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🌪️🏦 Whiplash Morning, ETFs keep soaking supply

Hello there you embodiment of curiosity;

Welcome to today’s edition of Osiris News, if you’re staring at the tape and rubbing your neck, you’re in good company. Bitcoin kissed a fresh high near $124K, then slid to close an old CME gap around $117K as hotter PPI data splashed cold water across risk. Liquidations ran hard, yet funding stayed tame, more cash-and-carry, less froth. The mood is not panic, it’s whiplash: brisk intake of breath, then a steadying hand on the rail. The motif today is simple in plain terms: spot-led buying met macro friction, and the market flinched without losing its footing. In one corner, ETH ETFs chalked another solid session; in the other, alts stretched, then eased, as open interest hovered near peaks and dominance slipped.

Welcome also if you’re feeling the alt breeze. Solana sprinted back toward the round number; AERO kept its stride on Base as Aerodrome’s flows held up; Pendle swelled as yield got curated rather than chased; and the ETH validator exit queue lengthened as some loops unwound. The theme beneath the theme: institutional plumbing is humming while retail reflex still twitches, and those two tempos sometimes clash. Two worlds, same market. Building on that contrast, let’s sift what mattered and why it felt so loud.

🔍 Quick Overview

• Bitcoin's Pullback: Bitcoin touched a new high, then pulled back sharply, liquidating over a billion in long bets, a reminder that gravity still works, even in crypto.

• Altcoin Season Kicks Off: While Bitcoin took a breather, altcoins, led by Ethereum's massive ETF inflows, are showing signs of a full-blown season, the party's just getting started elsewhere.

• Inflation's Cold Shower: Unexpectedly high US inflation data, particularly the PPI, sent a chill through the market, proving that even digital assets can catch a cold from traditional economics.

• Stablecoins Eye Trillions: Stablecoins are gearing up for a massive leap, projected to capture $1 trillion in global payments, though the GENIUS Act debate keeps regulators on their toes.

• Mining Gets a Makeover: Jack Dorsey's Block unveiled a modular Bitcoin mining rig built to last a decade, aiming to make mining more accessible and less of a repair headache.

Trending News

🚀 Ethereum ETFs See $3.7B Inflows in 8 Days

U.S.-based spot Ethereum ETFs have attracted $3.71 billion in cumulative capital inflows over eight consecutive days, signaling growing investor confidence. BlackRock's ETHA product led with $519.7 million in inflows on Thursday alone, contributing to a record $1.02 billion flow on Monday. These significant inflows underscore increasing institutional adoption and could drive Ethereum's price towards analysts' year-end target of $7,500.

🚀 Coinbase Sees September Altcoin Season Start

Coinbase Institutional predicts a full-scale "altcoin season" may begin in September, driven by softening Bitcoin dominance and improved altcoin liquidity. The broader altcoin market cap has already surged over 50% since July, reaching $1.4 trillion. This anticipated rotation from Bitcoin to altcoins suggests a period of significant gains for alternative cryptocurrencies, potentially starting with large-cap tokens.

🏛️⚠️ US Sanctions Russian Firms Over $51B A7A5 Stablecoin Evasion

The U.S. Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned Russian entities for allegedly using the ruble-backed A7A5 stablecoin to evade international financial restrictions. A7A5 processed over $51 billion in cumulative transaction volume through July, with daily volumes reaching approximately $1 billion. This action highlights increasing global efforts by law enforcement to combat the use of digital assets for sanctions evasion and illicit finance.

💰🔍 Trump-Backed Token Raises $1.5B Amid Discount Deals

World Liberty Financial, backed by the Trump family, is raising $1.5 billion to establish a Digital Asset Treasury (DAT) for its WLFI token, with partners acquiring tokens at significant discounts. This trend of companies forming DATs to accumulate specific cryptocurrencies raises ethical questions about insider access and potential conflicts of interest. The emergence of DATs, often involving discounted token acquisitions, could reshape token distribution models but also invites scrutiny over market fairness and transparency.

This tiny pause brought to you by “please let this help pay the bills” 👀

Beyond the Noise

Bitcoin set the headline by ripping to a record and then slipping fast, thin air, quick feet, and a clean fill of that futures gap. The first pass read like leverage pain, but funding never screamed; the move smelled of spot in control with derivatives following a step behind. The line that stuck on the squawk was dry and bullish: “conditions for a sustained rally are falling into place.”. In thirty seconds of calm after the flush, a veteran market-maker leaned back and said: “books refilled; it’s fine,” and the room exhaled.

Because the top-of-book calmed, the chain reaction moved to structure. Open interest stayed elevated, funding muted, and near-dated implied volatility low even as longer tenors rise, a curve that hums with patience rather than frenzy. BTC dominance slipped below sixty, a level that often signals altcoin season pressure building. Meanwhile the macro drumbeat got louder: a hotter PPI print rattled risk, the retail sales number now sits like a stone in Friday’s shoe, and dealers listen for clues in options skew ahead of a chunky options expiry into month-end.

Under that breathing room, ETH kept drawing steady bids from spot ETFs, an eight-day run of inflows that reads more like a metronome than a drum solo. The reflex loop in plain English: DATCOs buy ETH; investors buy DATCO equity for cleaner exposure; those firms sell stock via ATM lines and buy more ETH; the bid thrums. You don’t need the yardstick to grasp the force, hundreds of millions a day into products that don’t flinch at headlines.

If you ask: “Are ETFs killing volatility?” Short answer: they damp the daily chop, until they don’t; when flows reverse, moves can snap.

Regulators and politicians, sensing the water pressure, adjusted the valves. The GENIUS Act debate pulled banks into open worry about deposit flight to stablecoins, while Treasury talk toggled from “no more government buying” to “we’ll explore budget-neutral paths,” a tidy pivot that markets tend to hear as optionality. Abroad, Japan leans into private stablecoins for commerce and fences its CBDC for bank pipes; South Korea edges toward KRW-backed tokens while keeping capital gates narrow. On the sell side, one house said Ethereum looks primed for “meteoric” stablecoin growth because the rails already carry size where regulators allow it. The sound you’re catching is policy buzz turning into procurement lists.

While the rulemakers write, the builders ship. Puffer rolled UniFi V2, an Ethereum rollup stack that aims for sub-10 ms confirmations; Unichain added Flashblocks with TEE-assisted sub-blocks; Sunrise lit its L1 for Interliquidity with Proof of Liquidity; Squid bridged into HyperEVM so swaps flow where traders actually sit; o1.exchange opened a Base terminal with ≤1-block fills; Morpho plugged into Gemini vaults; DeFi Saver shipped Umbrella staking; Maple’s syrupUSDC showed up on Pendle where USDe/sUSDe already pull size; AERO held a green wick as Aerodrome stayed busy.

Not every sound was cheerful. A Turkey exchange paused after a suspected hit; an AMM bled; address poisoning kept lifting coins from rushed users; a venue ate an MEV misstep; and scam outfits prowl with fake “law firms.” The counter-sound was hopeful: Google reversed course to allow non-custodial wallets; Tether wired Lightning via Lightspark; Cake Wallet turned old phones into cold cards. Quiet moral lens: a frozen stablecoin wallet can mean missed rent and a week of skipped meals.

Back down in the mines, the spanners came out. Block unveiled the Proto Rig, a modular ASIC that aims to live a decade and cut repair time to minutes, paired with Proto Fleet, open-source fleet software that speaks Stratum V2. TeraWulf drew mega-cap backing for HPC hosting tied to AI racks; American Bitcoin ordered a small city’s worth of machines to front-run tariff bumps; Bitmain weighed U.S. production; and educators revisited the dull but urgent topic of pool centralization and 51% risk. Home setups and decentralized pool protocols won’t cure every ill, but they steady the ecosystem’s spine. Chainlink–ICE stitched FX and metals data on-chain, while SUI and SOL kept the block space lively.

Weekend watch: big BTC options expiry and the retail sales print could reset funding by Monday open.

This Caught My Eye:

Here’s a breakdown of the chart:

• Low Volatility Precursor: Bitcoin’s at-the-money implied volatility across all option maturities is at multi-year lows, a condition that has historically preceded large price swings as markets underprice potential moves.

• Profit-Taking Risk Ahead: Short-term holder cost basis bands flag $127K and $144K as critical resistance zones where 98% of supply is in profit, increasing the likelihood of profit-taking and heavier sell pressure.
  

Looking Ahead

Looking at the same landscape from a step back, the through-line is weight. Big, regular, unemotional flows are here, ETH ETFs, DATCOs, and stablecoin rails that carry size like freight. The market’s emotional weather, brisk, reactive, then calm, makes more sense when you imagine those pipes doing their work while traders argue over the last tick. The record-high-and-snap-back wasn’t a morality play; it was a stress test of new scaffolding. The creaks you heard? That was structure making room for cargo it once only daydreamed about.

Tomorrow inherits today’s pipes. If the options calendar clears without drama and the retail number doesn’t shove the Fed into a tighter crouch, the quiet bid likely keeps humming while alts jostle for oxygen. But a surprise in either direction can still crack the surface because fewer, larger hands leave air pockets. Questions remain: how do DATCOs behave in a real downswing; where do banks draw the line on stablecoin competition; how far can L1 verticalization go before users revolt? Calendars flag end-of-month roll, quarter-end window dressing, and a regulator’s comment period that could tilt custody standards. We build, we test, we adjust; nothing in markets is permanent, not even vertigo.

Until Monday,
- Dr.P