I. Macro Economy and Traditional Financial Markets
1. High Divergence in US Stocks: Signals of Slowing Growth Intertwined with Middle East Uncertainties
US stock markets showed high divergence last week. The S&P 500 fell slightly by 0.22%, the Nasdaq rose by 0.27%, and the Dow Jones increased by 0.39%. Macro data continued to weaken: the New York Empire State Manufacturing Index plummeted from 19.6 to 5.7, housing starts dropped sharply to 1.177 million units, and May retail sales grew by 0.4% month-on-month. Overall, this indicates that the high-interest-rate environment is gradually suppressing aggregate demand.
The labor market remains resilient, with initial jobless claims at 226,000. The four-week moving average rose slightly to 223,250, providing some support for overall consumption. The coexistence of consumer resilience with weakening real estate and manufacturing sectors creates a structural divergence, making the Federal Reserve's policy path more complex. The pace of economic cooling is insufficient to drive inflation down rapidly.
2. Fed Holds Rates Steady, Half of Officials Project Rate Hikes This Year, Wash Changes Style
The Federal Reserve maintained the policy rate at 3.75% with a 12:0 vote. Among the 18 officials, 9 project at least one rate hike this year, with 6 projecting more than one hike. Only 1 projects a rate cut this year, and 1 official did not submit Summary of Economic Projections. The Philadelphia Fed's "prices paid" index rose from 47.9 to 53.2, further strengthening the tightening stance.
New Chairman Wash adopted a communication style different from his predecessor, frequently mentioning "first principles," "alternative frameworks," and "mandate range." He was the only official to refuse to submit future interest rate projections in this dot plot, emphasizing that the Fed's core task is achieving price stability. This FOMC statement was almost completely rewritten, significantly shorter in length, increasing market uncertainty about the Fed's future communication and policy path.
II. Crypto Market
1. Market Performance: BTC Underperforms ETH, Market Sentiment Remains in Extreme Fear
Last week, BTC fell 3.7%, fluctuating within the $62,000–$65,000 range; ETH fell 1.2%, remaining around $1,700. As BTC performed significantly weaker than ETH, the BTC/ETH ratio fell 1.6%. The total crypto market cap fell 3.1%; excluding BTC and ETH, the market cap fell 2.3%; the altcoin market excluding the top 10 tokens fell 3.0%, showing a clear broad-based decline pattern.
The top 30 crypto assets fell by an average of 2.5%. Only XLM recorded a significant gain, rising 12.2%, driven by Stellar's roadmap for RWA tokenization, payments, and corporate settlements. Market sentiment remained in the "Extreme Fear" zone, with the Fear & Greed Index at 20. Additionally, jaredfromsubway.eth, one of the largest MEV sandwich bots on Ethereum, suffered a reverse attack, losing approximately $7.5 million, bringing on-chain security risks back into market focus.
2. ETF Flows: BTC Net Outflow of $226.8M, Institutional Buying Has Not Resumed Sustained Inflows
Last week, US spot Bitcoin ETFs saw a net outflow of approximately $226.8 million, while spot Ethereum ETFs had a net outflow of approximately $10 million. Split by trading day, BTC ETFs saw a net outflow of about $64.09 million on June 15, a small net inflow of about $10.06 million on June 16, net outflows of about $82.16 million and $90.66 million on June 17 and 18 respectively. The US market was closed on June 19 for the Juneteenth holiday.
For ETH ETFs, there were small net inflows on June 15 and 16, but flows turned net negative again from June 17 to 18, resulting in a week overall close to a small outflow. Overall, compared to the large outflows of the previous week, pressure eased somewhat, but institutional funds have not resumed sustained buying.
3. On-Chain Data: Stablecoin Total Supply Stabilizes, Structure Shows Divergence
DeFiLlama data shows that as of June 22, the total stablecoin market cap was approximately $315.3 billion, increasing by about $287 million in 7 days, a rise of about 0.09%. USDT's market share is about 59.05%. USDT saw a slight 7-day decrease of about 0.12%, USDC grew slightly by about 0.06%, indicating overall stability in mainstream settlement funds. USDS decreased by about 3.47% over 7 days, continuing the trend where ecosystem-focused stablecoins are more prone to contraction in volatile environments.
USD1 and USDG grew by about 9.27% and 6.74% respectively, reflecting expansion in compliance-oriented stablecoins and channel-based distribution networks. USDe remained largely flat over 7 days, with the expansion pace of yield-generating stablecoins slowing but no significant redemptions. BUIDL and USYC maintained slight growth, indicating continued resilience in institutional on-chain cash management demand. Overall, the stablecoin market shifted from total supply contraction in the previous week to supply stabilization with structural divergence, but funds still favor high-certainty dollar instruments.
4. Industry Narratives: STRC Trades Below Par for Fifth Consecutive Week, Strategy's Funding Flywheel Under Pressure
STRC has traded below its $100 par value for the fifth consecutive week. Its price once fell to around $82 before recovering to about $88, but its weekly trading volume still reached $1.6 billion. The nominal dividend yield has risen to 11.5%, with market discussion on whether to raise it further to 11.75% or 12%. Notably, Strategy, which once claimed it would "never sell Bitcoin," sold 32 BTC for the first time in late May this year, raising approximately $2.5 million to pay for preferred share distributions.
Strategy currently faces three potential response paths: raising the STRC dividend yield (each 0.5% increase would bring about $52.45 million in additional annual dividend costs); selling Bitcoin holdings to pay dividends, which would weaken the core narrative; or issuing new STRC shares below par value, which would structurally increase the long-term dividend burden. Last week, STRC accounted for 76.2% of the total trading volume of Bitcoin Treasury preferred securities, down from 80% the previous week. The second most traded asset was Strive's SATA, accounting for 15.8%.
This article is for market analysis only and does not constitute any investment advice. Investment risks are high. Please fully assess your own risk tolerance and implement strict risk control before trading.
