The Daily: Ethereum's critical inflection point, Strategy's $110 million bitcoin buy, and more

The following article is adapted from The Block’s newsletter,  The Daily , which comes out on weekday afternoons.

I hope you had a good weekend, folks. Bitcoin is back above the $105,000 level, but analysts warn the market remains on a "fragile" footing — with volatility likely to return mid-week as both U.S. CPI and PPI figures hit the calendar.

In today's newsletter, Bernstein says Ethereum is hitting a critical inflection point, Strategy buys another $110 million in bitcoin, Turnkey raises a $30 million Series B led by Bain Capital Crypto, and more.

Meanwhile, BlackRock's spot Bitcoin ETF becomes the fastest to hit $70 billion in AUM , crushing gold-based ETF GLD's previous record.

Let's get started.

Ethereum is hitting a critical inflection point

Analysts at research and brokerage firm Bernstein said Ethereum is reaching a critical inflection point as crypto pivots from speculation to blockchain-driven real-world financial innovation.

• While this crypto market cycle has been dominated by the narrative of institutionalization of Bitcoin, Bernstein said stablecoins and tokenization are driving forward other public blockchains such as Ethereum.
• "Bitcoin is great, we love it and still believe $200,000 is our high-conviction but conservative price forecast this cycle," the analysts led by Gautam Chhugani wrote in a Monday note to clients.
• "However, we believe, the mainstream interest is broadening beyond the 'store of value' Bitcoin use case toward the early stages of the financial innovation unleashed by the blockchain," they said.
• Ethereum's uniqueness is derived from its position as a decentralized computer, Chhugani explained, with stablecoin and tokenization use cases being native to the Ethereum blockchain, which enjoys a leading market share in these sectors.
• Major payment incumbents, such as Visa, Mastercard, and Stripe, are already developing their stablecoin strategies, while Robinhood and Kraken are pushing for real-world asset tokenization, Bernstein noted.
• The analysts argue that if companies and institutional investors are innovating on the blockchain, it makes those networks and their native assets, like ETH, valuable.
• "Not all crypto tokens are valuable, but foundational blockchain native assets such as Ethereum are now crossing the chasm from useless retail speculation to useful financial innovation."
• Meanwhile, Ethereum-based products led global crypto fund flows for the second consecutive week , although the pace continues to slow as investors await clarity from the Fed, according to CoinShares.

Strategy buys 1,045 BTC for $110 million

Strategy bought another 1,045 BTC for $110.2 million between June 2 and June 8, according to an 8-K filing with the SEC on Monday.

• The company funded the latest purchases solely using proceeds from sales of its STRK and STRF perpetual preferred stocks rather than its Class A common stock, MSTR.
• Strategy now holds a total of 582,000 BTC — worth over $62 billion — bought at an average price of $70,086 per bitcoin for a total cost of around $41 billion.
• That's the equivalent of roughly 2.8% of bitcoin's total 21 million supply and implies approximately $21 billion in paper gains.
  Meanwhile, The Blockchain Group unveiled a new $342 million share issuance plan to acquire more bitcoin .

Former Coinbase employees raise $30 million Series B for Turnkey

Turnkey, a crypto key management and wallet infrastructure startup co-founded by ex-Coinbase employees, has raised $30 million in a Series B funding round led by Bain Capital Crypto .

• Sequoia Capital, Lightspeed Faction, Galaxy Ventures, Wintermute Ventures, and Variant also participated in the round, bringing Turnkey's total funding to over $50 million.
• The startup claims to power more than 50 million embedded wallets and serves clients like Magic Eden, Alchemy, and Bridge across DeFi, payments, and AI tools and applications.
• Turnkey plans to use the fresh funding to scale its team and expand its modular infrastructure, with a focus on open-source contributions.

OpenSea rides OS2 wave to highest monthly users since 2023

NFT marketplace OpenSea hit its highest monthly user count since mid-2023 in May, fueled by the full launch of its upgraded OS2 platform.

• Despite the user surge, monthly trading volume remains far below its all-time highs, with May generating just $81 million compared to $5 billion in January 2022.
• OS2 now supports trading across 19 chains and features a new rewards system called Voyages that incentivizes onchain activity with XP.
• The hype surrounding those experience points and a potential airdrop for OpenSea's upcoming SEA token is also driving engagement, though a token launch date has yet to be announced.

Bitcoin network transaction activity reaches lowest level since 2023

Bitcoin network activity has reached its lowest level since October 2023 , with seven-day average transactions dropping to around 317,000, despite BTC's price hovering near all-time highs.

• Some miners have begun accepting ultra-low fee transactions as demand for block space softens, with one 0.1 sat/vB transaction at a $0.01 fee recently processed after sitting in the mempool for a month — significantly below the typical relay floor of 1 sat/vB.
• Meanwhile, a group of 31 Bitcoin Core developers pushed back against filtering out low-fee or non-standard transactions, sparking debate over censorship resistance and decentralization within the Bitcoin community.

In the next 24 hours

• It's quiet on the economic calendar front.
• ECB President Christine Lagarde will speak at 11:15 p.m. on Tuesday.
• EigenLayer is set for a token unlock .

Never miss a beat with The Block's  daily digest  of the most influential events happening across the digital asset ecosystem.