A Review of the Cryptocurrency Market in July: BTC Rises and Falls, ETH ETF Launch Fails, SOL Rises Against the Trend

Original Title: 《July recap : narratives, best-performers, and coins to watch》

Author: VIKTOR

Translation: 深潮TechFlow

BTC: Recovery after a 4-month range breakout, ultimately challenging the $70,000 resistance

BTC experienced a sharp decline for 5 days at the beginning of this month, ultimately ending on July 5 with a range breakout and market sell-off (including altcoins and BTC), dropping to a low of 53,500. This sell-off was likely due to improper positions held by market participants, but the main panic news at the time was that the German government was selling 50,000 $BTC that had been confiscated years ago.

Subsequently, $BTC oscillated between $54,000 and $58,000 for several days. On July 13, Donald Trump was shot at a meeting, which triggered a strong rebound in $BTC for several days, while also increasing the likelihood of Trump winning the election. Within a week, $BTC essentially rose to $68,000 with little pullback. All of this occurred while Mt. Gox began distributing $BTC to creditors, involving billions of dollars in $BTC, but the impact on BTC's price was not significant, seen as a very bullish signal.

On July 27, Trump spoke at a Bitcoin conference in Nashville, where it was reported that if he were elected again, he would announce the launch of a BTC strategic reserve. This triggered a massive FOMO in the market, with $BTC breaking through $69,000 just hours before the speech. During the speech, the price slightly retreated, but the "strategic reserve" mentioned by Trump was seen as a rather bullish signal.

Subsequently, as $BTC approached $70,000, open interest (OI) continued to rise (although this is usually a sign of disaster, "will it be different this time?" haha), it touched $70,000 in just a second, then fell back to $66,000 within a few hours. The month closed at $65,000, and we now know that the sell-off continued into early August, dropping below $50,000, but this will be discussed in the next monthly review.

ETH ETF Launch, Poor Price Performance

ETH mainly followed BTC in the first half of July, showing slightly weaker performance. The ETH ETF launched on July 23, and although the trading volume was not particularly disappointing compared to expectations, we saw a significant outflow of ETHE every day after the launch, with ETHBTC plummeting to 0.048 on the second and third days of ETF trading. $ETH closed the month at $3,230, with the overall ETF launch performance being disappointing.

Most direct ETH beta tokens also performed poorly in July.

$SOL and Its Ecosystem Perform Excellently

While ETH's performance was mediocre, $SOL was quite the opposite. It outperformed the market throughout July, rising over +50% from the bottom, nearing $193 by the end of July.

SOLETH approached its all-time high and reached a resistance level that had been rejected 3 times before, in March, April, and May. $JUP is the beta token most directly related to $SOL, while other strong performers in the ecosystem include: $PYTH, $JTO, $RAY, $HNT.

Cat Coins Leaders: $POPCAT, $MOG, and $MEW

In July, cat coins became the standout performers in the market: $MOG and $POPCAT emerged as the new "PEPE and WIF," consistently performing best during the rise. They both reached new all-time highs and approached a market cap of $1 billion. $MEW also joined this group, becoming the third most significant cat coin, nearly tripling from bottom to top.

Unexpected Surprise, $XRP Leads July Gains

An unexpected coin performed excellently in July------$XRP significantly outperformed the market, ending July with a +31% gain. One factor driving this trend was rumors about a potential settlement between Ripple and the SEC. Other coins that performed strongly in July included: $TRX, $BCH, $XMR, $XLM, $ZEC.

DeFi 1.0 Giants $MKR and $AAVE Perform Well

In July, one coin was significantly impacted by a piece of news, which was $MKR. The news was that BlackRock planned to apply for a $1 billion tokenized treasury plan for MakerDAO, causing $MKR to rise +10% within hours, overall increasing +50% from bottom to top.

MKR belongs to the DeFi 1.0 category, and although its valuation is not high, it generates substantial revenue. Another similar coin is AAVE, which has performed strongly since May 2024, outperforming the market. They also announced new Aavenomics, which will introduce fee adjustments for $AAVE token holders.

Altcoin Sell-off and Rebound, $WLD's Short Squeeze

As I mentioned earlier, July 5 was a sell-off day for altcoins, accompanied by significant liquidations, which typically leads to a strong rebound afterward. Many high FDV low circulation venture coins experienced rebounds, with some dropping 80% to 90% from their all-time highs, rebounding between +40% to 2 times.

A strong squeeze occurred particularly with $WLD, as they announced an extension of the vesting period for certain tokens. $WLD experienced an +85% short squeeze within 2 days, then fell back again. Overall, altcoins underperformed BTC again in the latter half of July.

Altcoin sell-off, rebound, then again underperformance.

Ordinals Quietly Perform Well

After the sell-off in early July until the end of the month, ordinals became one of the best-performing coins, mainly including $SATS, $ORDI, and $RATS. However, the Runes token, which was originally thought to be the next evolution of ordinals, did not perform well.

Among New Coins, Only $ZRO Performed Well

In July, there were not many significant new coin launches. $AVAIL launched, which is a data availability solution, competing with Celestia.

Among the recently launched coins, the most notable was $ZRO, which rose from $2.5 to $5.5 within the month. $TAIKO also performed well in the market until the end of July.

$NEIRO, Will It Become the New DOGE?

"The mother of Kabosu," the owner of the original $DOGE dog in the meme, released photos of her new Shiba Inu Neiro. Naturally, people flocked to create the meme coin "DOGE #2," resulting in three $NEIRO meme coins: two on Solana and one on Ethereum.

In the initial days, the two tokens on Solana were clear leaders, alternating in the lead, but unexpectedly, the $NEIRO on ETH ultimately became the winner, nearing a market cap of $200 million by the end of the month.

List of Best-Performing Coins:

Best performers among large coins in July:

• XRP: +31%

• ZRO: +28%

• JTO: +23%

• JUP: +22%

• SOL: +17%

• TAO: +11%

• TAIKO: +11%

• ICP: +10%

• AAVE: +10%

• MKR: +10%

• PYTH: +9%

• KAS: +8%

Some smaller coins performed well in July:

• NEIRO: 50X (if purchased in the initial days)

• BNX: +70%

• ZEC: +61%

• DSYNC: +67%

• OM: +49%

• MEW: +47%

• HONEY: +46%

• ALPH: +46%

• ZEN: +44%

• HNT: +41%

• SATS: +39%

• KMNO: +30%

• GAL: +25%

Smaller coins:

• SCF: Potentially up to 100X if invested early

• ZKML: +282%

• MUMU: +277%

• Y2K: +256%

• AZUR: +97%

• RETARDIO: +72%

• STMX: +72%