NOT airdrop mania, spot ETFs late recovery

Today’s edition of the weekly digest: Notcoin (NOT) faces 50% price drop after airdrop; Spot Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded funds (ETFs) making record inflows to recoup April losses amid market recovery; The crypto industry is witnessing the prevalence of regulatory and enforcement actions.

Notcoin saw a 50% decline after its debut. The Notcoin project started. The team previously announced the closure of foreign exchange direct deposits on May 14. They announced plans to continue making deposits after NOTE’s listing on May 16. Crypto.news reported on May 16 that the win-win blockchain project transferred 80.2 billion to NOT. Miners from the Open Network (TON) community. The listing followed shortly after with the support of many top exchanges such as Binance, ByBit, Gate.io and OKX. The 55% drop did not occur upon listing as miners moved to cash out their allocations. More than 500,000 Notcoin miners and airdrop beneficiaries sent 1 billion NOT tokens worth $6.8 million to a public address belonging to Telegram founder Pavel Durov as a token of gratitude. Spot Bitcoin ETFs recoup April losses The Spot Bitcoin ETF market started on positive footing last week, recording net inflows of $66 million on May 13. Fidelity’s Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund (FBTC) took the lead with a capital inflow of $38.6 million. A filing with the US SEC confirmed that the Wisconsin Board of Investment holds a total of $162.4 million across the two largest spot Bitcoin ETFs, Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) and BlackRock iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT). The spot ETF market also witnessed a total inflow of $100 million on the second day of the week. On this day, GBTC saw an outflow of $50.9 million, while ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF (ARKB) recorded the highest inflow of $133.1 million. Spot ETFs saw another round of net inflows on May 16, reaching $303 million, the largest figure since May 3. This inflow trend continued throughout the week. As a result, the market saw consistent inflows for five days. Last week, the cumulative figure amounted to $948.3 million. Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas confirmed that the ETF market saw $1.3 billion inflows in two weeks, erasing last month’s losses. He predicted that this positive trend will continue. Ethereum ETF’s fate uncertain Balchunas also predicted that the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) may never approve a spot Ethereum ETF product due to its stance against Ethereum in terms of its status as a commodity or security. Meanwhile, a report last week confirmed there is significant interest in spot Bitcoin ETFs. K33 Research analyst Vetle Lunde announced that as of March 31, some 937 institutions had committed to invest $11 billion in spot Bitcoin ETFs. Bitcoin reclaims $67K as crypto market recovers The market made a recovery last week, but price action was largely negative at the start of the week. Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz predicted that Bitcoin could still reach $75,000 during consolidation. Following the release of US CPI data on May 15, Bitcoin and the rest of the market staged a comeback. The global crypto market cap rose to $2.5 trillion on May 16. Bitcoin surpassed $66,000 in the middle of an uptrend, but this rise was not enough to offer significant gains to short-term holders. This recovery was further supported by news that CME plans to launch Bitcoin trading. BTC finally reclaimed the psychological threshold of $67,000 on May 17 for the first time this month. Despite this, Chainlink (LINK) was the biggest gainer of that day. LINK saw a 20% rally thanks to the DTCC partnership. BTC is currently trading at $66,576.70 per coin at last check on May 19. Global enforcement actions Enforcement efforts shook the scene last week. Chinese authorities have arrested six people for their connection to an illegal crypto trading scheme worth $300 million. A US court has ordered the seizure of up to 279 cryptocurrency accounts linked to North Korea. The accounts will be seized and handed over to US authorities as evidence shows they are linked to crypto theft cases. Three judges in the Netherlands sentenced Tornado Cash developer Alexey Pertsev to 64 months in prison after declaring him guilty. Pertsev appealed the decision, with industry commentators arguing that it was unfair to penalize someone for developing code. The US Department of Justice (DoJ) arrested two brothers, Anton Pepaire-Bueno and James Pepaire-Bueno, for stealing $25 million worth of crypto assets in just 12 seconds. They carried out the heist using MEV bots on Ethereum. The US Senate voted on May 16; Senate, SEC’s Staff Accounting Bulletin (SAB) No. 121 voted 60 to 38 in favor of repeal. Decision, HJ Res. 109 received bipartisan support; 11 Democrats rejected the rule, with all but two abstained Republican senators joining in, despite Democratic party leaders opposing the resolution.