Crypto Daybook Americas: Institutions Pile In Amid 'High Conviction' That Prices Will Grind Higher

By Omkar Godbole (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)

Since Friday, cryptocurrencies, especially bitcoin BTC$91,385.96, have demonstrated resilience in the face of the Iran-Israel hostilities. But they also haven't rallied on what might be considered positive news.

The two largest tokens, bitcoin and ether ETH$3,137.49, have traded in a narrow range in the past 24 hours. Even the best-performing of the top 100 tokens, bitcoin cash BCH$597.97, added just 4%.

Behind the scenes, though, institutions are continuing to embrace crypto. On Monday, investment banking giant JPMorgan filed an application for a crypto-focused platform, JPMD, to offer trading, exchange, transfer and payment services and issuance of digital assets.

Strategy, for its part, said it bought over 10,100 BTC worth $1.05 billion last week, one of the biggest acquisitions of the year. And both bitcoin and ether spot ETFs registered inflows.

On the regulatory front, the GENIUS stablecoin bill and the bipartisan CLARITY Act are progressing through Congress.

Perhaps markets are worried the U.S. will enter what might become a prolonged conflict in the Middle East. Hours after Axios reported the Trump team was mulling a diplomatic solution to the clash over Iran's nuclear program, President Trump said on Truth Social that he has not reached out to Iran for "Peace Talks" in any way, shape or form.

Wednesday's Federal Reserve rate decision presents another reason for bulls to tread cautiously. While the central bank is expected to hold rates steady, its commentary on the interest-rate trajectory could move markets.

According to XBTO, capital flows have become selective and risk-averse.

"The Market Factor, a proxy for the broader universe of liquid crypto assets, fell by 4.06%," XBTO told CoinDesk in an email. "This confirms that while the majors held steady, the wider basket of altcoins experienced a much more significant sell-off. The move's low Z-score of +0.11 suggests a controlled de-risking rather than a statistically significant panic event, indicating that capital is consolidating, not fleeing the asset class entirely."

Valentin Fournier, lead research analyst at BRN, said the market is witnessing a structural shift in leadership, with corporations and institutions dominating demand.

"With demand remaining strong and sell pressure weak, we maintain a high-conviction view that prices will grind higher in 2025," BRN said. "While momentum is paused, the asymmetry in risk/reward favors staying invested, especially if retail re-engages. We hold our exposure steady and expect BTC to lead until retail returns or ETH regains institutional inflows," BRN said.

In other news, traders should note that speculation Ripple will burn 10% of its XRP supply is misleading. The confusion likely results from RealFi burning its own token on the XRP Ledger, not XRP.

European digital asset manager CoinShares applied for a Solana spot ETF with the U.S. SEC, days after seven issuers, including 21Shares and Bitwise, updated their applications. OKX exchange has officially launched fully compliant centralized cryptocurrency exchanges in Germany and Poland. Stay alert!

What to Watch

• Crypto
  • June 18: At about 9:28 p.m. IoTeX L1 v2.2.0 hard fork will activate at block 36,893,881. The fork will halve block time to 2.5s and launch System Staking v3.
  • June 18: Shares of Purpose Investments' "Purpose XRP ETF" are expected to start trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange. The ETF will offer Canadian dollar–hedged, Canadian dollar unhedged and U.S. dollar units under the tickers XRPP, XRPP.B and XRPP.U, respectively.
  • June 20: Proof-of-stake blockchain BlackCoin (BLK) activates SegWit on mainnet, improving security and performance. Mandatory upgrade to node and wallet v26.2.0 required.
• Macro
  • Day 3 of 3: G7 2025 Summit (Kananaskis, Alberta, Canada)
  • June 17, 8:30 a.m.: The U.S. Census Bureau releases May retail sales data.
    • Retail Sales MoM Est. -0.7% vs. Prev. 0.1%
    • Retail Sales YoY Prev. 5.2%
  • June 17, 10 a.m.: National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) releases U.S. housing market data for June.
    • NAHB Housing Market Index Est. 36 vs. Prev. 34
  • June 17: The U.S. Senate will vote on the final passage of the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins bill (GENIUS Act).
  • June 18, 2 a.m.: U.K.'s Office for National Statistics releases May consumer price inflation data.
    • Core Inflation Rate MoM Est. 0.2% vs. Prev. 1.4%
    • Core Inflation Rate YoY Est. 3.6% vs. Prev. 3.8%
    • Inflation Rate MoM Est. Est. 0.2% vs. Prev. 1.2%
    • Inflation Rate YoY Est. 3.4% vs. Prev. 3.5%
  • June 18, 5 a.m.: EUROSTAT releases (final) May eurozone consumer price inflation data.
    • Core Inflation Rate YoY Est. 2.3% vs. Prev. 2.7%
    • Inflation Rate MoM Est. 0% vs. Prev. 0.6%
    • Inflation Rate YoY Est. 1.9% vs. Prev. 2.2%
  • June 18, 8:30 a.m.: U.S. Department of Labor releases unemployment insurance data for the week ended June 14.
    • Initial Jobless Claims Est. 245K vs. Prev. 248K
  • June 18, 2 p.m.: Federal Reserve announces its interest-rate decision. Rates expected to be held at 4.25%-4.50%. Chair Jerome Powell’s press conference follows at 2:30 p.m.
  • June 18, 5:30 p.m.: Brazil’s central bank, Banco Central do Brasil, announces its interest-rate decision.
    • Selic Rate Est. 14.75% vs. Prev. 14.75%
• Earnings (Estimates based on FactSet data)
  • June 23 (TBC): HIVE Digital Technologies (HIVE), post-market, $-0.12

Token Events

• Governance votes & calls
  • Compound DAO is set to vote on a proposal to create the Compound Foundation, a non-profit to drive protocol growth and strategy. It calls for an 18-month plan and requests $9 million in COMP, with voting set to begin in a day and end June 20.
  • Arbitrum DAO is voting on a proposal to launch DRIP, an $80M incentives program targeting specific DeFi activity. Managed by a foundation-led committee, DRIP would reward users directly and allow the DAO to shut it down via vote. Voting ends June 20.
  • ApeCoin DAO is voting on whether to sunset the decentralized autonomous organization and launch ApeCo, a new entity established by Yuga Labs with a mission to “supercharge the APE ecosystem.” Voting ends June 24.
  • Polkadot Community is voting on launching a non-custodial Polkadot branded payment card to “to bridge the gap between digital assets in the Polkadot ecosystem and everyday spending.” Voting ends July 9.
  • June 17, 12 p.m.: Lido to hist its 29th Node Operator Community Call.
  • June 18, 10 a.m.: Filecoin to host a session on unlocking Filecoin’s hot storage era.
  • June 19, 9 a.m.: TON to host a Builders Call: Payments Edition.
• Unlocks
  • June 17: APE$0.2359 to unlock 1.95% of its circulating supply worth $10.37 million.
  • June 18: FTN$0.5807 to unlock 4.65% of its circulating supply worth $88.80 million.
  • June 18: S$0.09612 to unlock 1.68% of its circulating supply worth $16.12 million.
  • June 30: OP$0.3145 to unlock 1.83% of its circulating supply worth $18.05 million.
  • July 1: SUI$1.6374 to unlock 1.3$ of its circulating supply worth $130.23 million.
  • July 2: ENA$0.2754 to unlock 0.67% of its circulating supply worth $11.85 million.
• Token Launches
  • June 17: SPK$0.02495 to be listed on Binance, KuCoin, Bithumb, Bybit, Bitget, MEXC, and others.
  • June 26: Coinbase to delist MOBILE$0.0₃2548, RNDR$1.6027, Ribbon Finance (RBN) and SYN$0.06454.

Conferences

The CoinDesk Policy & Regulation conference (formerly known as State of Crypto) is a one-day boutique event held in Washington on Sept. 10 that allows general counsels, compliance officers and regulatory executives to meet with public officials responsible for crypto legislation and regulatory oversight.

• June 18-19: Canadian Blockchain Consortium’s 2nd Annual Policy Summit (Ottawa)
• June 18-19: SuperAI (Singapore)
• June 19-21: BTC Prague 2025
• June 24-26: Blockworks' Permissionless IV (New York)
• June 25-26: Bitcoin Policy Institute’s Bitcoin Policy Summit 2025 (Washington)
• June 26: The Injective Summit (New York)
• June 26-27: Istanbul Blockchain Week
• June 30 to July 3: Ethereum Community Conference (Cannes, France)

Token Talk

By Shaurya Malwa

• USELESS exploded onto the memecoin scene with a 1,000% rally over the past week, despite crypto markets holding fairly steady on the Israel–Iran hostilities.
• Over $26 million in 24-hour trading volume shows feverish trader interest even though the coin’s website says it’s literally useless: no utility, no roadmap and no promise of gains.
• Launched via Letsbonk.fun on Solana, USELESS rode a wave from $0.004 to highs near $0.10, fueling retail FOMO and momentum largely driven by social media hype on X.
• A whale dubbed “Bonk Guy," who goes by @theunipcs on X, scooped up about 2.8% of the total supply (or 28 million tokens) for about $382,000 in recent weeks, contributing to the token's visibility.
• That stake is now worth roughly $2.3 million in unrealized profits.
• The frenzy is indicative of how satire and hype continue to outweigh fundamentals in an otherwise flat market, with its joke status not stopping traders from piling in, turning self-proclaimed zero-utility into serious capital swings.

Derivatives Positioning

• Annualized perpetual funding rates for most major tokens continue to hover below 10%. In other words, the market is bullish but not overheated.
• One exception is HYPE. Funding rates for HYPE remain above 40%, which may set the stage for a long squeeze should prices stop rising.
• TRX, BCH, SHIB, TAO and XRP have all seen increases in open interest.
• On the CME, annualized one-month basis in BTC and ETH futures remains below 10%.
• On Deribit, ether options from July expiry show bullish bias while bullishness in BTC options is evident only after August.

Market Movements

• BTC is up 1.17% from 4 p.m. ET Monday at $106,278.52 (24hrs: -0.67%)
• ETH is up 0.84% at $2,567.65 (24hrs: -2.06%)
• CoinDesk 20 is unchanged at 3,086.55 (24hrs: +0.81%)
• Ether CESR Composite Staking Rate is up 9 bps at 2.97%
• BTC funding rate is at 0.0042% (4.6308% annualized) on Binance

• DXY is up 0.21% at 98.20
• Gold futures are down 0.49% at $3,400.40
• Silver futures are up 0.35% at $36.58
• Nikkei 225 closed up 0.59% at 38,536.74
• Hang Seng closed down 0.34% at 23,980.30
• FTSE is down 0.51% at 8,829.82
• Euro Stoxx 50 is down 1.24% at 5,273.24
• DJIA closed on Monday up 0.75% at 42,515.09
• S&P 500 closed up 0.94% at 6,033.11
• Nasdaq Composite closed up 1.52% at 19,701.21
• S&P/TSX Composite closed up 0.24% at 26,568.61
• S&P 40 Latin America closed up 1.32% at 2,642.67
• U.S. 10-Year Treasury rate is down 2 bps at 4.434%
• E-mini S&P 500 futures are down 0.60% at 5,999.25
• E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are down 0.61% at 21,807.25
• E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index are down 0.64% at 42,264.00

Bitcoin Stats

• BTC Dominance: 64.8 (-0.12%)
• Ethereum to bitcoin ratio: 0.02415 (1.43%)
• Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 929 EH/s
• Hashprice (spot): $53.71
• Total Fees: 4.92 BTC / $528,060
• CME Futures Open Interest: 154,415
• BTC priced in gold: 31.1 oz
• BTC vs gold market cap: 8.80%

Technical Analysis

• Bitcoin's 50-day simple moving average (SMA) has emerged as strong support for the largest cryptocurrency, restricting downside moves at least twice this month.
• A potential break below the average could invite stronger selling pressure, yielding deeper losses.

Crypto Equities

• Strategy (MSTR): closed on Monday at $382.25 (-0.16%), pre-market down 2.09% at $374.28
• Coinbase Global (COIN): closed at $261.57 (+7.77%), pre-market down 1.85% at $256.73
• Circle (CRCL): closed at $151.06 (+13.1%), up 6.06% pre-market at $160.30
• Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY): closed at C$26.33 (+2.93%)
• MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $15.32 (+1.86%), pre-market down 1.76% at $15.05
• Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $10.17 (+4.63%), pre-market down 2.26% at $9.94
• Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $12.08 (+1.6%), pre-market down 1.08% at $11.95
• CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $9.62 (+3.44%), pre-market down 2.29% at $9.40
• CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $19.7 (+4.45%)
• Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed at $30.52 (+3.18%)
• Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $32.76 (+4.43%), pre-market down 0.18% at $32.7

ETF Flows

Spot BTC ETFs

• Daily net flows: $408.6 million
• Cumulative net flows: $46 billion
• Total BTC holdings ~1.22 million
  

Spot ETH ETFs

• Daily net flows: $21.4 million
• Cumulative net flows: $3.89 billion
• Total ETH holdings ~3.96 million

Source: Farside Investors

Overnight Flows

Chart of the Day

• The chart shows fund managers are most underweight on the U.S. dollar in two decades.
• The extreme bearish positioning in the dollar alongside elevated Treasury yields points to investor concerns about U.S. fiscal sustainability.
• That said, extreme bearish moods often mark interim bottoms.

While You Were Sleeping

• ARK Invest Offloads Over $50M in Circle Shares as Stock Extends Rally (CoinDesk): Cathie Wood's firm sold the shares, spread across three of its ETFs, as the price rallied 13% after it bought $373 million worth of the stock earlier this month.
• Polymarket Odds on U.S. Military Action Against Iran Slide as Trump Team Proposes Tehran Talks (CoinDesk): Odds on the decentralized betting platform fell to 46% after Axios reported that the U.S. may ask envoy Steve Witkoff to meet Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi this week.
• Deribit Sees Strong Demand From Institutions, Volume on Its Block RFQ Tool Reaches $23B in Four Months (CoinDesk): The crypto derivatives exchange's Block Request-for-Quote (RFQ) tool now accounts for 27.5% of block trades, signaling strong institutional demand for executing large crypto derivatives transactions without impacting public order books.
• Central Banks Plan to Boost Gold Reserves and Trim Dollar Holdings (Financial Times): Nearly all central banks surveyed by the World Gold Council say they expect to raise gold reserves within a year, while 75% foresee cutting dollar holdings by 2030.
• Bank of Japan to Slow Cuts to Government Bond Purchases From April Next Year as Growth Risks Loom (CNBC): The bank will slow its bond purchase cuts from April 2026, reflecting concern about draining liquidity too quickly. A policy review is set for June 2026.
• Citi Calls Time on Gold’s Rally on Slumping Demand, Fed Cuts (Bloomberg): Citi sees gold sinking below $2,700 by late 2026 as investment demand wanes amid expected Fed rate cuts, U.S. fiscal stimulus, and easing of Trump’s tariffs.

In the Ether