Morning Minute: Bitcoin Headed for Rare Back-to-Back Quarterly Loss

Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt. And check out our new daily news show covering all of the top stories in 5 minutes, downloadable on Apple Pod or Spotify.

GM!

Today’s top news:

• Crypto majors chop over the weekend, lag stocks; BTC steady at $60k
• BTC ETFs see $1.79B in outflows on week, 3rd most ever
• Brian Armstrong responds to criticism of Coinbase app promoting gambling
• Unlicensed crypto firms in Europe face trouble ahead of July 1 MiCa deadline
• ANSEM cools off after weekend run to $120M, now back at $80M

📉 Bitcoin Headed for Rare Back-to-Back Quarterly Loss

Bitcoin is trading just below $60,000 and is on track for a rare back-to-back quarterly loss.

It’s down roughly 12% this quarter after a 22% drop in Q1, which breaks its historically strong second-quarter pattern, with the quarter and first half both closing Tuesday. The selloff bottomed at a $58,115 low on June 26, a 20-month low, and the bounce since has been shallow.

The causes have been pretty consistent:

• steady outflows from spot Bitcoin ETFs (another $1.79B this past week)
• a hawkish Fed under Kevin Warsh
• a dollar at 12-month highs
• capital rotating into semiconductor and memory-chip stocks riding the AI boom.

The damage runs deeper in altcoins. ETH is down about 25% on the quarter and 47% on the year, and over the past week Dogecoin, XRP, and HYPE all posted double-digit losses. Solana held up a bit better, but is still down 43% on the year.

The back-to-back losses feed the bigger debate over whether Bitcoin’s four-year cycle is breaking, since a red 2026 would push the usual three-up, one-down rhythm into a second straight down stretch. But the bulls have a chart of their own.

Every prior time Bitcoin closed two red six-month candles in a row, in 2018 and 2022, it was followed by a three-year uptrend. The second red six-month candle of this stretch closes in two days.

Pair that with a Fear and Greed reading of 18, deep in Extreme Fear, and the setup looks either like the start of a deeper breakdown or the kind of capitulation that has marked past bottoms. Let’s hope it’s the latter…

🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets

• Crypto majors are mostly flat over the weekend; BTC -1% at $59.8k; ETH -1% at $1,570; SOL +1% at $72; HYPE even at $63.13
• ENA (+4%), AVAX (+4%) and AAVE (+3%) led top movers
• Oil even at $69.80; Gold -1% at $4,050
• Stock futures are green after a new US-Iran truce; DOW +0.5%, Nasdaq +1.3%
• Brian Armstrong responded to criticism that the Coinbase app promotoes gambling on BTC price action and sports betting, stating that users are free to act how they want but that Coinase shouldn’t be aggressively promoting
• Coinbase and OKX are going after Binance’s Euro customers as their MiCa license is set to expire on July 1
• Strategy’s enterprise mNAV fell below 1 for the first time, meaning the market now values the company at less than its Bitcoin holdings, erasing the premium that for years gave Saylor the flexibility to raise capital and buy more BTC
• Securitize, the BlackRock-backed tokenization firm, is set to go public this week under the ticker SECZ through a SPAC merger on the NYSE
• Cardone Capital is using real estate income to buy Bitcoin during price drops, with Grant Cardone funneling rental cash flow into BTC on dips
• Binance founder CZ blamed crypto’s 2026 performance on a mix of AI, global tension, and the four-year cycle, saying there’s no single cause for the market’s roughly 50% decline over the past year

Corporate Treasuries & ETFs

• The Bitcoin ETFs saw $444M in net outflows on Friday, totaling $1.79B in outflows for the week; the ETH ETFs saw $274M in outflows last week
• The average BlackRock IBIT investor is down 40% at current prices
• Michael Saylor teased more Bitcoin buying even as Strategy’s stock kept falling

Meme Coin Tracker

• Meme leaders were red on the week; DOGE -13%, SHIB -10%, PEPE -18%, PENGU -8%, TRUMP -12%, BONK -9%
• ANSEM ran from ~$1M to $120M over the weekend in one of the biggest moves seen in months
• WYNN (+38x), Solangeles (+90%) and alon (+80%) led movers on Solana
• Base movers included Rave (+30%) and POD (+22%)

📈 Myriad Market of the Day

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

• Hyper Foundation announced $10M in grands to help builders impacted by the USDH sunset
• The same sequencer bug caused the Base outages that occurred on June 25 and 26

🚚 What is happening in NFTs?

• NFT leaders were mostly flat over the weekend; Punks +1% at 32.5 ETH, BAYC +1% at 8.85 ETH, Pudgy -1% at 4.5 ETH; Hypurr’s +10% at 228 HYPE
• Creepz (+77%) and Chimpers (+20%) led top movers
• Several Punks sold for multiples above the floor this weekend, including a 3D Hoodie for 278 ETH, a VR for 135 ETH, and a Pilot for 100 ETH