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Hey!

I'm not meant to be here, but I snuck back to say that you'll see a few other names on some of these emails while I'm gone.

Don't fret, they're cool (I promise).

Today, the Empire newsletter's Katherine Ross is here to tell you about how markets are doing with bitcoin on fire. See you soon!

— Kate Irwin

Are we there yet?

We’re over halfway through the year, so let’s do a little recap, shall we?

I mentioned K33’s H1 report in an intro to the Empire newsletter the other day, but there’s a lot of interesting data to digest.

Such as the fact that the bitcoin treasury companies acquired a whopping 244,991 bitcoin by the end of June, which marked the official transition from H1 to H2. 

Not to mention that the number of treasury companies, perhaps unsurprisingly, almost doubled by the end of the first half. At the beginning of the year, there were 70 firms with bitcoin on their balance sheet, but that quickly ballooned to 134. 

Companies from the US, Canada, Japan and UK are at the top of the list when it comes to companies pivoting to a bitcoin treasury strategy, but the total sum is made up of companies from 27 countries, according to K33. That gives you a rough idea of how global this is, though the US tops the chart with 41 public companies. 

But it’s not all about bitcoin treasury firms or even just bitcoin. A lot has happened this year, as both Securitize CEO Carlos Domingo and Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley were eager to point out to us just this week. 

In the first half of the year, USDT and USDC’s circulating supply grew by $38 billion as folks flocked to the stablecoin narrative. 

Unfortunately, if you take stablecoins out of the mix, then only nine of the top 50 cryptos saw positive returns in H1, showing that altcoins are still struggling to find their footing in a market dominated by bitcoin and stablecoins. 

Of that nine, K33 noted that three specifically outperformed bitcoin: XMR, HYPE and SKY. 

So it looks like the momentum still isn’t there for an altcoin season. Looking ahead though, there may be some hope on the horizon if some of these altcoin ETFs are approved, which could happen by the end of this year, as we previously reported. 

K33 noted that H2 tends to be the stronger half for bitcoin seasonally, and we have other tailwinds such as more crypto IPOs to follow in Circle’s footsteps and we could get some more information on the proposed US strategic bitcoin reserve.

Not to mention the role that regulation could play, especially as lawmakers on the Hill discuss the crypto bills this week. 

So there’s still a lot of gas left in the tank — let’s see where it takes us. 

— Katherine Ross

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