Crypto prices remained lethargic as Asia markets opened Friday, with Bitcoin (BTC) trading at about $26,835, roughly flat over the previous four hours but down 1.2% from Wednesday, same time, according to market indexes. Bob Baxley, the CTO of DeFi infrastructure platform Maverick Protocol, wrote that crypto markets may now have to reckon with a U.S. Treasury having to replenish its general account, which has shrunk in recent months.
The risk here is that the roughly trillion dollars flowing back into the general account could suck a tremendous amount of liquidity out of the market, Baxley wrote. Something like this happened in 2019, and the strain placed on the market basically compelled the Federal Reserve to step in and add emergency liquidity to prevent a full-blown crisis.
Baxley added optimistically that crypto investors seem to be in a general accumulation phase.
The moving averages are pointing to neutral or perhaps a little more bullish, suggesting that we are in the process of building another foundation for another leg upwards, he wrote.
ERC-20 tokens are pushing toward a market cap of $500 million, and new data from Glassnode shows that they continue to be a lucrative source of fees for miners. According to on-chain data, inscriptions now account for 25% of all transaction fees and roughly 40% of all transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain.
Miners’ revenue comprises two elements: block rewards, currently 6.25 BTC ($167,709), and transaction fees that fluctuate based on network demand, with fees traditionally being lower than rewards since 2017. Data from CryptoQuant shows that the fees-to-reward ratio for bitcoin miners has swung in favor of miners thanks to inscriptions and ordinals.