Grayscale\'s Ethereum Trust has posted its first day of non-outflows, which comes 14 trading days since it launched. Meanwhile, Argo Blockchain has fully repaid a $35 million loan from Galaxy Digital, which prevented its bankruptcy when the crypto bear market hit the Bitcoin miner in 2022 and Bitcoin price faltered as institutional investors’ accumulation of stablecoins slowed down.
Grayscale ETH ETF stops bleeding after 14 days of outflow
The Grayscale Ethereum Trust (ETHE) has posted its first day of zero outflows, ending a consecutive daily onslaught of outflows since its launch.
On Aug. 12, Ether (ETH) exchange-traded fund (ETF) flows flipped positive for the fifth time since their launch on July 23, aided by ETHE posting its first day of zero outflows, per Farside data.
In total, ETHE has hemorrhaged nearly $2.3 billion in Ether in the 20 days since its launch.
In comparison, Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) took close to four months before it saw its first day of non-outflow.
Bitcoin miner Argo repays $35M Galaxy bailout loan
Bitcoin miner Argo Blockchain has successfully repaid a $35 million loan to Galaxy Digital, borrowed in 2022 to avoid bankruptcy during the crypto bear market. The loan was part of a broader agreement that included selling Argo’s Helios Bitcoin mining facility in Texas to Galaxy Digital for $65 million and refinancing its debt.
The loan was collateralized by Argo’s “23,619 Bitmain S19J Pro mining machines currently operating at Helios and certain machines located at Argo’s Canadian data centers,” Argo said. As part of the deal, Argo agreed to lease back space in Helios to keep running its Bitcoin mining equipment.
Argo had a hashrate of 2.7 exahashes per second (EH/s) as of the end of 2023. The total hashrate for the Bitcoin network is currently 677.43 EH/s, according to data from CoinWarz. In July, Argo mined 48 BTC, or 1.5 BTC per day on average, the company announced.
Bitcoin price drops below $59,000 as institutions stop buying stablecoins
Institutional investors have halted their accumulation of stablecoins over the past two days, causing Bitcoin’s price to drop below a key psychological level.
During the past 24 hours, the Bitcoin (BTC) price fell 3.9% to trade at $58,930 as of 08:03 am UTC on Aug. 12, falling from a weekly high of $62,510.
The drop below the $60,000 mark was likely caused by institutions stopping their stablecoin buying frenzy, according to an Aug. 12 X post from onchain analytics platform Lookonchain:
“Institutions seem to have temporarily stopped buying, and the price of $BTC dropped 4.5% today! We noticed that institutions stopped receiving $USDT from #TetherTreasury and transferring it to exchanges 2 days ago.”
The lack of institutional stablecoin inflows to crypto exchanges can signal a lack of buying pressure and investor appetite for the underlying asset, as stablecoins are the main on-ramp from the fiat to the crypto world used by investors.
Tether issues the world’s largest stablecoin, Tether (USDT), and has minted over $1.3 billion worth of stablecoins from the market bottom on Aug. 5 to Aug. 9.