Volumes on bitcoin futures offered by Bakkt set a record high on July 27, with 11,500 contracts traded on the institutional exchange.

Altogether, the contracts are worth about $126 million, at the time of writing. Each contract is equivalent to one bitcoin (BTC).

Total open interest – an indicator of the total number of outstanding contracts held by investors – reached $8 million from a low of around $4 million a few days earlier, showing that more money is flowing into the marketplace.
Read More: https://news.bitcoin.com/bakkt-futures-volume-hits-122-million-as-bitcoin-reached-new-11-month-high/

Switzerland’s principal stock exchange SIX Swiss Exchange is listing a new bitcoin exchange-traded product (ETP). The BTCA index, otherwise known as the “Bitcoin Capital Active ETP (BTCA),” is different from other crypto ETPs exchanged on SIX because it’s an “actively managed” cryptocurrency ETP.

SIX Swiss Exchange, based in Zurich is one Switzerland’s most popular stock trading platforms and the exchange allows investors to obtain securities like stock options, derivatives, and Swiss government bonds.
Read More: https://news.bitcoin.com/swiss-exchange-six-lists-actively-managed-bitcoin-exchange-traded-product/

Austria’s leading telecom company, A1 Telekom Austria Group, has announced that its merchant payment service now accepts cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin, for cashless payments. The company operates in seven countries and has 25 million customers.

A1 Telekom Austria Group is a leading provider of digital services and communications solutions in Central and Eastern Europe. Listed on the Vienna Stock Exchange, the company has about 25 million customers and over 18,000 employees. It currently operates in seven countries: Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Belarus, Slovenia, North Macedonia, and Serbia.
Read More: https://news.bitcoin.com/a1-telekom-austria-bitcoin-payment-service-thousands-of-retailers/

More strategists at major banks are voicing out their opinions about the position of the US dollar today, as well as its longevity. With the recent gold price rally, and fuelled by the ongoing and growing socio-economic issues, the USD's position as the world's reserve currency might be threatened.

"Real concerns around the longevity of the US dollar as a reserve currency have started to emerge. [...] Gold is the currency of last resort, particularly in an environment like the current one where governments are debasing their fiat currencies and pushing real interest rates to all-time lows," Daniel Sharp, a strategist at investment banking giant Goldman Sachs, was quoted as saying by Bloomberg.
Read More: https://cryptonews.com/news/goldman-sachs-strategist-warns-of-real-concerns-over-us-doll-7259.htm

Crypto adoption news
FiCAS AG, a Swiss-based crypto investment management boutique, said it has registered the Bitcoin Capital Active ETP (Exchange Traded Product), "the world's first actively managed crypto exchange-traded product, listed at the SIX" stock exchange. The company claimed that this ETP "provides the green light for retail and institutional investors to tap the burgeoning asset class."
Read More: https://cryptonews.com/news/new-bitcoin-etp-trading-records-synthetix-gets-3-daos-more-n-7256.htm

Flash loans on Aave have grown massively in the past few weeks, as DeFi traders take advantage of millions in temporary free money.
DeFi isn’t just about yield farming, and another new financial tool has rapidly been on the rise.

More than $138 million worth of flash loans were issued via Aave on Monday, a new all-time high for the novel financial instrument. Flash loans allow users to take out sizable loans with no collateral, on the condition that on-chain activity with the funds are profitable and all activity can be completed in a single block.
Read More: https://decrypt.co/37038/defi-flash-loans-skyrocket-100-million-per-day

The price of gold has broken a new high and trading volumes of gold-backed tokens are shooting up.
The price of gold has set a new all-time high of $1,954 a troy ounce today while volumes for gold-backed cryptocurrency tokens have risen.

In the past month, PMGT, a blockchain-based token issued by commodities digitization company, Infinigold, and backed by bullion held in the Perth Mint, has witnessed a near quadrupling in volume.
Read More: https://decrypt.co/36996/gold-trading-volumes-surge-on-cryptocurrency-markets

Synthetix, the third-largest DeFi platform by assets locked, is now under the control of community-owned organizations, or DAOs.
The Synthetix Foundation, which since the project’s 2018 launch has largely controlled the direction of the synthetic assets platform, is winding down and three DAOs are taking over; protocolDAO, grantsDAO and synthetixDAO, the team said in a blog post last night.

Synthetix is holding almost $460 million in assets in its smart contracts, up more than 20x from a year ago, according to DeFi Pulse, and its token SNX is up more than 10x in that time to $3.2.
Read More: https://decrypt.co/37011/synthetix-is-now-controlled-by-three-daos