The crypto market is holding its breath: BTC at $65,000, and institutions are reshaping their strategies.
While retail traders watched the sideways movement in major coins, tectonic shifts were taking place in the institutional sphere. The regulator of the Foggy Albion took on tokenized gold, giant Grayscale is winding down altcoin ETFs, and NYSE is building a bridge to DeFi. Let's break down the details.
Market: a sleepy kingdom or the calm before the storm?
Bitcoin (BTC) showed surprising calm by the morning of August 10. At 08:45 Moscow time, the asset was trading around $65,027. After a brief spike to $65,400, quotes pulled back to $64,800, but then stabilized again in the $65,000 area. This is classic consolidation before an important move — the market is accumulating liquidity.
Ether (ETH) followed the same logic, holding positions in a narrow range of $1,905–$1,935. Rare low volatility reigned in the top 10 by market cap: Solana (SOL) gained a symbolic 1.19%, while Hyperliquid (HYPE) corrected by 0.68%. This behavior suggests that large players are not ready to open new positions until the macroeconomic backdrop becomes clearer.
In the top 100, the situation was more interesting. The leader of the week was Pump.fun (PUMP) with an impressive gain of 38.64%. LayerZero (ZRO) and Curve DAO Token (CRV) were not far behind, rising by 20.36% and 19.37%, respectively. This indicates that targeted demand for niche projects persists even when major assets remain flat.
Regulation: London tames gold
The UK's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is in active talks with leading banks and industry participants to create a regulatory framework for tokenized gold. The discussion concerns the possibility of using digital tokens backed by the precious metal as collateral in wholesale markets. Given that London controls about 70% of global gold trading volume, this decision could dramatically improve market efficiency.
Specific standards are expected to be announced in the coming months. For the industry, this is a signal: traditional finance is no longer viewing tokenization as an experiment and is beginning to integrate it into systemically important assets.
Grayscale retreats, NYSE advances
American investment giant Grayscale Investments has officially withdrawn registration applications for launching three exchange-traded funds (ETFs) for altcoins. According to SEC documents, the company filed Form RW, withdrawing S-1 registrations for the Grayscale Cardano Trust ETF, Grayscale Hedera Trust ETF, and Grayscale Polkadot Trust ETF. The reasons for this decision have not been disclosed, but this is not the first time the company has wound down altcoin initiatives, focusing instead on flagship products like the spot Bitcoin ETF.
At the same time, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) is moving in the opposite direction. Its president, Lynn Martin, confirmed the development of an online platform for settlements of tokenized securities. The exchange already participated in a pilot project with the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTC) in July and is now building its own infrastructure. According to Martin, distributed ledger technology could serve as a bridge between traditional finance and DeFi, modernizing post-trade processes.
My take: Grayscale's withdrawal of applications is not a defeat but a pragmatic step. The company is clearly waiting for clearer signals from the SEC on altcoins. NYSE's activity, however, is a much more important marker. When the world's largest stock exchange begins building bridges into DeFi, it means institutional adoption of tokenization has reached a new level. The coming months will show which of the giants turns out to be a visionary and which a laggard.