Good Morning, Asia. Here's what's making news in the markets:

ETH is trading at $2770. ETH is up almost 11% this month, according to CoinDesk market data, outperforming BTC, which rose 5%.

Good Morning, Asia. Here's what's making news in the markets:

As Asia begins its Thursday business day, ETH is trading at $2,770.

ETH is up almost 11% this month, according to CoinDesk market data, outperforming BTC, which rose 5%.

Part of this could be because of institutional trading demand, and the fact that it's overtaken BTC in derivatives markets as sophisticated investors increasingly bet on ETH’s structural growth and role as a gateway between decentralized finance (DeFi) and traditional finance (TradFi), OKX Chief Commercial Officer Lennix Lai told CoinDesk in an interview.

"Ethereum is overshadowing BTC on our perpetual futures market, with ETH accounting for 45.2% of trading volume over the past week. BTC, by comparison, sits at 38.1%," Lai said.

This is a similar finding to what's occurring on Derebit, CoinDesk recently reported.

That's not to say that institutions have taken a disinterest in BTC. Far from it.

A recent report from Glassnode shows that despite BTC's recent volatility, institutions are happily buying up the dips.

Long-term holders (LTHs) realized over $930 million in profits per day during recent rallies, Glassnode wrote, rivaling distribution levels seen at previous cycle peaks. Yet, instead of triggering a cascade of selling, the LTH supply actually grew.

“This dynamic highlights that maturation and accumulation pressures are outweighing distribution behavior,” Glassnode analysts wrote, noting that this is “highly atypical for late-stage bull markets.”

Neither, however, are immune to geopolitical risk or black swan events like the Trump-Musk blowout.

These episodes serve as reminders that sentiment can shift quickly, even in structurally strong markets. But beneath the surface-level volatility, institutional conviction remains intact. ETH is emerging as the vehicle of choice for accessing regulated DeFi, while BTC continues to benefit from long-term accumulation by institutions via ETFs.

"Macro uncertainties remain, but $3,000 ETH looks increasingly likely,” Lai concluded.

Tron Continues to Win Stablecoin Inflow

The stablecoin market just hit an all-time high of $228 billion, up 17% year-to-date, according to a new CryptoQuant report.

That surge in dollar-pegged liquidity, driven by renewed investor confidence showcased by the blockbuster Circle IPO, rising DeFi yields, and improving U.S. regulatory clarity, is quietly redrawing the map of where capital lives on-chain.

"The amount of stablecoins on centralized exchanges has also reached record high levels, supporting crypto trading liquidity," CryptoQuant reported.

CryptoQuant noted that the total value of ERC20 stablecoins on centralized exchanges has climbed to a record $50 billion.

Most of this growth in exchange stablecoin reserves has been a result of the increase in USDC reserves on exchanges, per their data, which have grown by 1.6x so far in 2025 to $8 billion.

As far as protocols that have been a net beneficiary of all of this, Tron leads the pack. Tron's blend of fast finality and deep integrations with stablecoin issuers like Tether is credited with making it a liquidity magnet

Presto Research, which recently released a similarly themed report, wrote that it notched over $6 billion in net stablecoin inflows in May, topping all other chains and posting the second-highest number of daily active users behind Solana and was the top performer in native total value locked (TVL) growth.

By contrast, Ethereum and Solana bled capital, Presto's data said.

Both chains experienced significant stablecoin outflows and bridge volume losses, indicating a lack of new yield opportunities or major protocol upgrades. Presto’s data confirms a broader trend: institutional and retail capital alike are rotating toward Base, Solana, and Tron.

The commonality? These chains offer faster execution, more dynamic ecosystems, and in some cases, bigger incentive programs

Agent Economies Are Coming, but They Need Crypto Rails to Work

The next generation of AI won’t just talk to us, it’ll talk to itself. As autonomous agents grow more capable, they'll increasingly handle tasks end-to-end: booking flights, sourcing data, even commissioning other bots to complete subtasks. But there’s a problem: right now, these AI agents are trapped in silos and they need crypto to get them out.

In a recent a16z Crypto essay, Scott Duke Kominers, a Research Partner at a16z Crypto and a Faculty Affiliate at Harvard, argues that today’s agent-to-agent interactions are mostly hardcoded API calls or internal features within closed ecosystems.

There’s no shared infrastructure for agents to find each other, collaborate, or transact across systems. That’s where crypto comes in. Blockchains, with their open