Bitcoin Magazine

VanEck: Bitcoin’s Summer Lull Masks a Tightening Supply Base

Bitcoin spent the past month in a holding pattern around $63,700, and VanEck’s latest Bitcoin ChainCheck reads the setup as a cautious pause rather than a bottom, with derivatives flashing fear, miner economics near multi-year lows, and long-term holders tightening their grip.

The mid-July report frames the moment as consolidation, not recovery. Bitcoin closed July 12 at $63,742, flat against a month earlier yet 33% off its six-month high and 14% below its 200-day moving average near a bitcoin price of $74,000. 

The pause caps two monthly declines, a 3.6% dip in May and a 20.5% drop in June. 

Trading thinned into the summer. Spot volume averaged about $5.1 billion a day over the 30-day window, down near 29% from the post-2019 norm, a softness the firm notes has marked June through August in each of the past six years. 

Realized volatility fell to 30.4% on an annualized basis, under the trailing-year 43% level and well beneath the long-run average near 81%.

Derivatives flash fear, not panic

VanEck reads the derivatives complex as defensive. The one-month put/call implied volatility skew widened to +11.4 percentage points, an 83rd-percentile mark since 2021, and traders appear content to fund put purchases with the sale of calls. 

The firm reads that as fear rather than capitulation. Total options premium eased 23% to $613.6 million, and the put/call premium ratio climbed to 1.49, against an average near 0.71.

Perpetual-futures funding tells a similar story. The rate sits near +4.5% on a 30-day average, about half the long-run +8.4%, a sign that positioning stays far from bullish after a spring stretch in which traders were paid to hold shorts. 

VanEck maps both signals to below-average forward returns across the 30-to-180-day window. It flags two markers of a true bottom that have not arrived: a skew past +15 points, or funding that flips negative. Until one appears, the firm sees near-term downside pressure over a quick rebound. 

VanEck has pointed to negative funding as a bullish tell in past notes.

Bitcoin ETP outflows and shaken treasury confidence

Demand ran negative on the month, a drop the report ties to exchange-traded product outflows. U.S. spot ETPs shed 40,010 BTC, worth about $2.40 billion, while corporate treasuries added 2,343 BTC and miners kept 1,204 BTC. Exchange balances rose to fill the gap. 

The report also charts shaken confidence among digital asset treasuries after Strategy used $1.38 billion to retire convertible notes, a move that left the company with a $900 million reserve and pushed it to its first bitcoin sales since 2022. Those sales, VanEck writes, fed the negative flows across the treasury cohort.

The on-chain picture cuts the other way. The share of bitcoin held longer than a year reached 60.8% of supply, a figure that has climbed through the price drop from 59.1% six months earlier. Another 17.7% of supply sits in the six-to-twelve-month band, coins that graduate into the long-term bucket if they stay put. 

VanEck projects the long-term share reaches about 62% in three months and nears 63% in six. Regimes with a long-term share above 60% and rising have lined up with above-average returns across horizons in the firm’s tests, an echo of its prior finding that whales kept holding through the selloff. 

Selling, the report finds, concentrates in the middle of the age curve, while the youngest and oldest coins stay still. Profitability metrics run cold, with net unrealized profit at the 17th percentile and 53% of supply in profit against a four-year average of 76%.

Miner economics near multi-year lows

Miner economics form the report’s grimmest section. Network hash rate held near record highs around 930 EH/s as price fell, a mix that pushed implied hashprice to about $30.6 per petahash per second per day, near multi-year lows. 

Daily miner revenue averaged $28.5 million, down 39.5% year over year, a level that puts lower-efficiency rigs at or below breakeven. Miner-held bitcoin stayed near 1.785 million, a sign of steady sales of new coins over capitulation.

The pivot to artificial-intelligence hosting runs through the section. VanEck highlights TeraWulf’s 20-year, $19 billion lease with Anthropic and CleanSpark’s $6.6 billion deal as top unlevered yields, part of a build-out the firm has tied to a $50 billion near-term funding gap. 

Miner equities have dropped about 42% from 52-week highs on higher rates, a New York pause on data-center construction, and doubt over AI returns. 

The firm keeps its conviction, and points to richer contract terms, new AI deals, and hyperscaler spending as reasons the de-rating overstates the risk. 

It also notes bitcoin correlation across the group has stepped down, a sign the market prices the names on their own merits. That optimism is not universal across the market; some analysts have argued an AI pivot alone will not rescue struggling miners.

VanEck sees a market that leans toward soft returns over the near term, held back by cautious derivatives and weak miner cash flow, yet supported by a supply base that keeps tightening. For patient holders, the firm writes, the structural picture stays constructive.

This post VanEck: Bitcoin’s Summer Lull Masks a Tightening Supply Base first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Binance has completed its 36th quarterly BNB burn, permanently removing more than 1.6 million BNB from circulation in one of the largest scheduled supply reductions for the token to date.

The burn destroyed 1,615,827.795 BNB, valued at roughly $931.7 million at the time of the event. The tokens were sent to the BNB Chain dead address through the network’s Auto-Burn mechanism, continuing Binance’s long-running plan to reduce the total BNB supply over time.

Token burns are familiar in crypto, but they are not all equal. A small burn can be little more than marketing. A burn close to $1 billion is harder to ignore, especially when it involves one of the largest exchange-linked assets in the market.

For BNB holders, the important question is whether supply reduction can keep supporting the token’s long-term economics while the broader Binance ecosystem continues to evolve.

Reference: BNB Chain

TL;DR

• Binance completed its 36th quarterly BNB burn.
• The burn removed 1,615,827.795 BNB, worth about $931.7 million.
• The event continues the Auto-Burn programme designed to reduce BNB supply over time.

Why The BNB Burn Matters

BNB’s burn programme is one of the central pieces of the token’s economic design.

The idea is simple: reduce supply over time and make the remaining tokens scarcer. In theory, that can support long-term value if demand remains stable or grows. In practice, the market still has to weigh burns against trading activity, regulatory pressure, Binance ecosystem growth, and broader crypto sentiment.

That is why each quarterly burn gets attention.

A burn does not automatically make a token rise. Markets are forward-looking, and traders often know a burn is coming. But the size of the latest event is still significant. Removing more than 1.6 million BNB from circulation gives investors a concrete supply-side update at a time when exchange tokens are under closer scrutiny.

BNB is not just another altcoin. It sits close to Binance, BNB Chain, trading fees, ecosystem incentives, DeFi activity, and user behaviour across one of crypto’s largest platforms.

That makes the burn both a tokenomics event and an ecosystem signal.

Auto-Burn Keeps The Process Predictable

The Auto-Burn mechanism matters because it makes the process less discretionary.

Earlier token burns across crypto sometimes felt like manual announcements designed to create attention. Binance’s Auto-Burn model is intended to create a more predictable supply-reduction schedule based on network and market conditions.

That predictability can help investors understand the token’s long-term supply path.

According to the available project materials, the 36th burn sent BNB to the dead address on BNB Chain, permanently removing the tokens from circulation. The supporting BscScan address provides the on-chain record of the burn destination.

This kind of transparency is useful because tokenomics claims need verification. A project can say tokens are burned, but the market wants to see the movement on-chain.

For BNB, the burn programme also ties into the broader commitment to reduce supply toward the long-term target. That gives the token a structural scarcity narrative, even if price still depends on demand.

Supply Reduction Is Only Half The Story

The burn is important, but BNB still needs demand.

A shrinking supply can support a token only if users, traders, developers, and ecosystem participants continue to find reasons to hold or use it. That is why the BNB Chain ecosystem matters alongside the burn schedule.

BNB is used across exchange-related activity, gas fees, ecosystem participation, and DeFi applications. It is also tied to the perception of Binance’s strength as a global crypto brand. If Binance and BNB Chain remain active, burns can reinforce the token’s economic case. If demand weakens, burns alone may not be enough.

That is the balance traders will be watching.

The latest burn comes as exchange tokens face a more mature market. Investors no longer look only at supply reduction. They want to know whether the ecosystem is growing, whether regulatory risk is manageable, and whether the token has durable utility beyond speculation.

For BNB, the answer remains closely tied to Binance’s broader reach and BNB Chain’s continued activity.

What Traders Watch After The Burn

The immediate price reaction to a burn can be noisy.

Some traders buy before the event and sell after. Others treat the burn as long-term background rather than a short-term catalyst. Market conditions also matter. If Bitcoin and Ethereum are under pressure, even a large BNB burn may not drive a sustained move.

The more important signal is whether BNB can maintain demand over time as supply continues to decline.

If BNB Chain activity grows, exchange usage remains strong, and token utility stays relevant, the burn programme can strengthen the long-term narrative. If activity weakens, the supply story becomes less powerful.

That is why the 36th quarterly burn should be read as part of a bigger picture.

It is a serious supply reduction, not a magic price lever. It reinforces the tokenomics case, but it does not replace the need for ecosystem growth.

For now, Binance has delivered another large burn on schedule. The next test is whether the market treats that reduced supply as meaningful in a more selective crypto environment.

This article is based on information from BNB Chain and BscScan.

This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.

This report is based on information released by BNB Chain. at BNB Chain

Much like radio operators being encouraged to use the least possible amount of power to make a contact, chemists have a similar rule encouraging using the least amount of materials in experiments. Not only is this rooted in economics, but in safety as well; if something goes wrong it’s generally good if there’s not excess amounts of reactants. With modern techniques, though, it’s possible to bring experimental chemistry down to incredibly small scales, and [Marb’s lab] found that they needed a custom built still for these new, diminutive experiments.

The first step is to build the heating component of the still. This is provided with a few custom aluminum parts for the base and a pair of heaters originally meant for 3D printers, with the assembled unit wrapped in insulation. The heater accomodates a 25 mL round-bottom flask. Temperature control of the heating mantle is provided by a controller mounted to a DIN rail which receives power from a 24V power supply, and an additional temperature probe is added to measure the temperature of the distillate. A test run with water shows the small still quickly and efficiently evaporating the water up to a condenser.

Although building a still doesn’t have to be technically difficult, building something this small that’s effective and safe is a bit more challenging than a backyard moonshining operation. Scaling chemical reactions down can often be a challenge but is possible with the right mindset and equipment. We’ve seen miniaturization of many things that we might not have expected including hydrogen production, aluminum smelting, and even the construction of a microscope.