• Michael Saylor delivered the keynote at the BTC 2024 conference, predicting a $13 million Bitcoin price by 2045.

• Cory Bates summarized RFK Jr’s Bitcoin policy proposal from BTC 2024.

• Ethereum Team Lead Péter Szilágyi cast doubt on ETH’s future in a fiery tweet thread. He slams the PeerDAS proposal, which raises the size of Ethereum blobs to 32 MB. He called it "a cute charade: decentralized validation but centralized control" and warned that “Ethereum is losing the plot”.

• Former FTX exec Ryan Salame requested a delay for his 7.5 year prison sentence, citing the need for surgery after a dog bit his face!

• Coingecko’s Q2 industry report reveals Meme Coins were the most popular narrative with a 14.3% share of Coingecko’s traffic. Cat themed coins made the leaderboard at #14 (1.8% share). Dogs appear to have missed out. Perhaps they are busy dishing out justice to the FTX gang!

Whales clawed back a portion of BTC they bled over the last 7 - 10 days.

HODLer Net Position Change (chart below) tracks the 30-day changes in the positions of long-term holders. After a brief accumulation phase at the start of the year, we observed three distinct distribution phases, with the most significant occurring from March to April.

The third distribution phase now appears to be subsiding, indicating that we might see more coins transitioning into the HODLing phase as a majority of short-term positions become profitable.

The market sell-off eased on Friday as investors took comfort in easing inflation data, which could strengthen the case for a Fed rate cut. Fed’s key inflation gauge, the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) index, rose 2.5% in June from a year ago, in line with expectations. S&P 500 climbed 1.11%, and the NASDAQ gained 1.03%.

Among Bitcoin-related stocks, only Block Inc. posted a decline, mainly due to perceived broader business challenges, particularly with its Buy Now Pay Later offering.

🥇Bitwise

Bitwise led on Friday taking in 466 Bitcoin, their first positive flow for the week.

🥈Blackrock

BlackRock pulled in 341 Bitcoin, a slower than typical day for them, but good enough for second place.

🥉VanEck

VanEck hit the podium in third place, buying 285 Bitcoin. On a day where CEO Jan VanEck announced he has over 30% of his portfolio in Bitcoin.

🧮 Total

GBTC saw outflows as usual - selling 393 Bitcoin. Fidelity (+67 Bitcoin) had a quiet day, so net flows in total saw ETFs buying 765 Bitcoin.

🔷 Ethereum

Another day of selling for the ETH ETFs (-$162m). All driven by Grayscale (-$311.4m) which has lost 14% of it’s FUM in four trading days. The usual suspects are buying, Blackrock ($87.3m), Fidelity ($39.3m), Bitwise ($16m) but it’s not enough to stop net outflows.

Bitcoin attracts another advocate among the pension fund behemoths.

The $144 billion State of Michigan Retirement System (SMRS) disclosed in its 13F filings an allocation of 110,000 shares to ARKB, currently valued at ~$7.5 million. Though a small fraction of its total assets, this 'dip the toe' investment is a promising start.

The ETF choice in ARKB also stands out, as long-term institutional investors have typically gravitated towards BlackRock’s IBIT. BlackRock is the world's largest investment manager with a dominant institutional client base.

SMRS has a long-standing relationship with Cathie Wood and has been investing in ARK ETFs since 2016. It’s not far-fetched to think they may share some of Cathie Wood’s optimism for her $3.8 million BTC price target by 2030!

This marks the second pension fund to disclose a Bitcoin allocation. In May, the State of Wisconsin Investment Board announced a $160 million Bitcoin investment spread across IBIT and GBTC.

As the 13F filing season progresses, it wouldn't be surprising to see more pension funds revealing Bitcoin allocations before the August 15 deadline.

Those are the Flows this Saturday.

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you next week.

— Julian