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What to know:

By Omkar Godbole (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)

Since Friday, cryptocurrencies, especially bitcoin (BTC), have demonstrated resilience in the face of the Iran-Israel hostilities. But they also haven't rallied on what might be considered positive news.

The two largest tokens, bitcoin and ether (ETH), have traded in a narrow range in the past 24 hours. Even the best-performing of the top 100 tokens, bitcoin cash (BCH), added just 4%.

Behind the scenes, though, institutions are continuing to embrace crypto. On Monday, investment banking giant JPMorgan filed an application for a crypto-focused platform, JPMD, to offer trading, exchange, transfer and payment services and issuance of digital assets.

Strategy, for its part, said it bought over 10,100 BTC worth $1.05 billion last week, one of the biggest acquisitions of the year. And both bitcoin and ether spot ETFs registered inflows.

On regulatory front, the GENIUS stablecoin bill and the bipartisan CLARITY Act are progressing through Congress.

Perhaps markets are worried the U.S. will enter what might become a prolonged conflict in the Middle East. Hours after Axios reported the Trump team was mulling a diplomatic solution to the clash over Iran's nuclear program, President Trump said on Truth Social that he has not reached out to Iran for "Peace Talks" in any way, shape or form.

Wednesday's Federal Reserve rate decision presents another reason for bulls to tread cautiously. While the central bank is expected to hold rates steady, its commentary on the interest-rate trajectory could move markets.

According to XBTO, capital flows have become selective and risk averse.

"The Market Factor, a proxy for the broader universe of liquid crypto assets, fell by 4.06%," XBTO told CoinDesk in an email. "This confirms that while the majors held steady, the wider basket of altcoins experienced a much more significant sell-off. The move's low Z-score of +0.11 suggests a controlled de-risking rather than a statistically significant panic event, indicating that capital is consolidating, not fleeing the asset class entirely,"

Valentin Fournier, lead research analyst at BRN, said the market is witnessing a structural shift in leadership, with corporations and institutions dominating demand.

"With demand remaining strong and sell pressure weak, we maintain a high-conviction view that prices will grind higher in 2025," BRN said. "While momentum is paused, the asymmetry in risk/reward favors staying invested, especially if retail re-engages. We hold our exposure steady and expect BTC to lead until retail returns or ETH regains institutional inflows," BRN said.

In other news, traders should note that speculation Ripple will burn 10% of its XRP supply is misleading. The confusion likely results from RealFi burning its own token on the XRP Ledger, not XRP.

European digital asset manager CoinShares applied for a Solana spot ETF with the U.S. SEC, days after seven issuers, including 21Shares and Bitwise, updated applications. OKX exchange has officially launched fully compliant centralized cryptocurrency exchanges in Germany and Poland. Stay alert!

Grayscale’s New Income-Focused ETFs

Grayscale, the world’s largest crypto-native asset manager, now offers two new income-focused ETFs:

• Grayscale Bitcoin Covered Call ETF (BTCC) seeks to maximize potential income generation, and is designed to serve as a complement to existing Bitcoin ownership.
• Grayscale Bitcoin Premium Income ETF (BPI) seeks to balance upside participation with income generation, and is designed to serve as an alternative to direct Bitcoin ownership.

Through two different approaches to systematic covered call writing on Bitcoin, these two products deliver an alternative income stream for investors that’s less correlated to traditional income-oriented investments.

BTCC and BPI both offer monthly distributions for investors.* See the latest distribution amount on their respective product pages at etfs.grayscale.com

Important Disclosures

*The Funds intend to pay out dividends from net investment income, if any, and distribute any net unrealized capital gains to their shareholders at least annually.

Investors should consider the investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses carefully before investing. For a prospectus or summary prospectus with this and other information about the Funds, please call (866)-775-0313 or visit our websites at etfs.grayscale.com/btcc and etfs.grayscale.com/bpi. Read the prospectuses or summary prospectuses carefully before investing.

Investing involves risk and possible loss of principal. There is no guarantee the investment strategy will be successful. The Fund is considered to be non-diversified. The Fund is actively managed and its performance reflects the investment decisions that the Adviser makes for the Fund.

Grayscale Bitcoin Covered Call ETF (“BTCC”) and Grayscale premium Income ETF ("BPI") (collectively, the "Funds") will not invest in digital assets directly. The Funds also will not invest in initial coin offerings. The Funds will, however, have indirect exposure to digital assets by virtue of its investments in derivatives on exchange-traded vehicles that hold digital assets as investments. Because the Funds will not invest directly in any digital assets, they may not track price movements of any digital assets.

BTCC and BPI are distributed by Foreside Fund Services, LLC and Grayscale Advisors, LLC is the adviser. Foreside is not related to GSA or its affiliates.

Crypto:

• June 18: At about 9:28 p.m. IoTeX L1 v2.2.0 hard fork will activate at block 36,893,881. The fork will halve block time to 2.5s and launch System Staking v3.
• June 18: Shares of Purpose Investments' "Purpose XRP ETF" are expected to start trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange. The ETF will offer Canadian dollar–hedged, Canadian dollar unhedged and U.S. dollar units under the tickers XRPP, XRPP.B and XRPP.U, respectively.
• June 20: Proof-of-stake blockchain BlackCoin (BLK) activates SegWit on mainnet, improving security and performance. Mandatory upgrade to node and wallet v26.2.0 required.

Macro

• Day 3 of 3: G7 2025 Summit (Kananaskis, Alberta, Canada)
• June 17, 8:30 a.m.: The U.S. Census Bureau releases May retail sales data.
  • Retail Sales MoM Est. -0.7% vs. Prev. 0.1%
  • Retail Sales YoY Prev. 5.2%
• June 17, 10 a.m.: National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) releases U.S. housing market data for June.
  • NAHB Housing Market Index Est. 36 vs. Prev. 34
• June 17: The U.S. Senate will vote on the final passage of the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins bill (GENIUS Act).
• June 18, 2 a.m.: U.K.'s Office for National Statistics releases May consumer price inflation data.
  • Core Inflation Rate MoM Est. 0.2% vs. Prev. 1.4%
  • Core Inflation Rate YoY Est. 3.6% vs. Prev. 3.8%
  • Inflation Rate MoM Est. Est. 0.2% vs. Prev. 1.2%
  • Inflation Rate YoY Est. 3.4% vs. Prev. 3.5%
• June 18, 5 a.m.: EUROSTAT releases (final) May eurozone consumer price inflation data.
  • Core Inflation Rate YoY Est. 2.3% vs. Prev. 2.7%
  • Inflation Rate MoM Est. 0% vs. Prev. 0.6%
  • Inflation Rate YoY Est. 1.9% vs. Prev. 2.2%
• June 18, 8:30 a.m.: U.S. Department of Labor releases unemployment insurance data for the week ended June 14.
  • Initial Jobless Claims Est. 245K vs. Prev. 248K
• June 18, 2 p.m.: Federal Reserve announces its interest-rate decision. Rates expected to be held at 4.25%-4.50%. Chair Jerome Powell’s press conference follows at 2:30 p.m.
• June 18, 5:30 p.m.: Brazil’s central bank, Banco Central do Brasil, announces its interest-rate decision.
  • Selic Rate Est. 14.75% vs. Prev. 14.75%

Earnings (Estimates based on FactSet data)

• June 23 (TBC): HIVE Digital Technologies (HIVE), post-market, $-0.12

Governance Votes & Calls

Unlocks

Token Launches