The Weekly Wrap: Fed Holds Rates Steady, Leopold Forced to Unwind Hedge Fund & Morgan Stanley Launches ETH and SOL ETFs

Listen to the Weekly Wrap on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. It is a summary with the help of AI-voices. 

This Week’s Top Stories

“Federal Reserve holds interest rates steady in split decision.” – Wednesday, 29 July 2026 

• The Federal Reserve held interest rates steady for the fifth consecutive policy meeting this year. The members voted 9–3 to leave the federal funds rate target range unchanged at 3.50%–3.75%.
• There was a lot of uncertainty during the days before the meeting as the odds for a rate hike were as high as 35% and representatives of Citadel Securities were predicting a surprise rate hike at the beginning of the week.
• After all, the pause came as the majority of market participants had foreseen. The FOMC statement included comments on the conflict in the Middle East and the elevated uncertainty that it still brings to the market. They also stated that inflation remains elevated relative to the 2% target while productivity growth and capital investment are strong and job gains have kept pace with the workforce.

“Strategy BTC sales could become the norm when advantageous to the company.” – This week 

• Strategy reported a net loss of more than $8B for the second quarter of 2026, mainly driven by fair value changes in its bitcoin holdings.
• During the earnings call, Strategy President and CEO Phong Le repeatedly said that the company will continue to sell bitcoin when advantageous, to replenish its US dollar reserve, fund preferred dividends and interest payments, and support share buybacks.
• He also said future capital raises will no longer be allocated entirely to Bitcoin purchases, with proceeds dynamically split between BTC and USD reserves based on market conditions.

“Leopold Aschenbrenner’s Situational Awareness hedge fund was forced to unwind all public stock positions.” – Thursday, 31 July 2026 

• You might have heard the story of the 24-year-old former OpenAI and FTX employee Leopold Aschenbrenner and his hedge fund Situational Awareness over the past few months as he has been making headlines growing his fund over 2000% since 2024.
• Aschenbrenner became famous in 2024 through a series of essays on how the emergence of artificial intelligence would require an enormous expansion of computing power, advanced semiconductors, memory, and energy infrastructure. At the same time, he outlined a bearish stance towards traditional software companies such as Adobe, as he saw them as the big losers of the rise of AI.
• Over the past few weeks, his leveraged long positions in AI stocks and short positions on software companies started going against him, and this week he was forced to sell all of his public stock holdings. Ken Griffin’s Citadel hedge fund reached a deal to buy the stocks paying 40 cents on the dollar.

Most crypto assets are down this week 

Most crypto assets are down this week, with Bitcoin trading below $64K at the time of writing. Ethereum is trading just below $1.9K, while Solana is sitting at $73. Ethereum is up more than 3% against Bitcoin since last Friday, as many investors have noticed its strength over the past few months. Ethereum is up more than 17% against Bitcoin since the beginning of June this year. 

The total crypto market capitalization continues to trade more or less sideways, as it has throughout the month. Light Crude Oil futures are back at $82 today, down more than 10% since last Friday, while gold and silver continue to hover around the same levels as they have had over the past few weeks. 

US stock market investors experienced a few volatile days, as the S&P 500 lost more than 2% on Wednesday and Thursday. However, it managed to turn around and close in positive territory yesterday after news of Aschenbrenner’s blowup started making the rounds. 

The real show was happening on the other side of the world, as South Korea’s KOSPI crashed almost 23% this week before staging a huge recovery yesterday and closing up almost 17%. The move was largely linked to SK Hynix, one of the world’s largest memory chip manufacturers, which reported record earnings but still lost more than 20% this week. However, it is currently on track to close the week flat or in positive territory. Some of the biggest stocks in the world are trading like memecoins.

Ethereum is up 17% against Bitcoin since June

You might have seen posts on X and other social media platforms on Ethereum and its performance against Bitcoin over the past two months as it is up around 17% since the beginning of June. Looking back at last year, ETH rallied more than 145% against Bitcoin in spring before topping the rally at the end of August and correcting down 40% over the course of 8 months and bottoming at the 0.025 level. The 0.030 level appears to be a strong resistance, but should ETH manage to break it to the upside it has the potential for a constructive rally towards 0.04 or even higher.

Zcash’s Ironwood Upgrade is Live, Are memes a secular growth story? And NEAR AI news

Zcash upgraded its network with the Ironwood upgrade this week. The upgrade introduced a new shielded pool designed to strengthen Zcash's security and make the integrity of its circulating supply independently verifiable. Upon activation, the original Orchard pool was restricted, and funds exiting Orchard must now pass through Zcash's turnstile to enter Ironwood. Ironwood is the culmination of a coordinated effort across the Zcash ecosystem to respond to the Orchard soundness vulnerability discovered in late May this year and further hardens the protocol for the future. 

You might remember that earlier this year, Shielded Labs security researcher Taylor Hornby uncovered a soundness vulnerability in Orchard, Zcash's most recent shielded pool. The vulnerability was disclosed and patched through a coordinated emergency network upgrade. However, because Zcash's privacy features hide shielded transaction values by design, inspecting transactions within the Orchard pool cannot establish whether counterfeit ZEC was ever created through the exploit. It was therefore impossible to determine whether the vulnerability had actually been exploited. 

That question can only be answered at the pool's boundary by verifying that no more value leaves the pool than legitimately entered it. Ironwood now provides a path forward by introducing stronger safeguards on both sides of that problem. 

In other news, the onchain trenches have experienced a modest comeback in recent weeks, driven largely by the story surrounding Ansem and the Solana memecoin «The Black Bull», which reached a market capitalization of almost $500 million within days. The token is now trading at around $180 million, leaving market participants wondering whether the revival has staying power or represents another temporary surge of the kind seen repeatedly over the past year. 

During the memecoin boom of 2023 and 2024, Solana was one of the main beneficiaries. The question is whether it would benefit to the same extent from another cycle or whether other assets now offer more direct exposure. In our view, PUMP could play an important role. Several researchers have recently highlighted the Pump.fun token after the platform’s revenue surpassed that of Hyperliquid this month. Its relatively low revenue multiple suggests that the market does not currently view memecoins as a secular growth story. The key question is whether that perception will eventually change. 

Last but not least, NEAR AI has launched staking based payments for confidential inference and agent hosting, allowing users to stake NEAR in exchange for recurring AI compute credits instead of paying through fiat subscriptions. The underlying NEAR remains withdrawable, while agent hosting uses a fixed stake to credit ratio and confidential inference converts staking yield into compute credits. The service relies on Trusted Execution Environments, with hardware signed attestations verifying that inference was executed inside a confidential enclave, and provides access to models from providers including Anthropic, OpenAI and Google.

Ether spot ETFs outperform Bitcoin, and Morgan Stanley launched ETH and SOL ETFs this week

Last week, the US Bitcoin spot ETFs recorded their lowest trading volume since October 2024 as the products managed to attract $34M in net inflows, with the last two trading days wiping out most of the inflows from the beginning of the week. Interestingly, the Ethereum spot ETFs saw over $100M in net inflows last week, outperforming BTC more than 3x and putting in their second consecutive week of outperforming the Bitcoin spot ETFs. 

The Hyperliquid spot ETFs are now on their fifth day with net outflows. After one of the best launches in terms of inflows during the first two months after launch, the cumulative flows of HYPE have decreased to roughly $290M today, down from $320M at the beginning of July. 

The same two stories as every week, at least for the past few weeks: Strategy increased its USD reserves again last week by selling MSTR shares worth more than $500M last week, while repurchasing STRC preferred shares for $25M. They did not buy or sell any BTC and continue to hold 843’775 BTC. BitMine, on the other hand, you guessed it right, bought roughly 10K ETH, bringing its total holdings to 5’787’414 Ether. 

In other news, Morgan Stanley launched their Ethereum and Solana spot ETFs, for which they intend to stake a portion of the ETH and SOL holdings. The company first introduced ETFs back in 2023 and has now built an ETF product suite of 22 products with more than $14B in assets under management. When it comes to crypto, the ETH and SOL products are an addition to the existing BTC product the company launched earlier this year.

AAII members continue to feel bearish 

AAII members continue to feel bearish about the stock market over the next six months, with more than 41% expressing a bearish outlook this week. This comes after almost 45% felt bullish just two weeks ago, representing a drastic shift. 

The Crypto Fear and Greed Index is back in Extreme Fear territory at 25 after spending some time in Fear, while the CNN Fear and Greed Index remains in Fear territory, as it has for the past few weeks.

• Binance US plans to apply to the CFTC in August for designated contract market status, with the goal of offering prediction markets to customers. – Link
• Robinhood’s second-quarter net revenue rose 32% year-over-year to a record $1.31 billion, while net income increased 48% to $573 million and diluted EPS reached $0.62. – Link
• U.S. SEC Chair Paul Atkins said the agency is prepared to move ahead with crypto market rules within its authority if Congress fails to pass the CLARITY Act. – Link
• Hyperliquid Financials Dashboard: A dashboard that brings live financial reporting on Hyperliquid into one place. CSV downloads for the underlying data, and analytical and projection tools to help you interpret it. No more raw data. – Link
• Coinkite warned that wallets created on Coldcard Mk3 devices running firmware versions 4.0.1 through 5.0.3 may be at risk due to a seed generation flaw. Users are advised to migrate funds immediately. – Link

New month, new luck? 

July is coming to an end, and it has been a relatively quiet month compared with June, when most crypto assets closed with losses in the double digits. In July, projects such as PUMP, up 40%, ONDO, up 30%, ETH, up 19%, and LIT, up 17%, managed to record solid gains. Bitcoin, meanwhile, is up less than 10% and remains well below the price levels seen in May. 

Bitcoin and most other crypto assets have essentially traded sideways for the past two months. The typically quiet summer period has lived up to expectations, with volatility and trading volumes remaining low as many market participants are either on vacation or focused on other sectors, such as AI and technology stocks. However, if history repeats itself, or at least rhymes, crypto will likely return to the spotlight sooner or later. The main question is when. 

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

Monday, 3 August 2026 

Switzerland – CPI 

USA – ISM Manufacturing Prices 

Tuesday, 4 August 2026 

USA – JOLTS Job Openings 

Wednesday, 5 August 2026 

USA – ISM Non-Manufacturing Prices 

USA – Crude Oil Inventories 

Thursday, 6 August 2026 

Switzerland – Unemployment Rate 

USA – Initial Jobless Claims 

Friday, 7 August 2026 

USA – Nonfarm Payrolls 

Unemployment Rate