May 29, 2024

Crypto markets were muted during the European morning, with bitcoin appearing to consolidate around $68,000 following its rally to $70,000 at the start of the week. BTC is priced at just over $67,800 at the time of writing, around 1% less than 24 hours ago. The broader digital asset market, as measured by the CoinDesk 20 Index (CD20), has dropped about 0.65% during that time. ETH meanwhile is trading just above $3,800, down a little over 2% in the last 24 hours as the market awaits further news on the listing of spot ether ETFs in the U.S. following last week's SEC approval of some filings by the prospective providers.

BlackRock's spot bitcoin ETF has leapfrogged Grayscale's to become the largest of its kind after a $102 million inflow on Tuesday. BlackRock's IBIT holds nearly $20 billion worth of bitcoin, compared with GBTC's $19.7 billion. GBTC saw $105 million in outflows on Tuesday. Buying activity for IBIT ramped up recently amid bullish sentiment for bitcoin and the broader crypto market. The bulls gained momentum after the ether ETF filings approvals and renewed support for crypto among U.S. political parties. That helped mark a sudden shift in IBIT, which recorded low or even zero inflows before May 15 and saw its first-ever day of outflows in April, leading to bearish sentiment.

Riot Platforms has the capacity to consolidate the bitcoin mining sector, broker Bernstein said in a report. Riot is trying to acquire rival miner Bitfarms, after buying a 9.25% stake in the company. “The bitcoin mining business is becoming tougher for smaller players, with limited capital to ramp up on the global hash power race,” Bernstein analysts Gautam Chhugani and Mahika Sapra wrote. Bernstein says it expects the U.S. bitcoin mining industry to consolidate to about five large players who will control substantial capacity. There are more than 20 publicly listed miners at present. The largest bitcoin miners should ramp up their M&A plans to maintain “long-term strategic relevance,” Bernstein noted.

The meme coin sector drove the biggest gains for traders in the last 24 hours, with shiba inu climbing as much as 12%.

The surge started during European afternoon hours on Tuesday as stocks of video-game retailer GameStop (GME) rose 19% in premarket trading, a signal that has historically led to gains in meme tokens. 

"Popular memes are running primarily due to Asian traders entering the market again - most tend to see their prices rise most significantly during Asian trading hours, during the middle of the night US time," Rennick Palley, founding partner at crypto fund Stratos, said in an emailed statement.

"This is a follow-on effect to excitement around the ETH ETF and US regulatory shift to becoming more pro-crypto."

Meme tokens such as pepe (PEPE) and mog (MOG) have rocketed as much as 100% in the past week as a beta bet on the Ethereum ecosystem. This is on the back of U.S. listing approvals for a spot ether ETF.