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The Weekly Tape

The relief trade got its follow-through as BTC printed a five-week high above $66.5K after opening the week near $65K, now two weeks off the $58K lows, with ETH near $1.94K continuing to outpace on the bounce.

SOL fell 3.6% on the day the SBI Solana Global JV was announced, a sell-the-news print against one of the quarter's bigger distribution deals.

Last edition we looked at whether the ETF trickle becomes a streak, and after a ~$500M outflow fakeout, BTC spot ETFs managed to log their second consecutive week of net inflows, the first back-to-back stretch since May.

HYPE ETFs once again show no sign of life with net inflows stagnant at ~$300M since June.

Saylor’s weekly disclosure repeated last week’s shape. The July 20 8-K adds $225M to the USD Reserve, now $3.2B against an unchanged 843,775 BTC, which puts dividend coverage at 1.8 years.

The criticism has shifted from “will they sell BTC” to the funding mechanics, with holders noting the MSTR sales sit below the 1.22x mNAV threshold management itself defined as the accretion line.

Crypto Natives Turned on Base

The week's loudest drama was political rather than technical. A coin named $BRIAN did $100M+ in volume on Base off Brian Armstrong's profile-picture changes, collapsed 99%, and Armstrong responded that his account is not alpha.

The main reason for the fallout was the Base team being heavily out of touch with the users who have been the most active and driven the most volume to the chain the past few years.

The flow data shows Robinhood Chain now runs >3.6M daily transactions, $3.1B in weekly DEX volume, >$400M in stables, and ~$300M of DeFi TVL, with Uniswap processing 98% of that volume, which answers last edition's "regime or a week" question in the regime direction.

Looking at the volume composition, tokenized RWAs account for just $12.8M of it, so the chain built for RWAs is running almost entirely on memecoins.

PUMP and the Price of Trust

PUMP reclaimed $0.0020 this week. The case for it is mechanical buybacks and burns from its $440M in annualized revenue against a $1.4B FDV. 15.15% of supply has been burned permanently from ~$400K/day in buybacks.

Ansem compares Hyperliquid running $800M annualized revenue at $65B FDV vs Pump.fun $440M at $1.4B, both doing recurring buybacks, so the 40x multiple gap is a trust premium rather than a revenue difference. One team never overpromised and delivered its users an airdrop while the other made $1B, raised $1B, and never rewarded users.

Derivatives Positioning

Aggregate perp DEX open interest sits at $20B, finally climbing back to January highs this year.

June's soft inflation prints came almost entirely from falling energy prices. That makes them fragile, because the Iran-Hormuz re-escalation has already pushed WTI up 15.5%, and the same channel that produced the disinflation now works in reverse.

The options market is not trading that risk yet. BTC 25-delta skew collapsed further across the curve this week, to +1.6pts at 1W, +2.7pts at 1M, +3.7pts at 2M, +3.9pts at 6M, and +4.5pts at 1Y. The front end sat at +4.3pts last week and +8.2pts three weeks ago, so the put premium that was concentrated around near-term events has been mostly unwound. In last week’s edition we saw September having a +6.3pts hump, which has since fell.

The curve now slopes upward with the largest put bid at the 1Y tenor as desks treat tonight's Alphabet and Tesla prints and next week's FOMC as noise while the only meaningful put bid sits out at the 1Y tenor. Skew remains positive at every horizon, so protection was rolled out to the long end, not taken off.

HYPE is the divergence spot of the week. The token lost 11.6% while its stock-perp volume ran $11.5B weekly, up from $500M in January. HIP-3 pairs now account for >50% of Hyperliquid’s 24H volume.

RWA Perps also grew to roughly a third of open interest, yet protocol revenue has fallen three straight quarters, from $356.7M in Q3’25 to $201.8M in Q2’26.

The July 29 FOMC hike odds ran ~7% at last edition, fell to ~4% after CPI and PPI, and now sit at ~16% with the Fed in blackout.

The Week Ahead

Tonight, Jul 22 after market close:

• GOOG - all eyes will be on the capex guide after SOXX fell 10.2% last week on returns concerns.

• TSLA

July 23

• Intel (INTC)

Next week’s Key events and Earnings

• FOMC: ~16% chance of hike per Polymarket.

• SK Hynix (000660)

• Microsoft (MSFT)

• Meta Platforms (META)

• Samsung Electronics (SMSN)

• Apple (AAPL)

Summary

The relief rally that started on the CPI print survived its second week, with BTC at 5-week highs, back-to-back ETF inflows for the first time since May, and Strategy funding dividends without touching the stack for a second straight disclosure.

Whether or not this rally still has legs depends on the next seven days as MAG7 and semis earnings are released and FOMC on July 29.

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The Weekly Tape

The relief bounce got its confirmation this week. BTC dipped to $61.6K into Tuesday’s CPI print before reclaiming $64K within hours of the release, now holding a second week of recovery off the $58K 21-month lows.

Crypto total market cap added ~$200B in the past week and is now sitting at ~$2.4T extending last week’s recovery.

US spot Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs saw ~$500M in outflows on Monday despite positive outlooks in early July where flows finally flipped positive. ETH ETFs saw a similar outflow on Monday.

HYPE ETFs have stayed relatively flat the past couple of weeks.

However, HYPE DATs are seeing their mNAV drop <1x.

Strategy's July 13 8-K shows BTC holdings unchanged at 843,775 while the USD reserve grew by $450M to a total of $3.0B, extending the dividend runway without touching the BTC stack this time. This comes after last week's 3,588 BTC sale to fund Q2 dividends.

June CPI printed 3.5% against a 3.8% consensus, with core at 2.6% and headline falling 0.4% month over month, the biggest monthly drop since April 2020.

This print carried more weight than usual because the Warsh Fed spent the past few weeks openly debating a July 29 hike, so BTC was pricing hike risk rather than hoping for a cut.

The Casino Moved to Robinhood Chain

Robinhood chain remains the main talking point for a second week as launchpad activity took over the chain's flow. Current TVL sits at $175M while DEX volumes are averaging over $700M per day the last week.

The centerpiece is Noxa. NOXA.fun, the chain's native launchpad, printed $2.33M in protocol fees on July 11, roughly 4x Pump.fun's take the same day, and cleared ~$7.66M in fees for the week. On July 13 the team burned 40% of the token supply.

However, internal disputes regarding revenue split resulted in the deployer being turned off amidst a successful run, causing them to fumble millions in daily fees as volumes continue to climb.

The other side of that flow is Solana, where last week’s Ansem-led revival is cooling as the marginal trench dollar migrates to the newer venue.

Derivatives Positioning

Aggregate perp DEX open interest sits at $19.2B, slowly grinding higher from the $17-18B figure last week. The post-CPI print saw ~$500M in OI being added overnight.

BTC 25-delta skew is the tell on whether desks believed the print. Last week the curve sat positive at every tenor, +7.5pts at 1W fading to +5.6pts at 1Y, with hedges concentrated at the front.

This week’s curve saw the 1W tenor drop 3.2pts, the biggest move anywhere on the curve, so the hedges really were about the July 29 decision. But the hump at 2M (+6.3pts) now sits over the September window, meaning desks rolled protection out to the next event rather than taking it off.

On Hyperliquid, HIP-3 open interest is holding $3.6B with TradeXYZ still above 95% of builder-market volume. Across onchain RWA perps platforms, TradeXYZ holds a majority 55% share.

Prediction Markets

Polymarket’s July 29 FOMC market now sits at 93% hold, 7% for a 25bps hike, and under 1% for a cut. Hike odds climbed through early July before repricing within minutes of the CPI release, and traders betting on zero cuts in all of 2026 still hold 79.8%, so the print removed the hike tail without adding an easing bid.

The World Cup continues to carry platform volume, with the Winner market past $4B+ cumulative and the Final just days away. Polymarket has again broken a new record in fees generated, hitting $12.2M as volumes sustain above $1B.

Summary

The macro fear that pinned BTC to its lows was specific, a July 29 hike, and Tuesday’s CPI removed it. The bounce came with $134M in short liquidations and Fed odds repricing to 93% hold, though positioning says the relief is believed near term while protection gets rolled out to September. ETH and BTC ETFs saw outflows on Monday reversing its positive inflows early July, while HYPE ETFs have stayed flat.

Underneath the macro, the sidelined risk-on capital is showing up in memecoin bets on new chains. Robinhood Chain’s launchpad out-earned Pump.fun 4x inside its second week. Whether that flow is a regime or a temporary rotation is next week’s question.

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The Weekly Tape

Crypto finally caught a relief bounce this week to $64K after testing 21-month lows at $58K. HYPE and LIT remained strong amidst overall market downturns, with LIT continuing to lead the way off the back of Robinhood’s announcement, up 10% this week, and 56.9% in the last 30-days.

Crypto total market cap regained $200B in the past week.

US spot Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs finally saw some relief this week with inflows slowly trickling back.

HYPE ETFs continue to see positive net inflows, albeit at a much lower rate than prior months, ~$12M last week.

Saylor has been the core focus these couple of weeks as investors wondered how Strategy is going to meet dividend payments. This week, Strategy sold $216M which covers the whole Q2 dividends for STRF, STRE, STRK, STRD and the full monthly dividend for June on STRC.

This was seemingly viewed as a bullish move despite a 32BTC sell nuking the markets a few weeks back.

An alternative bearish take regarding the situation from Light’s post.

Lighter Robinhood Revival

The single best-performing perp DEX token this week was Lighter (LIT) after Robinhood announced support for perp DEX trading on Lighter directly from Robinhood Wallet.

LIT is still below its TGE price of around $3, but has demonstrated strength over the last 2 months.

Robinhood Chain Surge

Robinhood chain is the main talking point this week as bridge volumes soared on the back of Vlad Tenev’s post about memecoins which appears to be contributing bulk of the chain’s volumes right now.

Robinhood chain transactions and DEX volumes have also surged on the back of this announcement to over 2.7M and $313M today respectively.

Robinhood chain has hit $100M in TVL within a week, with >$50M of inflows just today on the back of Vlad’s post.

The Solana revival last week seems to be cooling off as capital rotates to chase the next shiny coin.

Derivatives Positioning

The derivatives metrics shifted with the bounce, and it is evidence of whether this holds. Aggregate perp DEX open interest sits near the ~$17B-$18B base built off the February lows.

But the more telling move is in options positioning where BTC 25-delta skew softened across the curve this week but stayed positive at every tenor (+7.5pts 1W to +5.6pts 1Y). The belly (2mth-3mth) came off hardest while the front held, leaving 1mth as the peak. Traders unwound medium-term downside protection as the bounce played out but kept immediate-term hedges on. Puts are still being bid everywhere, so this seems to be more cautious participation in the relief rally, not a conviction risk-on turn.

World Cup Rakes in Record Numbers

The World Cup contract on prediction markets keeps compounding, now past ~$4B cumulative volume on Polymarket's Winner market, with the platform printing a record $11M revenue last week on $1.2B in volume.

However, this week, yet another dispute arose on Polymarket regarding whether Cristiano Ronaldo cried at the World Cup.

Summary

Crypto caught its first summer bounce, but the flows say hold it lightly. BTC clawed off a 21-month low and ETF outflows broke their streak with two inflow days, though June still closed as the worst ETF month on record.

Robinhood’s week-old chain crossed $100M TVL on meme activity which Tenev first dismissed then embraced, and LIT ran >50% in 30-days as Robinhood made Lighter its default perp venue. Options flow indicates cautious positioning despite the relief bounce. Our weekly Pulse goes deeper on the macro on Saturday.

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The Flow Brief is a mid-week, charts-first scan of where crypto capital moved across ETF flows, sector baskets, derivatives, and prediction markets.

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The Weekly Tape

Revenue Sectors Held, Token Sectors Sold Off (diff focus)

Derivatives Positioning

Prediction Markets

Summary

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Important Links

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• Total Crypto MCap: [MCAP] ([MCAP_7D_CHG] vs last week)

• BTC: [BTC_PRICE] · dominance [BTC_DOM] · 7D [BTC_7D]

• ETH: [ETH_PRICE] · 7D [ETH_7D] · ETH/BTC [ETH_BTC]

• QQQ: [QQQ] · Gold: [GOLD] · Oil (WTI): [OIL] · US 10Y: [10Y]%

• Crypto Fear & Greed: 47 - Neutral (vs 29 last week)

[CHART: Market Snapshot — data grid. Screenshot from AWO dashboard.]

Macro this week: [HL_1]. [HL_2]. FED rate decision probabilities via Polymarket: Cut [FED_CUT]% / Hold [FED_HOLD]% / Hike [FED_HIKE]%.

[CHART: Polymarket FED probability bar — Cut / Hold / Hike]

[CHART: BTC vs SPY — % change on key macro event days this week]

BTC reclaimed $79K in Asia hours and equities hitting record highs with S&P at 7,165, NASDAQ at 24,836 even as F&G stayed in “Fear” last week.

BTC & ETH Flows

BTC and ETH flows set the tone for everything else. Here’s what I’m watching.

BTC

ETF flows came in [net positive/negative/flat] over the week, with roughly [ETF_NET_7D] in net [inflows/outflows]. [EXCHANGE_FLOW_SENTENCE — e.g. “Exchange balances continued declining, with about [X] BTC leaving spot venues, a trend that has held for [N] consecutive weeks.”]. Derivatives are [DERIV_READ — e.g. “relatively clean: funding flat across major venues, OI up [X]% but not at crowded levels”].

ETH

[ETH_FLOW_SENTENCE — e.g. “ETH is lagging BTC in spot but picking up in perps, with funding turning slightly positive for the first time since [DATE].”]. ETF/ETP net flows [ETH_ETF_READ]. Staking deposits [NET_STAKING_READ]. ETH/BTC is at [ETH_BTC], [direction and meaning — e.g. “near multi-month lows, still showing no structural bid relative to BTC”].

Latest BTC purchase, disclosed on Apr 20 Bought 34.1K BTC for ~$2.54B at $74,395 avg

Sector Performance & Baskets

Under the hood, I slice the market into baskets and see who is actually working.

[CHART: Sector Basket Performance — 7D vs BTC. Screenshot from AWO dashboard.]

[BASKET_COMMENTARY — 3–5 sentences on which baskets led and lagged, what the divergences say. Example below:]

On-chain AI [outperformed / underperformed] BTC by roughly [X]% on the week, with [LEADERS] leading and [LAGGARDS] lagging. DeFi blue chips were [flat / up / down], with fee-generating names [diverging from / tracking] governance-only tokens. Perp DEX volumes [rose / fell] week-over-week, with [TOP_VENUE] holding the top spot on fees. RWAs continued [accumulating / shedding] TVL quietly, without much CT attention. Meme sector [read].

Baskets I’m leaning into this week: [BASKET + ONE-LINE REASON]. Baskets I think are crowded or fragile: [BASKET + ONE-LINE REASON].

Protocol Data: Fees, TVL, Other Interesting Data

Next, I look at who is actually generating fees and attracting capital.

Top fee generators (7D)

[CHART: Protocol fee ranking with mini bars. Screenshot from AWO dashboard.]

[FEE_COMMENTARY — 1–2 sentences. Example: “DeFi apps continue to dominate over base chains this week. The top five are all product-layer protocols, not infrastructure, which keeps reinforcing that value capture is skewing toward front-end and stablecoin rails.”]

TVL movers

Gainers: [TVL_GAINERS — e.g. “Pendle (+$420M), EigenLayer (+$310M), driven by a new incentive campaign and renewed restaking appetite”]. Losers: [TVL_LOSERS — e.g. “Lido (-$180M) and Curve (-$120M), with no obvious catalyst beyond rotation out of older DeFi into higher-beta names”].

[ODDITY — optional 1–2 sentences on any data that tells a different story than CT, or a single number that caught your eye this week. E.g.: “One thing worth noting: active address counts on [CHAIN] jumped [X]% while price was flat, suggesting organic activity rather than price-chasing.”]

Projects To Watch Into The Week

These are names I’m watching more closely this week. They’re not all buys, but they’re on my screen.

[PROJECT_1]

[What it is — one sentence, assume crypto-literate reader]. [Why it’s on the radar this week — catalyst, flow, structural trend]. [Your angle — “I care because X; if Y happens I’ll [accumulate / farm / fade it]”]. [Optional: “I’ll be writing deeper on this later this week; for now I’m watching [METRIC/CATALYST].”]

[PROJECT_2]

[Same structure.]

[PROJECT_3]

[Same structure. Can flag as a research preview if applicable.]

(Add up to 6 names. Remove this line before publishing.)

My Note

[SHORT_TITLE — e.g. “Flows Before Narratives” or “The Quiet Week That Wasn’t”]

[CORE_IDEA — 2–3 sentences on the lens you’re bringing to this week. Keep it anchored to something you’re genuinely thinking about, not a market observation dressed up as philosophy. Example: “Every week I try to run a simple test: which assets are attracting capital because of what they do, and which are attracting capital because of what they’re promising? The gap between those two groups tends to close in the wrong direction for the latter during volatile periods, which is where I think we are now.”]

[FLOW_TO_LENS_TIE — 3–5 sentences connecting this week’s actual data to the idea. What do the flows say? What does the basket performance confirm or contradict? Where does the fee and TVL data fit in? Example: “This week’s basket performance reinforces that read — DeFi blue chips generating real revenue are outperforming narrative tokens even in a mildly risk-on environment. The fee rankings tell the same story: the top five earners are all products people are actively paying to use. That kind of data is easy to ignore when markets are running, but it’s exactly when it matters most.”]

[BEHAVIORAL_IMPLICATION — 1–2 sentences on what this changes about how you’re operating into the week. Be honest and specific. Example: “Going into this week, I’m being stricter on position sizing in anything with no fee or TVL baseline, regardless of how compelling the narrative sounds. One exception: [PROJECT], which I think has a real catalyst rather than just a story.”]

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The Weekly Tape

BTC slid toward its 2024 range lows this week, but capital didn't leave the market so much as concentrate. BTC trades near $58.5K, down from ~$64K a week ago, with DeFi tokens hit hardest. SOL held green over seven days against a red tape, pulled up by tokenized RWA trading and Ansem’s efforts to revive Solana.

Since the October top, crypto market cap has fallen from $4.3T to $2.0T, a 54% drawdown, ~$10B a day for 8 months.

US spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded a historic over $4B in net outflows in June

HYPE ETFs saw strong inflows this month with cumulative net inflow just shy of $300M.

On Monday, Saylor announced a “Digital Credit Capital Framework” which saw sales of $1.1bn worth of MSTR shares to replenish the USD reserve, which now covers almost 1.5 year worth of dividends.

They pointed out that BTC sales could happen for all sorts of purposes, but still only sold MSTR and not BTC last week even at depressed mNAV.

Buyback Tokens Held While Beta Sold Off

The perp DEX names with buyback flywheels held or ran while everything relying on pure beta sold off with BTC.

Lighter (LIT) rose ~40% in the last 30-days, outperforming BTC and HYPE.

Solana ecosystem also saw an uptick in volumes as Ansem started a movement to revive Solana and the trenches. $ANSEM ran to $160M amidst an overall depressed market which saw ecosystem coins and memes catching a bid as well.

This resurfaced theories and speculation about a potential Pumpfun airdrop.

The flavour of the week is onchain options. Both Synapse ($SYN) and Derive ($DRV) are up ~40% on the week.

Arthur Hayes bought $2.2M of SYN and publicly backed Hypercall as a Deribit challenger. The thesis being buybacks where Hypercall would use revenue to buy back SYN once live. The catch is there’s no product yet and Synapse’s Q2 revenue is about $3K against a $120M+ cap, so this is a bet on the flywheel existing, not evidence it does.

Derive ($DRV) runs a live options and perps venue with growing fee share and trades at a ~$76M market cap, versus Synapse's valuation on a pre-product testnet.

Derivatives Positioning

Aggregate perp DEX open interest is now at $17B, ~50% off the $12-13B lows in early February. As mentioned in the prior week’s brief, the current OI base looks stickier, although majors are now testing multi-year supports. BTC and ETH slid toward key support with options traders paying up for downside protection.

BTC 25 delta skew is positive across every tenor from +8.2pts at 1W to +5.6pts at 1Y. This shows the options market is paying up for puts over calls at every horizon. The downward slope shows the fear is front-loaded where traders are hedging the immediate support test rather than a long-term breakdown.

On Hyperliquid, HIP-3 has reached roughly $3.2B of open interest and 29.3% of 30-day perp volume, yet TradeXYZ controls more than 95% of HIP-3 volume and open interest.

Prediction Markets

Once again, prediction market volumes have been driven by the 2026 FIFA World Cup, with the World Cup Winner contract at ~$3.5B in total trading volume.

Polymarket’s hit a new record $8M revenue last week (vs $7.5M prior) and $432M in TVL. Trading volume remains elevated at $1.1B.

Meta also recently announced intentions to enter the prediction market scene, with its experimental app called “Arena”.

Summary

BTC slid toward its range 2024 lows while capital rotated into Solana rather than leaving the market. SOL ecosystem tokens outran majors on RWA and tokenized-stock demand, with JTO leading on the Market Layer launch. Perp DEX tokens with buyback flywheels held while beta names corrected, and Arthur Hayes reopened the onchain options trade with a revenue-thin but sharply bid SYN. Options desks paid up for downside protection as BTC skew stayed puts-bid, and the World Cup kept generating the deepest prediction market in the platform's history as Meta moved to enter the category.

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The Weekly Tape

The 6-week cumulative ETF outflow total reached $5.94B, the longest consecutive streak of weekly outflows on record.

HYPE ETFs saw inflows of $1.5M in the last 24H

On the DAT front:

• Strategy acquired 520 BTC

• BMNR acquired 52.2K ETH

Revenue Sectors Held, Token Sectors Sold Off

The week showed a split between protocols that earn and tokens that are merely narrative plays. Total DeFi TVL sits at $71.66B (-3.15% 7d) while total protocol fees came in at $359M (-1.7% 7d).

Revenue generating projects has been what the market reverted to amidst downturns as the tide goes down and reveals which businesses have been generating real value. The top 8 revenue generating projects (with tokens) returned -5.66% as an equal-weighted basket over the last 30-days.

Perp DEX tokens have remained resilient against market-wide drawdown as it remains as one of crypto’s core use cases with strong revenue generating abilities.

Ondo expanded its Global Markets catalog past 430 tokenized stocks and ETFs in the June 17-19 window, has crossed $1B in TVL, and has $18B in cumulative trading volume.

On June 12, the US government issued an export control directive forcing Anthropic to disable Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for every user worldwide. Off the back of this news, crypto AI tokens caught a bid before the rally started to unwind over the last week again.

Derivatives Positioning

Aggregate perp DEX open interest bottomed around $12-13B in early February, grinded along the lows through March, and has since rebuilt to roughly $17-18B today. The choppy price action since May has disguised what is, at the OI level, a persistent bid from traders willing to keep positions open.

Hyperliquid crypto perps and HIP-3 equity perps remain the largest in OI and volumes from interest in 24/7 equity trading.

Prediction Markets

As of June 24, Polymarket hosts 432 active markets for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, with the World Cup Winner contract accumulating $3B in total trading volume. That number makes it one of the largest single prediction market contracts in history and puts World Cup volume in the range of major US sporting events

Polymarket’s saw a record $7.5M in revenues last week and $427M in TVL at ATHs

Kalshi also crossed $100M in World Cup volume, confirming that sports prediction market demand isn't limited to a single venue.

Summary

ETF outflows are decelerating but still negative. Token prices recovered from the Iran-driven low but are still getting chopped into June. Perp DEX platform revenue held while the DEX tokens themselves corrected. RWA protocols and Polymarket continued posting the strongest fundamental numbers in crypto as the World Cup is generating the most liquid prediction market in the platform’s history.

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