The Week On-Chain 24, 2024
Despite impressive US ETF inflows, a market-neutral Cash-and-Carry trade appears to be subduing buy-side pressure, requiring non-arbitrage demand to further stimulate price action. Alongside this, we explore the divergence between declining active addresses and surging transaction counts.

Executive Summary
- In the advent of the Runes protocol, a counterintuitive divergence has formed between declining active addresses and increasing transaction counts.
- Major labelled entities now hold a staggering ~4.23M BTC, accounting for over 27% of the adjusted supply, with US Spot ETFs now commanding a balance of 862k BTC.
- The Cash-and-Carry trade structure appears to be a meaningful source of ETF inflow demand, with the ETFs being utilized as the instrument for obtaining the long spot exposure, whilst an increasingly large net short position for Bitcoin accrues in the CME Group futures market.

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