The Flow Brief is a mid-week, charts-first scan of where crypto capital moved across ETF flows, sector baskets, derivatives, and prediction markets.
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The Weekly Tape
The relief bounce got its confirmation this week. BTC dipped to $61.6K into Tuesday’s CPI print before reclaiming $64K within hours of the release, now holding a second week of recovery off the $58K 21-month lows.
Crypto total market cap added ~$200B in the past week and is now sitting at ~$2.4T extending last week’s recovery.
US spot Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs saw ~$500M in outflows on Monday despite positive outlooks in early July where flows finally flipped positive. ETH ETFs saw a similar outflow on Monday.
HYPE ETFs have stayed relatively flat the past couple of weeks.
However, HYPE DATs are seeing their mNAV drop <1x.
Strategy's July 13 8-K shows BTC holdings unchanged at 843,775 while the USD reserve grew by $450M to a total of $3.0B, extending the dividend runway without touching the BTC stack this time. This comes after last week's 3,588 BTC sale to fund Q2 dividends.
June CPI printed 3.5% against a 3.8% consensus, with core at 2.6% and headline falling 0.4% month over month, the biggest monthly drop since April 2020.
This print carried more weight than usual because the Warsh Fed spent the past few weeks openly debating a July 29 hike, so BTC was pricing hike risk rather than hoping for a cut.
The Casino Moved to Robinhood Chain
Robinhood chain remains the main talking point for a second week as launchpad activity took over the chain's flow. Current TVL sits at $175M while DEX volumes are averaging over $700M per day the last week.
The centerpiece is Noxa. NOXA.fun, the chain's native launchpad, printed $2.33M in protocol fees on July 11, roughly 4x Pump.fun's take the same day, and cleared ~$7.66M in fees for the week. On July 13 the team burned 40% of the token supply.
However, internal disputes regarding revenue split resulted in the deployer being turned off amidst a successful run, causing them to fumble millions in daily fees as volumes continue to climb.
The other side of that flow is Solana, where last week’s Ansem-led revival is cooling as the marginal trench dollar migrates to the newer venue.
Derivatives Positioning
Aggregate perp DEX open interest sits at $19.2B, slowly grinding higher from the $17-18B figure last week. The post-CPI print saw ~$500M in OI being added overnight.
BTC 25-delta skew is the tell on whether desks believed the print. Last week the curve sat positive at every tenor, +7.5pts at 1W fading to +5.6pts at 1Y, with hedges concentrated at the front.
This week’s curve saw the 1W tenor drop 3.2pts, the biggest move anywhere on the curve, so the hedges really were about the July 29 decision. But the hump at 2M (+6.3pts) now sits over the September window, meaning desks rolled protection out to the next event rather than taking it off.
On Hyperliquid, HIP-3 open interest is holding $3.6B with TradeXYZ still above 95% of builder-market volume. Across onchain RWA perps platforms, TradeXYZ holds a majority 55% share.
Prediction Markets
Polymarket’s July 29 FOMC market now sits at 93% hold, 7% for a 25bps hike, and under 1% for a cut. Hike odds climbed through early July before repricing within minutes of the CPI release, and traders betting on zero cuts in all of 2026 still hold 79.8%, so the print removed the hike tail without adding an easing bid.
The World Cup continues to carry platform volume, with the Winner market past $4B+ cumulative and the Final just days away. Polymarket has again broken a new record in fees generated, hitting $12.2M as volumes sustain above $1B.
Summary
The macro fear that pinned BTC to its lows was specific, a July 29 hike, and Tuesday’s CPI removed it. The bounce came with $134M in short liquidations and Fed odds repricing to 93% hold, though positioning says the relief is believed near term while protection gets rolled out to September. ETH and BTC ETFs saw outflows on Monday reversing its positive inflows early July, while HYPE ETFs have stayed flat.
Underneath the macro, the sidelined risk-on capital is showing up in memecoin bets on new chains. Robinhood Chain’s launchpad out-earned Pump.fun 4x inside its second week. Whether that flow is a regime or a temporary rotation is next week’s question.
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