Good morning, Asia. Here’s what makes news in the markets:
Welcome to Asia Morning Briefing, a daily overview of top stories during the US HOURS and an overview of market movements and analysis. For a detailed overview of US markets, see Coindesk’s Crypto Doybook Americas.
As Asia begins its Thursday everyday life, ETH is for $ 2,770.
ETH has risen nearly 11% this month, according to Coindesk market data that surpasses BTC, which rose 5%.
Part of this may be because of the institutional demand for trade, and the fact that it has been overtaken by BTC in derivatives as sophisticated investors, is increasingly focusing on ETH’s structural growth and role as a gateway between decentralized finance (DEFI) and traditional funding (Tradfi), Okx Chief Commercial Officer Lennix Lai told Coindk in an interview.
“Ethereum overshadows BTC in our eternal futures market with ETH, which accounts for 45.2% of trading volume over the past week. BTC is for comparison of 38.1%,” Lai said.
This is a similar finding of what occurs on derebit, Coindesk reported recently.
It is not to say that institutions have taken an unprillion in BTC. Far from that.
A recent report from Glassnode shows that despite BTC’s recent volatility, institutions fortunately buy dips.
Long -term holders (LTHS) realized over $ 930 million in profits per year. Day during the latest rallies, Glassnode wrote, which competed distribution levels seen in previous cycling tops. Instead of triggering a cascade of sales, the LTH supply actually grew.
“This dynamic emphasizes that maturation and accumulation pressure outweigh distribution behavior,” wrote Glassnode analysts, noting that this is “very atypical for late phase bull markets.”
However, neither is immune to geopolitical risk or black swan events such as Trump-Musk blowing.
These episodes serve as reminders that mood can change quickly, even in structurally strong markets. But under the volatility of the surface level, institutional conviction remains intact. ETH emerges as the selected vehicle for access to regulated defi, while BTC continues to take advantage of prolonged accumulation of institutions via ETFs.
“Macrouses are back, but $ 3,000 Eth looks more likely,” Lai concluded.
Tron continues to win stableecoin flow
The StableCOin market just hit a highlight at all times of $ 228 billion, an increase of 17% year to date, according to a new cryptoquant report.
This increase in Dollar-Pegged Liquidity, driven by Renewed Investor Trust, shown by Blockbuster-Cirkelbo, Rising Defi Yields, and improving US regulatory clarity, quietly draws the card of where capital lives on the chain.
“The amount of stablecoiner on centralized exchanges has also reached record high levels, supporting crypto -trade liquidity,” reported cryptoquant.
Cryptoquant noted that the total value of the ERC20 stableecoins on centralized exchanges has risen to a record $ 50 billion.
Most of this growth in Exchange StableCOin reserves has been the result of the increase in USDC reserves on exchanges according to their data, which has grown by 1.6x so far in 2025 to $ 8 billion.
As far as protocols have been a net receiver of all this, the Tron will lead the package. Tron’s blend of rapid finality and deep integrations with stablecoin issuers like Tether is credited to make it a liquidity magnet
Presto Research, which recently released a similar theme report, wrote that it noted over $ 6 billion in the Net StableCOin Funny in May, topped all other chains and placed the second highest number of daily active users behind Solana and was the top executive in native total value locked (tvl) growth.
In contrast, Ethereum and Solana Capital, Presto’s data said.
Both chains experienced significant stableecoin flow and bridge -volumerab, indicating a lack of new yield options or larger protocol upgrades. Presto’s data confirms a broader trend: both institutional and retail capital rotate against base, Solana and Tron.
Commonality? These chains offer faster execution, more dynamic ecosystems and in some cases larger incentive programs
Agent economies are coming but they need crypto rails to work
The next generation of AI will not just talk to us, it will talk to itself. As autonomous agents become more skilled, they are increasingly handling tasks end to end: Booking flights, purchasing data, even commissioning of other bots to complete sub -tasks. But there is 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-affected company in Harvard claims that today’s agent-to-agent interactions are mostly hardcoded API calls or internal features in closed ecosystems.
There is no shared infrastructure for agents to find each other, collaborate or act across systems. This is where Krypto comes in. Blockchains, with their open, composable architectures, offers a “forward compatible” way of building interoperable agent economies, a neutral substrate that can develop along with AI itself.
Early projects such as Halliday are building protocol-level standards for workflows across agent, while companies like Catena and Skyfire use Krypto to allow autonomous agents to pay each other without a human being needed.
Coinbase has even stepped in to support infrastructure efforts here. If these rails grab, blockchains won’t just be financial infrastructure; They will be back-end of an open AI economy where agents act, coordinate and enforce the user’s intention transparent.
The message is clear: If AI agents are the future of productivity, Crypto is the infrastructure that makes them play neat.
Web3 Games need better games to grow
Gaming maintains its lead as the dominant category of the distributed app (DAPP) ecosystem, even when its market share continues to slip, according to a new report from Dappradar.
The latest data from the dppradar shows that Gaming’s dominance fell in the second month in a row, from 21% in April to 19.4% in May.
The daily user activity remains relatively stable and hovers about 4.9 million unique active wallets, yet the sharp decrease in investments is painted a more troubled image: Venture financing for game projects fell to just $ 9 million in May, down sharply from over $ 220 million monthly at the end of 2024.
“2025 so far has been a reality check for the gaming market. Various projects that raised millions in previous years have now closed the store. Among them wrote the hero, as Fantasy Mmorpg Ember Sword and the social deduction game, Mystery Society,” Dppradar Analysis, in their report.
Dippradar analysts point to a basic error that drives this emigration: lack of engaging gameplay.
Projects often prioritized tokenomics, speculative NFT launches and marketing flashes, often sidelines of critical gameplay tests and development.
Without fun and playful mechanics in their core, even heavily funded web3 games have struggled to maintain player interest, which suggests that the industry’s biggest challenge can simply learn how to build good games.
And this tale is nothing new: Studies have said this since 2022.
Market Movement:
- BTC: Bitcoin slipped 2% after not holding the $ 110,000 level, with price test key support for $ 108.5K in the midst of rising geopolitical tensions and mixed atmosphere, although strong institutional influxes via Spot -TFs suggest underlying demand remain intact.
- ETH: ETH jumped 5% to break past $ 2,800, da $ 815 million
- Gold: Gold rose 0.97% to $ 3,363 after US inflation data showed cooling prices, increasing the expectations that Fed could resume rates in September.
- Nikkei 225: Tokyo Stocks opened mixed on Thursday when a stronger yen weighs exporters, while optimism over a potential trade agreement in USA-Japan supported purchases, with Nikkei down 0.22% in early trade.
- S&P 500: Tokyo Stocks opened mixed on Thursday when a stronger yen weighs exporters, while optimism over a potential trade agreement in USA-Japan supported purchases, with Nikkei down 0.22% in early trade.
