Dont Panic Bull Market May Be Over But These Developments in the Second Half of 2024 Are Still Worth Anticipating

Author: Terry, Blockchain in Plain Language
In the past two months, despite the continuous hot events of memes, airdrops of top projects, the market has been in a rather mysterious and sluggish atmosphere. The bear’s roar seems to be faintly audible, while the footsteps of the bull are uncertain, and the market crash and restart seem to be only a moment apart.
This article aims to explore and sort out some of the brewing events hidden in the market over the past two months, while also looking ahead to the potential positive factors that may be overlooked, and envisioning the main storyline that may dominate the next six months.
01
BTC Spot ETF Inflows Turned Positive
The market always tends to overestimate the short-term effects of new things and underestimate their long-term impact. For the Bitcoin spot ETF, which has been launched for almost half a year, there has been a signal worth paying attention to recently:
According to SoSoValue data, since mid-May, the Bitcoin spot ETF has seen a new wave of capital inflows, lasting for nearly a month. On June 4th, it even reached a historical peak of $8.86 billion (second only to $10.5 billion on March 12th).


Although there have been consecutive declines since the beginning of this week, the overall situation has clearly reversed compared to April and May. As of the time of writing (June 21), the net asset value of the Bitcoin spot ETF is $562.4 billion, with an ETF net asset ratio (the ratio of market value to total market value of Bitcoin) of 4.39%, and a total cumulative net inflow of $14.67 billion.
02
Cryptocurrency Regulation and Ethereum Spot ETF Acceleration
Against the backdrop of the 2024 election year, the macro environment has clearly improved recently, both in terms of regulation and funding, brewing a new round of bullish catalysts.
First, on May 22, the “21st Century Financial Innovation and Technology Act” (FIT21 Act) was passed by a vote of 279 to 136 in the House of Representatives. Subsequently, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) formally approved the 19b-4 form for 8 Ethereum spot ETFs on May 24.


This shift in the U.S. regulatory stance from tough to softening, especially the expected approval of the Ethereum ETF, has been significantly accelerated. It seems that, in hindsight, this change in attitude and approval speed by U.S. regulatory agencies was not entirely unexpected. There are signs that individuals and institutions, such as Justin Sun, had already started accumulating ETH chips near $3000, indicating early positioning by those with keen foresight.
Most directly, the performance of ETH in the secondary market has also swept away previous declines and begun to gradually strengthen. The most noticeable change is the ETH/BTC exchange rate. Since October last year, ETH has been declining compared to BTC, and the ETH/BTC exchange rate has fallen from above 0.064 to below 0.045. Since mid-May, the ETH/BTC exchange rate has started to reverse its downward trend, breaking through the 0.05 and 0.055 levels in the past month and reaching a recent high of 0.058, showing overall strength.
03
Traditional Web2 Players Accelerating Layout in Web3
On June 6, Robinhood announced the acquisition of the cryptocurrency trading platform Bitstamp for $200 million, expanding beyond the United States. Both parties have reached an acquisition agreement, which requires regulatory approval. Compared to the $400 million acquisition price by NXC, a subsidiary of the South Korean company in 2018, it is a significant bargain.


As is well known, Robinhood is one of the most commonly used stock and cryptocurrency CEX for U.S. users, with 11 million monthly active users. Its popularity in the cryptocurrency trading sector is even higher than Coinbase: Robinhood’s transaction-based revenue in the first quarter of this year increased by 59% year-on-year to $329 million, with cryptocurrency revenue reaching $126 million, a 232% year-on-year increase, showing strong performance.
Established in 2011, Bitstamp is the longest-running global cryptocurrency CEX and is considered one of the most compliant CEX. With operations in Luxembourg, the UK, Slovenia, Singapore, and the U.S., and valid licenses and registrations in over 50 countries/regions, it can provide support for Robinhood’s expansion into other regions for cryptocurrency business.
This is almost a perfect complementary relationship. While Robinhood’s market currently focuses mainly on the United States, its competitors Kraken and eToro have stronger businesses in Europe. Although Bitstamp has only 4 million users, most of them are in Europe. Therefore, it represents a huge leap for Robinhood’s expansion into Europe.
It is worth noting that just a month ago, Robinhood received a Wells notice from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which covered topics related to RHC’s cryptocurrency asset listing, custody, and platform operations. Therefore, the acquisition of Bitstamp will expand Robinhood’s global layout and hedge the strong regulatory impact of the U.S. SEC, ensuring that it always stays in the game.


In addition, Fortune magazine predicts that in addition to adding around 4 million new cryptocurrency customers for Robinhood, this transaction will also enable Robinhood to offer a wider range of cryptocurrency products to more institutional clients:
Expanding from the 15 tokens offered in the U.S. market and over 30 tokens in Europe to over 85 tokens included in Bitstamp, the diversification of services offered by Bitstamp (such as staking, stablecoins, trading, custody, and major brokerage services) will help Robinhood attract more institutional clients and accelerate its expansion in the European market.
04
Macro Environment Sounding the Horn of Easing
Although U.S. CPI, PPI, non-farm, and other data have repeatedly exceeded expectations in the past six months, and Federal Reserve officials have begun to take a “tough stance,” causing the market to continuously adjust its interest rate cut expectations, at least for now, inflation has basically come to an end. People remain cautiously optimistic about the Federal Reserve’s interest rate cut in the second half of the year.
FOMC permanent voting member and New York Fed President John Williams emphasized on Tuesday that any decision on the timing or degree of interest rate cuts this year will depend on the economic data to be released soon. At the same time, Fed officials have lowered their expectations for interest rate cuts this year, with the median official forecasting only one interest rate cut.
However, the Bank of Canada and the European Central Bank, which are seen as the vanguard of the Federal Reserve, have already sounded the horn of a shift and overtaken the interest rate cut:
On June 5, the Bank of Canada lowered its interest rate from 0.5% to 0.475%, the first time in four years.
On June 6, the European Central Bank lowered its interest rate from 0.4% to 0.375%, the first time in five years.
In any case, the global wave of interest rate cuts has further accelerated, and favorable macro factors are indeed accumulating.
05
Major Payment/Financial Institutions Returning
Furthermore, recently, BN has once again allowed Mastercard users to purchase cryptocurrency on BN, and the BN-branded Visa card has also been restored for use on the trading platform, with BN indicating that the withdrawal service using Mastercard will be resumed later.
As early as March, MetaMask also reached a partnership with Mastercard to conduct the first test of a blockchain payment card. Marketing materials indicate that the MetaMask/Mastercard payment card, issued by Baanx, will be the “first truly decentralized Web3 payment solution,” allowing users to use cryptocurrency for daily consumption wherever bank cards are accepted.
This undoubtedly greatly solves the cognitive and access barriers for incremental users, moving towards seamless deposits and withdrawals (instant exchange of fiat currency and stablecoins), abstracting the user experience for easy use (account abstraction, close to the Web2 payment experience), and particularly bridging the link between cryptocurrency and offline consumption scenarios, which is conducive to anchoring cryptocurrency assets to a wider range of assets.
06
Conclusion
Overall, in this market with fluctuating conditions, there are still quite a few positive factors slowly fermenting. As long as you observe carefully, you can still see signs of confidence.
Although the bear’s roar seems to be faintly audible, the footsteps of the bull are uncertain. In this context, staying cautiously optimistic, observing and actively participating at all times may be the only thing one can do in the current market atmosphere.