(31/52) Weekly Market Insight | August Week 3 | Optimistic Dip Buying - ChainUp: Leading Provider of Digital Asset Exchange & Custody Solutions

Headline News: $4000 Breakout or History Repeats

Despite the White House’s “reciprocal” tariffs taking effect and the softening labor market, the broader market was driven by a renewed wave of dip buying as the Fed is inching closer to lower interest rates. Ethereum continues to outperform Bitcoin as more favouring digital asset specific policies were announced, and increased over 20% last week, revisiting over the $4000 level for the first time in 8 months.

Macro-Outlook: Overlook Stagflation, Betting Rate Cuts

President Trump announced a 100% tariff on all imported semi-conductors and exempting companies that build in the US. Trump also imposed an additional 25% tariff on Indian goods, totalling 50%. Commerce Secretary Lutnick suggested most likely reaching an agreement with China. The EU paused its counter-tariffs against the US.
US ISM services PMI fell to 50.1 in July, well below forecasts of 51.5, showing increasing risk of stagnated services sector.
The market expects a 46% probability of 3 rate-cuts or 75bps cut by the end of 2025.

Upcoming Economic Calendar including,

Tuesday, August 12, 8:30pm: US Inflation Rate in July
Thursday, August 14, 8:30pm: US PPI in July
Friday, August 15, 8:30pm: US Retail Sales in July
Friday, August 15, 10:00pm: Michigan Consumer Sentiment Preliminary Reading in August

Weekly-Cryptos-Overview: Retire with Bitcoin ; Liquid Staking is Cool

President Trump signed an executive order, directing the Department of Labor to revise “qualified assets” for 401(k) investment to a broader range of assets, including cryptocurrencies. Trump also signed an executive order, aimed at preventing banks from denying services to companies that involve in cryptocurrency services.
The SEC clarified that liquid staking services and LSTs are not considered as securities. The SEC also announced stablecoins to be classified as cash equivalents in accounting.
The US CFTC announced the beginning of Crypto Sprint implementation, inviting recommendations on spot crypto asset contracts trading on registered futures exchanges.
KakaoBank announced reviewing new business ventures in digital asset issuance, custody and won-based stablecoin.
Coinbase app now supports DEX trading, and it plans to expand to Solana soon.
Binance partnered with BBVA, leading bank in Spain, as the off-exchange service custodian for customers to use the margin for trading on Binance.
Animoca Brands, Anchorpoint, Standard Chartered, and HKT announced establishing a joint venture to apply for a stablecoin issuer license from HKMA.

Layer 1 and Layer 2s

The SEC and Ripple jointly dismissed appeals, ending their 5-year legal case.
Base experienced a 33-minute network halt due to sequencer management disruption.
Kaia partnered with DaWinKS to enable cash withdrawal, card issuance and on-ramp services across Korea’s travel hubs using USDT.
Fluent, the multi-VM blockchain optimised for EVM, SVM and Wasm, launched the public testnet.

Dapps

Pendle launched Boros, a new platform for funding rate trading, on Arbitrum. Boros will initially support Binance’s BTC and ETH markets with a $10 million cap on notional open interest and 1.2x maximum leverage.
Chainlink launched Chainlink Reserve, using protocol revenue to buyback LINK and accumulate in the reserve.
Jupiter Lend, the advanced money market developed by Jupiter and Fluid, launched private Beta on Solana, featuring 95% LTVs on borrowings.
PancakeSwap launched AAPL, AMZN, and TSLA on PancakeSwap Pepetuals with up to 25x leverage on BNB Chain.
INFINIT’s IN token is now live with approximately $100 million FDV. IN holders can stake to entitle for protocol fees sharing, governance and priority access.
Euler announced the zkVerified lending vaults, enabling institutions to deploy permissioned, verifiable and complaint lending markets. Euler also launched the UI for its previously launched EulerSwap, enabling users to earn from swap fees and lending yield from the same LP.
Succinct, the ZK Prover Network, launched its PROVE token with approximately $1.4 billion FDV.
Lens protocol announced Lens Token Distributor, a gasless GHO distributor based on users’ contribution, consistency, influence and quality.
Alchemix introduced V3, revamping the redemption mechanism Transmuter to set specific redemption periods and provide predictable timeframe when they can redeem alAssets at 1:1 value, and Meta-Yield Token that represents multiple yield-bearing strategies into one.
Magic Eden launched Solana liquid staking token, meSOL, using 100% of the validator revenue to buyback ME and redistribute to ME stakers.
BounceBit partnered with Franklin Templeton to launch BB Prime, using BENJI as collateral for its basis-trading strategy.
PreStocks, tokenised pre-IPO stocks trading platform which is backed by Republic, is now live on Solana network.
Pump.fun introduced Glass Full Foundation, aiming to inject “significant” liquidity into the most active and promising communities within the pump.fun ecosystem.

Upcoming Alpha and Governance

Fluid has hit over $10 million annualised revenue goal. The protocol is expected to implement buyback using the protocol revenue soon.
Lido proposed Dynamic Buyback Program, using portion of the operating surplus to buyback LDO based on the current size of protocol treasury, such as using 70% of surplus for buyback if treasury amount is above $85 million. However, the discussion of the proposal is mixed. Many suggested Lido has not achieved a sustainable operating surplus yet.
Linea will be integrating Lido V3 stVault to facilitate its Layer-2 native staking.
Jito proposed to increase the Block Engine fees from 50% to 100% directing to DAO Treasury, along with all future BAM fees.
A governance proposal from TokenLogic suggested that Metamask plans partnered with Stripe to launch mmUSD stablecoin. The proposal was later deleted.
LayerZero proposed to acquire Stargate by offering every STG for 0.08634 LZO.

Token Unlock

PUMP token unlocked on August 14, amount representing 2.83% of the token supply.
STRK token unlocked on August 15, amount representing 3.33% of the token supply.
ARB token unlocked on August 16, amount representing 1.8% of the token supply.
VANA token unlocked on August 16, amount representing 1.47% of the token supply.
APE token unlocked on August 17, amount representing 1.92% of the token supply.
ZK token unlocked on August 19, amount representing 2.4% of the token supply.
ZRO token unlocked on August 20, amount representing 22.2% of the token supply.
KAITO token unlocked on August 20, amount representing 6.91% of the token supply.
PLUME token unlocked on August 21, amount representing 3.25% of the token supply.
INIT token unlocked on August 25, amount representing 1.55% of the token supply.
NEWT token unlocked on August 25, amount representing 2.91% of the token supply.
ALT token unlocked on August 26, amount representing 6.03% of the token supply.
HUMA token unlocked on August 27, amount representing 7.28% of the token supply.
RESOLV token unlocked on August 28, amount representing 9.14% of the token supply.