Institution purchase makes $ 3k eth likely, while AI agents are looking for crypto metals

Good morning, Asia. Here’s what makes news in the markets:

Welcome to the Asia Morning Briefing, a sunny summary of the leading stories of US time and a general measures of movements and market reviews. For a detailed overall -analysis of US markets, see The Americans.

As Asia begins this business day on Thursday, ETH trades at $ 2,770.

The ETH reached about 11% this month, according to CoinDesk market data, BTC outperforming, which increased by 5%.

Part of it may be due to institutional trading demand, and the fact that it has reached the BTC in derivatives markets as a sophisticated investor who has risen to the ETH and paper structure as a gateway between Decentralized Finance (Defi) and traditional finances (Tradfi), the Commercial’s chief commerce Lennix Lii to CoinDesk said to a coin interview.

“The Ethereum is overshadowing BTC in our Perpetual Futures Market, with ETH accounting for 45.2% of the trading volume over the past week. The BTC, by comparison, is sitting at 38.1%,” Lai said.

This is a Similar search to what is going on in the debitCoinDesk recently reported.

That is not to say that institutions take a disinterest on the BTC. Far from it.

A Recent report from glassnode Shown that in the other Recent volatility of BTCInstitutions happily buy dips.

Long-term holders (LTHS) realize more than $ 930 million in revenue per day at recent rallies, Glassnode wrote, competing in the distribution levels seen in the past peaks of the cycle. However, instead of spying a cascade of sale, the LTH supply has really grown.

“Dynamic highlights whose maturation and accumulation of pressure are beyond the distribution behavior,” written by Glassnode analysts, noted that it is “highly atypical for the late bull markets.”

However, neither, immune to geopolitical risk or Black Swan events such as Musk-mukk blowout.

These episodes serve as reminders that emotions can move quickly, even in strong market structures. But under volatility at the surface level, institutional belief remains intact. The ETH is emerging as the vehicle selected for access to the regulated defi, while the BTC continues to benefit from the long-term accumulation of institutions through ETFs.

“Macro uncertainty remains, but $ 3,000 ETH looks more likely,” Lai concluded.

Tron continues to win Stablecoin Inflow

The Stablecoin market only hit a full time of $ 228 billion, up to 17%-year-to-date, according to a new cryptoquant report.

The advancement of the liquidity dollars, driven by the revised confidence to the investor Blockbuster Circle displayedrising defi Ani, and improving the clarity of US regulation, is silent redrawing of the map where the on-chain capital lives.

“The value of stablecoins in centralized exchanges also reached a high -level record, supporting crypto trading liquidity,” Cryptoquant reported.

The cryptoquant noted that the total amount of ERC20 stablecoins in centralized exchanges has risen to a record of $ 50 billion.

Much of this growth in the Stablecoin Reserve Exchange has been the result of increasing USDC reserves in exchanges, each data, which has grown 1.6x to 2025 to $ 8 billion.

As far as the protocols became a net beneficiary of all this, Tron led the pack. Tron’s blend of quick end and deep integration with stablecoin gives such as Tether is already credited to making a liquidity magnet

Presto Research, which recently released a similar themed report, wrote that it noticed more than $ 6 billion in Net Stablecoin Inflows in May, leading all other chains and posting a second highest number of daily active users behind Solana and became the leading performer in the folk total locked amount (TVL).

Conversely, Ethereum and Solana smell capital, Said the data of Petto.

Both chains experience significant stablecoin flows and bridge volume losses, indicating a lack of new yield opportunities or major protocol upgrades. The presto data confirmed a broader trend: institutional and retail capital and retail capital towards the base, solana, and tron.

The similarity? These chains offer faster implementation, more dynamic ecosystems, and in some cases, larger incentive programs

Agent’s economies will come, but they need crypto metals to work

The next AI generation will not only talk to us, it will talk to itself. As autonomous agents grow more capable, they will further handle end-to-end tasks: booking flights, sourcing data, even commissioning other bots to complete subtasks. But there is a problem: for now, these AI agents are trapped in the silos and they need crypto to release them.

In a recent essay A16z cryptoScott Duke Comminers, an A16Z crypto research partner and a faculty affiliate with Harvard, argued that agents-agent contacts are now often hardcoded API calls or internal features within closed ecosystems.

There is no shared infrastructure for agents to find each other, cooperate, or transact throughout the systems. That’s where crypto enters. Blockchains, along with their open, composable architecture, offer a “forward matching” way to produce interoperable agent economies, a neutral substrate that can change next to AI.

Early projects like Halliday build protocol level standards for cross-agent workflows, while companies like Catena and Skyfire use crypto to enable autonomous agents to pay each other without the required person.

Coinbase even came in to support infrastructure efforts here. If these railroads are handling, blockchains will not only be financial infrastructure; They will be the back-end of an open AI economy, where agents will transact, coordinate, and implement the user clearly.

The message is clear: if AI agents are the future of productivity, crypto is the infrastructure that makes them happy.

Web3 gaming requires better games to grow

Playing maintains its lead as the dominant category in the ecosystem of the distributed app (DAPP), even though its market sharing continues to slip, According to a new report from Dapradar.

The latest data from Dappradar shows the dominance of gaming fell for the second consecutive months, from 21% from April to 19.4% in May.

The user’s sunny activity remains relatively stable, walking around 4.9 million unique active purses, but sharp decline in investment paints is a more disturbing picture: Venture funding for gaming projects has dropped to just $ 9 million in May, down deep from more than $ 220 million months to the end of 2024.

“2025 So far, it has become a check of reality for the gaming market. Various projects that have raised millions in recent years, now closing the shop. Among them, heroic shooter Nyan Heroes, the fantasy MMORPG Ember sword, and a game of social reduction in the mystery society,” the analyst analysts of the DampPradar, “written by the analyzes of the DampPradar.

Dappradar’s analysts point to a major flaw that drives this release: a lack of engaging gameplay.

Projects are often -prioritized tokenomics, speculative NFT launch, and marketing blitze, often running critical trials and gameplay development.

Without fun mechanics and can be remedied in their core, even web -funded games struggle to maintain the player’s interest, suggesting that the biggest challenge in the industry can only learn how to build good games.

And this narrative is nothing new: Surveys say this since 2022.

Market Movements:

• BTC: Bitcoin slipped 2% after failing to hold the $ 110k level, with a price trial support at $ 108.5K amid the rise of geopolitical tensions and mixed sentiment, even with strong institutional flowing through ETF spots suggesting the underlying demand remains intact.
• Eth: ETH jumped 5% to break the past $ 2,800 as $ 815m in institutional flows poured into eth ETFs, driven by technical technical, recorded staking levels, and fresh SEC guides clarifying staking and wallet software that falls out of security laws
• Gold: The gold rose 0.97% to $ 3,363 after US inflation data showed cooling prices, strengthening expectations that the Fed could continue rate cuts in September.
• NIKKEI 225: Tokyo stocks opened the mixed Thursday, as a stronger Yen weighing on exporters while optimizing a potential US-Japan trade deal supported the purchase, including Nikkei of 0.22% in early trading.
• S&P 500: Tokyo stocks opened the mixed Thursday, as a stronger yen weighing on exporters while optimizing a potential US-Japan trade deal supported the purchase, with Nikkei dropped 0.22% in early trading.