Data & Insights: Predicting the World Cup; No Stable Interest

Altcoin Alternatives

• While we’ve been focusing on Bitcoin and Ethereum spot ETFs, altcoin ETFs have continued to trade under most people's radar. Solana and Hyperliquid ETFs have combined to account for nearly 80% of non-BTC and ETH ETF volume, with Hyperliquid ETFs having launched only 2 months ago.
  • Solana boasts an impressive $904M AUM, while the Hyperliquid suite has managed to attract $350M in net inflows. Both figures represent approximately 2% of each token's market cap. 
  • Bitcoin, by comparison, has nearly 9% of its market cap held in ETF products. The gap suggests that altcoin ETFs may benefit further as they gain investor acceptance. 
  • Alternatively, this could be reflected in BTC’s nearly 2-year head start rather than a ceiling that alts are guaranteed to close. 
• These flows are likely skewed by investor type. SOL and HYPE sit further down the risk curve with less regulatory precedent and higher volatility, so they're attracting allocators with higher risk tolerance. Bitcoin and Ethereum, however, benefit from the anchoring of investors who tend to be stickier and more passive.
  • As projects such as Hyperliquid and Solana continue to engage with regulatory bodies and build out RWA rails, this may open the door to investors interested in that exposure.

Strategic Conclusions

• MSTR is down roughly 38% this year, with this market cap now sitting at just under $35B. This comes as its Bitcoin stack is worth $54.5B, or 0.63x when you divide market cap by the value of its BTC.
  • This is a simple mNAV and fails to capture the leverage that is included on top of the base assets. 
  • Strategy carries $6.7B in convertible notes and $15.5B in preferred stock, both of which have priority claims on the bitcoin. 
• Enterprise value is calculated by adding debt and preferred equity to market cap while subtracting cash. Using enterprise value yields an mNAV of 1.03x. Even though the common stock appears deeply discounted, this mNAV calculation accounts for the difference.
  • The wide gap between 0.64x basic and 1.03x EV mNAV is the actual leverage, not a bitcoin discount.
• In many cases, selling Bitcoin to buy back stock while the stock trades at a basic mNAV discount is accretive to BTC per share for everyone. While this could make sense for other DATs, Strategy has become so big that significant selling could spook all Bitcoin investors, leading to a negative feedback loop.
  • Furthermore, Strategy’s average cost basis is $75,482 per coin, well above the current holdings value per coin. Selling now locks in a realized loss against that basis, a real deterrent even when the buyback math is theoretically accretive.

The Real Deal

• Tokenized real-world asset (RWA) perps have been the clearest crypto growth story of the year.
  • Monthly volumes across exchanges for these assets have grown from just ~$85 billion in January to ~$470 billion in June, a 450% increase within just six months
  • The value prop for these products is clear as day, giving leveraged, 24/7, borderless exposure (and in Hyperliquid’s case, without KYC) to instruments that otherwise trade on limited hours in traditional, KYC-gated brokerages
• Within the broader RWA category, tokenized equities have been the more popular asset class to trade over tokenized commodities
  • Tokenized equity perp volumes grew by roughly 7x from January to June, led by pre-IPO stocks such as SPCX, as well as single-stock semiconductor names such as MU, SNDK, SK-HYNIX and INTC, among others.
  • SPCX was the single most-traded equity perp across all crypto exchanges in June with over ~$66 billion traded as it IPO’d in mid-June.
• The dominant platforms facilitating RWA perps are quite concentrated at the top, with Binance, Hyperliquid and OKX making up over 80% of all tokenized RWA perps volume in June.
  • Binance alone accounts for nearly half of all the category’s volume.
  • Hyperliquid remains the standout onchain venue in an otherwise centralized field, while smaller onchain platforms like Ostium and Lighter sit well behind.

The Everything Market

• Crypto’s significance within the context of Robinhood’s overall trading volume has declined considerably over the last two years, as the business has been diversifying away from crypto.
  • Crypto's share of Robinhood trading volume has declined from making up ~10% of total volume in 2024, to just ~3% in 2026 so far.
  • In nominal terms, Robinhood’s crypto volume fell from a peak of ~$35 billion in November 2024 to ~$6 billion in May 2026, experiencing monthly declines in 12 of those 18 months.
• Meanwhile, Robinhood’s monthly equities volume has moved the other way, more than doubling over the same span.
  • Equity trading volume grew from ~$147 billion in November 2024 to ~$315 billion in May 2026.
  • A third engine has also been pulling retail attention away from crypto, that being event contracts, also known as prediction markets.
  • The number of Robinhood event contracts traded per month grew from 200 million in April 2025 to nearly 4 billion in May 2026
  • Prediction markets are now a meaningful business line for Robinhood after just a year of launch, competing with crypto for the same cohort of users and attention.
• Despite the decline in crypto volumes, overall volume for the platform has actually more than tripled in the last two years.
  • Robinhood is now a larger, better-diversified business and far less hostage to crypto sentiment, which made up nearly a fifth of its volume in late 2024.
  • This diversification away from crypto has reflected in the stock price of HOOD, which used to, but no longer, track fairly accurately with the price of Bitcoin due to the business’ dependence on crypto.
  • In the last twelve months, HOOD is down just -3.5% while BTC is down by -45%. In the last three months, HOOD is up +11% compared to BTC’s -15% in the same period.

On to the Next

• A few days before the World Cup Final, combined Kalshi and Polymarket open interest (OI) is down 20% from its peak of ~$2 billion at the beginning of July
  • On a smoothed weekly basis, total OI ran from ~$1.2 billion in late May to ~$1.8 billion in the week ending July 5, then fell to ~$1.5 billion by the week ending July 19.
  • Kalshi’s sports volume peaked at ~$9 billion in the week ending July 5 and fell to ~$4 billion by the week ending July 19, down ~55%.
  • While Polymarket’s sports volume peaked near ~$2.3 billion and dropped to ~$740 million over the same span, down ~68%.
  • Sports accounted for roughly 80% of both platforms’ total volumes throughout the tournament, as all eyes were on the World Cup.
• The decline is unsurprising, as the World Cup group stage that ran from mid to late June packed the schedule with matches across 48 teams, flooding both platforms with many markets to bet on
  • As the tournament bracket narrowed through the knockout rounds and the number of matches per day thinned out, the amount of markets people could bet on dried up, and with the final played on July 19, the catalyst is now gone entirely.
  • For context, OI has fallen more gently than volume. Volume is daily turnover, which collapses the moment there are fewer matches, while OI is the outstanding stake that unwinds only as markets resolve.
  • Following the world’s biggest sporting event, it is likely that prediction markets activity will remain subdued compared to its June-July levels, at least until the next major event catalyst, that being the US midterm cycle into the fall.