The Weekly Wrap: Warsh’s first FOMC Meeting, STRC Below $90 & Continued ETF Outflows

This Week’s Top Stories

“Fed holds interest rates steady as inflation hits 3-year high.” – Wednesday, 17 June 2026 

• The Federal Reserve left the federal funds rate target range unchanged at 3.50 to 3.75% in a unanimous 12 to 0 vote.
• The Federal Reserve’s latest dot plot was interpreted as rather hawkish by many market participants. Nine of 18 officials projected at least one rate hike this year, with six of them projecting multiple hikes. Only one official projected a rate cut.
• Newly appointed Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin M. Warsh held his first policy press conference on Wednesday following his initial FOMC meeting.
• Speaking at the press conference, Warsh voiced a commitment to bringing inflation down to the Fed's desired level of 2% and vowed to start a “new chapter” in the Federal Reserve’s oversight of the U.S. economy.
• Warsh was widely expected to take the stance of a monetary hawk, and Wednesday confirmed this expectation. In the past, he has repeatedly argued that the Fed should speed up the roll off of its trillions in holdings sooner rather than later. He has been a long-standing critic of quantitative easing and balance sheet expansion.
• Kevin Warsh is expected to dial back the Fed’s heavy communication style. For over a decade, he has argued that the Fed should do more thinking and less talking, essentially moving away from frequent forecasts, dot plots, and detailed forward guidance. Warsh’s approach aims to let markets function more independently.

Crypto Market Down, With Few Exceptions 

The total market capitalization of crypto is down around 4% this week after a good start on Monday, which marked the high for the week. Starting Tuesday, most crypto assets began trading lower, with few exceptions. Hyperliquid, for example, reached a new all-time high on Tuesday, trading just below $78 for the first time. HYPE is up 17% this week, while AERO and UNI are both up more than 20%. 

UNI is likely outperforming this week because Standard Chartered published a report stating that it expects UNI to trade around $100 by the end of 2030, as it defines Uniswap as core market infrastructure for tokenizing real-world assets and DeFi growth. AERO, on the other hand, was likely able to benefit from fundamental catalysts such as the upcoming upgrade, protocol buybacks, and continued dominance in the Base ecosystem. 

Worldcoin, WLD, is the best performing coin this week, up 30%, likely driven by speculation around the OpenAI initial public offering, which is likely to take place in the coming months.

STRC Below $90 

Strategy’s preferred stock Stretch, STRC, continued to drift lower this week after locking in its lowest close to date on Wednesday. During intraday trading, the stock hit a low of $82.50 and closed the day at $88.59. 

STRC, or the Variable Rate Series A Perpetual Stretch Preferred Stock, was designed to trade at $100 by offering a variable dividend, currently at 12.9%, which is adjusted monthly. When STRC trades above par, Strategy issues new shares to buy bitcoin. With STRC under par, Strategy has paused the stock’s ATM program.

Pump.fun Metrics Slide, Ethereum Locks in Glamsterdam & Bhutan is Selling 

The core metrics for Solana's dominant memecoin launchpad, Pump.fun, have continued to deteriorate over the past few weeks. The token graduation rate has fallen roughly 80% over the past three months to just 0.26%, and average daily revenue has slipped to around $800’000 so far in June, down from roughly $4.8 million six months earlier. The cooldown is visible at the chain level, too: average daily fees generated on Solana have dropped from about 33’000 SOL in January to approximately 5’300 SOL in June. 

On the blockchain development side, Ethereum's core teams have entered the final stretch ahead of the next major network upgrade, Glamsterdam. Developers have begun full-scale testing of a fork bundling all planned EIPs on private devnets, the last phase before the codebase is frozen and pushed to public testnets. The upgrade is squarely focused on scaling Layer 1, introducing Enshrined Proposer Builder Separation, ePBS, and Block Level Access Lists as its headline changes. 

Sovereign selling out of Bhutan also continued. Wallets linked to the Royal Government of Bhutan moved 533.2 BTC, worth around $34.52 million, to Binance yesterday. The data suggests Bhutan has gradually offloaded roughly 10’000 BTC over the past year since June 2025, realizing approximately $979 million. The government still appears to hold around 1’750 BTC, currently valued at roughly $113 million.

Global Outflows Extend to $1.67 Billion 

Last week, digital asset investment products recorded net outflows of almost $1.7 billion in their third consecutive negative week and the second-largest weekly outflow of 2026, behind only the week of 23 January. 

Bitcoin saw $1.4 billion in outflows, the largest weekly Bitcoin outflow of 2026, exceeding both last week’s record and the January peak. Year-to-date Bitcoin inflows have fallen to $1.2 billion, down from $2.6 billion the prior week and $3.9 billion two weeks ago. 

Ethereum saw $257 million in outflows. Altcoins also experienced a bad week: only five assets recorded meaningful inflows above $1 million, with XRP at $20.3 million, Hyperliquid at $10.8 million, and Near at $7.6 million the only notable inflows. 

The spot HYPE ETFs have attracted approximately $153 million in net inflows and generated nearly $900 million in cumulative trading volume within their first month of trading. The three products currently on the market, 21Shares’ THYP, Bitwise’s BHYP, and Grayscale’s HYPG, all hold HYPE directly and distribute staking rewards to investors.

Crypto in Extreme Fear at 14 

The Crypto Fear and Greed Index has decreased again over the past couple of days, is back below 20, and remains in extreme fear territory, where it has now spent almost three weeks, essentially the whole month of June. The CNN Stock Market Fear and Greed Index has also been on a downtrend in June and is currently at 37, also in fear territory. Interestingly, AAII members continue to feel rather mixed, with more than 36% of members taking a bullish stance and almost 40% feeling bearish on the stock market over the coming six months.

• Strategy buys 1’587 BTC for $100M, holdings rise to 846’842 BTC. – Link
• Binance is set to lose permission to serve EU clients within weeks as its MiCA license application in Greece is expected to be rejected. – Link
• Strategy’s variable-rate perpetual preferred stock STRC closed at $89 and touched an intraday low of $88.51, hitting a record low and bringing its year-to-date decline to about 10.7%. – Link
• State Street launches GENIUS-compliant money market fund for stablecoin issuers. – Link
• Bitmine acquired 76,881 ETH over the past week, bringing total holdings to 5.62 million ETH tokens as of June 14. – Link

Asset Selection Remains Key 

The broader crypto market continues to trade sideways or lower, and it remains very difficult to actually be on the profitable side of the market over the past few months. Asset selection is the key word here and is what most investors should be focused on. Narratives are changing quickly, with few projects and narratives actually being able to persist and perform over a longer period of time. Zcash and the privacy narrative, Hyperliquid and revenue-driven protocols, TAO or Venice and the AI trend are examples of this. 

The overall crypto market seems to remain dependent on macro developments and geopolitical topics, as Wednesday’s FOMC meeting showed on the negative side, while the news on a U.S. and Iran peace deal demonstrated how positive news can impact markets. 

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

Thursday, 25 June 2026 

USA – Initial Jobless Claims 

USA – PCE Price Index, Core PCE Price Index 

USA – GDP