Spot Bitcoin ETFs near 20-day inflow streak as crypto offerings grow, and Robinhood acquires Bitstamp

DATA from CryptoCompare shows that the price of Bitcoin moved up slightly over the past week, seeing an initial jump to close on $72,000 per BTC before enduring a correction to under $69,000 and recovering from it to now trade at $69,400.

Ethereum’s Ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, dropped by nearly 3% over the past week to now trade at $3,670, losing some of the value it gained after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) cleared the path for the trading of spot Ether exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

Headlines in the cryptocurrency space this week have focused on growing inflows to spot Bitcoin ETFs listed in the United States, which have seen a 19-day inflow streak as of this writing to now have over $60 billion in assets under management.

These inflows came while Australian investors started getting access to their own spot Bitcoin ETF, the Monochrome Bitcoin ETF, trading under the ticker IBTC, which started trading in the country on June 4.

Despite these inflows and Bitcoin’s recent price rise, trading on centralized cryptocurrency exchanges in May dropped by over 20% to $5.27 trillion as prices remained stagnant for most of the past month after Bitcoin’s halving event.

According CCData’s latest Exchange Review report, spot trading volumes fell 21.6% to $1.57 trillion in May, while derivatives volumes declined 19.4% to $3.69 trillion that month, meaning the derivatives market saw its dominance rise to the highest level since December 2023.

Meanwhile major asset manager Franklin Templeton has started exploring the launch of a new cryptocurrency fund that would go beyond Bitcoin and Ethereum, which could even include staking rewards, allowing investors to generate yield by validating transactions on Proof-of-Stake networks.

Franklin Templeton, it’s worth noting, is one of the spot Bitcoin ETF issuers in the United States and has over $1.6 trillion in assets under management. Its spot Bitcoin ETF has over $350 million in assets.

Robinhood acquires Bitstamp for $200 million in all-cash deal

Over the week commission-free trading platform Robinhood has revealed it agreed to acquire one of the longest running cryptocurrency exchanges, Bitstamp, in a $200 million all-cash deal that’s set to close in the first half of the next yar.

The acquisition, advised on by Barclays Capital and Galaxy Digital, was touted as a “major step” in Robinhood’s growth and expansion outside of the United States. It comes after Robinhood started offering cryptocurrency trading to clients in the European Union in December 2023.

READ MORE: Robinhood ramps up crypto ambitions with $200m deal to buy Bitstamp

Bitstamp rival Kraken was also revealed to be potentially exploring a final funding round before going through with an initial public offering (IPO), with this latest round seeing the firm seeking to raise $100 million, capitalizing on renewed investor interest.

Kraken has harbored IPO ambitions since at least 2021 and is said to be looking for a “marquee” firm to join its board and guide it towards a successful IPO, with discussions at this point being preliminary and no formal documentation being exchanged so far.

Another cryptocurrency exchange, Coinbase, also made moves this week as it launched a user-friendly smart cryptocurrency wallet offering users a smoother onboarding experience, gasless transactions, and getting rid of recovery phrases.

The self-custodial wallet is set to let users authenticate through known methods including Face ID, fingerprint recognition, or YubiKey, while letting them tap into their Coinbase or Coinbase Wallet balances for payments. It’s set to support Ethereum, Base, Optimism, Arbitrum, Polygon, Avalanche, BNB Chain, and Zora networks with plans to add support for more later on.

Tether makes major investment in Bitcoin miner Bitdeer

Leading stablecoin issuer Tether further moved into the Bitcoin mining space over the week through the acquisition of a significant stake in Bitdeer Technologies, a publicly traded BTC mining firm owned by Bitmain co-founder Jihan Wu.

The agreement involves a private placement of 18.6 million Class A ordinary shares, which will bring in $100 million in gross proceeds that Bitdeer will use to expand its data center operations, develop specialized mining equipment, and in other general corporate purposes.

Tether, which revealed a profit of $4.52 billion during the first quarter of the year, with $1 billion of that figure coming in from its holdings of US Treasury Bills, which grew by 17.3% to reach $74 billion according to CCData’s Stablecoins & CBDCs report, will also have the option to purchase an additional $50 million worth of shares.

Tether has been establishing itself in the Bitcoin mining space, announcing last year plans to invest $500 million within six months to build its own mining facilities in Uruguay, Paraguay, and El Salvador.

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Francisco Memoria is a content creator at CryptoCompare who’s in love with technology and focuses on helping people see the value digital currencies have. His work has been published in numerous reputable industry publications. Francisco holds various cryptocurrencies.