PROBABLY NOTHING
Separating the signal from the noise
IN THIS ISSUE (10) - 3 August 2026
👻 Ethereum is outperforming Bitcoin
📊 Fed maintains rates for now
🧈 Tokenised metals are now available on Luno
THE WEEK IN MARKETS
The Fed held rates at 3.5% to 3.75% this week, which was the boring part. The interesting part was the three regional presidents who dissented in favour of a hike, the most unified split of its kind since 2016 and a fairly loud hint that Kevin Warsh’s committee is done being patient with inflation. Markets got the memo and are now pricing a September hike. Equities did not enjoy it: the S&P 500 fell 2.4% and the Nasdaq shed nearly 5%, most of the damage from a semiconductor rout after signs of progress in China’s chipmaking briefly pushed the index toward correction.
Crypto spent the week waiting on the same decision and doing very little with it. Bitcoin hovered near $64,000, down under 1% over seven days, Ether eked out 1.5%, and Solana slipped. Oil was the rare bright spot, falling almost 7% as Iran tensions cooled, though the read on Wall Street was that cheaper energy still would not rescue rate-sensitive tech. Gold added 1.25%, quietly doing what gold does.
🔥 WHAT’S UP: Gold | +1.25% | 1 week
💧 WHAT’S DOWN: Nasdaq | -4.86% | 1 week
Data correct as at 30 July 2026.
THE BIG READ
Ethereum remembers how to win
For most of the past year, Ethereum’s job was to lose money slightly faster than Bitcoin. In July it swapped roles and made money roughly twice as fast. Since late June, Bitcoin gained about 10% while Ethereum climbed 24%, and the ETH/BTC ratio broke above its 200-day moving average for the first time since January. Cue the annual ritual of pronouncing altcoin season, again.
Source: TradingView data via daily close.
Same tide, faster boat
The mechanics are less mystical than the charts suggest. Ethereum runs a higher beta than Bitcoin, meaning it amplifies whichever way the market is already leaning. In the May and June selloff that beta buried it. In July’s risk-on bounce it worked in reverse. The move up is the same move down, played backwards.
Follow the flows
After Bitcoin’s brutal run of ETF outflows through June, the money returning to crypto leaned Ethereum’s way:
Ether ETFs outpaced Bitcoin funds by roughly three to one in the week to 24 July, about $104m against $34m.
Morgan Stanley picked the moment to launch spot Ethereum and Solana products that pass staking rewards straight to holders.
When the marginal institutional dollar starts preferring ETH, the ratio moves.
Source: SoSoValue data via Blockhead. Figures approximate.
Ethereum has a job again
For two years the knock on Ethereum was that nobody could say what it was for. Bitcoin had its one clean story, digital gold, and ETH had a committee of half-finished ones. That could be quietly changing. The tokenisation push, the stablecoin infrastructure most of it runs on, and the corporate treasuries now parking ETH on their balance sheets give the asset something it lacked through the drawdown: a reason to be held rather than traded. When the reason to own something shifts from “line go up” to “the plumbing runs on it,” the buyer base gets less twitchy. That is the real tell in July’s flows, more than the price itself.
Regime change or dead-cat sprint
The part nobody selling you altcoin season wants to dwell on:
Bitcoin dominance was still grinding back toward 60%.
Analysts remain split on whether a genuine rotation has even started.
A single month of outperformance after a savage drawdown is exactly what high beta looks like on the way up.
One month does not redraw a two-year chart. Ethereum has remembered how to win before, usually right up until it forgets again. What is different this time is that the reasons to hold it have outlived the last bounce, and the ratio has cleared a line it could not clear all year. Whether that is the opening act or the whole show is the one thing the data cannot tell you yet.
Both assets sit one tap apart on the Luno app.
Tokenised Metals: Now available on Luno
Tokenised metals on Luno track the price of physical commodities like silver, platinum, palladium, copper, and uranium. These are the raw materials powering modern electronics, energy, and manufacturing. They give you direct exposure to metal price movements through the Luno app, without a commodities broker, storage, or a separate foreign exchange step.
QUICK TAKES
📊 Warsh gets his fight, markets get nothing
The Fed held rates steady at 3.5%-3.75% for a fifth straight meeting, but the 9-3 vote was the closest in years, with three regional presidents pushing openly for a hike. New Chair Kevin Warsh called it “a good family fight” and stuck to his promise of offering less forward guidance, leaving markets to parse a terse statement instead of a roadmap. Stocks sold off into the decision anyway, with the Dow down over 800 points, as investors realized less guidance cuts both ways. Read more
⛵ Strategy is selling
Strategy offloaded 3,588 Bitcoin for roughly $216 million to cover dividends on its preferred stock, its largest disposal yet and about a hundred times May’s token sale. The market barely flinched, sending MSTR up around 8%, apparently reading a forced-looking sale as disciplined capital management. Read more
💻 SaaS might be making a comeback
Salesforce jumped 7%, ServiceNow 8%, and Workday 10% this week as enterprise software staged another leg of its comeback from an AI-agent panic that once wiped nearly 40% off the sector. The same AI story that gutted these names is now bailing them out, as investors bet incumbents can bolt on agentic features rather than get replaced by them. Read more
PROBABLY SOMETHING
Businesses stacked 115,000 BTC last quarter while individuals offloaded 78,000, so the dip everyone was panicking about was mostly retail handing its coins to institutions. Whether that reads as capitulation or accumulation depends entirely on which side of the trade you were sitting on. Read more
