessions. It tells them what to watch, which part of the market is reacting, and where the first obvious risk sits. That is more valuable than simply saying a token, company, or regulator has made a move. The useful work is in connecting the update to liquidity, positioning, adoption, enforcement, or user behaviour without pretending that any single headline controls the whole market.

The practical question now is whether this remains an isolated update or becomes part of a chain of follow-through. A second filing, another wallet move, fresh dashboard data, a new governance vote, or a stronger market reaction can all turn a clean single-day story into a broader narrative. Without that follow-through, it still matters, but more as a marker of where attention was concentrated on July 8 than as a complete trend on its own.

That distinction is especially important in a market where headlines can travel faster than context. A source-backed update gives readers something firmer to work with, but it does not remove liquidity risk, execution risk, or the chance that traders fade the initial reaction once the first wave of attention passes.

In that sense, the headline is only the starting point. The better read is to watch how builders, exchanges, funds, wallets, regulators, or large holders respond after the first announcement has moved through the feed.

This report is based on information from governance.aave.com.

This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.

Tether burned 2.5 billion USDT on the Ethereum network, marking one of the largest stablecoin supply reductions in recent months. According to CryptoQuant data, this was the largest single-day Ethereum-based USDT burn since the 3.5 billion USDT burn on February 10th.

Another notable development in the market was the sharp drop in USDT balances flowing in and out of Binance via the Tron network. According to the data, the USDT balance circulating through Binance’s Tron channel fell to approximately $860 million.

This level is the lowest recorded since the $391 million low seen on December 29, 2025. It also marks the first time in a long time that the balance has fallen below $1 billion.

Analysts note that Tether’s large-scale burn on Ethereum should not be interpreted as a direct signal regarding market direction.

Stablecoin issuers typically conduct such operations for purposes such as investor repayments, treasury management, reserve optimization, or cross-chain liquidity balancing. Therefore, the burning data alone may not necessarily indicate an expected rise or fall in the market.

However, it is noted that the decrease in the USDT supply on Ethereum and the simultaneous contraction of USDT liquidity in Binance’s Tron channel should be considered together. According to experts, the simultaneous occurrence of these two developments could send important signals, especially regarding exchange-based stablecoin flows and cross-chain liquidity distribution.

In the cryptocurrency market, stablecoin movements are closely watched as they offer important clues about investor behavior, exchange liquidity, and overall risk appetite. These recent developments involving Tether have also caught the attention of market participants.

*This is not investment advice.

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In This Article Korea's XRP Ripple Premium Is Structural, Not AccidentalWhale Activity and Exchange Outflows Back the Retail StoryXRP Price Context: Recovery in Progress, Global Volume Softer XRP Ripple has reclaimed the top spot on Upbit, South Korea’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, with $52.33M in 24-hour trading volume, outpacing Bitcoin at $42.14M and Ethereum at $24.30M on the same venue.

Roughly 10% of Upbit’s entire $493.74M daily crypto exchange volume was in XRP while the two largest coins by global market cap finished second and third.

(SOURCE: CoinGecko)

The gap matters because Bitcoin and Ethereum represent the default institutional benchmarks for crypto demand. When XRP trading volume overtakes both on a major regulated exchange, it is a signal that Korean retail capital is rotating toward the token with intention, not just chasing a news headline.

Even with XRP dominating trading volume in South Korea, the token is trading at $1.13, down -1.4% over the past 24 hours, with overall daily trading volume at just over $1.71Bn.

Korea’s XRP Ripple Premium Is Structural, Not Accidental The current volume snapshot fits a pattern that has been building for years. According to Upbit’s own disclosure, XRP was the exchange’s largest digital asset by cumulative trading volume in 2025, surpassing $1 trillion in trading volume on the platform and exceeding Bitcoin’s total.

Ryan Yoon, an analyst at Tiger Research cited by Investing.com, attributes the sustained dominance to South Korean retail investors, particularly those in their 40s and 50s, rotating capital out of domestic and US equities and back into crypto, with XRP as their primary target.

Earlier this year, XRP trading volume on Upbit surged 289% in a single hour during a momentum window, compared to a 128% increase on Binance over the same period.

The divergence illustrates just how sensitive the Korean crypto market is to XRP price catalysts relative to global venues. PANews reports that approximately 15% of global XRP trading volume now originates from South Korea.

DISCOVER: Best Meme Coin ICOs to Invest in 2026

Whale Activity and Exchange Outflows Back the Retail Story 🚨🚨🚨Something interesting is happening with $XRP liquidity.

Upbit just took the top spot in XRP trading volume, beating Binance, Coinbase, and every other global exchange on the heatmap.

Liquidity is positioning before headlines catch up.

Why is South Korea betting on $XRP? pic.twitter.com/OG61uKXEo1

— X Finance Bull (@Xfinancebull) March 8, 2026

The volume data is one half of the picture. The other is where the coins go after they are traded. In May, an unidentified investor withdrew 6.3 million XRP from Upbit in a single transaction.

Around the same time, on-chain data tracked by CoinGlass showed whale investors, large holders whose moves can shift market structure, pulled $135M worth of XRP off exchanges in a single week.

Exchange outflows, where coins move from trading platforms into private wallets, are a standard on-chain metric (a measure derived directly from blockchain transaction data) interpreted as accumulation rather than selling preparation.

Data from CoinGlass shows net XRP outflows from exchanges totaled $30.38M over the past seven days and $147.50M over the past month.

That combination, high spot trading volume on Upbit alongside sustained net outflows globally, suggests two distinct buyer cohorts: active Korean retail traders on one side and longer-horizon accumulators on the other.

EXCLUSIVE: Earn $10 USDC Via Binance Sign-Up

XRP Price Context: Recovery in Progress, Global Volume Softer The "3rd Retest" would be a gift 🎁 $XRP https://t.co/VaSUr4R1OR pic.twitter.com/kRbJ4Sc36Z

— 🇬🇧 ChartNerd 📊 (@ChartNerdTA) July 6, 2026

On the XRP Ripple price, the token bottomed at $1.01 during last month’s broader market selloff before recovering to approximately $1.14, a 12.87% rebound. Over the past week, it is up +8%, with a -1.4% loss in the most recent 24-hour window. XRP’s current market capitalization is roughly $77Bn, ranking it sixth among cryptocurrencies globally.

One counterpoint worth flagging: global XRP trading volume over the same 24-hour period fell 31% to approximately $1.21Bn. The strength on Upbit is therefore a Korean-specific phenomenon running against a softer global backdrop, not a uniform global surge.

That divergence reinforces the argument that domestic Korean crypto market dynamics, retail rotation, KRW liquidity depth, and Ripple’s longstanding relationships with Korean remittance providers are doing the heavy lifting.

Institutional demand is also building alongside the retail story. XRP-linked ETFs have attracted over $1.21Bn in cumulative inflows globally, according to data cited by TradingView, while Bitcoin and Ether spot ETFs recorded net outflows over the same period.

That institutional channel may eventually decouple XRP’s Korean spot activity from pure retail sentiment and anchor it to a broader demand base.

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Bitcoin and Ethereum supplies on exchanges are reported to be near their lowest levels since 2017 and 2015, respectively, according to Santiment. This development suggests a significant shift of these digital assets away from centralized platforms into long-term holdings, staking, and decentralized finance options. The decrease in exchange supplies could be indicative of reduced sell-side liquidity, potentially leading to increased price pressures if demand remains strong. Market participants appear to view this trend as consistent with long-term holding patterns and institutional accumulation.

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Key Takeaways Bitcoin and Ethereum exchange supplies are at historic lows, suggesting reduced sell-side liquidity. Market activity implies a shift toward long-term holding and institutional accumulation for both assets. Pricing suggests participants view this supply squeeze as potentially increasing upward price pressures on Bitcoin and Ethereum. What to Watch Market observers will be closely monitoring any changes in Bitcoin and Ethereum’s demand dynamics, as continued strong demand could amplify price increases. Key indicators include institutional investment flows, particularly through ETFs and staking platforms. Additionally, regulatory developments and technological upgrades within the Ethereum network could further impact market pricing, as seen with previous major updates such as The Merge.

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Term Structure

Contract Odds Δ since publish Volume 24h December 31, 2026 1.2% — — View market → December 31, 2026 2.6% — — View market → December 31, 2026 3% — — View market → December 31, 2026 4.2% — — View market → December 31, 2026 5.5% — — View market → January 1 2027 11.5% — — View market → January 1 2027 17.5% — — View market → January 1 2027 2.1% — — View market → January 1 2027 2.5% — — View market → January 1 2027 4.5% — — View market → January 1 2027 4.5% — — View market → January 1 2027 7.5% — — View market → January 1 2027 67.6% — — View market → January 1 2027 11% — — View market → January 1 2027 3.9% — — View market → January 1 2027 22% — — View market → January 1 2027 44% — — View market →

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has a revised technical roadmap that researchers broadly support. The problem: they're also impatient.

Buterin's updated "strawmap," published July 5 following Ethereum's Berlin research summit, describes a three-to-four-year protocol overhaul that would touch nearly every major component of the network — consensus layer, execution environment, state management, and cryptography. The framework, dubbed "Lean Ethereum," is the most comprehensive restructuring proposal since the 2022 Merge that moved the network from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake.

Two weeks ago, Ethereum researchers met in Berlin to continue charting the protocol's long-term trajectory, following along discussions with client teams in Svalbard in April.

The updated strawmap is at https://t.co/HZEerH1xxI, and I attached a picture of it to this post.

My… pic.twitter.com/KPGayHSySf

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) July 4, 2026 The headline priorities in the updated roadmap are quantum resistance and privacy, both elevated to immediate concerns rather than long-horizon objectives. Quantum resistance involves replacing the elliptic curve cryptography underlying Ethereum's signature scheme with quantum-safe alternatives — work the industry treats as increasingly urgent given advances in quantum computing research. Privacy is now designated a "first-class goal," meaning core protocol components will be designed to enable private, trustless transactions by default, rather than layering privacy solutions on top.

The technical architecture also shifts how Ethereum verifies itself. Rather than every node re-executing every transaction, the network plans to adopt recursive STARKs — a cryptographic proof system that allows a single node to verify that work was done correctly by checking a compact proof, rather than repeating it. The goal is a lighter, faster network that is cheaper to operate and harder to censor.

Ethereum's current "flexible state" — the running record of every account balance, smart contract, and token ledger — would be capped in its current form while new, more scalable state types are introduced. The long-term EVM replacement, RISC-V, remains under consideration as the preferred instruction set architecture for a post-EVM Ethereum.

The market has responded positively. ETH traded at $1,780.99 as of Tuesday, up 11.92% over seven days and 0.04% in the past 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap data. Bitcoin was at $63,411, up 5.78% over the week.

The execution timeline is where consensus fractures. Ethereum core developers broadly endorse the roadmap's direction but are pressing for faster delivery. The Strawmap remains a multi-year programme with no guaranteed hard dates — a structural reality that sits uncomfortably against a competitive landscape where Solana has gained significant developer and institutional ground on throughput and latency.

The fork choice between a technically superior but slower roadmap and a market that rewards speed is one Ethereum's research community has not yet resolved.

JPMorgan's JLTXX tokenized money market fund has grown its onchain assets under management by roughly 250% over the past month, according to data platform Token Terminal. The bank runs the fund exclusively on Ethereum. JLTXX, formally the OnChain Liquidity Token Money Market Fund, launched May 13…

JPMorgan's JLTXX tokenized money market fund has grown its onchain assets under management by roughly 250% over the past month, according to data platform Token Terminal. The bank runs the fund exclusively on Ethereum.

JLTXX, formally the OnChain Liquidity Token Money Market Fund, launched May 13 with JPMorgan seeding it with $100 million of its own capital, according to a thread from ethereuminsti. Other launch investors brought day-one total value locked to $200 million. Seven weeks later, TVL reached $695 million, a 248% increase, the thread said, a figure consistent with Token Terminal's roughly 250% estimate.

JLTXX's growth partly reflects its use as reserve backing for stablecoins. Dune's analytics account said the fund's addition to USDG's reserves, alongside BlackRock's BUIDL and Superstate's STBXX, points to rising institutional demand for onchain Treasury exposure that complies with the GENIUS Act, the U.S. stablecoin law that sets eligibility rules for reserve assets.

Second Filing in MayThe Defiant previously reported that JPMorgan filed for the fund on May 13, roughly three weeks after Morgan Stanley launched its own Stablecoin Reserves Portfolio, as banks compete to supply compliant reserve assets to stablecoin issuers.

Ethereum remains the only blockchain available to JLTXX investors, per ethereuminsti, even as JPMorgan operates its own private Kinexys network for other settlement activity. The fund's growth adds to a broader push by banks and asset managers, including BlackRock and Fidelity, to bring money market products onchain as stablecoin issuers seek yield-bearing, regulation-compliant collateral.

No exact current AUM figure has been published by JPMorgan itself; the $695 million and 248%-250% growth figures come from third-party onchain trackers Token Terminal and Dune, which independently arrived at consistent numbers.

A HyperSwap user lost about $12,300 after clicking a fake airdrop link on X, approving one wallet request, and unknowingly giving a scammer control of his funds.

BeInCrypto reconstructed the attack with the victim using public blockchain records. The records show a fast phishing operation inside the Hyperliquid ecosystem. 

The scammer took the victim’s position on HyperSwap, withdrew the funds behind it, converted them into HYPE, and moved the money to Ethereum in less than two minutes.

Note: HyperSwap is an exchange that runs on the Hyperliquid blockchain. HyperSwap has its own team, and Hyperliquid does not manage it — just as the creators of Ethereum do not manage applications like Uniswap running on it.

The Trap Started With a Fake X Account The victim used HyperSwap. Like other decentralized exchanges, it lets users trade directly from their wallets without a company holding their funds.

The victim had supplied money to a HyperSwap liquidity pool. In simple terms, he had deposited crypto, so other users could trade against it. In return, he could earn fees.

On HyperSwap V3, that position was represented by NFT #178549. This was not a picture or collectible. It was more like a digital receipt. Whoever controlled that NFT controlled the funds linked to the position.

The victim told BeInCrypto he saw a post on X promoting an airdrop. An airdrop is a token giveaway, often used by crypto projects to reward users.

The Scammer’s Post Using a Fake X Account with a Very Similar Username to the Official HyperSwap Account The post appeared to come from HyperSwap. It did not. It came from an impostor account with a handle that closely resembled the real HyperSwap account, HyperSwapX, which is linked from the project’s official website.

The victim followed the link and connected his wallet. He believed he was checking whether he qualified for the airdrop. Instead, he approved a transaction that gave the scammer permission to move his HyperSwap position.

That approval was the key moment.

One Approval Gave the Scammer Control Crypto wallets often ask users to approve transactions. Some approvals are harmless. Others give another address permission to move valuable assets.

To most users, the warning can look routine. A fake site can make a dangerous approval look like a normal step in claiming tokens.

That appears to be what happened here.

At 20:21:51 UTC on June 29, the scammer used the earlier approval to transfer NFT #178549 out of the victim’s wallet. The victim did not sign anything at that moment. The scammer had already secured permission.

The scammer’s address was 0x880C95246D7525b84902E6c040818a7C72d3Aa77. HyperEVM explorer records flagged it as Fake_Phishing3746335, with a “Phish / Hack” tag reported by HashDit.

The NFT moved to another scammer-controlled wallet. Once that happened, the attacker controlled the liquidity position.

Twenty-five seconds later, the scammer withdrew the funds behind the NFT. The position contained about 3,935 USDC and 116.6 WHYPE. Together, they were worth roughly $12,300 at the time.

Theft transaction in hyperevmscan: On June 29, 2026, the address marked as Fake_Phishing3746335 transferred the victim’s NFT (0x39f2…0f9E) to his wallet The Money Was Moved Fast After withdrawing the funds, the scammer prepared to move them away from HyperEVM.

First, the wallet gave permission to LI.FI, a legitimate cross-chain bridge and swap service. A bridge lets users move crypto from one blockchain to another.

There is no evidence that LI.FI took part in the theft. The scammer used it after stealing the funds.

The scammer then converted the stolen USDC and WHYPE into about 175.9 HYPE. Seconds later, the HYPE was bridged from HyperEVM to Ethereum.

The destination was 0xFa47eef42fB2C63DCEA0cAC2295a58036052932D. On Ethereum, that wallet received the funds and almost immediately moved 7.035 ETH onward in one transaction.

The wallet had been created shortly before. It was used once and left almost empty. That pattern is common in laundering chains, where stolen funds pass through temporary wallets to make tracing harder.

From the NFT transfer to the bridge transaction, the active theft took about 84 seconds.

A Wider Phishing Pattern The scammer’s wallet appeared to be part of a broader operation.

Explorer records reviewed by BeInCrypto showed the address had been active for about 33 days. It was also linked to roughly 25 other addresses. That suggests the attacker may have targeted more than one user.

The link to the fraudulent resource has been hanging in messages since June 26 For victims, the problem is practical. Blockchain records can show what happened. They rarely stop it from happening in real time.

Once a user signs a bad approval, the scammer can act quickly. Once funds move across chains, recovery becomes even harder.

The victim later tried to report the suspicious link and get it removed. He said he felt ignored and began to suspect the HyperSwap team had failed to act.

The on-chain evidence reviewed by BeInCrypto points to a phishing attack from an impostor account. The fake X account was separate from HyperSwap’s official account. The official HyperSwap account and official contract were not shown to have carried out the theft.

However, the victim’s experience highlights a serious weakness in the ecosystem. Users can be attacked through fake social media accounts, drained through confusing wallet approvals, and left with few clear options after the money is gone.

During a conversation with BeInCrypto journalists, the victim stated that they tried various ways to warn the Hyperliquid team about the scam, but received no response.

According to the victim, the only active communication channel with HyperSwap was Discord. At the time of writing, the link to it is invalid. So he tried to get the problem across to the ecosystem team where the project works, but that attempt was unsuccessful.

The screenshot shows our interlocutor trying to reach Hyperliquid support via Discord. In this case, the Hyperliquid command ignores the user’s request to send a message about the found vulnerability and prompts him to contact HyperSwap himself. Overall, the scammer’s method was simple. A fake account promoted a fake airdrop. A fake site secured wallet approval. A flagged phishing wallet took the victim’s HyperSwap position, emptied it, and moved the funds to Ethereum.

The loss was about $12,300. The theft took less than two minutes.

The victim suggested that HyperSwap employees may be involved in the theft or are deliberately hiding it. However, BeInCrypto could not find any exact information to support those claims. 

Solana is now formally in the U.S. spot ETF conversation after a VanEck-linked proposal reached the SEC through a Cboe BZX rule filing.

For more details, visit the official SEC platform.

TL;DR A Solana spot ETF proposal has entered the SEC process through a Form 19b-4 filing.The filing argues that SOL should be treated as a commodity-style crypto asset rather than a security.Approval is not guaranteed, but the filing expands the ETF race beyond Bitcoin and Ethereum. The filing is important because spot crypto ETFs in the U.S. have so far been dominated by Bitcoin, with Ethereum products forming the next major battleground. Solana entering the process gives investors a clearer view of which altcoins institutions think can support a regulated fund wrapper.

Solana Gets Its ETF Test VanEck has been one of the more aggressive asset managers in digital assets, and the Solana filing fits that pattern. The central question is whether the SEC will accept the argument that SOL has enough market structure, liquidity, and regulatory clarity to sit inside a spot ETF product.

That is not a small hurdle. Bitcoin and Ethereum already had deep futures markets, years of institutional coverage, and extensive regulatory discussion before their fund structures advanced. Solana has strong network usage and a large market, but it also comes with a different history around outages, token distribution, and how regulators classify major altcoins.

Why The Filing Still Matters Even if approval takes time, the filing changes the conversation. It shows that major issuers are no longer waiting for the SEC to define the next wave of crypto ETF assets. They are forcing the question directly through the rule-change process.

For Solana, that matters beyond the immediate price reaction. ETF filings can reshape how advisers, institutions, and trading desks talk about an asset. SOL is no longer only being pitched as a high-speed chain for DeFi and memecoins. It is now being positioned as the next serious candidate for regulated U.S. fund exposure.

This report is based on the SEC filing for the proposed Solana ETF rule change.

This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.

A major decentralized finance transaction on the Ethereum network ended with an estimated $2 million loss after a large swap was routed through a low-liquidity pool. According to blockchain analytics group Lookonchain and security firm GoPlus Security, the user exchanged 1,126.44 ETH—worth about $2.01 million at the time—in a single transaction.

Price impact from pool route deepened lossesInstead of receiving assets close to the original amount, the trader ended up with just 5,776 LIT tokens, valued at around $14,200. GoPlus Security clarified that the loss was not caused by a hack or a standard front-running scenario. Rather, it resulted from a backrunning arbitrage mechanism operating within the same block, exploiting price inconsistencies caused by the trade. GoPlus Security is widely recognized for its work on blockchain and smart contract risk assessment.

GoPlus Security emphasized that this was not a security breach or typical front-running, but rather price manipulation from a backrunning arbitrage opportunity occurring within the same block.

The ill-fated swap was routed through the AVAIL/WETH pool on Uniswap V3. With extremely limited liquidity in this pool, the large ETH order instantly pushed the AVAIL token price far above its actual market value. This forced the trader to purchase the token at a dramatically inflated price, resulting in severe losses.

Backrunning arbitrage within the same block draws attentionThe transaction continued across additional trading routes. After the AVAIL tokens were swapped for USDC, the trader then bought LIT on Uniswap V4. However, due to unfavorable price execution along each step, almost the entire value of the original ETH was wiped out.

As explained by GoPlus Security, after the large swap disrupted prices in the AVAIL/WETH pool, a backrunning participant acquired AVAIL at or near the fair market value from another source. That trader then sold the tokens into the artificially inflated pool, extracting more than 1,072 WETH as profit.

Glossary: MEV (Maximal Extractable Value) refers to the extra profit gained from prioritizing and ordering transactions during block production. A “backrunner” is a participant who quickly moves in to profit from temporary price swings caused by a large order.

On-chain data showed that roughly 1,018 ETH was subsequently sent to Titan Builder as a block producer payment.

Low liquidity raises risk for large tradesBlockchain records reveal that about 1,018 ETH was later paid to Titan Builder as a block builder fee. This highlights how MEV participants can seize pricing imbalances during block production to generate significant revenue. Titan Builder stands out as a key transaction organizer within the Ethereum block-building ecosystem.

The incident has reignited debate about the risks associated with processing large orders through pools with limited liquidity. When a sizable transaction passes through such markets, even a single order can cause rapid and extreme price fluctuations. While arbitrageurs often restore price equilibrium after the fact, users may end up paying far above the true market value during these episodes.

Ultimately, this example underscores the need for smarter routing technologies in decentralized trading. Systems that avoid illiquid pools and better estimate transaction costs on a route-by-route basis could help prevent similar costly errors in the future.

Disclaimer: The information contained in this article does not constitute investment advice. Investors should be aware that cryptocurrencies carry high volatility and therefore risk, and should conduct their own research.

Key Takeaways Blockchain security company Coinspect has identified a critical security weakness dubbed “Ill Bloom” that impacts cryptocurrency wallets on Bitcoin, Ethereum, Polygon, Tron, Solana, and additional networks The security issue originates from inadequate random number generation used when creating wallet recovery phrases in specific mobile wallet applications Hackers have successfully stolen a minimum of $5 million starting May 27, including one coordinated assault that emptied 431 wallets totaling $3.1 million The vulnerability has existed since 2018, meaning wallets created years ago could still be compromised Users can verify their wallet’s safety using a complimentary verification tool provided by Coinspect Coinspect, a prominent blockchain security organization, has revealed a critical security flaw named “Ill Bloom” that threatens thousands of cryptocurrency wallets worldwide.

The security weakness is rooted in insufficient randomness during the seed phrase generation process used by certain software wallets. When wallet applications employ inadequate random number generators during the creation phase, the resulting mnemonic phrases become susceptible to prediction and exploitation by malicious actors.

Multiple blockchain networks are impacted, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Polygon, Rootstock, Tron, and Solana.

According to Coinspect’s investigation, this security flaw has existed for at least six years, dating back to 2018. Alarmingly, vulnerable wallets were still being created as recently as several weeks ago, putting both longtime users and newcomers at serious risk.

Timeline of the Exploitation Campaign The first major coordinated attack occurred on May 27, when cybercriminals targeted 431 wallets from a pool of 2,114 identified vulnerable addresses, successfully draining $3.1 million worth of digital assets.

A second wave of attacks struck over the weekend, with approximately $2 million extracted from compromised wallets. Current estimates place total losses at a minimum of $5 million, though Coinspect suggests the actual figure may be considerably higher when accounting for losses across all affected blockchain networks.

To prevent further exploitation, Coinspect has deliberately withheld complete technical specifications of the vulnerability, limiting the information available to potential attackers.

According to the security firm, hardware wallet owners remain unaffected by this particular vulnerability. Most popular software wallet providers are also considered secure. The primary risk group consists of individuals who generated their recovery phrases using obscure or lesser-known mobile wallet applications.

Historical Precedents of Seed Generation Vulnerabilities The Ill Bloom vulnerability is not an isolated incident in the cryptocurrency security landscape.

During 2023, Ledger’s cybersecurity division discovered that the browser extension version of Trust Wallet contained a seed generation weakness that significantly reduced randomness. This flaw reduced potential phrase combinations to approximately four billion possibilities, making it feasible for attackers to crack wallets within 24 hours using modest GPU computing power. Trust Wallet addressed the vulnerability before any user funds were compromised.

Similarly in 2023, a security weakness in the Libbitcoin Explorer wallet software resulted in $900,000 being stolen through systematic private key brute-force attacks.

What makes the Ill Bloom vulnerability particularly concerning is that it doesn’t originate from a single wallet provider, making remediation efforts more complex and widespread.

SlowMist, a respected security monitoring organization, has confirmed it is actively tracking the ongoing situation. Coinspect is calling on wallet developers to implement weak mnemonic detection capabilities directly into their applications.

Concerned users can access Coinspect’s specialized verification tool to determine whether their wallet addresses are vulnerable. If unauthorized transactions have occurred from your wallet, the Ill Bloom vulnerability may be responsible.

Glamsterdam, @ethereum's next major hard fork, has reached its final devnet stage with ten Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) locked in. Core developers call it the most significant protocol change since The Merge.

Two EIPs Driving the UpgradeTwo proposals sit at the heart of the upgrade. Enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation (ePBS), defined in EIP-7732, integrates the block-building process directly into the Ethereum protocol. This removes the current 80 to 90 percent reliance on third-party relays like MEV-Boost, reducing centralization risks and ensuring a fairer, more transparent distribution of Maximal Extractable Value (MEV).

The second headliner is EIP-7928, Block-Level Access Lists (BALs). Block-level Access Lists let blocks declare the accounts and state they will touch, enabling faster parallel execution and raising the L1 transactions-per-second ceiling.

Beyond the two headliners, the package also contains EIP-7708 (ETH transfers and burns emit a log), EIP-7778 (block gas accounting without refunds), EIP-7843 (a SLOTNUM opcode), EIP-7954 (raising the maximum contract size from roughly 24 KiB to 32 KiB), EIP-7975 (eth/70 partial block receipt lists), EIP-8024 (backward-compatible SWAPN, DUPN and EXCHANGE opcodes), EIP-8037 (state-creation gas-cost increase), and EIP-8159 (eth/71 Block Access List Exchange).

Gas Limit and TimelineTogether, the two headline proposals clear a path toward a dramatically higher gas ceiling. The 200 million gas limit is the design target for what Glamsterdam unblocks, not a value the fork itself enforces. Validators set the limit via standard gas-vote signaling, which they currently coordinate around the 60 million range, and would step it up only as nodes prove they can handle the larger blocks without degraded propagation.

The final devnet is the last major engineering phase before client releases, security reviews, and public testnets. Holesky and Hoodi will fork before mainnet, and only after multi-client stability holds for several epochs across those networks. Past forks have run two to four months of public-testnet seasoning, putting a mainnet window broadly between September and December 2026.

Ethereum Foundation contributors note Glamsterdam is proving trickier and slower than Fusaka, so a slip remains possible. No firm mainnet activation slot has been set. What is clear is that $ETH's base layer, if the upgrade lands on schedule, will be materially more capable heading into 2027.

Sources:
The Defiant: Ethereum's Glamsterdam Upgrade Enters Final Devnet Phase
Datawallet: Ethereum Glamsterdam Upgrade and EIPs Explained
Kiln: Glamsterdam, Ethereum's Next Hard Fork Explained

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin published a post stating that Ethereum researchers recently held a meeting in Berlin, continuing discussions with client teams initiated in Svalbard in April, to update the blockchain’s long-term protocol roadmap. Vitalik noted that "Lean Ethereum" is not a single upgrade, but a series of protocol evolutions to be rolled out gradually over the next 3 to 4 years—its impact is comparable to The Merge as Ethereum’s second major iteration, while the current phase may mark its third major evolution. He outlined core upcoming changes for Ethereum: replacing direct execution verification with recursive STARK proofs, integrating post-quantum cryptography, adjusting the consensus mechanism to a decoupled design of available chain and finality, and implementing multi-dimensional gas models alongside state structure restructuring. At the state level, Ethereum may form a "two-tier state structure" around 2030, consisting of ~2TB of traditional dynamic state and ~100TB of new scalable state to support scaling needs across different application scenarios. Vitalik emphasized that privacy capabilities will no longer be an add-on feature, but a core goal of protocol design. The system will also rely more on formal verification to boost security, and push the EVM toward higher-level abstractions, with the underlying layer potentially transitioning gradually to RISC-V or leanISA architectures. Key parameters including gas limits, blob sizes, and block times will be adjusted multiple times over the next few years, as Ethereum continues scaling via client optimizations and protocol upgrades. Vitalik concluded that Ethereum is entering a phase of continuous restructuring and scaling, aiming to complete underlying system upgrades without disrupting the existing application ecosystem.

Relevant content

The U.S. CLARITY Act has made further progress, while the county sheriffs' organization has shifted to a neutral stance.

The Major County Sheriffs Association (MCSA) has shifted its stance on the CLARITY Act from opposition to neutrality. In a letter to Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott and Senator Elizabeth Warren, the organization noted that some of its concerns about Section 604 of the bill have been addressed. Previously, the MCSA had warned that the provision could undermine, to some extent, law enforcement capabilities targeting illegal financial activities related to crypto assets. Section 604 is tied to the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act, with its core focus on limiting liability for developers of decentralized protocols. Supporters argue that developers should not be held liable as intermediaries for user actions, while law enforcement agencies had earlier raised fears that the provision could create regulatory and enforcement "loopholes" that would hinder investigations into cases like money laundering, ransomware, drug trafficking, and terrorist financing. Despite the neutral stance, the MCSA still calls for including local law enforcement agencies in relevant research and coordination mechanisms in future revisions to boost digital asset crime investigation capabilities. Analysts say this change removes a key obstacle to the CLARITY Act’s progress, boosting its feasibility of advancing to a Senate vote. However, opposition from the banking sector to stablecoin yield products and DeFi regulation remains a major uncertainty.

16 minutes ago

Perspective: The next phase of tokenization will be "customized investment portfolios", rather than just improving settlement efficiency.

Thomas Sy, head of multi-asset solutions at New York Life Investment Management (NYLIM), stated that the next core application of tokenization will be "personalized portfolio construction" rather than just improving settlement efficiency or extending trading hours. NYLIM manages approximately $807 billion in total assets, with about $110 billion overseen by Sy’s team. He noted that blockchain technology will enable asset management firms to customize complex portfolio strategies for different investors at scale—a capability the traditional financial system currently struggles to deliver. Sy added that the future of asset management will center on "high customization," and blockchain is the only technological path capable of achieving this at scale. He emphasized that tokenization is not limited to putting ETFs, bonds or private credit on the blockchain; the key is to restructure the very way portfolios are built. He also pointed out that current portfolios often mix ETFs, bonds and private assets, but personalized strategies are difficult to scale due to operational complexity. Tokenization is expected to "embed customization logic into the assets themselves," reducing operational costs and boosting efficiency. Additionally, Sy said stablecoins have become a key entry point for traditional finance to access on-chain markets. Currently, the stablecoin market capitalization exceeds $300 billion, and they are being used for cross-border payments and fund management. He believes this trend will gradually drive institutional demand for on-chain yield-generating assets. On decentralized finance (DeFi), NYLIM is still researching related applications, but Sy stressed that institutional participation requires more mature infrastructure, including improved tokenized collateral, clearing mechanisms and prime brokerage systems.

16 minutes ago

US national debt has hit $39 trillion, sparking long-term concerns, with analysts warning the risk of an unsustainable fiscal path is rising.

The size of U.S. national debt has risen to around $39 trillion, with public debt equivalent to the total U.S. GDP. Annual interest payments have reached roughly $1 trillion, exceeding the defense budget. The U.S. Treasury system traces its origins to the debt consolidation reform promoted by Alexander Hamilton in 1790, when the federal government assumed the war debts of individual states and promised full repayment, thereby establishing the U.S. credit system and laying the foundation for the global status of the U.S. dollar and U.S. Treasuries. Today, U.S. Treasuries are regarded as one of the core assets of the global financial system, underpinning the reserve currency status of the U.S. dollar and widely held by central banks and financial institutions worldwide. However, as the debt scale continues to expand, market concerns about its long-term sustainability have intensified. According to calculations from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Budget Model (PWBM), when the debt-to-GDP ratio exceeds around 210%, the fiscal system may face unsustainability risks. Currently, the U.S. ratio stands at roughly 100%, and the U.S. Congressional Budget Office projects it could rise to 175% by 2056. Analysts note that in scenarios of rising healthcare spending and persistent fiscal deficits, this risk threshold could be reached earlier, and the long-term stability of the debt structure is facing more stringent market and policy tests.

16 minutes ago

Iran’s new supreme leader remains unaccounted for, as Tehran continues to hold mourning events for Khamenei.

According to CNN, mourning events for late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei are ongoing in Tehran and multiple Iranian cities, drawing an estimated millions of participants, and will run through July 9. Meanwhile, the international community is uncertain about his successor. Reports indicate his son Mojtaba Khamenei has not made a public appearance, sparking concerns over the power transition and actual governance. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has also warned of security threats targeting the country in the coming days. On the regional front, abnormal shipping activity has been observed in the Strait of Hormuz, with multiple vessels turning back while attempting to transit, and the situation remains uncertain. Separately, U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have held a phone call and agreed to meet in the U.S. soon, with outside attention focused on further coordination between the two countries amid tensions with Iran.

16 minutes ago

Bitcoin broke through $63,000 this morning, erasing all losses from the end of June, with XRP leading gains among major cryptocurrencies.

Bitcoin rose above $63,000 earlier today for the first time in two weeks, up roughly 3.6% from last week and nearly erasing losses from late June. The rally unfolded during thin trading volume for the U.S. Independence Day holiday, with low liquidity widely seen as amplifying short-term volatility. Among major cryptocurrencies, XRP gained 5.3% to reach $1.18, notching a nearly 10% weekly rise and lifting its market cap to around $73 billion, overtaking USDC to become the fifth-largest crypto asset. On-chain data shows XRP holders’ average losses have hit an extreme historical level, leading some traders to view this as a sentiment reversal signal. Ether (ETH) climbed 3.2% to approximately $1,793, with a weekly gain of ~11.5%; Dogecoin (DOGE) rose 2.6%; Solana (SOL) added around 13.2% week-over-week, extending the broader rebound trend. Analysts attribute the rally to Federal Reserve officials signaling easing inflation pressure, weaker non-farm payroll data, and short covering, with Bitcoin bouncing rapidly from below $60,000 to above $63,000. The market’s future trajectory will hinge on upcoming U.S. inflation data and the return of institutional liquidity after the holiday.

16 minutes ago

BTSE has launched cryptocurrency trading platform BTSE Indonesia in Indonesia.

Blockchain trading and payments firm BTSE Group recently launched cryptocurrency trading platform BTSE Indonesia in Jakarta via a joint venture with PT Aset Kripto Internasional, and completed the rebranding of local licensed platform NVX. It is understood that BTSE will provide trading infrastructure and liquidity support, while the local Indonesian team will handle marketing, business partnerships, sales, and user growth. BTSE Indonesia stated that it has received approval from Indonesia’s Financial Services Authority (OJK) to operate as a regulated digital financial asset trading platform. The license is also expected to support its future expansion into cryptocurrency futures and other businesses in compliance with local regulatory requirements. Official data shows that Indonesia’s cryptocurrency trading volume from January to November 2024 reached 556.5 trillion Indonesian rupiah (equivalent to approximately $31.2 billion), with registered cryptocurrency users hitting 22.11 million as of November 2024.

16 minutes ago

Ethereum surged above $1,700 on July 3, trading close to $1,715 after a rise of more than 6% in the past 24 hours. The move marked a notable recovery from recent downward pressure and brought the cryptocurrency back into the spotlight at a closely watched technical level.

Spot ETF inflows and a critical price thresholdAlongside Ethereum’s climb, US spot Ethereum ETFs saw a sharp uptick in inflows. Data from SoSoValue showed a total net inflow of $29.08 million into these ETFs on July 2. BlackRock’s ETHA fund accounted for the bulk of this movement with $29.74 million in net inflows, while Grayscale’s ETHE fund recorded $2.75 million in net outflows on the same day.

Market analyst Daan Crypto Trades noted that Ethereum jumped 10% on a weekly basis, retesting the $1,750 level that marked the February lows. According to the analyst, holding above this level signals a strengthening price structure and points to a key technical threshold for the asset.

Daan Crypto Trades highlighted that reclaiming the $1,750 zone could be seen as a sign of strength, though he indicated he would keep watching the price action around resistance as the close approached.

Rare technical indicator flashes buy signalA TD Sequential buy signal also appeared on Ethereum’s monthly chart, grabbing market attention due to its infrequency. Technical analyst Ali Charts commented that this signal, while rare, could mean sellers are becoming exhausted on longer time frames.

Mini glossary: The TD Sequential is a technical indicator developed by Tom DeMark, designed to identify points where a market trend may be weakening and potential reversal zones may emerge. It does not, however, confirm a trend reversal on its own.

Historical data shows that previous monthly TD Sequential buy signals have preceded rallies of 235% in 2022 and 182% in 2025. However, analysts caution that a single signal does not guarantee the start of a new uptrend.

Ali Charts emphasized that July began with a strong technical signal for Ethereum, with the market now closely monitoring the TD Sequential buy setup on the monthly chart.

Technical indicators and on-chain market flowsOn the technical side, Ethereum’s MACD histogram entered positive territory at 19.33, with the MACD line moving above the signal line. Despite these moves, both indicators remained below the zero line. The RSI climbed to approximately 51.85, rising above both its moving average and the neutral 50 threshold.

The price recovered from a double-bottom formation around $1,565. In the near term, the first resistance level for Ethereum lies at $1,800, followed by a significant barrier at $2,000. The liquidity concentration between $1,740 and $1,750 is also drawing attention for short-term price action.

In derivatives markets, open interest surged 10.64% to $24.54 billion. Trading volume rose 14.48% to $44.74 billion. Funding rates spiked 113.86%, suggesting a notable increase in leveraged long positions.

On-chain analyst Darkfost from CryptoQuant observed that ETH withdrawals from Binance hit their highest level in three years, exceeding 166,000 in just 24 hours. In contrast, PelinayPA noted that Binance’s net flow stood at a positive 12,938 ETH, meaning more ETH was deposited than withdrawn. On the institutional side, BitMine added 27,084 ETH to surpass a total holding of 5.7 million ETH, while SharpLink acquired 10,000 ETH valued at $16.1 million during the recent drop.

Disclaimer: The information contained in this article does not constitute investment advice. Investors should be aware that cryptocurrencies carry high volatility and therefore risk, and should conduct their own research.

Ethereum withdrawals on Binance have caught the crypto world’s attention with one of the most remarkable moves in recent months. According to CryptoQuant data, 166 thousand ETH left the exchange in the past 24 hours, marking the strongest daily outflow recorded since March 2023.

Outflows hit a three-year highThe data show that Ethereum withdrawals from Binance have surged to their highest level in over three years. This move comes as the market is searching for direction and signals a notable shift in investor behavior. As one of the world’s highest-volume crypto exchanges, large withdrawals from Binance tend to be watched closely by market observers.

CryptoQuant data revealed that the Ethereum withdrawals on Binance have reached their highest point in more than three years, with 166 thousand ETH leaving the platform in the past 24 hours.

The sharp spike in withdrawals has fueled the view that crypto investors may be choosing to move their assets off exchanges and into long-term storage. The fact that this activity took place while the Ethereum price hovered around $1,500 has fueled speculation that some investors find this zone a compelling buying opportunity.

Mini glossary: CryptoQuant is an analytics platform that tracks the crypto market using on-chain blockchain data and exchange flows. Large outflows from exchanges are at times interpreted as a signal that investors may prefer holding over selling.

Ethereum seeks a recoverySince its latest peak at the start of 2025, Ethereum has faced sustained correction pressure, with its value dropping about 67%. Interestingly, over the same period, Ethereum’s decline has outpaced Bitcoin’s pullback by roughly 15 percentage points.

MetricDataDaily ETH outflow from Binance166 thousand ETHPrevious similar outflow recordHighest since March 2023ETH change since 2025 peak67% declinePrice movement in last 48 hoursApproximately 10% riseDespite this, there have been signs of price recovery over the last two days. Ethereum climbed roughly 10% in 48 hours to again top $1,700. The timing of both the withdrawal surge and rising prices has prompted debate over whether accumulation momentum is returning to the market.

The sharp withdrawal activity in Ethereum took place while the price steadied near $1,500, fueling expectations that some investors view this level as a bargain-buying opportunity.

The latest volatility shows how quickly investor sentiment can shift. Especially for major exchanges, sizable asset outflows offer key signals on how investors are positioning themselves and may hold clues beyond short-term price action.

Disclaimer: The information contained in this article does not constitute investment advice. Investors should be aware that cryptocurrencies carry high volatility and therefore risk, and should conduct their own research.

Solana now beats Ethereum on trading volume, active users, and fee revenue. Ethereum still holds the money. Halfway through 2026, the question is no longer who is faster. It is whether the two chains are even running the same race.

Summary

Solana has overtaken Ethereum in Layer 1 activity with higher transaction volume, more active users, stronger DEX trading, and greater fee revenue. Ethereum continues to dominate in total value locked, stablecoin liquidity, institutional adoption, and developer activity despite losing ground in onchain usage. The rivalry has shifted from a direct competition into two distinct models, with Ethereum focused on settlement and custody while Solana leads in trading and execution. There was a time when the Ethereum versus Solana debate could be settled with a smirk and an outage screenshot. Solana was the chain that went down. Ethereum was the chain that mattered. Then Solana stopped going down, its trading volume flipped Ethereum’s, its ETF launched to institutional inflows while Ethereum funds bled for seventeen straight days, and the smirk changed sides.

Halfway through 2026, both tokens are deep in a bear market. ETH trades near $1,714 after a brutal second quarter that included a 29.5% thirty-day drawdown at the June lows, its worst quarterly stretch in years. SOL trades near $81, down roughly 78% from its cycle high, hit even harder in raw percentage terms. Price settles nothing here. The interesting story is underneath, in the on-chain data, where the two networks have diverged so completely that comparing them now requires deciding which metrics count.

So: is Ethereum losing the L1 race to Solana? The honest answer is that Solana has already won several of the events, Ethereum still owns the ones with the most prize money, and the race itself has split into two different sports.

How we got here: a short history of a long feud The rivalry has run through three distinct acts, and the current one makes no sense without the first two.

Act one, 2021 through 2022, was Solana as the venture-backed challenger: a chain built for speed, championed by Sam Bankman-Fried, and dismissed by Ethereum partisans as a centralized science project. The dismissal briefly looked like prophecy. Solana suffered repeated full-network outages, including the infamous February 2024 halt that lasted nearly five hours after a legacy loader bug forced a coordinated validator restart, and when FTX collapsed in November 2022, SOL crashed toward single digits as the market priced in guilt by association. Obituaries were published. Several were smug.

Act two, 2023 through 2024, was the resurrection nobody ordered. Solana’s developer community kept shipping through the winter, the Jupiter and Jito ecosystems matured, memecoin mania found its natural home on the only chain where a thousand trades cost less than a sandwich, and DEX volume began the climb that ended with the flip of Ethereum in late 2024. Ethereum spent the same period executing its own plan flawlessly and discovering the plan had a hole in it: the Dencun upgrade in March 2024 introduced blob space and cut L2 costs by an order of magnitude, which supercharged rollup adoption while gutting the fee burn that had underwritten the ultrasound money narrative. Activity exploded across the Ethereum stack, and ETH the asset captured almost none of it.

Act three is now: both chains institutionally legitimate, both tokens deep underwater, and the argument relocated from architecture threads to fund flow tables. Uniswap founder Hayden Adams warned back in 2025 that Ethereum’s confused scaling identity could hand DeFi leadership to Solana; in 2026 that warning reads less like a hot take and more like a memo the market already acted on.

The scoreboard, metric by metric Start with what Solana has flatly won: activity.

On a representative day in late June, Solana processed 127 million transactions from more than 2 million active addresses. Ethereum mainnet processed 2.8 million transactions from roughly 512,000 active addresses. That is not a gap. That is a different order of magnitude. Solana sustains 600 to 700 real transactions per second on average against Ethereum L1’s 15 to 20, at a cost of roughly $0.00025 per transaction against Ethereum’s dollars-per-swap mainnet pricing.

Trading volume tells the same story. Solana’s weekly DEX volume hit $11.49 billion in April against Ethereum’s $7.62 billion, a 51% lead. In February the monthly gap was wider still: $117 billion on Solana against $52 billion on Ethereum, more than double. Jupiter, the aggregator that routes the overwhelming majority of Solana order flow across Raydium, Orca, Phoenix, and Meteora, alone processes $2 billion to $4 billion in daily volume. Solana flipped Ethereum on DEX volume in late 2024 and has held the lead through every market condition since.

Then comes the metric that should worry Ethereum researchers most: revenue.

Solana generates over $1 million in chain fees per day. The major Ethereum L2s, where most Ethereum user activity now lives, generate under $200,000 combined, because blob-based data posting after the Dencun upgrade pushed L2 costs, and therefore L2 fee revenue, toward zero. Ethereum deliberately commoditized its own execution layer to win the rollup war. The result is a settlement layer with shrinking direct income and a rival that monetizes every swap on a single unified ledger.

Now flip the card, because Ethereum’s wins are just as lopsided.

Total value locked Ethereum L1 holds roughly $55.6 billion in DeFi deposits, around 68% of the entire global DeFi market, and the combined L1 plus L2 figure exceeds $80 billion. Solana holds between $8 billion and $12 billion depending on the week and the methodology, a figure that took a $270 million hit in April when the Drift Protocol exploit tore through its perps ecosystem. The deepest protocols in the industry, Lido at $27.5 billion, Aave at $27 billion, EigenLayer at $13 billion, all live on Ethereum, and Aave V4 launched on Ethereum mainnet in April to reinforce the point.

Stablecoins Ethereum hosts roughly 70% of all on-chain stablecoin supply, around $32 billion in USDC and $60 billion in USDT, and remains the venue where BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, and JPMorgan build tokenized products first. Solana carries about $14 billion in stablecoins, though each of those dollars turns over roughly six times faster than its Ethereum counterpart.

Developers Ethereum counted 31,869 active developers against Solana’s 17,708 at the latest Electric Capital reading, and added more new developers over the trailing year than any other ecosystem. Solana ranked second.

One chain has the users, the volume, and the revenue. The other has the money, the institutions, and the builders. Losing, it turns out, depends entirely on where you point the camera.

How the race split in two The reason the comparison keeps producing contradictory answers is that the two chains stopped competing on the same terms years ago, a divergence we chronicled when the ecosystems first collided in early 2025.

Ethereum abandoned the monolithic race on purpose. Its roadmap treats the base layer as settlement infrastructure while execution migrates to rollups: Base, Arbitrum, Optimism, and a long tail of zk systems that post proofs and data back to mainnet. Base alone captures nearly half of all L2 DeFi value, Arbitrum another 31%, and the top three rollups process close to 90% of all L2 transactions. Measured as a stack, the Ethereum ecosystem still dwarfs Solana on almost every capital metric. Measured as an L1, Ethereum mainnet is a slow, expensive chain that its own designers no longer intend retail users to touch.

Solana made the opposite bet: one ledger, one global state, sub-second finality at 400 milliseconds, and a relentless engineering campaign to make the single chain fast enough that nothing else is needed. The Firedancer validator client built by Jump Crypto, rolling toward full deployment late this year, is the endgame of that bet, with a theoretical ceiling measured in the hundreds of thousands of transactions per second. The network reliability problem that defined Solana’s reputation in 2022 and 2023 has largely disappeared; outages went from routine to rare, and the chain has traded its crash-prone image for something closer to an execution monopoly on retail flow.

The philosophical split produces the statistical one. Capital sits and compounds on Ethereum because that is what the architecture rewards: deep pools, long-duration lending, staking layered on restaking. Capital churns on Solana because sub-cent fees make churning free: high-frequency trading, memecoin rotation, dollar-cost-average bots, payments. Ethereum became the deposit ledger. Solana became the trading floor.

Follow the fees: two broken business models, one working one The revenue gap deserves its own examination, because it is the metric where architecture decisions turn into economics, and where both chains have problems they rarely advertise.

Ethereum’s fee engine used to be the envy of the industry. EIP-1559 burned base fees, high demand made ETH deflationary, and the ultrasound money framing wrote itself. The rollup migration dismantled the machine step by step. Execution moved to L2s, whose sequencers keep the margin between what users pay and what blob posting costs, and Dencun made blob posting cost next to nothing. The result in 2026: mainnet burns a fraction of its former fee load, L2s pay Ethereum pennies for security worth billions, and the value accrual question, what does ETH earn when Base wins, has replaced scaling as the ecosystem’s defining unsolved problem. Ethereum built a settlement business and priced its product like a public good.

Solana’s engine is simpler and currently stronger: one chain captures every fee at every layer. The base fee is fixed at 5,000 lamports per signature, roughly a hundredth of a cent, while priority fees let users bid during congestion, and stake-weighted quality of service plus local fee markets keep hot accounts from clogging the scheduler. On top of the protocol fees sits the Jito MEV economy, where searcher tips flow to validators and stakers, turning order-flow chaos into staking yield. Over $1 million in daily chain revenue against sub-$200,000 for the entire major L2 basket is the visible output.

The caveat is concentration of source. A large share of Solana’s fee revenue traces to speculative trading, memecoins above all, which makes the revenue line high-beta to the exact market segment least likely to survive a deep winter. Ethereum’s fee problem is structural but its demand is diversified; Solana’s fee machine works beautifully and runs on the most flammable fuel in crypto. Neither model is finished.

Fusaka and the second-half Ethereum upgrade path aim at scaling data further without answering value capture, while Solana’s validator economics, where thin margins already pushed the validator count down 68% from its 2023 peak, depend on fee and MEV income holding up.

The other front: stablecoins, payments, and tokenized everything DEX volume gets the headlines, but the war’s second front may matter more by 2027, because it is the one institutions actually fund: who carries the tokenized economy.

Ethereum’s position is incumbency at scale. Roughly 70% of stablecoin supply, the deep USDC and USDT float that institutional desks require, and essentially the entire first generation of tokenized funds. When Ondo debuted its SEC-aligned tokenized stock model with BlackRock ETF shares this week, the underlying rails were Ethereum-ecosystem by default. Stablecoin legislation cleared the path for bank issuance and for the consortium models now emerging among major institutions, and banks build where the auditors already have coverage, which is one more network effect compounding for the incumbent.

Solana’s position is velocity and consumer reach. Its $14 billion stablecoin float turns over roughly six times faster than Ethereum’s, because sub-cent fees make stablecoins usable as money instead of just collateral. USDC settles on Solana in under a second for a fraction of a cent, which is why Visa chose it for settlement pilots, why payment processors keep adding it, and why the Solana Developer Platform launched with Mastercard, Worldpay, and Western Union rather than with hedge funds. Solana is also mounting a genuine RWA challenge through Token-2022, whose compliance extensions target exactly the issuer requirements Ethereum handles with bespoke contracts, and both chains now face a third competitor for the same institutional flow in the compliance-native stack being assembled on the XRP Ledger.

The stakes here dwarf the DEX war. Stablecoins are a $320 billion asset class growing through legislation, and tokenized funds are the institutional product with the steepest adoption curve. If Ethereum keeps the float while Solana takes the flow, the split-decision structure of this whole rivalry repeats at a much larger scale, with Ethereum as the vault and Solana as the checkout lane of tokenized finance.

The institutional tiebreaker For most of crypto history, the institutional column belonged to Ethereum without argument. That is the column where 2026 has produced genuine movement.

The regulatory sequence mattered first. The SEC’s March 2025 classification of sixteen digital assets including SOL as commodities dissolved the securities overhang that had kept allocators away, and spot Solana ETFs began trading on October 28, 2025, making SOL the third asset after BTC and ETH with U.S. spot fund access. The flows since then have been small next to Bitcoin’s but directionally embarrassing for Ethereum: through the spring drawdown, Solana ETFs crossed $1 billion in cumulative inflows while Ethereum funds posted a seventeen-day outflow streak that stripped hundreds of millions, and July has opened with ETF flow reports showing ETH and SOL products gaining together while Bitcoin funds bleed. Goldman Sachs disclosures showed over $100 million in SOL exposure, and CalPERS entered the asset class the same quarter.

Solana’s institutional push went beyond funds. The Solana Foundation launched its Developer Platform in March with Mastercard, Worldpay, and Western Union among early adopters, shipped a quantum-readiness plan built on the NIST-standardized Falcon signature scheme in April, and rolled out on-chain, stake-weighted validator governance this week. Token-2022 extensions gave the chain the compliance hooks, confidential transfers, transfer restrictions, interest-bearing instruments, that enterprise issuers require. The pitch that Solana is a casino chain unsuitable for serious money has aged badly.

Ethereum’s institutional position remains the stronger one on stock rather than flow. It custodies the tokenized funds, hosts the deep stablecoin float, and runs the staking infrastructure through which more than 35 million ETH, nearly 29% of supply, secures the network across a million-plus validators. When a treasury desk needs to move nine figures with minimal slippage, Ethereum’s depth is still the only game available. BitMine Immersion bought its way past 5 million ETH this spring precisely on that thesis. But stock is what you accumulated yesterday. Flow is what you are winning today, and the flow has been tilting one direction for over a year.

The uncomfortable items on both ledgers Neither chain gets to run its highlight reel without the blooper file.

Solana’s validator count has collapsed to roughly 795 active validators from more than 2,500 in 2023, a 68% decline that concentrates block production and hands critics a decentralization argument with real teeth. Its DeFi remains thin and concentrated: one aggregator with 95% market share is a single point of failure wearing a market structure costume, and the $270 million Drift exploit showed what happens when a load-bearing protocol breaks. Its volume mix still leans on memecoin speculation, the most cyclical demand source in the industry, and February’s $117 billion month can become a $40 billion month without a single thing going wrong technically.

Ethereum’s problems are quieter and arguably deeper. Lido alone controls roughly 24% of staked ETH, a concentration risk of its own. The rollup roadmap solved scaling and created a value-capture puzzle nobody has answered: if execution fees accrue to Base and Arbitrum while blobs cost pennies, what exactly does ETH the asset earn from Ethereum the ecosystem’s growth? Retail has already voted, migrating to L2s so completely that mainnet active addresses look like a ghost town next to Solana’s. And the fragmentation tax is real: liquidity split across a dozen rollups with seven-day optimistic exits is a worse user experience than one chain with 400-millisecond finality, no matter how elegant the settlement theory. The KelpDAO exploit this spring, which erased $13 billion of TVL in 48 hours of contagion, showed that composability depth cuts in both directions.

Both assets, meanwhile, have been terrible investments this year, a market-wide condition tied to the macro regime we examined in the context of Bitcoin’s liquidity dependence. Fee revenue and active addresses have not protected SOL holders from a 78% peak drawdown, and settlement supremacy has not protected ETH holders from underperforming Bitcoin for most of the cycle. Whatever race is being run, neither token’s chart looks like a victory lap, and on-chain fundamentals have been decoupled from price across the majors for much of 2026.

So who is actually winning? Frame the question three ways and you get three defensible answers.

If the L1 race means base-layer usage, Solana won it, and the margin is no longer close. Two hundred times Ethereum’s L1 throughput, forty times its transaction count, five times its daily fee revenue, and a lead in DEX volume that has survived every market regime since late 2024. By the definition of Layer 1 that existed when the rivalry started, the contest is over.

If the race means where value lives, Ethereum is not losing and may never lose within this cycle. A 68% share of global DeFi TVL, 70% of stablecoin supply, the institutional tokenization pipeline, and the largest developer base in the industry constitute a network-effect fortress that Solana’s growth has dented but nowhere near breached. Capital has inertia, and inertia compounds.

If the race means trajectory, the tape favors Solana with an asterisk. It is winning new users, new listed products, new enterprise integrations, and the ETF flow battle. The asterisk is that trajectory arguments assume the current regime persists, and Solana’s flow-heavy economy is more exposed than Ethereum’s stock-heavy one to the next collapse in speculative appetite. Ethereum’s Fusaka upgrade cycle and the second-half protocol roadmap that all major chains have queued for late 2026 could reshuffle the technical comparison again.

The most likely outcome is also the least satisfying for partisans: permanent coexistence with divided territory. Ethereum settles and custodies. Solana executes and trades. Builders already behave as if this is settled, deploying on both by default. The 2025 framing of an L1 war with a single survivor has quietly died, not with a bang but with two chains discovering they are optimized for markets the other cannot serve.

What could flip the board before December Split decisions invite the obvious follow-up: what would actually change the standings? Four live catalysts carry enough weight to move the argument rather than the noise.

Ethereum’s upgrade cycle is the first. The Fusaka window and the broader second-half protocol roadmap target another step-change in data capacity, and the ecosystem’s real prize sits next to it: any credible mechanism that routes L2 economic success back into ETH, whether through based sequencing, native rollup designs, or fee-market reform, would repair the value-capture hole that has haunted the asset since Dencun. Markets have front-run Ethereum upgrades before; a roadmap that finally answers the accrual question would be the first fundamental ETH catalyst in two years.

Firedancer completion is the second. Solana’s independent validator client moving to full deployment removes the single-client risk that institutions cite most, and its throughput headroom opens application categories, full order-book markets, high-frequency payment networks, that no chain currently serves. If even one breakout consumer or enterprise application lands on that capacity, Solana’s volume base diversifies away from memecoins, which neutralizes the strongest bear argument against its fee economy.

ETF mechanics are the third. Staking-enabled fund structures, under active regulatory discussion for both assets, would transform the flow picture: a spot product yielding 3% to 7% natively changes the allocator pitch entirely, and the asset that gets staking approval first inherits a durable flow advantage. Watch the filings, not the influencers.

Treasury companies are the fourth and strangest. BitMine’s multimillion-ETH accumulation and the emerging class of SOL treasury vehicles mean corporate balance sheets now sit inside both ecosystems as permanent, price-insensitive holders. The Strategy playbook applied to ETH and SOL is small today; its growth rate through a recovering market could make treasuries the marginal buyer that decides which token outperforms, independent of every on-chain metric in this article.

The verdict for the second half Ethereum is losing the L1 race as originally defined, and it forfeited that race by choice when it went all-in on rollups. Solana is winning everything measurable at the base layer while still trailing badly where the institutional money actually sits. Watch three numbers through December: whether Ethereum ETF flows recover once its next upgrade lands, whether Firedancer’s full rollout converts Solana’s throughput ceiling into new categories of application, and whether Solana DeFi TVL can hold above $12 billion without memecoin volume subsidizing it. The chain that answers its own weakness first will own the 2027 narrative. Until then, the war everyone expected has settled into something stranger: two winners, two different games, and one increasingly obsolete question.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Digital asset markets are volatile, and you can lose your entire investment. Always do your own research. Information current as of July 3, 2026.

Table of contents

Remember when I kept telling you to watch the exit doors instead of the price? For weeks, Ethereum‘s supply was quietly tightening, coins leaving exchanges, staking hitting records, while the price did nothing but bleed and everyone ignored it. Well, this week the ignoring stopped.

ETH is trading at $1,719, up 6.4% on the day, the strongest of all the major coins, and up nearly 9% on the week (live ETH price on CoinGecko). And the thing that lit the fuse is exactly the kind of demand the tight supply was waiting for. Let me walk you through it.

The fund that changed the mood Here is the headline that matters. BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, launched a new staked Ethereum fund called ETHB, and it pulled in $100 million on its very first day.

Why is that such a big deal? Two reasons. First, “staked” is the magic word: unlike the older Ethereum ETFs, this fund passes staking yield to investors, the roughly 3% that Ethereum pays for securing the network. That was always Solana’s ETF advantage, and now Ethereum has its own yield-bearing product from the biggest name in finance. Second, $100 million on day one is a statement of demand. After months of watching money drain out of crypto funds, institutions just showed up for Ethereum with real size on the first day they got a product they liked.

And it did not happen in a vacuum. Bitcoin ETFs just logged five straight days of inflows led by BlackRock’s IBIT, the first sustained streak in months. The institutional money that vanished this spring is stepping back in, and Ethereum is getting the biggest single dose of it.

Why ETH is moving so hard Now connect this to the supply story we have been following. Ethereum’s exchange reserves have been sitting at all-time lows around 14.5 million ETH, and the staking ratio at record highs near a third of all supply. Translation: there is less ETH available to buy on the open market than at any point in years.

So what happens when fresh demand, a $100 million fund launch, a short squeeze that liquidated $281 million in bearish bets across crypto, and a dovish shift from Fed Chair Warsh, hits a market with record-thin sellable supply? Exactly what you saw: the price moves fast. A 6.4% daily jump is what a supply squeeze looks like when it finally meets a demand spark. This is the mechanism I have been describing for weeks, just running in the direction nobody positioned for.

The macro helped too. Warsh said inflation risks had eased, the first genuinely dovish note from the new Fed chair, and markets are now watching US jobs data as the next potential fuel. After a hawkish June that crushed crypto, even a small change in the Fed’s tone lands with force.

The honest caveats, as always I owe you the other side, because one great day does not erase a hard year. ETH is still down more than 60% from its 2025 high near $4,950, and this bounce, however real its drivers, has not yet broken the larger downtrend. The level that changes that conversation is $1,800, the resistance ETH rejected during the selloff, and then the big one at $2,000. Until those fall, this is a strong rally inside a bear market, not a confirmed reversal.

And remember what carried ETH down: it falls harder than Bitcoin when fear returns. If the jobs data disappoints or the Fed walks back the dovish tone, the same beta that powered this 6% jump works in reverse. Enjoy the move; respect the trend.

The levels I’m watching Above: $1,750 first, then the real test at $1,800, and the prize at $2,000, where the recovery becomes undeniable. Below: $1,650 is the first support, then $1,600, the floor that held through the worst of it. As long as ETH holds above $1,650, this breakout attempt stays alive.

Where this leaves us Ethereum at $1,719 is having its best day in months, leading every major coin, and for once the reason is concrete: BlackRock’s staked ETH fund drew $100 million on day one, right into a market with record-low sellable supply and record-high staking. The squeeze we watched build all spring finally met its demand spark, with a dovish Fed and a short squeeze as accelerants.

It is not a confirmed trend change yet, $1,800 and $2,000 stand in the way, and ETH’s high beta cuts both ways. But the thing the bears said would never come, institutional demand returning to Ethereum, just showed up with a nine-figure opening day. Watch $1,800. The quiet story is not quiet anymore.

FAQ What is the Ethereum price today? Ethereum is trading around $1,719 on July 3, 2026, up 6.4% on the day, the strongest performance among major coins, and up nearly 9% on the week.

Why is Ethereum going up today? BlackRock launched a staked Ethereum fund, ETHB, that drew $100 million on its first day, landing in a market with record-low exchange supply. A dovish signal from Fed Chair Warsh, a $281 million short squeeze, and five straight days of Bitcoin ETF inflows added fuel.

What is BlackRock’s ETHB fund? ETHB is BlackRock’s new staked Ethereum fund, which passes Ethereum’s staking yield (roughly 3%) to investors, unlike older ETH ETFs. Its $100 million first-day inflow signals returning institutional demand for Ethereum.

What are the key Ethereum levels to watch? Resistance sits at $1,750, then the key $1,800 level, with $2,000 as the milestone that would confirm a real recovery. Support is $1,650, then $1,600. Holding above $1,650 keeps the breakout attempt alive.

Is the Ethereum recovery confirmed? Not yet. ETH remains down over 60% from its 2025 high, and the larger downtrend holds until $1,800 and then $2,000 are reclaimed. The rally has concrete drivers, but ETH’s high beta means it would fall hard again if the macro mood reverses.

This is not investment advice. Cryptocurrency is highly volatile. Always do your own research.

The Ethereum Foundation published a policy guide on July 1, positioning Ethereum as neutral public infrastructure for governments and institutions. The document, prepared by the foundation’s Global Policy Strategy Team, frames Ethereum as a decentralized alternative to the centralized digital systems that many governments currently rely on for payments, identity verification, and record-keeping.

$76 Billion in Staked ETH as a Security Argument The guide cites an OpenZeppelin analysis showing approximately $76 billion in staked ETH securing the Ethereum network as of March 2026. 

It would cost roughly $50.7 billion to finalize a fraudulent transaction on the network, excluding automatic slashing penalties, according to a Cryptopolitan report. The foundation contrasts Ethereum’s continuous uptime since its 2015 launch with that of other layer-1 blockchains reviewed in the OpenZeppelin analysis. 

Binance Smart Chain, XRP Ledger, Tron, Solana, and Canton each experienced between one and seven outages and had comparatively few economic deterrents to attack, the report found.  Ethereum’s validator set is globally distributed across nations and legal systems, with no single country controlling a majority share. 

“Ethereum is a decentralized ecosystem that functions through the activity of a large, diverse, and global group of stakeholders,” the guide stated. “That breadth of participation is one of the things that makes Ethereum so secure, which in turn is what makes it the top choice for institutions, enterprises, and the public sector.”

From Investment Asset to Digital Infrastructure Ethereum has historically been discussed as the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. The foundation is now framing it as foundational digital infrastructure comparable to the internet’s base protocols. 

That rebranding could influence how regulators worldwide classify public blockchains and the tokens that operate on them. The guide highlights sovereign governments already using Ethereum-based solutions. Argentina and Bhutan have built decentralized identity systems on the network.

 Indian authorities are testing Ethereum-based land registries to reduce property fraud in title transfers. The foundation encourages lawmakers to define a clear distinction between public blockchains open to anyone and those controlled by a single organization or foundation.

Timed With a Foundation Restructuring The policy guide arrives alongside a structural overhaul at the Ethereum Foundation. The organization cut roughly 20% of its workforce and created an “institutional layer” cluster focused specifically on government and enterprise engagement. A separate nonprofit, Ethereum Institutional, also launched this week with backing from key ecosystem participants.

If governments begin adopting Ethereum as public infrastructure, the regulatory clarity it would generate would extend well beyond Ethereum itself. The precedent would shape how all public blockchains are classified, potentially accelerating institutional investment across the broader digital asset market.

The guide cites independent security audits and uptime data while noting that one unnamed layer-1 blockchain had an organization controlling about 42% of the token supply, a trait that institutions would typically need to disclose and mitigate.

The foundation’s next test is whether this guide moves from policy paper to government procurement shortlist, a process that typically takes years rather than months.

Ethereum is having a tough time at the moment, with sentiment at rock bottom, but underlying supply dynamics paint a different picture.

Ethereum has a “wall of worry” where negative sentiment is meeting staking absorption, reported CryptoQuant on Tuesday.

The Coinbase Premium, a measure of institutional interest, is 230% below its three-month average, while Binance funding rates are deeply negative, signaling caution from US institutions and leveraged traders, it added.

Despite this wall of negativity, ETH’s price has stayed stable over the past week rather than breaking down.

ETH Staking Hits Record 40M Meanwhile, the Ether supply is tightening as stablecoin balances on Binance are draining while staking inflows have surged 65%, “suggesting long-term holders are locking up supply even as short-term traders de-risk,” it stated.

“While traders are shorting or de-risking on Binance, long-term holders are actively locking supply into the staking contract.”

This combination of deep pessimism and a shrinking liquid/exchange supply is a classic pattern, which historically creates fragile conditions for short traders if selling pressure exhausts.

The analysts concluded that monitoring the reversal of the Coinbase Premium will be the primary signal for a shift in this regime.

Ethereum’s Wall of Worry: Negative Sentiment Meets Staking Absorption

“Historically, when speculative sentiment is this depressed while organic supply is being absorbed by staking, it creates a fragile environment for short-sellers.” – By @CryptoOnchain pic.twitter.com/C8XO4Omlmp

— CryptoQuant.com (@cryptoquant_com) June 30, 2026

You may also like: Ethereum Execs Launch Non-Profit to Accelerate Institutional Adoption Bitmine Buys Another 27,000 ETH Despite Market Slump, Nears 5% of Ethereum Supply ‘Engineers, Not Business Operators’: Why Loopring Is Shutting Down Its DEX The staking figures speak for themselves, with a record amount of ETH off the table and locked up.

ETH staking has hit an all-time high of 40 million, which equates to 33% of the entire supply, according to Ultrasound.Money.

Additionally, the validator exit queue is just 9,248 ETH, while more than 2.9 million ETH are in the entry queue.

Bitmine chair Tom Lee said that crypto is a hyper-volatile asset, and some macro headwinds are weighing on ETH, such as markets seeing a Fed hike, Clarity Act purgatory, AI FOMO, and private credit hurting flows.

However, there are also some tailwinds, including the tokenization megatrend, crypto downstream of AI, money becoming digital/software, and peak pain, he said in a recent interview.

ETH Price Outlook Despite these tailwinds, ETH prices remain depressed, with the asset dipping to an intraday low of $1,550 on Tuesday.

There was little momentum during Wednesday morning Asian trading, with ETH lifting to $1,585. The longer it stays at current levels, the greater the chances of another leg down, especially if Bitcoin loses support at $58,000.

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While price action has long dominated the cryptocurrency market, attention in 2026 is steadily shifting toward the technical foundations of blockchain networks. With Ethereum, Solana and Avalanche preparing for some of their most ambitious protocol upgrades to date, Coinbase’s layer-2 network Base activated its Beryl hard fork just last Friday. In contrast, Bitcoin developers remain deadlocked over several contentious proposals and have yet to reach consensus.

Focus shifts from speed to resilienceTim Sun, a senior researcher at Hong Kong-based asset manager HashKey Group, explained that previous protocol upgrades have typically prioritized adding new features, speeding up transactions and boosting capacity. However, Sun observed that by 2026, the industry’s priorities are tilting towards more predictable governance, greater reliability and the development of robust, enterprise-scale infrastructure to support widespread financial use cases.

Tim Sun stresses that, looking ahead to 2026, simply adding more features is no longer the main concern; instead, reliability and institution-grade infrastructure are taking center stage.

Spotlight on Ethereum’s Glamsterdam upgradeAmong Ethereum’s key roadmap milestones, the Glamsterdam upgrade stands out as one of this year’s most pivotal steps. Currently being tested on developer networks, it is expected to roll out to the mainnet in the second half of 2026. Planned changes include improved scalability, reinforcement of the layer-1 base, and a streamlined user experience aimed at simplifying network usage.

Sun noted that the upgrade could enable higher transaction throughput, expand data capacity, and reduce database bloat. The overarching goal is to make Ethereum a more favorable environment for stablecoin settlements and on-chain use of real-world assets.

Holly Atkinson, chief product and technology officer at 1inch, described Glamsterdam as Ethereum’s most significant upgrade since The Merge in September 2022. One highlight is ePBS—short for enshrined proposer builder separation—a structure aimed at making block creation and proposal processes more transparent. However, RuleSpark founder Pavan Kaur cautioned that while this step might help, it will not eradicate maximal extractable value (MEV) issues altogether, as some harmful practices may simply adapt and persist in new forms.

Mini glossary: ePBS stands for enshrined proposer builder separation. It aims to clarify the distinction within the protocol between validators who propose blocks and entities that build their content, with the objective of minimizing concentration in transaction sequencing.

Solana and Base aim for lightning-fast confirmationsOn the Solana front, the Alpenglow upgrade is the year’s most significant development. After receiving strong backing in governance votes in September 2025, Alpenglow is still under development and slated for release in the latter half of 2026 alongside the Agave 4.1 validator client. This system will replace the current TowerBFT mechanism with an innovative voting component named Votor.

One of the most concrete impacts is a dramatic reduction in transaction finality time. The goal is to bring finality down to between 100 and 150 milliseconds under optimal network conditions, compared to the present average of approximately 12.8 seconds. The upgrade also targets reducing network load by removing on-chain voting operations, ultimately improving validator communication efficiency.

NetworkUpgradeKey objectiveEthereumGlamsterdamScalability and stronger layer 1SolanaAlpenglowCut finality time to 100–150 msBaseBerylReduce withdrawal time from 7 to 5 daysAvalanchePost-Etna L1 modelLower custom chain setup cost by over 99%Elsewhere, Base deployed its Beryl hard fork following a brief sequencer outage that paused block production for about two hours due to an invalid block. Jesse Pollak, one of Base’s co-founders, emphasized that users’ assets remained unaffected by the disruption, but acknowledged the downtime was unacceptable and added that lessons learned will help reinforce Base as a round-the-clock global financial platform.

Jesse Pollak underscores that user funds were secure during the incident, but says Base recognizes the network pause was not acceptable and is using this experience to guide technical improvements.

According to Base documentation, the Beryl hard fork introduces the B20 native token standard, shortens withdrawal finality from seven days to five, and implements the Reth V2 integration. These updates are expected to decrease node storage requirements and enhance execution efficiency.

Avalanche goes institutional, Bitcoin debates persistOn Avalanche, there is less focus on a single named hard fork and more on sweeping changes to attract enterprise users and boost performance. According to Sun, the Etna hard fork replaced the legacy subnet model with a system of sovereign Avalanche L1 chains, slashing the startup cost for launching a private blockchain by over 99%. He also highlighted that Progmat, which he says represents about 63% of Japan’s security token market, recently moved more than $2 billion in tokenized assets to a dedicated Avalanche L1 chain.

Bitcoin, meanwhile, stands apart from rival networks. Its main challenges in 2026 are not scheduled upgrades but debates over whether to make the protocol more programmable or to strengthen it against quantum computing threats. Proposals like OP_CAT, CTV and Lightning-focused LNHANCE—each associated with covenants and programmability—remain under discussion but lack an agreed activation path. Proposals such as BIP 360 and similar efforts to ease the shift to quantum-resistant spending methods are also still on the table without a clear consensus.

Disclaimer: The information contained in this article does not constitute investment advice. Investors should be aware that cryptocurrencies carry high volatility and therefore risk, and should conduct their own research.

Ethereum traded near $1,615 on July 2 as buyers tried to stabilize the market after weeks of pressure. 

Summary

Ethereum trades near $1,615 as buyers defend support while ETF flows turn positive again. Analysts watch $1,700 to $1,800 as the recovery zone needed for stronger confirmation next move. Staking rate above 33% suggests more ETH is locked despite weak short-term price action. ETH remains close to the lower end of its recent range, but new ETF inflows and stronger staking activity have added fresh data points for traders watching a recovery attempt.

The token was up 2.49% over 24 hours, with a daily range between $1,564.82 and $1,637.22, according to crypto.news price data. Ethereum’s market cap stood near $194.87 billion, while 24-hour trading volume was about $10.81 billion.

Spot Ethereum ETFs recorded $14.895 million in net inflows on July 1, while BlackRock’s ETHA posted the largest single-day inflow at $36.639 million, according to SoSoValue. The shift came after a period in which ETF outflows weighed on ETH demand and kept traders focused on the $1,500 support region.

Ethereum spot ETF net inflow, source: SoSoValue Ethereum price holds near lower range Ethereum’s short-term setup remains cautious. The recent price trend has been mostly sideways near the lower range, with ETH holding around $1,580 to $1,650. The market still needs a move above the $1,700 to $1,800 area to show stronger recovery momentum.

Recently, Ethereum had remained pinned near the $1,500 support zone after quarter-end selling, whale distribution, and weak institutional flows. That report said analysts were watching $1,700 as a key recovery level, while a loss of $1,500 could open another move lower.

The technical picture shows early improvement, but not a full trend reversal. The MACD histogram is positive near 7.60, while the MACD line is around minus 66.92 and above the signal line near minus 74.52. That points to a bullish crossover and weaker bearish momentum, but both lines remain below zero.

Ethereum (ETH) price chart, source: crypto.news The RSI is near 40.46 and above its moving average around 36.50. This shows some recovery in momentum, but the reading remains below 50. Buyers need a stronger RSI move and a price reclaim of $1,700 to $1,800 before the setup turns more constructive.

ETF inflows return after weeks of pressure ETF flows remain central to ETH’s short-term outlook. Earlier pressure came from repeated outflows across U.S. spot Ethereum ETFs. Crypto.news previously reported that funds saw $273 million in net outflows during the week ending June 26, with BlackRock’s ETHA accounting for $236 million of withdrawals.

The latest positive daily flow gives bulls some relief, but one day of inflows does not erase the wider weakness. ETF demand matters because these products can create spot buying pressure when flows are positive. When flows reverse, fund managers may need to redeem underlying ETH, adding supply to the market.

Ethereum has underperformed during this period because its ETF market is smaller than Bitcoin’s. Ethereum ETF outflows have been more painful in relative terms because the ETH ETF complex is much smaller than the Bitcoin ETF market.

That makes the July 1 inflow important for sentiment. A steady run of inflows would support the case for ETH to retest $1,700. If inflows fade again, traders may keep treating rallies as weak rebounds inside a broader downtrend.

Staking rate reaches record level On-chain data adds a different signal. CryptoQuant analyst EgyHash said Ethereum’s staking rate has crossed 33% for the first time, reaching about 33.06%. The analyst described the trend as a sign that long-term holders continue locking ETH despite price weakness.

EgyHash noted that the staking rate has climbed steadily since the Merge, while ETH price has moved through several bull and bear phases. The analyst said this shows many holders prefer to keep ETH staked rather than sell during weak market periods.

Ethereum (ETH) staking rate, source: CryptoQuant analyst EgyHash A higher staking rate can reduce liquid supply available on exchanges. That may support price if demand returns, because fewer coins are immediately available for sale. Still, the analyst warned that “staking growth alone does not guarantee an immediate price recovery.”

This makes staking a medium-term support factor rather than a short-term trigger. It can help tighten supply, but ETH still needs demand from ETFs, spot buyers, treasury firms, and onchain users to produce a stronger recovery.

Corporate buyers keep accumulating ETH Corporate treasury demand remains active despite weak price action. As previously reported, SharpLink bought another 10,000 ETH for $16.1 million, lifting its holdings to 886,725 ETH. The purchase came as Ethereum headed toward a rare third straight quarterly loss.

BitMine has also expanded its Ethereum treasury. Moreover,  BitMine added 27,084 ETH in one week, raising its holdings to more than 5.7 million ETH, or about 4.7% of circulating supply.

The institutional push is also expanding beyond treasury buys. Earlier today, crypto.news reported that Ethereum Institutional launched with backing from BitMine, SharpLink and Joe Lubin to support adoption by banks, asset managers, custodians, and other financial firms.

The corporate buying has not yet changed the short-term trend. Whale selling, ETF weakness, and broader risk-off trading have kept ETH below the $1,700 to $1,800 recovery band. Still, these purchases show some institutions continue to add ETH at lower prices.

Ali Charts said ETH is approaching a long-term support area near $1,100, a level he described as the lower boundary of a multi-year channel. He pointed to $3,000 as a mid-range target and $5,000 as a macro ceiling if the lower channel holds.

ETHEREUM: WHEN TO BUY?

Ethereum is approaching a historically support level that has defined its macro price action for years.

Since 2021, the $1,100 level has served as the ultimate bottom boundary of Ethereum's long-term price channel. Historically, every single test of this… https://t.co/LNkygeXO5n pic.twitter.com/1NQMcvoXYL

— Ali Charts (@alicharts) July 2, 2026 Disclosure: This article does not represent investment advice. The content and materials featured on this page are for educational purposes only.

REAL launches a confidential execution layer using ZKsync's Prividium tech, letting banks and funds manage tokenized assets onchain with privacy controls and Ethereum settlement.

REAL, a blockchain infrastructure provider focused on tokenized real-world assets, has rolled out a confidential execution layer aimed at regulated financial firms that want to operate onchain without broadcasting every move.

The new layer runs parallel to REAL's public Layer 1 network and uses ZKsync's Prividium technology, which gives banks, asset managers, and funds privacy controls over positions, allocations, and counterparty data. Settlement still happens on Ethereum, so institutions retain access to public liquidity even while keeping sensitive activity off the open network.

For years, regulated firms have faced a structural tradeoff. Public blockchains offer global reach, near-instant settlement, and composability, but they also expose treasury strategies, portfolio positions, and trading relationships to anyone watching the chain. That visibility has kept many of the largest potential participants out of the tokenized real-world asset market, even as issuance volumes climbed.

REAL is positioning the confidential layer as a direct response to that gap. The architecture lets firms keep privacy and public settlement together, with the confidential chain handling sensitive activity while the public chain provides access to onchain liquidity.

"Institutions shouldn't have to choose between public liquidity and operational privacy. We're building infrastructure that delivers both," said Ivo Georgiev, CEO of Real Finance. 

The company's view is that issuance volumes alone will not define the next phase of tokenization. What matters is whether institutions can run their daily operations on these systems.

The new layer is designed around workflows where confidentiality is a baseline requirement: wealth and asset management mandates, balance sheet operations, tokenized deposit structures, and selective disclosure to auditors, compliance officers, and regulators when a review calls for it. Firms still get blockchain-native settlement and distribution, but their portfolio activity does not sit in plain view.

The release extends REAL's broader pitch around the lifecycle of tokenized real-world assets, which spans issuance, risk assessment, insurance, trading, and institutional execution under one compliance-aware architecture. The company has been building toward an environment where regulated capital can move onchain without forcing operators to rebuild reporting and oversight processes from scratch.

"This is about giving institutions a practical path into onchain finance," Georgiev added. "Real-world assets onchain require infrastructure that reflects how regulated finance actually operates. That's what we're building."

Tokenized real-world assets have drawn growing interest from major banks, asset managers, and other regulated firms over the past two years. The pitch is straightforward: blockchains can move money and assets faster and at lower cost than legacy rails. The friction has come from infrastructure that does not match how institutional desks actually operate, especially around confidentiality of positions and counterparties.

REAL is built on Cosmos Tendermint and uses a dual-validator model that includes both technical validators and business validators such as tokenizers, risk scorers, insurers, and credit agencies. Prividium, the underlying privacy infrastructure for the new layer, is ZKsync's product for regulated entities seeking configurable confidentiality and Ethereum settlement.

The company is headquartered in Sofia, Bulgaria.

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BSCN's dedicated writing team brings over 41 years of combined experience in cryptocurrency research and analysis. Our writers hold diverse academic qualifications spanning Physics, Mathematics, and Philosophy from leading institutions including Oxford and Cambridge. While united by their passion for cryptocurrency and blockchain technology, the team's professional backgrounds are equally diverse, including former venture capital investors, startup founders, and active traders.