Quick read. Risk-on bias into the weekend. BTC held above $76K with ETF flows positive for the fourth straight week. Base set a new daily transaction record, and the L2 fee compression story continued.
The 5 things to know this morning
- Base hits a new transaction record. 21.1M daily transactions yesterday, eclipsing the prior March high. The driver is the new on-chain perp venue plus a fresh wave of memecoin activity. Median fee held under a cent. The question is whether sequencer economics keep up.
- BTC ETF flows: 4 straight positive weeks. Weekly aggregate flow was +$685M, the fourth consecutive week of net inflows. Cumulative since launch is now ~$58.1B. The institutional bid framework continues to deliver.
- L2 fees are now structurally cheap. Aggregate L2 fees paid by users are down ~62% year-over-year despite a higher transaction count. That is good for users, ambiguous for L2 token holders, and the central question for the ETH burn story going forward. See our analysis.
- Stablecoin supply growth is positive. Aggregate stablecoin supply added $4.1B this week. USDC, USDT, and USDe were all net positive; frax-dollar/" title="Legacy Frax Dollar">FRAX and PYUSD were flat. This is the cleanest single leading indicator for on-chain activity and it is pointing the right way.
- Korea retail premium has flipped positive. The Kimchi premium is at +1.4% after weeks of negative territory. Small reading, but historically a tell for renewed retail bid in Asia.
By the numbers
| BTC overnight | $76,420 (+1.0%) |
| ETH overnight | $2,134 (+0.2%) |
| SOL overnight | $85.5 (+0.5%) |
| Fear & Greed | 33 (Fear) |
| BTC dominance | 53.6% |
| Weekly ETF flows | +$685M net (4th positive week) |
| DXY / US 10Y | 99.3 / 4.51% |
The 4-week ETF run, in context
Four consecutive weeks of positive ETF flow is not a rare event historically, but it is a meaningful pattern. In the 16 months since spot ETF launch, we have had eight stretches of 4-or-more positive weeks. Six of them were followed by BTC outperformance over the subsequent 30 days; two were not. The two failures both came on the back of macro shocks (an early-2025 yields spike and the May 2024 ETH ETF approval-day reversal). The pattern’s predictive power is real but not bulletproof — it works when macro conditions remain stable and the institutional bid is the dominant marginal flow. As long as DXY stays below 100 and the 10Y stays in the 4.3-4.7% range, we think this run continues. If those conditions break, all bets are off.
What we’re watching today and into the weekend
U Mich consumer sentiment preliminary at 10am ET is the only US data of consequence. Crypto-specific: keep an eye on weekend Asia volume — the Kimchi premium flipping positive is small but worth watching for confirmation. Memecoin flows on Base will be volatile through Sunday. We are also watching the BTC ETF creation/redemption pattern at the 4pm ET print: a single large negative day at the end of a strong week is the classic “rebalancing” tell and would not change our read of the regime; sustained outflow into a positive week would.
The weekend liquidity environment in crypto is genuinely thinner than during the week, which makes price moves on light volume look outsized — do not over-read a Saturday +3% move as a regime change. We will publish briefings only on weekdays; weekend price-action coverage stays in the news feed.
For next week’s setup: Tuesday has retail sales and Wednesday has FOMC minutes. Both are non-trivial. If retail sales surprises hot, dollar strength is the channel that hits BTC; if it surprises cold, the equity-correlation channel takes over. We will preview both more thoroughly in Monday’s briefing.
Model 24h: BTC $76.9K, ETH $2,150. 7-day range: BTC $74-79K, ETH $2,070-2,220.