Crypto Long & Short: Infrastructure is the prevailing currency in digital assets

Unlike traditional financial markets, the digital assets ecosystem was built from the ground up to operate continuously. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, markets remain open, liquidity flows across borders, and blockchain networks settle transactions in real time. This always-on environment is not simply a technological achievement—it is the foundation of a new financial architecture that demands resilience, reliability, and trust.

Technology may be the enabler, but technology alone does not sustain a market. Over the past decade, a new generation of companies has emerged to support digital assets at scale. Exchanges, custodians, payment providers, liquidity venues, compliance specialists, market makers, and settlement networks have adapted to the unique demands of a market that never sleeps. Through continuous innovation and operational excellence, these organizations have become fundamental components of the ecosystem.

As a result, infrastructure today represents far more than software and connectivity. It encompasses processes, people, governance, agents, and trusted relationships. It is the invisible framework that allows participants to transact with confidence regardless of the underlying asset being used. The value of the ecosystem increasingly lies not in any single token, but in the ability to move value efficiently, securely, and seamlessly across networks and jurisdictions.

This trend is becoming even more relevant as real-world assets enter the digital landscape. Stablecoins have already demonstrated the power of blockchain-based representations of traditional value, becoming the most successful digital asset use case to date. Tokenized deposits, bonds, funds, and other real-world assets are poised to follow, expanding the range of opportunities available to businesses and individuals worldwide.

For the end user, however, the underlying asset may become increasingly irrelevant. Most people are unlikely to care about the blockchain protocol, token standard, or settlement mechanism powering a transaction. What matters is accessibility, speed, security, and trust. Users want to access global opportunities using their local resources, through partners they know and platforms they can rely on.

In this environment, the long-term competitive advantage belongs to those who build and operate the infrastructure connecting participants, assets, and markets. Coins may evolve, protocols may change, and new forms of digital value will continue to emerge. But the institutions that enable trust, connectivity, and seamless access will remain at the center of the ecosystem.

The prevailing currency in digital assets may change over time. Infrastructure, however, is what endures.

Principled Perspectives

– By Alen Pavlović, Portfolio Manager, Liquibit Capital

Using CoinDesk’s liquidation feed, the forced selling flushed early and high. By the time Bitcoin bottomed on 5 June, the cascade was already over.

Bitcoin fell from around $74,000 to $59,081 in the first week of June. The number that traveled was the size of the wreckage. The more revealing number was the timing.

Using CoinDesk’s liquidation feed, we mapped every hour of forced selling onto the price path. The heaviest hour of long liquidations, about $28 million, hit on 2 June, with Bitcoin still trading near $68,000. That was three days, and almost $9,000, above the eventual low of $59,081, which did not arrive until 5 June. The leverage was being cleared while the market was still high.

Bitcoin’s hourly liquidation intensity painted onto the price path. The hottest hours sit early and high, days above the 5 June low. Source: CoinDesk.

The selling was also violently concentrated. Of the 168 hours in the week, 17 of them carried 64% of all liquidations. This was not an orderly unwind. It was a handful of brutal hours, clustered on 2 June and 4 June, with long stretches of quiet in between.

When the week’s liquidations actually happened, by day and hour (UTC). Most of the grid is quiet; the burst hours glow. Source: CoinDesk.

That timing inverts the usual picture. Liquidations are imagined stacking up at the capitulation low, driving the final flush. Here the reverse happened. The forced selling burned out early, near $68,000, and the last leg down to $59,081 was carried by ordinary spot supply, not blown-out leverage. The bottom was not a liquidation climax. It was what came after one.

One word on the data, because most liquidation figures understate reality. Exchanges typically cap their public feeds at one message per second, which hides volume during exactly these bursts. We confirmed that CoinDesk serves Bybit’s uncapped stream, so the $440 million cleared on Bybit here is a complete figure rather than a sample, 82% of it longs. Across Bybit, Binance and OKX the week cleared at least $1.55 billion, with the capped venues setting only a floor.

A cascade’s fingerprint is not its size. It is its timing, and this one peaked long before the bottom.

– By Helene Braun

Several of crypto’s biggest narratives converged this past week as Mexican billionaire Ricardo Salinas Pliego reaffirmed his bitcoin-first investment strategy, Strategy’s (MSTR) STRC preferred stock sparked debate after losing its par value, and Ethereum’s (ETH) largest sandwich bot operator was drained of $7.5 million in an exploit tied to fraudulent trading approvals.

• Mexican billionaire with 70% of his investment portfolio in bitcoin says it’s better than real estate: Ricardo Salinas Pliego, whose net worth is estimated at roughly $5 billion, is a bitcoin maximalist who told his wife to mortgage her house to buy bitcoin.
• How STRC lost its par: the timeline behind Strategy’s preferred-stock meltdown: From a bond buyback and dwindling cash reserves to a bitcoin bear market, the sequence of events that turned STRC’s par-value challenge into a marketwide debate.
• Ethereum’s biggest ‘sandwich’ bot drained of $7.5 million in ironic exploit: Blockaid said an attacker tricked Jaredfromsubway.eth into approving fake trading routes, then used those approvals to drain WETH, USDC and USDT.

Chart of the Week

Backpack’s tokenized equity spot DEX volume ramped sharply through mid-June, peaking near ~$150 million on 16 June before cooling into the back half of the week. Rather than lagging the activity, BP tracked it – and arguably led – climbing from ~$0.27 to ~$0.67 over the window (roughly 2.5x), and grinding higher even as daily volumes faded toward June 20–21.

• Listen: “We’re still in ‘early innings’ of bitcoin-related ETPs.” David LaValle spoke with Dominic Chu on CNBC’s ETF Edge to discuss the current crypto environment and the factors driving investor interest.
• Read: In “Crypto for Advisors”, Markus Thielen from 10x Research explains why a cycle-smart strategy outperforms traditional Dollar-Cost Averaging for bitcoin. Then, Eric Tomaszewski from Verde Capital Management, shares why advisors should look past surface-level numbers to find where real value is actually growing.
• Watch: “The Convergence Is Coming: David LaValle on Crypto’s Next Chapter for Advisors.” Dave LaValle, President of CoinDesk Data & Indices, sat down with The Wealth Advisor to walk through the digital asset landscape and what advisors need to know.
• Engage: Are you attending TokenizeThis in NYC this week? Connect with us onsite!

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Note: The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of CoinDesk, Inc., CoinDesk Indices or its owners and affiliates.