Ethereum Inflows Spike to Levels Not Seen Since March

Ethereum is experiencing a resurgence as The Fed prepares for a major meeting on Wednesday. This week: Elon Musk and rapper Iggy Azalea trigger new bets on memecoins, JPMorgan doubles down on tokenizing real-world assets, and a (somewhat tepid) consensus emerges for what to expect when ETH ETFs begin trading.

Listen to Coinage discuss these stories and more in our usual News Recap above.

Crypto Inflows Come Roaring Back

Last week was a monster week across the board for crypto asset flows. Unsurprisingly, the majority of those flows were led once again by Bitcoin ETFs, but Ethereum also saw its best week since March, attracting $69 million from investors following the surprise SEC decision to allow ETH ETFs. In total, more than $2 billion flowed into crypto asset products, according to CoinShares.

Interestingly, Bitcoin volatility over the last couple weeks has dipped to historic lows. As Swan Bitcoin’s Chief investment officer Rapha Zagury flagged, the crypto is experiencing volatility that is in now in the bottom 6% of historical averages. That might change this week as the Fed prepares for its Wednesday rate decision. While rates are not expected to be lowered, the board will reveal their latest “dot-plot” for when those rate cuts might come.

Ethereum ETF Expectations

Now that Ethereum ETFs have been approved by the SEC, the industry is coming to consensus on what to expect when they open for trading.

As anticipation builds for Ethereum ETFs to begin trading, analysts are coalescing around a number for inflows. According to Bitfinex head of derivatives Jag Kooner, the number to watch will be 10-20% of the inflows Bitcoin was able to attract. That estimate echoes similar expectations from the Bloomberg intelligence duo James Seyffart and Eric Balchunas and Fireblocks’ managing director as well.

Extending that out in dollar-terms would amount to expecting about $200 million in net flows over the first couple weeks of trading. On the year, ETH investment products have seen about $80 million in net inflows.

New Memecoins On The Block

Celebrities are back with their own tokens, and the latest is rapper Iggy Izzaelea. She sat down with crypto influencer ThreadGuy for a new interview that touched on a lot of things — including plans for her $MOTHER token.

Given the fact that most (if not all) celebrity coins have utterly failed — Izzaelea has a long way to go to win the trust of the market. That said, the token has risen another 25% since the interview, so maybe she’s onto something? So far, plans seem to be built around riding the wave of adoption and integrating the token for payments, first at her telecom company for people to buy phones or plans. Details on re-launching that company were sparse, and we’re not sure if that’s gonna move the needle.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk also seemingly engaged in some memcoin shenanigans, that only Coinage seemed to notice. On a stream, the SpaceX founder joked that he’s over Mars and now setting his sights on reaching Uranus. What would usually be a dumb joke has now become fodder for the memecoin $ANUS. Normally, we wouldn’t mention something off that alone — but it’s the same coin Tether co-founder Brock Pierce would not stop talking about during a private event we attended at Token 2049.

Sure enough, Pierce retweeted a clip of the mention, which came from crypto influencer Mario Nawfal’s account. The coin pumped as much as 50% in trading Monday. Perhaps that could continue if more things are planned. We are not part of the crypto cabal (yet) — but with volume up 775% on a memecoin mentioned by those names when it’s still at a $5 million market cap — we figure it’s at least a mention on a slow Monday.

JPMorgan Doubles Down on RWAs

Back on Earth, JPMorgan is doubling down on real-world assets. In a new partnership with Fidelity International, the bank announced it would be using its blockchain, Onyx, to tokenize a money market fund for the international firm.

“Tokenizing our money market fund shares to use as collateral is an important and natural first step in scaling our adoption of this technology,” Stephen Whyman, Fidelity International's head of debt capital markets, told CoinDesk.

Onyx is JPMorgan’s own blockchain endeavor — which could stand to steal some of the thunder away from open and permissionless systems. For its part, Robinhood seems equally focused on tokenizing assets as well. We chatted with Robinhood’s head of crypto about their $200 million acquisition of Bitstamp and why they are better suited than even Coinbase to be the market leader in tokenization.

Other Web3 Headlines

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• Wife of Binance exec ‘expected a lot more’ from US as husband languishes in Nigerian prison

• How Ethena’s stablecoin broke crypto history as fastest to hit $3 billion

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