Morning Minute: Crypto Surges Over Holiday Weekend

Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt. And check out our new daily news show covering all of the top stories in 5 minutes, downloadable on Apple Pod or Spotify.

GM!

Today’s top news:

• Crypto majors green over holiday weekend; BTC rebounds to $63k, HYPE hits $71
• LIT soars nearly 50% on the week following Robinhood integration, leads alts
• BTC ETFs flip to net inflows on Thursday, breaking outflow streak
• ANSEM jumps to $350M and enters crypto top 100
• Daniel Sundheim spends $2.2M acquiring 22 CryptoPunks in epic collection build

? Crypto Surges Over the Holiday Weekend as ETF Flows Flip Green

Crypto majors ripped higher over the July 4 holiday weekend, painting the weekly board green while US markets sat closed.

Bitcoin climbed back to highs over $63,000, up 5% on the week, but the alts led the charge.

• ETH +12% to $1,770
• SOL +11% to $81
• HYPE +12% to $71
• ZEC +16% to $450

Downstream, LIT led most alts up 44% to $2.50 and a new local high after its Robinhood integration.

Broadly, the CMC20 index of the top 20 assets rose about 9%.

Two factors were key in the reversal. First, Thursday’s soft June jobs report, just 57,000 payrolls against roughly 113,000 expected, eased rate-hike fears and gave risk assets room to run. Second, and more importantly, the ETF flows flipped. After bleeding a record $4B+ in June, spot Bitcoin ETFs swung to a $223.5 million net inflows on July 2. ETH ETFs were green two days running, adding about $15 million on July 1 and $29 million on July 2. The institutional selling that defined June’s collapse showed its first real signs of reversing.

This bounce comes off a 21-month low of $57,950 to open July, after Bitcoin’s worst first half since 2018 and 2022. Whales had been absorbing the ETF selling all month, buying roughly $16.7 billion of BTC over two weeks, the kind of divergence that has shown up near past bottoms. The ETFs flipping green is the piece bulls were waiting for.

Saylor’s ecosystem caught some welcome relief in the Bitcoin rally as well, with STRC jumping 21% to $87.87 to end the week after hitting lows near $70. And MSTR stock rebounded 21% as well, reclaiming $100.

Now, one or two green days don’t undo a record-outflow month. But alts outrunning Bitcoin is a classic risk-on tell, and for the first time in weeks, the flow picture points up. Now we watch whether it holds when full liquidity returns.

? Macro Crypto and Markets

• Crypto majors are flat, with HYPE leading; BTC even at $62k; ETH even at $1,747; SOL even at $80; HYPE +2% at $70
• DEXE (+15%), LAB (+9%) and LIT (+8%) led top movers
• Oil even at $68; Gold +1% at $4,170
• Stock futures are green as chip stocks rebound; DOW flat, Nasdaq +1%
• President Trump defended his crypto ventures after his disclosure showed over $1 billion in 2025 earnings, pushing back on conflict-of-interest criticism as Democrats renew calls to bar politicians and their families from the industry
• Odds of the CLARITY Act passing briefly surged to 55% after two major law enforcement groups shifted their stance, but has since retraced to 44%; now only 1 month remains until the key Aug 7 deadline marking the Senate summer break
• Vitalik Buterin outlined Ethereum’s “Lean Ethereum” roadmap, a 3-4-year plan to make recursive STARKs a native verification layer, swap remaining quantum-vulnerable cryptography for post-quantum alternatives, introduce a “scalable state” type reaching 100 TB by 2030 to cut some transaction costs more than 10x, and explore RISC-V or leanISA VMs for programmable privacy
• Bitcoin miner stress hit a historically rare level, with the Miner Cycle Stress Composite falling to a new 2026 low and entering its “undervalued” range, a level that previously showed up near major bottoms in 2015, 2018, 2020, 2022, and 2024

Corporate Treasuries & ETFs

• The Bitcoin ETFs saw $223M in net inflows on Thursday (though $527M net outflows on the week); the ETH ETFs saw $29M in inflows on Thursday ($13M outflows for the week)
• STRC rebounded to $89.17 on Thursday, up 21% on the week

Meme Coin Tracker

• Meme leaders were very green on the week; DOGE +6%, SHIB +4%, PEPE +15%, PENGU +8%, TRUMP even, BONK +11%
• ANSEM soared 300% on the week to $350M FDV, making it a top 100 token by FDV
• LEVI (+180x), ZERO (+48%) and JOBY (+430%) led movers on Solana
• Base movers included SYND (+30%) and LFI (+30%)

? Myriad Market of the Day

? Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

• Summer Finance was exploited over the weekend with $6M drained so far
• VVV has fallen 20% since its equity announcement last week, now trading at $11.56

? What is happening in NFTs?

• NFT leaders were mostly green over the weekend; Punks +4% at 32.4 ETH, BAYC +5% at 9.2 ETH, Pudgy even at 4.5 ETH; Hypurr’s +2% at 220 HYPE
• Murakami Flowers (+29%) and Masks of Luci (+17%) led top movers
• Daniel Sundheim spent $2.2M acquiring 22 Punks over the past week, building one of the best collections in existence