South Korea's Upbit surpassed centralized exchanges Coinbase (COIN) and OKX in spot trading volume for the first time in July, according to a report by CCData, making it the world’s second-largest crypto exchange after Binance. Coinbase’s volume dropped by 11.6% to $28.6 billion in July, and OKX’s fell 5.8% to $29 billion. Upbit bucked the general market trend, with a 42.3% increase in trading volume to $29.8 billion. The Korean market is being driven by demand for cryptocurrencies from retail investors.

Coinbase, the biggest publicly traded U.S. crypto exchange, announced that Base, its layer-2 blockchain built with Optimism's OP Stack, will open to the public next Wednesday. Base went live for developers in July so that they could test applications on the network. Users are now able to transfer their ether to Base, Coinbase wrote in a blog post. The Base announcement came ahead of Coinbase releasing its second-quarter results. Its revenue topped analysts' expectations, and its loss was narrower than expected.

ProShares and Bitwise have filed applications with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for an exchange-traded fund focused on bitcoin and ether. According to ProShares' filing, the Bitcoin and Ether Equal Weight ETF will measure "the performance of holding long positions in the nearest maturing monthly bitcoin and ether futures contracts." Bitwise, meanwhile, filed for a Bitcoin and Ether Market Weight ETF. In recent months, excitement has mounted over the possibility that a spot bitcoin ETF could soon be approved.

The amount of bitcoin held in addresses tied to over-the-counter desks, a proxy for institutional activity, has declined to the lowest level since June 15.

As of Thursday, the so-called OTC desk balance stood at 5,138 BTC, about $150 million at BTC's current market price of $29,225. That's a 33% slide from the one-year high of 7,697 BTC at the end of June, according to data tracked by Glassnode.

The tally surged by 156% in the first half as bitcoin's market value rose 84%, with some observers at the time referring to the climb as a bullish development. "In our view, increased balances on OTC desks suggest that institutions and other large capital allocators are focused increasingly on bitcoin," Ark Investment Management's June report said.

- Omkar Godbole

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