Morning Minute: Standard Chartered Says the Crypto Winter Is Over

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 jump over the weekend on Iran peace deal progress; BTC at $66.5k, HYPE +12%
• BTC ETFs see biggest inflows in a month on Friday, reversing trend
• ZEC soars 20% after Zooko announces a Mythos audit found no vulnerabilities
• AERO jumps 15% after rolling out Predictive Allocation upgrade
• Collector Crypto executes $4M airdrop, token holds at $70M

🌱 Standard Chartered Says the Crypto Winter Is Over

In a Friday note, Standard Chartered’s head of digital assets research, Geoff Kendrick, wrote that Bitcoin’s slide to roughly $59,000 on June 5 marked the cycle low.

His words: “Winter is over. Welcome back to crypto spring.” The bank is holding a $100,000 year-end target, about 70% above current levels, and expects Ether to outperform Bitcoin on the way up. He says the lows are in and even cast the current price as the entry everyone will wish they’d taken. Looking back from year-end with Bitcoin at $100k, “this was the buying zone we all wanted.”

Is Geoff right?

Well, the three overhangs that had been grinding crypto lower for weeks are all starting to lift at once.

• The first was the SpaceX IPO, which had turned into a liquidity vacuum as traders (seemingly) sold Bitcoin to free up cash for the largest offering in history. That deal is now done, SPCX jumped 19% in its Friday debut, and with the allocation scramble over, the forced ETF selling should fade.
• The second was the Iran war. Trump declared it over on Thursday evening and a US-Iran peace deal looked near heading into the G7, which knocked oil down to $81 and its lowest effective level since early March.
• The third was the ETF bleed out. After roughly $5 billion in outflows since mid-May, the sharpest selling since these funds launched, money started flowing back in on Friday with the BTC ETFs seeing $85M in inflows for their biggest day in a month, helping Bitcoin reclaim $64,000.

Put together, that is a genuine change in the setup. But, it still has to play out. The SpaceX IPO liquidity drain may not truly be felt for weeks. It’s always hard to trust the peace talks around the Iran war. And as for the ETF flows, well they can be fickle.

But it does seem like momentum may be building here. BTC is back over $65k. Leading alts jumped 10-20% this weekend, showing signs of animal spirits returning. Let’s see if it continues…

🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets

• Crypto majors are very green after new Iran deal to end the war; BTC +3% at $66.5k; ETH +7% at $1,780; SOL +7% at $73; HYPE +12% at $68
• ZEC (+28%), WLD (+23%), and NEAR (+18%)
• Oil -5% at $80; Gold +2.8% at $4,358
• Stock futures are very green, with the DOW +0.9% and Nasdaq +2%
• The US government ordered Anthropic to pull its Claude Fable and Mythos AI models over a security vulnerability; Anthropic pushed back, calling it overreach and saying the flaw is already widespread across the industry
• ZCash ran a security audit using Mythos and found no further vulnerabilities than the one discovered just over a week ago (ZEC +20%)
• Crypto exchanges refunded buyers of tokenized SpaceX shares after xStocks failed to secure an allotment in the IPO
• A Tennessee man was indicted over a crypto Ponzi scheme that allegedly stole millions from investors

Corporate Treasuries & ETFs

Meme Coin Tracker

• Meme leaders were green; DOGE +4%, SHIB +3%, PEPE +6%, PENGU +8%, TRUMP even, BONK +12%, SPX +6%, FARTCOIN +11%
• KINS (+40%), BURNIE (+54%), and Jotchua (+24%) led movers on Solana
• Base movers included Botcoin (+60%), Nock (+10%) and Tibbir (+10%)

📈 Myriad Market of the Day

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

• Collector Crypt airdropped 15M tokens ($4M) for its Q2 rewards (CARDS at $70M)
• Aerodrome rolled out a new upgrade, Predictive Allocation, which rewards liquidity providers for anticipating where liquidity will be needed next instead of chasing pools that already earned fees

🚚 What is happening in NFTs?

• NFT leaders were green; Punks +2% at 33.5 ETH, BAYC +1% at 9.1 ETH, Pudgy +3% at 4.67 ETH; Hypurr’s +5% at 272 HYPE
• NPC (+27%) and Blupets (+37%) led top movers