Some highlights from last week:

The total cryptocurrency market cap decreased by -3.4% over the course of the week, falling from $1.56T to $1.51T. All major assets, besides BNB (+4.4%), saw negative returns as the median 7d return was -3.2%. Long term sentiment remains positive despite the recent drawdowns. XRP is the only major asset to have a neutral long term sentiment score (59.3). Trading volume (-11.6%) and Tweet volume (-8.2%) were both down this week.

Out of the 6 major crypto sectors, only 2 sectors saw positive returns this week. NFTs led the way at +17%, with Exchange tokens following behind at +4.8%. Smart Contract Platforms took the biggest hit, as they experienced a -8% return.

On Wednesday, the former CFTC chair stated that a Bitcoin ETF would be good for investors and regulators. Despite sentiment spiking for a brief period after this announcement, the price of BTC proceeded to drop -6% over the next several hours.

After extensive demand from institutional clients, Aave has announced plans of launching a permissioned version of its platform for institutional investors. Aave Pro will be coming later this month. Shortly after the announcement was sent out, the price of AAVE surged +25% from $276 to $345. Additionally, Aave tweet volume increased by +57% at its peak.

One of the hottest projects in recent weeks has been Axie Infinity. On Wednesday, AXS’s 30d average daily sentiment score reached a new all time high of 61.4, helping push the price of AXS to a new high of $13.65.

Not only has the price and sentiment of AXS reached new highs, but so have the social conversations surrounding the project. There are now over 625 tweets sent out about Axie on a daily basis, the most of any NFT project.

During the weekend, DeFi protocol Synthetix, in collaboration with Chainlink and Optimism, announced that exchange on Optimism will be enabled starting the week of July 26th. Within 24 hours after this announcement, the price of SNX had climbed +15% from $11.7 to $13.5.