Gate Institutional Weekly: BTC price mends at low levels, and Gate’s U.S. stock trading volume hits another new high for the period

Summary

• Crypto market risk appetite recovered; BTC up ~6.8% weekly, ETH up ~12.2%; ETF funds still net outflow overall, but ETH ETF saw a small return first, institutional sentiment shifting from panic redemption to tentative covering.

• TradFi equity Perp trading share rose to ~60%–65%; Gate TradFi weekly trading volume remained high at ~$85 billion, CFD still contributed ~95% of volume, US stock trading volume grew for five consecutive weeks and hit a new high.

• DEX trading structure continued to diverge; Uniswap and PancakeSwap volume declined, while PumpSwap sustained high growth, driving Solana issuance, trading, and wallet ecosystem to become the main source of incremental capital and protocol revenue.

• LST sector recovered in sync; ETH and SOL staked assets rebounded with risk appetite, while Aave lending demand re-concentrated on the Ethereum main market.

• Stablecoin supply remained weak overall, but USDC’s institutional channel strengthened with support from BNY Mellon; Aave USDC borrowing rate rose, reflecting renewed demand for high-quality dollar liquidity; protocol revenue shifted from on-chain derivatives to Solana traffic gateways.

• BTC OI recovered from ~$20.5 billion to ~$22 billion, funding rates remained positive, indicating leveraged capital re-entering; options volume also recovered, 25D Skew improved from deep negative levels, DVOL fell from 46–48 to 39–40.

• Gate’s June platform spot and futures trading volumes grew 49.39% and 11.19% MoM respectively; Gate institutional spot and futures volumes grew 17.71% and 10.70% MoM respectively; in the first week of July, CrossEx trading volume grew 26% WoW.

1. Market Focus Interpretation

Last week (June 29 to July 5, 2026), global markets were driven by cooling U.S. employment, falling rate expectations, and recovering risk appetite. U.S. June nonfarm payrolls added 57k, below the market expectation of ~115k; April and May data were revised down by a combined 74k. The unemployment rate edged down from 4.3% to 4.2%, mainly due to a decline in labor force participation.

After the data release, market concerns about a July Fed rate hike eased. The 10-year U.S. Treasury yield ended the week at ~4.4477% after intra-week fluctuations, and the 2-year yield fell to ~4.13%, with marginal easing of rate pressure. U.S. stocks rose overall during the holiday-shortened trading week: the Dow gained ~2.0% weekly, the S&P 500 rose ~1.8%, and the Nasdaq gained ~2.1%. However, rotation pressure emerged in AI and semiconductor sectors, indicating that capital was not unilaterally chasing high-valuation growth stocks but repricing risk assets under the "economic slowdown but policy no longer more hawkish" combination. In commodities, oil fluctuated between Middle East risk premiums and OPEC+ production increase expectations; WTI crude traded around $70. Gold remained elevated, reflecting that inflation and geopolitical risks have not fully dissipated. The crypto market benefited from falling U.S. Treasury yields, easing dollar liquidity pressure, and improved equity risk appetite. Both BTC and ETH strengthened during the week, with ETH showing higher elasticity, suggesting capital shifting from defensive BTC allocation to higher-beta assets.

2. Liquidity Analysis

2.1 ETF still in clear net outflow; BTC ETF weekly net outflow of ~$57k

In terms of ETFs, the BTC spot ETF was still in a clear net outflow state last week. The U.S. BTC spot ETF saw a weekly net outflow of ~$115k, continuing the large redemption pressure from June. However, on July 2, a single-day net inflow of $221.72 million occurred, ending the previous outflow streak of about 10 trading days totaling ~$2.73 billion. In terms of AUM, total net assets of BTC spot ETFs were ~$74k on June 26, rising to ~$1.79B on July 2, an increase of ~$1.79B, mainly driven by BTC price rebound offsetting net redemptions. By product, on July 2, the largest inflow was into Fidelity’s FBTC at ~$166 million, followed by ARKB at ~$91.84 million; the most notable outflow was from BlackRock’s IBIT, with a single-day outflow of ~$40.43 million, still in a continuous outflow narrative.

ETH spot ETFs faced significantly less pressure than BTC. Aggregated daily frequency data shows a net outflow of ~$13.65 million from June 29 to July 2, with outflows of ~$30.04 million and ~$27.6 million on June 29 and June 30 respectively, turning to inflows of ~$14.89 million and ~$29.08 million on July 1 and July 2. AUM rose from ~$72.82B on June 29 to ~$74.37B on July 2, an increase of ~$426 million, mostly from ETH price rebound and small fund replenishment. At the product level, ETHA led inflows on both July 1 and July 2, with ~$29.74 million on July 2; products such as ETHE/ETHB bore the main redemption pressure during the week.

Overall, institutional sentiment has not fully turned bullish but shifted from panic redemptions to tentative covering: BTC still needs IBIT to resume inflows to confirm the trend, while ETH shows small-scale capital returning at lower levels.

2.2 TradFi Liquidity

• TradFi Perp DEX: Over the past week, the trading structure of TradFi Perp DEX continued to concentrate on equity assets. The share of equity perpetual contracts rapidly rose to ~60%–65%, becoming the absolute market dominant again; the previously dominant commodity contract share continued to fall to ~10%–15%, indicating cooling hedge trading in gold, crude oil, etc. Meanwhile, the share of index/ETF contracts remained stable at ~20%; other asset classes such as FX, bonds, Pre-IPO, and ETFs still accounted for low trading volumes, with limited contribution to overall volume. Market capital continued to concentrate on high-liquidity equity products.

• Gate TradFi Trading Volume: Over the past week, Gate TradFi total trading volume was ~$85 billion, down ~13%–15% WoW. Total volume last week was close to $98 billion, reaching a recent high; this week it fell back to ~$85 billion, but still above the levels at the end of May and early June, indicating overall trading activity remained stable. CFD remains the absolute core business. CFD volume was ~$81 billion, accounting for about 95% of total volume. Although lower than last week, it still contributed the vast majority of volume, continuing to be the main growth driver for the Gate TradFi product suite. Perp maintained resilience. Perp volume remained in the $400–500 million range, accounting for about 5%, with little overall change, indicating that derivatives trading demand remained stable amid subdued market volatility.

• Gate U.S. Stock Trading Volume: Gate officially launched U.S. stock trading services on June 2. With the advantages of real underlying asset support, direct USDT trading, no overnight holding fees, and high liquidity, Gate’s U.S. stock trading volume continued to grow rapidly over the past week, hitting a new recent high, further improving from the previous week, extending the five-week consecutive growth trend since early June. With the successive launch of features such as U.S. stock trading, pre-market and after-hours trading, web interface, and 7×24 trading, user participation has been steadily increasing. Meanwhile, the weakening U.S. employment data boosted market risk appetite, leading to active U.S. stock trading, which further drove platform U.S. stock trading volume growth, reflecting that Gate’s global equity business is entering an accelerated expansion phase.

• TradFi Order Book Depth: We selected XAUT, the TradFi asset with the highest trading volume, to analyze its order book depth (Delta). Over the past week, green Delta bars significantly outnumbered red bars, especially on July 1, 3, and 6, where multiple net buy-side liquidity increases of $500k–$800k were observed, indicating that market makers continuously replenished buy orders, and the market had strong absorption capacity. The XAUT price rose from ~$4,000 to the $4,160–$4,180 range, during which order book buy-side depth increased concurrently, suggesting that the rise was supported by genuine liquidity rather than thin-depth short-term spikes. Although there were some negative Deltas of $200k–$500k from July 2 to 5, they were short-lived and did not form a continuous liquidity withdrawal, having limited impact on price. Overall, the latest large buy-side injection implies that a strong liquidity support level has formed around $4,150. If macro risk-aversion continues in the short term, the depth structure of XAUT will still favor a strong price.

3. On-Chain Data Insights

3.1 Top DEX spot volumes continue to cool, PumpSwap brings Solana speculative traffic back to the forefront

This week, the main DEX trading structure continued to shift. Uniswap and PancakeSwap remained in the top two, but volume edged lower compared to the previous week, with no significant expansion in turnover for mainstream spot pools. PumpSwap, on the other hand, continued to rise, maintaining high volume and user counts as Solana’s speculative traffic shifted toward platforms integrating issuance and secondary trading. Meteora also saw some recovery, but Raydium, Curve, Aerodrome, and other more mature liquidity scenarios were relatively flat, with funds not forming a cross-chain broad rally.

3.2 Stablecoin supply remains weak overall, but USDC’s institutional channel continues to open

Stablecoin supply remained somewhat contracted this week. Major assets such as USDT, USDC, USDS, USD1, and USDe mostly edged lower, with no large-scale new dollar inflows on-chain. Relatively bright spots were PYUSD expanding and DAI remaining stable, reflecting small-scale reallocation of funds between regulatory and yield narratives. BNY Mellon announced this week that it would support USDC custody, transfers, minting, and burning on its digital asset platform, which is a substantive positive for USDC’s institutional channel. Meanwhile, news of BlackRock, Google, and Coinbase participating in supporting Open USD also indicates that stablecoin competition is shifting toward embedding in payments, custody, clearing, and institutional wallets. However, opposition from community banks to stablecoin legislation continues to ferment, and regulatory hurdles have not disappeared.

3.3 LST sector clearly recovers from last week’s pullback; ETH and SOL staked assets rebound together

This week, the LST sector warmed up significantly. Lido, Rocket Pool, StakeWise, and other ETH-side protocols all recovered from last week’s lows. SOL-side elasticity was also strong, with Jito, Sanctum, and Jupiter Staked SOL all seeing varying degrees of rebound. Since TVL is denominated in USD, this recovery is related to the price recovery of ETH and SOL, but it also shows that last week’s position reduction did not evolve into sustained redemption pressure. After the KelpDAO/rsETH incident, institutional judgment on LST remains more focused on safety and path clarity, with the risk premium between standard LST and cross-chain wrapped assets having diverged. Overall, this week’s LST was driven by a combination of valuation recovery and improved risk appetite.

3.4 Aave lending recovery driven by Ethereum main market; multi-chain structure still divergent

Aave’s lending balance recovered this week, with the main increment coming from the Ethereum main market. When risk appetite restored, funds still returned first to the core market with the best liquidation depth and collateral quality. Some markets like Arbitrum, Base, Mantle, and Ink also saw slight improvements, but Plasma and MegaETH continued to decline, slowing the pace of earlier new market expansion. This structure is consistent with the risk recovery logic of recent weeks: Aave has not lost lending demand, but capital is choosier about chains, collateral, and risk control parameters.

3.5 Aave core asset lending rates diverge again; USDC funding pressure clearly rises

The lending rates of Aave’s three core assets showed new divergence this week. The average borrowing cost of USDC rose significantly, USDT rose slightly, while WETH remained basically low. USDC’s highest rate within the week still briefly spiked, indicating that the core dollar pool remains sensitive to utilization changes. In contrast, WETH rates did not rise in tandem, and ETH directional leverage was not crowded. This combination usually corresponds to a rebound in institutional demand for stablecoin turnover, arbitrage, and collateral management. The Aave community discussion about increasing USDC liquidity buffers has practical relevance in this week’s data. The conclusion from the rate side is clear: market risk appetite has somewhat recovered, but the first thing to become more expensive is still high-quality dollar liquidity.

3.6 Protocol revenue shifts from high-elasticity derivatives to Solana traffic gateways; Pump ecosystem performs strongest

This week’s protocol revenue structure changed significantly. Tether and Circle are the most stable cash flow bases, but growth elasticity mainly came from Solana traffic gateways such as Pump.fun, PumpSwap, Axiom, and Phantom. Hyperliquid Perps revenue declined compared to the previous week, as the earlier heat in on-chain perps and equity/pre-IPO trading cooled, but it remains one of the highest-earning on-chain derivatives protocols. Titan Builder revenue continued to improve, reflecting that order flow and MEV-related infrastructure still have strong cyclical elasticity. Aave V3 revenue edged down, matching the divergence in lending rate structure but uneven balance recovery. Combined with DEX data, this week’s revenue and trading sides point to the same main line: mainstream spot platforms hold the base, while the real marginal elasticity comes from Solana issuance, wallets, and high-frequency trading frontends. Stablecoin issuers are responsible for stable cash flow, while trading infrastructure and traffic gateways are responsible for short-term elasticity.

4. Derivatives Tracking

4.1 BTC price recovers from lows; OI rise shows leveraged capital re-entering

Last week, BTC price first fell then rose. Early in the week, the price was still oscillating around $60k, dipping to ~$59k around June 30, then gradually recovering and rising to the $63k–$64k range from July 3 to July 5. Overall, the price shifted from the previous week’s weak decline to a low-level rebound, but it has not yet fully escaped the range-bound structure.

In terms of OI, there was a clear recovery this week. OI was around $20.5 billion near June 29, then gradually rose, returning to around $21.9–$22.0 billion by July 3–5. The price rebound combined with OI recovery indicates that leveraged capital has re-entered the market, with new positions providing support for this round of repair. The funding rate remained positive throughout the week, mostly in the 0.003–0.006 range, indicating that long sentiment continued to dominate. Compared with the previous extreme high funding rate phase, this week’s funding rate did not go out of control, but in the context of a just-recovering price, persistent positive rates also imply that the market has re-accumulated a certain amount of long exposure.

Overall, this week’s BTC derivatives market shifted from "low-level defense" to "moderate re-leveraging repair." If the price can hold above $63k, the OI recovery will help sustain the rebound; but if BTC falls back to around $60k, the new long positions may face deleveraging pressure again.

4.2 Options volume stabilizes first then rises; monthly contracts continue to dominate trading structure

Options activity remained high last week. From June 29 to July 1, BTC options volume mostly stayed in the 24k–27k contract range, relatively stable. Entering July 2–3, volume increased further, rising to around 34k contracts near July 3, the high of the week.

Structurally, monthly options remained the main source of volume, indicating that market participants continued to use longer-dated contracts for directional positioning and risk management. Weekly options volume also remained stable, reflecting some trading demand during the short-term rebound. In contrast, daily options, though picking up on some days, did not become dominant overall. Weekend volume dropped significantly, falling to around 8,000–10k contracts on July 4–5, showing that short-term trading heat cooled after the price rebound. Overall, the options market this week did not show panic-driven volume expansion, but rather a structure of "price repair + monthly contract dominance + weekend cooling."

From a trading behavior perspective, options activity reflected more of a position adjustment after the rebound rather than unilateral chasing. If BTC continues to hold above $63k, options volume may remain moderately active; if the price falls back below $60k, protective demand may boost volume again.

4.3 25D Skew recovers from deep negative values, but downside protection demand hasn’t disappeared

From the 25D Skew curve, BTC skew across tenors showed a recovery trend last week. Early in the week, 7D skew was in deep negative territory, close to -12, indicating strong short-term downside protection demand and market caution about the price falling back below $60k.

As BTC prices gradually rebounded, short-dated skew recovered quickly. After June 30, 7D skew returned to around -6 to -7, significantly narrowing the gap with other tenors, indicating that the defensive buying concentrated at the near end had eased. Medium-to-long-dated skew also recovered but remained negative overall. 30D, 60D, 90D, and 180D skew mostly traded around -6 to -7, reflecting that although the market is no longer extremely bearish, it is still paying a premium for downside risk.

Overall, this week’s skew moved from an extreme defensive state back to a relatively balanced negative range. If BTC can maintain above $63k, short-dated skew is expected to continue recovering; if the price falls back below $60k, protective demand may heat up again.

4.4 DVOL clearly falls; market volatility expectations cool with price repair

In terms of volatility, the BTC volatility index DVOL declined overall last week. Early in the week, DVOL remained around 46–48, reflecting the risk premium from the previous week’s price decline and protective demand that had not fully dissipated.

Entering July, as BTC prices gradually recovered and skew improved from deep negative levels, DVOL began to decline significantly. From July 3 to July 5, DVOL fell to around 39–40, a notable drop from early in the week, indicating that the market’s pricing of future sharp volatility has clearly cooled. The decline in DVOL alongside OI recovery and price rebound is not contradictory; it indicates that the market is leaning more toward a moderate repair rather than a high-volatility breakout. The absence of sustained panic-driven protection buying in the options market further confirms that the volatility premium is being released.

Overall, BTC is currently in a combination of "price repair + falling volatility + mildly negative skew." If the price continues to oscillate in the $62k–$64k range, DVOL may remain low; if the price breaks upward or falls back below $60k, volatility may expand again.

5. Outlook for the Week

6. Gate Institutional Update

I. Trading performance maintains resilience; BTC and ETH spot continue to lead the market

• June platform spot trading volume grew 49.39% MoM, significantly above the average of major exchanges.

• BTC and ETH spot trading performance continues to lead: BTC volume grew 95.42% MoM, ETH grew 72.50%, both ranking among the top of mainstream trading platforms. Small-cap token spot trading activity continued to increase, maintaining synchronized growth with the market.

• Platform futures trading volume grew 11.19% MoM; institutional spot and futures volumes grew 17.71% and 10.70% MoM respectively, with an improving trading structure.

• Multiple global quant, market-making, and high-frequency trading institutions continue to advance their onboarding, maintaining active institutional-level trading demand.

II. CrossEx ecosystem continues to expand; Q2 trading scale hits new highs

• CrossEx Q2 cumulative trading volume and cumulative capital scale both continued to grow at a high speed, continuously breaking historical records.

• In the first week of July, CrossEx trading volume grew 26% WoW, with institutional capital continuing to flow in.

III. Institutional products and capital services continue to upgrade

• Large-scale interest-free loans, OTC Loan, and other capital solutions continue to be upgraded to meet diversified institutional capital needs.

• Multiple top-tier institutions have applied for institutional-grade products such as RPI, Colo, GMCC, and OTC Loan, with professional trading service penetration continuously improving.

• Lending business maintains steady growth, with new institutional clients continuously onboarded, further improving institutional capital utilization efficiency.

IV. Technology infrastructure continues to optimize

• Continuously optimizing WebSocket, REST API, and trading link performance, further reducing order processing and market data push latency.

• 3.0 trading architecture continues to advance, focusing on optimizing high-frequency trading tail latency and system stability.

• AI chatbot continues to upgrade, maintaining an accuracy rate of 85%+ for basic problem resolution.

• Third-party infrastructure such as Fireblocks and Copper continues to improve, with further enhanced automation capabilities, strengthening the institutional onboarding experience.

Data Sources

• Investing,

• Gate,

• CMC,

• Coinglass,

• Dune,

• Dune,

• CryptoQuant,

• Amberdata,

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Disclaimer

Cryptocurrency market investment involves high risk. Users are advised to conduct independent research and fully understand the nature of the assets and products they are purchasing before making any investment decisions. Gate is not responsible for any loss or damage caused by such investment decisions.