The digital asset market ticked upward during the European morning with ether reclaiming $3,500. ETH has climbed over 4% in the last 24 hours, trading at $3,540 at the time of writing. The CoinDesk 20 Index (CD20) added around 1.6%. DOGE is nearly 3.5% higher following its slump on Tuesday, while fellow meme coin SHIB is also up over 3%. Bitcoin remains subdued, trading around $65,400, a lift of 0.2% from 24 hours ago. Spot bitcoin ETFs in the U.S. experienced a further $152.4 million worth of outflows on Tuesday.

Wallets tracked by CryptoQuant show whales sold over $1.2 billion worth of BTC in the past two weeks. These long-term bitcoin holders are displaying few signs of renewed demand, indicating an ongoing absence of upside for the world's largest cryptocurrency. “Traders are still not increasing their bitcoin holdings and large holders’ demand growth is still missing strength,” analysts wrote. Market observers say crypto miners may be increasingly looking at the booming AI sector instead of bitcoin to ply their trade, prompting a sale of their bitcoin rewards instead of holding. Both sectors rely extensively on powerful computing chips to generate and maintain data.

Bitcoin and crypto-linked stocks are underrated and ripe for institutional adoption, according to broker Bernstein. While BTC and bitcoin ETFs may have shown promise before disappointingin recent months, Bernstein predicts ETF approval by major wirehouses and large private bank platforms in the second half of the year. Bitcoin ETF inflows are expected to accelerate in the third and fourth quarters, the report said, and the next leg of adoption will be driven by large advisers approving ETFs and allocation headroom from existing portfolios. Bernstein has outperform ratings for bitcoin-adjacent publicly traded firms like MicroStrategy, Robinhood and miners Riot Platforms and CleanSpark.

The U.S. consumer is increasingly struggling to keep up with credit-card loan payments, painting a challenging picture for the economy and speculative activity in non-serious assets like meme coins.

The percentage of credit card loans with balances outstanding for more than 90 days increased to 10.69% in the first quarter, the highest since second-quarter 2012, according to data from the New York Federal Reserve.

A mounting debt pile means less disposable income and weakened inclination to invest in risk assets such as meme coins.

While consumer finances are weakening, it does not necessarily mean a complete collapse in meme coins, because so-called degens might persist. Degens, or people engaging in high-risk speculative trading in the crypto market, are not fundamentally different from early internet adopters, AllianceDAO's Qiao Wang said in a blog post, characterizing them as: "Financial risk-takers who are brave enough to try unproven products."

- Omkar Godbole