📈 ETH’s supply is now higher than before the Merge upgrade; US SEC acknowledged Grayscale Solana Trust’s 19b-4 filing and is seeking public comments

Ether’s supply is higher than before the Merge; US SEC seeks public comments on proposal to list and trade Grayscale Solana Trust; representatives in 3 US states introduced bitcoin investment bills

Quick Take

• Ether’s supply is now higher than before the Merge upgrade; the US SEC acknowledged Grayscale Solana Trust’s 19b-4 filing and is seeking public comments; representatives across three US states introduced bitcoin investment bills.
• US spot bitcoin ETFs had a net inflow of US$204 million last week, down by 64% week-on-week. Spot ether ETFs saw a net inflow of $420 million last week (vs net outflow of $45 million the week before). 
• On the macro side, the US added 143,000 jobs in January, lower than the 169,000 forecast from Dow Jones, but the unemployment rate dropped 0.1% to 4%. The University of Michigan consumer survey for February showed expectations that inflation would be 4.3% one year from now, a 1% increase from January, amid concerns about rising tariffs from the Trump administration. The latest CME FedWatch Tool showed a 92% probability of a March rate cut in the US (vs 85% last week). The Bank of England cut interest rates by 0.25% to 4.5%. 
• Notable updates: Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade is scheduled to activate on the Holesky and Sepolia testnets; Ondo Finance (ONDO) introduced Ondo Chain; Polygon Ecosystem Token’s (POL) Agglayer v0.2 mainnet is live; the Crypto.com App listed DeepBook Protocol (DEEP) and Berachain (BERA)
• Notable events in the coming week: US consumer price index, producer price index and retail sales.

Weekly Market Index

Price and volatility indices decreased by -5.68% and -43.77% last week, respectively. The volume index was up by +36.90%. 

Crypto prices increased at the start of last week, which coincided with US President Donald Trump reaching an agreement with Mexico and Canada to put tariffs on hold for a month and at least 30 days, respectively. Prices retraced towards the end of the week amid continuous tariff concerns, including China imposing additional tariffs on selected US imports and Trump’s plan to announce 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports to the US.

Chart of the Week

Ether’s supply is now higher than before the Merge upgrade. Its supply as of 10 February is 120,532,693 ETH, 11,552 ETH higher than the supply on 15 September 2022, the day of the Merge, according to Ultrasound.money. 

Ether’s supply turned inflationary around March to April 2024 after the Dencun upgrade, which introduced blobs to scale Ethereum and resulted in a portion of transactions shifting to Layer-2 (L2s). This resulted in a reduction in the base fee burn rate, causing the network to mint more ETH than burned on a net basis. 

Weekly Performance

BTC and ETH decreased by -0.9% and -7.7%, respectively, in the past seven days. Prices of most other selected top market capitalisation tokens were down except SHIB (+2.4%) and SOL (+0.7%). Shiba Inu partnered with the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure to integrate blockchain applications into government services. 

All key categories decreased in market capitalisation in the past seven days. AI category led the decrease.

Notable Updates

Newly Listed Tokens in Crypto.com App

News Highlights

Investment Vehicles

• The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) acknowledged the 19b-4 filing of the Grayscale Solana Trust. It is seeking public comments within 21 days on the proposal to list the Trust, which will convert it into an exchange-traded product (ETP). In addition, the regulator delayed the decision on whether to allow options trading on BlackRock’s iShares Ethereum Trust to 9 April.  
• BlackRock plans to list a bitcoin ETP in Europe, according to reports from Bloomberg. The fund will be based in Switzerland, making it Blackrock’s first crypto-linked ETP outside of the US. 
• Franklin Templeton is seeking SEC approval for its Franklin Crypto Index ETF, which will initially track bitcoin and ether with a weighting of 86.31% and 13.69%, respectively. 
• Truth.fi, the financial arm of Trump Media and Technology Group, which is partially owned by Trump, applied to register trademarks for brand names of six investment vehicles. This includes two bitcoin funds: Truth.Fi Bitcoin Plus ETF and Truth.Fi Bitcoin Plus SMA. 
• The Securities and Exchange Commission of Thailand plans to launch a distributed ledger technology-based trading platform for securities firms to trade digital tokens. 
• Cboe BZX Exchange submitted four 19b-4 filings to the SEC to list and trade spot XRP ETFs from asset managers WisdomTree, Bitwise, 21Shares, and Canary. In addition, the exchange proposed to allow the listing and trading of options on spot ether ETFs. This follows a similar filing by NYSE American, which is currently pending SEC’s review. 
• Grayscale filed to list its Grayscale Litecoin Trust as an ETP on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) Arca. 

Adoption

• Representatives across three US states introduced bitcoin investment bills:
  • Missouri Representative Ben Keathley proposed the creation of a Bitcoin Strategic Reserve Fund to diversify the state’s investment portfolio.
  • Kentucky State Representative Theodore Joseph Roberts introduced a bill aiming to create a bitcoin reserve, which will allow the allocation of up to 10% of excess state reserves into digital assets. 
  • Florida Senator Joe Gruters introduced a bill proposing investment of part of the state’s funds in digital assets. 
• The University of Austin plans to raise a bitcoin investment fund worth over $5 million, as part of the institution’s $200 million endowment fund. The fund targets a minimum five-year bitcoin holding strategy. 

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