Bitcoin Advances on Reports of RFK Jr. Retiring

A year ago, HashKey Capital estimated that liquid ether derivatives would double from their total value as of August 2023, locked in at $44 billion by August 2025. At the halfway mark, things seem to be on track. The TVL value of Ether LSDs reached $36.25 billion, with Lido claiming a 70% market share, according to DeFiLlama data. Despite relatively stagnant ETH prices recently, staking demand continues to grow, with the validator’s input queue reaching an all-time high of around 7,400, HashKey Capital analysts wrote in a note to CoinDesk. “However, annualized stake returns have remained at around 3.5% over the past four months. This creates a situation where more validators want to join, but the rewards do not increase substantially.”