Crypto Market Is Bouncing Back, Trump Executive Order & ETH on the Rise?

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This Week’s Top Stories

“President Trump signed an Executive Order to allow 401(k) investors to access digital assets and other alternative assets such as private equity or real estate.” – Thursday, 7 August 2025 

• On Thursday, President Trump announced that he has signed an Executive Order allowing 401(k) investors to access alternative assets, including private equity, real estate, and digital assets.
• The order directs the Labor Department to reevaluate existing guidance on alternative investments, clarify their position, and consult with the Secretary of the Treasury, the SEC, and other federal regulators.
• This marks a significant policy shift by the Trump administration, potentially opening up roughly USD 12.5 trillion for allocation into alternative assets. The key question is how much of this capital could flow into crypto. Even if only 1 to 3 percent of the USD 12.5 trillion were allocated to digital assets, the inflows could reach hundreds of billions.

“SEC Chairman Atkins announced the launch of Project Crypto, the SEC’s north star to make America the crypto capital of the world.” – Thursday, 31 July 2025 

• Last week, Paul Atkins, the Chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, introduced Project Crypto, a commission-wide initiative to modernize crypto market regulation.
• The plan covers asset classification and issuance, tokenization, custody and trading rules, integrated securities and non-securities markets, super-app access, DeFi compliance, and innovation exemptions.
• Most importantly, the project will work to onshore crypto back to America, with the goal of bringing the global crypto economy back to the U.S. and ushering in the golden age of crypto.
• On Tuesday, the SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance additionally clarified that liquid staking, and the issuance of staking receipt tokens generally do not constitute offers or sales of securities. This is another piece of regulation that clarifies a key component of the staking infrastructure and opens up new opportunities for crypto players in the U.S.

A Quick Crypto Overview: The Crypto Market Is Bouncing Back

Last week’s macro “Superbowl”, with the FOMC meeting, PCE data, and the U.S. jobs report, certainly did not disappoint, and the crypto market took a hit alongside U.S. equities. The total crypto market (excluding stablecoins) corrected 10 percent to the downside, with Ethereum, for example, losing almost 15 percent from its USD 3’950 high down to USD 3’350 this past Sunday. 

This week, however, the crypto market is bouncing back. Ethereum has already made a new two-week high, trading just shy of the USD 4’000 mark, currently up almost 17 percent since Sunday, while the total crypto market excluding stablecoins is up 7.5 percent, still below last week’s high. 

Bitcoin dominance continues to trade lower this week after a short pullback into the 62.5 percent level over the weekend and is currently hanging on for dear life at roughly 60 percent. It certainly looks like Bitcoin is losing some steam in dominance terms, which could open the door for Ethereum and potentially other altcoins as well. 

Chart of the Week: Bitcoin Dominance is Losing Ground

As just mentioned, Bitcoin dominance is trading to the downside, currently sitting at levels last seen in March of this year. While the current 60 percent level appears to provide some support, it looks likely that BTC dominance will trade lower over the coming weeks, if not months. 

Data from spot ETFs and corporate treasuries support this thesis. Ethereum spot ETFs were on a tear during the last weeks of July, outpacing Bitcoin spot ETFs not only on a market-cap-adjusted basis but even bringing in more net new assets on several days, as noted here before. 

Corporate treasuries have also been increasing their Ethereum holdings significantly. Bitmine now holds 833’000 Ether, followed by Sharplink Gaming with 521’000 Ether, representing 30-day increases of 410 percent and 150 percent respectively. 

While Bitcoin dominance is losing ground, Ethereum dominance is up 36 percent since the beginning of July and currently stands at 12.4 percent. This is an interesting dynamic worth keeping in mind. While it could still be just a short “summer trend”, there is also potential that this is a real rotation with staying power.

What’s Happening Onchain? Ethereum Metrics at 365-Day-Highs, Base was Offline & Pump.Fun News 

Ethereum monthly active addresses and weekly token trading volume have both reached new 365-day highs over the past couple of weeks, while fees and revenue remain far below their highs from November 2024. While token trading volume in the week of 14 July surpassed the USD 330 billion high from the week of 16 December, revenue (the share of transaction fees that is burned) was USD 10 million, compared to USD 41 million in the December week. This is likely driven by increased Layer 2 activity and stablecoin adoption. 

In other news, the Base network experienced a 33-minute disruption that halted block production on the Base mainnet. You can read the incident report here. 

Remember Pump.Fun? It got awfully quiet around the token launch platform after its ICO flop over the past few weeks. Today, they announced the Glass Full Foundation, aimed at accelerating the most vibrant and organic communities in the Pump.Fun ecosystem. According to Pump.Fun, the foundation is expected to inject significant liquidity into promising communities in its ecosystem. This follows their introduction of the pump fun revenue dashboard, where PUMP buy backs can be tracked in real time. 

Digital Asset Fund Flows: Digital Assets with Outflows Last Week & DATs on the Rise 

Last week, digital asset investment products saw net outflows of USD 223 million. After a positive start to the week, Friday, 1 August, experienced record-high outflows from Bitcoin and Ethereum spot ETFs. The Bitcoin spot ETFs recorded their second-highest historic net outflows on Friday, with almost USD 900 million exiting in a single day. 

This week started with outflows on Monday, but investors have since begun piling into the products again. The Ethereum spot ETFs attracted USD 222 million yesterday, almost on par with the Bitcoin spot ETFs, which brought in USD 277 million. 

As mentioned earlier, Digital Asset Treasuries (DATs) are accumulating Ethereum at scale, with BitMine and Sharplink Gaming leading the pack. Both are rapidly increasing their ETH holdings. This week, Nasdaq-listed Global Inc. filed an S-3 registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to offer up to USD 5 billion of securities in multiple tranches. The company plans to use the majority of net proceeds from the common stock offering to acquire Ether. 

Corporations are not the only ones making moves. Chainlink announced the launch of the Chainlink Reserve, a strategic reserve pool to accumulate LINK tokens converted from enterprise integration and on-chain service revenue. The reserve has already accumulated 65’500 LINK tokens. 

July was also a good month for crypto fundraising, as the amount of total crypto fundraising more than doubled month-over-month to more than $6 billion in July, up from $2.9 billion in June.

Market Sentiment: Sentiment has cooled down – AAII Members lean to Bearishness 

The crypto fear and greed index is currently in greed territory at 74, after spending some time in the 50s for the first time since the end of June. Looking at the CNN Fear and Greed Index shows that stock investors appear to be even less euphoric than crypto investors, with the index staying in neutral territory at 54, down from greed readings last week. 

AAII members turned bearish in this week’s sentiment survey, with over 43 percent stating that they feel bearish on the stock market for the coming six months, up from 33 percent last week. This puts the share of bearish AAII members at its highest level since May this year, although still well below the historic bearishness of April, when almost 62 percent of members were bearish at the bottom of the correction. 

Other Relevant News 

• Tether has released its Q2 2025 attestation report, confirming a net profit of approximately $4.9 billion for the quarter and a total of $5.7 billion in net profit for the first half of the year. – Link 

• Strategy reported Q2 2025 net income of $10 billion, driven by Bitcoin price gains. – Link 

• Peter Thiel-backed crypto exchange Bullish has filed for a U.S. IPO, aiming to raise up to $629 million at a valuation of $4.23 billion. – Link 

• Per Reuters, Ripple to acquire stablecoin payment platform Rail for $200M, deal expected to close Q4 2025 pending regulatory approval. – Link 

Looking Ahead: How much Time and Explosiveness is Left for this Cycle? 

The crypto market bounced back slightly this week, recovering part of last week’s downward move alongside the U.S. stock market. 

Gold has been trading sideways since April but appears to be coiling for a move over the coming weeks, something to keep an eye on. Could the digital gold narrative help Bitcoin in this regard if gold were to break out to the upside? 

The recent news surrounding Trump’s Executive Order allowing 401(k) investors to enter crypto could potentially benefit Bitcoin, and possibly Ethereum, the most out of all cryptocurrencies, as the spot ETFs enable easy access. This, combined with a breakout in gold, could positively impact Bitcoin dominance. Other than that, however, it still looks like dominance will move lower, which would be in line with recent crypto market cycles. 

From a timing perspective, the current cycle should be nearing its end over the coming months. Will there be an explosive ending to the cycle, as has been the case in the past? Only time will tell, but there are arguments for it having a decent probability of happening towards autumn and year-end. 

Below, you can find some of the key data releases and events to watch out for next week. 

Tuesday, 12 August 2025 

USA – CPI and Core CPI 

Thursday, 14 August 2025 

Switzerland – PPI 

Eurozone – GDP, Employment Change 

USA – PPI and Core PPI, Initial Jobless Claims 

Japan – GDP 

Friday, 15 August 2025 

Switzerland – GDP