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The Vermont Department of Financial Regulation (DFR), a United States state agency, warned citizens against rising crypto investment frauds perpetrated over popular social media sites.

On June 25, 74-year-old Naum Lantsman lost his life savings — $340,000 — to a crypto scam orchestrated over Instagram and Telegram. The DFR referenced the incident as it stressed “the need for Vermonters to exercise extreme caution and vigilance when using or investing in cryptocurrency.”

Instagram has been rated as the top platform connected to crypto fraud by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which also holds true for Lantsman. His initial contact with the crypto scammer happened over Instagram, wherein he came across a post from SpireBit claiming to be an "international financial broker" dealing in cryptocurrencies.

Without any form of investigation or research about the platform, Lantsman created an account on SpireBit. A Spirebit representative contacted Lantsman over Telegram and — over several days — coerced him into making investments.

What started off as a $500 investment ultimately resulted in a loss of more than $340,000. Once a user ‘invests’ on fake platforms like SpireBit, the dashboard shows profits on every trade, which encourages investors to shell out more of their savings.

The market capitalization of stablecoins has hit the lowest level since August 2021 coming on the back of 16 consecutive months of decline, a new report says.

Cryptocurrency analytics platform CCData released a report on July 20 saying the stablecoin market cap fell 0.82% from the start of the month until July 17, taking the sector's market cap to $127 billion.

Stablecoin market dominance took a slight fall and is currently at 10.3%, dropping from 10.5% in June.

Of the top ten stablecoins, Pax Dollar (USDP) was hit hardest, falling 43.1% to $563 million in July — its lowest figure since December 2020.

CCData believes the fall was largely attributed to MakerDAO — a decentralized autonomous organization behind the Maker protocol — which elected to remove $500 million of USDP from its reserves because it failed to accrue additional revenue.

The double-digit percentage gains for XRP (XRP) this month may have reached the exhaustion point, reflecting the trends elsewhere in the cryptocurrency market.

This follows the euphoria surrounding Ripple's partial win versus the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, resulting in bullish calls for as high as $15 in the coming months. 

Nonetheless, fractal analysis of XRP's recent candlestick and price momentum patterns hints that a sharp market correction is not off the table, particularly if history repeats.

Notably, certain XRP market signals preceded a 65% price decline in Q2, 2021. These are now flashing again, namely the multi-year descending trendline resistance and an "overbought" relative strength index (RSI), as illustrated below.

The descending trendline resistance (marked as "upper trendline resistance" in the chart above) has limited XRP's upside since January 2018. This price ceiling is helped by another horizontal trendline resistance (purple) near $0.93.

After failing to sustain above the resistance of its narrow range, Bitcoin (BTC) fell near a key support on July 18. The consolidation of the past few days seems to be an accumulation phase, according to Glassnode’s Bitcoin Accumulation Trend Score. A similar score was seen during the accumulation phases between November to December and again from March to April.

According to CoinShares data, institutional investors continue to plow funds into digital asset investment products, which rose to $742 million in the past four weeks. Bitcoin continues to attract the lion’s share of the funds, with last week alone accounting for $140 million in inflows.

Morgan Creek Capital chief investment officer and founder Mark Yusko said in an interview with Cointelegraph that Bitcoin’s fair value is $55,000 and the markets are likely to “drift upwards toward that level.” Once this level is crossed, Yusko expects speculators to step in, resulting in a blow-off top sometime in 2024.

What are the important support levels that need to hold in Bitcoin and altcoins to prevent a deeper decline? Let’s study the charts of the top-10 cryptocurrencies to find out.

Bitcoin price analysis

Bitcoin slid below the 20-day exponential moving average ($30,124) on July 17 and tested the crucial support of $29,500 on July 18. The long tail on the day’s candlestick shows that lower levels continue to attract buyers.

In the latest episode of The Market Report, Cointelegraph analyst and writer Marcel Pechman discusses Ripple’s partial victory against the Securities and Exchange Commission and its impact on the crypto market. Although people traded based on emotion after headlines popped out, the next day, as investors could process what happened, the altcoins gave away half of the gains.

On July 13, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled that Ripple’s XRP (XRP) token is not a security — but only for programmatic sales on digital asset exchanges. The question of sales to institutional investors remains an open case.

Moreover, according to a former chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Timothy Massad, the SEC could appeal the judge’s decision. Therefore, this initial win for Ripple could still be overturned.

According to Pechman, the XRP decision was a non-event in price terms. The spot Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund impact is likely the main trigger for the next 18 months, even though initially, altcoins tend to underperform relative to BTC.

Lastly, Pechman analyzes how macroeconomics and regulatory concerns might drive Bitcoin’s price to $29,000 — starting with the Bitcoin futures premium stagnating around a neutral 7% level for the past week. Next, the show covers the Tether (USDT) premium in China, which reached its lowest level in over six months, indicating excessive demand to exit crypto markets. 

Bitcoin (BTC) is still almost a year away from its next block reward halving, but Litecoin (LTC) miners are already bracing for impact.

In less than two weeks, Litecoin’s block subsidy will drop from 12.5 LTC to 6.25 LTC per block.

Whales stock up on LTC — but BTC value stays weak

Despite its fair share of controversy, Litecoin remains the 12th largest cryptocurrency by market cap at around $6.8 billion.

Its miners currently rake in 7,200 LTC in block rewards daily, equal to a U.S. dollar value of around $670,000.

As the halving nears, major investors appear to be seeking an easy trade, popular trader Mikybull Crypto and others noting “whales” buying up almost $60 million worth of LTC in the past two days.

A wallet address containing pre-mined Ethereum worth $116 million moved its entire stash of 61,216 Ether (ETH) to an address in the Kraken crypto exchange after lying dormant for eight years.

In June 2014, the Ethereum ecosystem conducted a sale event, allowing early team members and co-founders to participate and accumulate pre-mined Ether, at a time when the network was unable to generate tokens on its own.

During the pre-mine period, Ether traded at a price range of $300-$400, which would place the wallet’s worth at roughly $20 million at the time. However, eight years later, the tokens in question are worth more than $116 million at the time of writing.

Etherscan data confirms that the pre-mined 61,216 ETH were transferred on July 18, at 7:30 pm ET to a Kraken wallet address. Sending $116 million in Ether required a minuscule transaction fee of $1.5 and 25.475673161 Gwei in gas price, as shown in the below screenshot.

While the identity of the wallet owner remains unknown, the incident showcases the importance of hodling — an investment strategy that prioritizes the long-term accumulation of crypto tokens.

The second quarter of the year has been a solid one for Bitcoin's performance as its market dominance gained against altcoins which “bled” throughout the quarter according to CoinGecko.

On July 18, the crypto data aggregator released its industry report for Q2 2023 which noted Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) continued to build upon their Q1 gains over Q2.

Meanwhile, Binance Coin (BNB), XRP (XRP) and Cardano (ADA) suffered double-digit losses over that time.

CoinGecko said BNB and ADA saw the largest losses as both were labeled securities in lawsuits against Binance and Coinbase filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Decentralized finance (DeFi) tokens were hit particularly hard during the quarter with Uniswap (UNI), Chainlink (LINK) and Lido (LDO) taking double-digit losses.

Fidelity Digital Assets released a 'Q2 2023 Signals Report' on July 18, which claimed that Ether’s (ETH) outlook for the next 12 months and the long term is positive. Year-to-date, Ether price has gained 62% but while the investment firm might be 'short-term' bullish on Ether, that does not mean they believe that the month-long bullish channel will be sustained.

While institutional investors like Fidelity Digital Assets may have a bullish longer-term vision of ETH price, let’s compare their analysis against network and market data to see if they’re on the money.

Beyond the technical indicators, the rationale behind Fidelity’s report bullish outlook for Ether is the networks’ higher burn rate versus coin issuance, the “new address momentum” and a growth in the number of network validators.

According to the Fidelity report, the net issuance since The Merge in September 2022 resulted in a net supply decrease of more than 700,000 Ether. Additionally, the analysts claim that Glassnode’s increasing Ethereum addresses that transacted for the first time ever proves a healthy network adoption.

The report also points to a 15% increase in the number of active Ethereum validators in the second quarter.

The development firm behind the Chainlink protocol and its native LINK token has gone live with its cross-chain protocol, aimed at providing interoperability between traditional financial firms and both public and private blockchains.

In a July 17 post on the Chainlink blog, Chainlink  Labs' Chief Product Officer Kemal El Moujahid announced that its Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) has launched under early access on Ethereum, Avalanche, Polygon, Arbitrum, and Optimism.

Developers on these platforms will have access to CCIP on their respective testnets on July 20.

CCIP is an interoperability protocol that allows enterprises to transfer data and value between public or private blockchain environments directly from their backend systems.

Chainlink’s interoperability solution uses Swift’s messaging infrastructure, which is used by over 11,000 banks around the world to facilitate international payments and settlement.

Bitcoin continues to shoulder the market, as digital asset inflows saw positive movement for the fourth consecutive week, with $137 million incoming. 

According to CoinShares, this brings the four-week total to $742 million — correcting the nine weeks’ worth of outflows before the streak began and marking the largest inflow run since the fourth quarter of 2021.

The continuing positive momentum might be attributed to several factors, including a recent partial victory for the crypto community in the form of a legal decision in the Securities and Exchange Commission v. Ripple lawsuit.

Related: SEC could be waiting ‘years’ to file appeal in Ripple case — Brad Garlinghouse

The XRP (XRP) token soared on news of the ruling, and the market followed suit with a week of activity that received an overall rating of 56 on the “Fear and Greed Index” for cryptocurrency — an indication of “greed,” or increased positive sentiment. This week, however, the index saw a return to a “neutral” rating, as of July 17, despite four weeks of positive inflows into crypto investment products.

The next phase of the ‘SEC vs Ripple’ case is set to move forward as U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres of the Southern District of New York filed paperwork on July 17 referring the case to Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn.

First reported by journalist Eleanor Terrett, the court issued an “amended order of reference to a Magistrate” transferring judiciary oversight of the case to the Magistrate’s office:

The single-page document, which was viewed by Cointelegraph, indicates that the next step will be general pretrial. This stage usually entails discovery and a short window to raise objections.

General pretrial is the most likely portion of the proceedings for a settlement to occur. As Cointelegraph recently reported, experts believe that it’s unlikely the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will appeal the previous week's rulings by Judge Torres.

Related: Judge rules XRP is not a security in SEC's case against Ripple

Bitcoin remains stuck inside a narrow range, making it difficult to predict the direction of the next possible breakout. The U.S. Dollar Index (DXY), which generally moves in inverse correlation to Bitcoin (BTC), dropped below 100, but that has failed to propel Bitcoin higher. This suggests that Bitcoin is charting its own course in the near term.

Therefore, the earnings season from big companies this week may sway equities markets in the United States but may not have the same effect on Bitcoin. It is becoming increasingly difficult to pinpoint the event or the news flow that will cause Bitcoin’s price to escape the range.

The uncertainty about Bitcoin’s next directional move has not deterred the whales. CryptoQuant’s contributing analyst SignalQuant highlighted that one on-chain indicator, the unspent transaction outputs, has been rising in 2023, similar to the increase seen in 2019. If the indicator continues to rise, it will suggest that Bitcoin has room to run and the low made in late 2022 was a long-term bottom.

Could the DXY stage a recovery? Will that limit the upside in Bitcoin and the major altcoins? Let’s analyze the charts to find out.

S&P 500 Index price analysis

The S&P 500 Index (SPX) is in a strong uptrend. The price has reached resistance at 4,513, which may act as a minor hurdle. But if bulls do not give up much ground from the current levels, it will suggest that traders expect the rally to continue.

Bitcoin (BTC) refused to give up $30,000 at the July 17 Wall Street open as observers placed bets on a step lower next.

Bitcoin traders line up downside targets

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView followed what one analyst called “boring” BTC price action into the new trading week.

After an equally quiet weekend, BTC/USD showed no signs of volatility amid a lack of catalysts for change across risk assets.

“The market is in flux, and both camps are fighting for dominance,” on-chain monitoring resource Material Indicators wrote in part of its latest analysis, referring to a battle between Bitcoin bulls and bears.

“Everytime bears start to get some momentum, bulls replenish support at $30k. IMO, still too soon to declare a confirmed bull breakout, quite simply, because we haven't even had a legit test of resistance. Time for patience and discipline.”

Nearly two years after the dog-inspired decentralized finance (DeFi) project — AnubisDAO — was rug-pulled for almost $60 million in Ether (ETH), the stolen funds were siphoned away using Tornado Cash.

In October 2021, AnubisDAO raised 13,556 ETH from crypto investors owing to the predated Dogecoin (DOGE) trend. However, roughly 20 hours into the investment, the funds were sent to a different address — resulting in an instant loss for the investors.

Between July 15 and 16, the illicit funds were moved via Tornado Cash, a decentralized protocol that allows private transactions. The person in possession of the 13,556 ETH divided and moved the funds via 100 ETH per transaction, as shown in the screenshot below.

The information was brought forward by blockchain investigator PeckShield, back when 13,556 ETH was worth roughly $60 million. After almost two years, the stolen funds amounted to almost 26.2 million at the time of writing.

As the duped investors see their funds being siphoned away into the abyss, a few remain optimistic about a highly unlikely scenario of getting a refund once the bear market recovers. As a result, investors are advised to do thorough research about a project and its founders before making any investment.