Cryptocurrency markets closed the final week of July largely flat or lower, with a US Federal Reserve rate decision, upcoming midterm elections, and legal troubles for the founder of Telegram all shaping investor sentiment.
Bitcoin
Bitcoin traded between $62,700 and $65,700 from July 24 to 31, with only one daily move exceeding 2.5 percent. The Federal Reserve held its benchmark rate at 3.5 to 3.75 percent at its July 29 meeting.
Fed chair Kevin Warsh announced the decision, which the Board of Governors passed 9 to 3. The three dissenting votes were all cast in favor of raising rates. Warsh did not signal the direction of future decisions, saying he wanted a direct and unfiltered reaction from the market. Bitcoin slipped 1.39 percent in the first hour after the announcement before largely recovering.
Analysts also pointed to November’s congressional midterm elections as a headwind. According to the article, Bitcoin has historically formed a price bottom ahead of such votes, then rallied after results are known. The composition of the House of Representatives, one third of the Senate, and multiple state governorships are all at stake, with implications for Donald Trump’s presidency.
Spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded their fourth consecutive week of net inflows, totalling $203.84 million. BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) accounted for $209.56 million of that figure. The crypto fear and greed index fell three points to 25, moving from fear into extreme fear.
Ethereum
Ether rose 1.58 percent over the week, touching $1,980 on July 27, its highest level in 55 days. No single session produced a move greater than 4.5 percent.
Ethereum marked its eleventh anniversary on July 30 with a record 40.2 million ETH locked in staking, worth more than $63 billion and representing roughly 33 percent of total circulating supply.
On-chain security platform Blockaid reported that $332 million was stolen from the Ethereum network in the first half of 2026. Analysts said the majority of incidents exploited vulnerabilities in Ethereum’s code. The one case Blockaid classified as user error was a March incident on decentralized exchange CoWSwap, in which a user lost $50 million to slippage while attempting to convert 50,432 aEthUSDT to AAVE. The losses weigh on Ethereum’s reputation, according to the article.
Spot Ether ETFs posted their fourth straight week of inflows at $18.39 million. BlackRock’s iShares Ethereum Trust (ETHA) led individual funds with $36.62 million.
Gram
Russian authorities filed criminal charges against Telegram founder Pavel Durov and placed him on the Rosfinmonitoring list of terrorists and extremists. The move pressured Gram, the cryptocurrency tied to Durov’s The Open Network blockchain, which fell 3.75 percent on the week. Lawyers told Bits.media readers that Russians can still legally use both the Telegram messenger and Gram.
Zcash
Zcash developers launched the Ironwood upgrade on July 28 to fix a critical vulnerability discovered in the Orchard privacy pool in late May. Orchard was shut down and replaced by Ironwood, which received 176,000 ZEC, worth roughly $81 million, on its first day. That represents about 5 percent of Orchard’s total holdings of nearly 3.66 million ZEC valued at more than $1.7 billion.
Ironwood introduces a turnstile mechanism designed to block counterfeit ZEC tokens that could have been minted through the Orchard bug, and adds partial quantum computing attack resistance under proposal ZIP 2005. Despite the technical milestone, Zcash fell 5.4 percent for the week.
Aptos
Aptos processed 13.2 million transactions in a single day during the week, pushing cumulative totals since its October 2022 launch past 4.51 billion. However, decentralized lending protocol AAVE halted its planned deployment on Aptos, citing a new risk management framework aimed at reducing economic and technical exposure across multiple blockchains. Aptos fell 6.63 percent and continued trading near its all-time low of around $0.55.
