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While Bitcoin’s price faced heightened bearish pressure in the last few days, Ethereum’s price experienced significant upside action, which led to a new all-time high during the weekend. In addition to outperforming Bitcoin in terms of price action, ETH is demonstrating notable on-chain activity when compared to BTC.

Bitcoin Is Lagging Behind Ethereum

Ethereum’s strength is becoming increasingly evident in the current bull market cycle, with new on-chain data highlighting its edge over Bitcoin. CryptoMe, a market expert, has outlined a key metric that underscores the disparity in momentum between the two crypto giants in a quick-take post on the CryptoQuant platform.

According to the market expert, Ethereum is giving strong signals compared to Bitcoin, as Wall Street is starting to adopt the altcoin. Considering the trend, ETH fundamentals appear to be painting a clear picture of resilience and market dominance. 

In the last 3 months, ETH has outperformed, and this disparity may continue for some time. CryptoMe’s analysis is based on a comparison of the Open Interest (OI) data for Bitcoin and Ethereum futures contracts traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME).

Delving into BTC’s performance, the expert highlighted that Bitcoin hit an all-time high of $110,000 in January, then fell to $74,000 in March and April before rising to $124,000 for a new all-time high. However, the open interest did not retest its old levels during this period. 

Therefore, even if the price of Bitcoin increased, it would not be able to draw the same amount of institutional interest as CME options. Meanwhile, the circumstances are different for ETH. In 2024, ETH made several attempts to break past the $4,000 mark, but failed each time due to its weak open interest. 

However, CryptoMe noted that the open interest in CME has started to increase in this current trend. The development implies that the ongoing uptrend is bolstered by fresh liquidity inflows and shows that the altcoin is diverging from Bitcoin.

ETH Rallies To New Highs: The Top Is Not In

ETH may have risen sharply to new highs, but CryptoMe foresees a continued uptrend due to the absence of retail investors on centralized exchanges. Typically, retail investors enter close to the top and give the major players exit liquidity. Nonetheless, since retail is still absent in the current move, it shows that ETH’s price action is healthy and has room to grow.

In the overall picture, ETH is showing a more bullish outlook compared to BTC lately. According to the market expert, the increase in CME open interest and the absence of retail participation indicate that this disparity might persist in the near to medium future.

At the time of writing, ETH was trading at $4,414, demonstrating a nearly 5% in the last 24 hours. Despite the waning price action, CoinMarketCap data reveals that investors’ sentiment is slowly turning bullish, as evidenced by a more than 10% increase in trading volume in the past day.

Featured image from iStock, chart from Tradingview.com

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Four US-dollar stablecoin issuers hold roughly $182 billion in US Treasury bills, an amount that would slot them 17th on the Treasury Department’s country-by-country league table.

The amount in overnight Treasury-collateralized repos and Treasury-heavy money market funds would put the group between Norway’s $195.9 billion and Saudi Arabia’s $133.8 billion.

Tether’s USDT tops the cohort. Its first-quarter attestation showed $120 billion in Treasuries, while CEO Paolo Ardoino told CNBC in late May that the firm held “more than $125 billion” and continues to expand.

Circle’s May accountant’s report listed $28.7 billion in T-bills and $26.5 billion in overnight repos, for a combined $55.2 billion backing USDC.

First Digital’s May 31 dashboard showed $1.665 billion in FDUSD reserves, 78% of which is held in Treasury bills, amounting to roughly $1.3 billion.

Paxos’ PayPal USD (PYUSD) uses overnight reverse-repo agreements collateralized 97% by Treasuries. It has $878 million outstanding, which implies roughly $880 million in government debt.

According to US Treasury data from April, those positions reach $182.4 billion, enough to leapfrog South Korea and the United Arab Emirates and fall just shy of Norway.

Treasury paper dominates reserves

Issuers buy short-dated government debt because it settles T-plus-zero at clearing banks, offers daily liquidity, and earns yields now above 5%. 

Tether’s latest assurance showed that Treasuries, repos, and Treasury-only money-market funds represented more than 80% of its collateral, helping drive $1 billion in first-quarter profit.

Circle uses BlackRock’s SEC-registered Circle Reserve Fund to hold its bills and repos, enabling same-day liquidation if redemptions spike.

Ardoino said that issuing stablecoins “creates incremental demand for US debt without relying on the banking system,” citing Tether’s ranking above that of Germany, the UAE, and Spain.

Circle and Paxos have made similar arguments in policy filings, noting that narrowly distributed, highly liquid collateral protects holders during market stress.

Regulatory backdrop

Lawmakers in Washington and Brussels are considering bills that would restrict reserve assets to cash and short-term Treasury securities, maintaining the current composition but limiting diversification into gold or corporate bonds. 

The GENIUS Act, which cleared the Senate in June, would formalize those limits. At the same time, Europe’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regime already bars commodities for euro-pegged coins. 

Stablecoin treasurers say the proposed rules align with their investment profile, though they warn that concentration in one asset class links stablecoin liquidity to Federal Reserve funding conditions.

Mentioned in this article

XRP does remain up by 13% in the past week, and while it has suffered an 11% decline in a month, it retains a very healthy 317% increase in the past year.

And these gains come as the probability of an XRP ETF approval rises, with a new report from Kaiko concluding that XRP is the likeliest alt to follow in the footsteps of Bitcoin and Ethereum.

An XRP ETF has become especially likely after Ripple and the SEC jointly filed to suspend their October appeals, something which makes XRP’s long-term price prediction look very bullish indeed.

XRP Price Eyes Breakout as ETF Approval Odds Rise, Beating Solana and DOGE

Published a little earlier this week, Kaiko’s report noted that XRP is currently the leading altcoin in terms of the number of outstanding ETF applications.

There are currently 10 XRP-based ETF applications under review, with its nearest rival – Solana – at five, with third position being held jointly by Dogecoin and Litecoin.

The report also noted how XRP’s share of spot volume on US exchanges has risen in recent months, reaching 20% of all trading volume.

By contrast, Solana’s share has declined in the past couple of years, falling from well over 25% to 16%.

For Kaiko, this makes an SEC approval of XRP ETFs likelier than it is for Solana and other alts, even if XRP lacks the futures ETFs that helped strengthen the case for spot-based Bitcoin funds.

Its analysts wrote, “This underlying markets improving dynamics and the launch of a 2x XRP ETF last week position XRP ahead of other assets when it comes to approval. Although some tokens, such as LTC, which have very similar consensus mechanisms to BTC and share similarities to commodities could also have a clear path to approval.”

Such optimism hasn’t had an immediate impact on the XRP price, however, with the coin’s chart today suggesting that it may be waning again after looking like it could recapture some strong momentum.

Its RSI (purple) has fallen below 50 again and could drop further, with the same analysis applicable to its 30-period average (orange).

As such, we may see the XRP price drop back down to $2 in the near term, although an improvement in the tariff situation could see it spring back up to $2.50 in a matter of weeks.

Time to Pay Attention to New Upcoming Projects

Assuming that XRP will have to wait for some ETF approvals before it really takes off this year, many traders may like to diversify into newer tokens.

There are thousands of new coins to choose from, with most likely to bring more risk than reward, but one tactic for improving your chances can be to look into presales.

The biggest presales often result in considerable rallies once the corresponding coins launch for the first time, with one of the most interesting presale tokens right now being MIND of Pepe (MIND).

It has raised an impressive $8 million in its ongoing sale, with investors drawn to its plans to launch an autonomous AI agent that will interact with the crypto market.

Its agent will scan masses of social and trading data in order to gain insights into emerging trends and directions, with the platform using its machine learning to produce actionable market analysis and advice.

On top of this, it will also harness its insights into trends to generate its own potentially viral meme coins, to which traders can gain early access by holding MIND.

This could mean that MIND attracts strong demand, especially when it will be necessary to pay for access to MIND of Pepe’s advice and analysis.

Investors can join its sale by going to the MIND of Pepe website and connecting their wallets, with MIND currently available at $0.0037165.

This price will continue to rise for as long as the sale lasts, so if traders want the biggest possible returns, they should act quickly.

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