Thread by @skew_markets

1/. A recap thread to wrap up a lively Q2

- Bitcoin up ~200% YtD and back > $10,000
- Ether has been lagging as IEOs are the new ICOs - supporting BNB
- Stellar is worst performing - started to underperform before the Facebook news

2/. Macro theme #1 - Easing

- The Fed and ECB pivoted and turned dovish again in June
- 40% of sovereign debt globally is now negative yielding, ~25% of the total bond market
- Gold and Bitcoin surged in tandem

3/. Macro theme #2 - Facebook

- Not another altcoin project - sends a clear signal cryptos are here to stay
- No big bank involved - not even a neo bank! Few crypto companies involved
- After many high profile IPOs this year, the valley and its VCs are starting another crusade

4/. Projections - mining & gravity

- Bitcoin hash rate is at ATH
- Starting to see projections for a $100k+ bitcoin price
- A $100k dollar price would mean $5bln+ of monthly supply coming from mining and $2.5bln+ next year for halving

That's a lot of bitcoins to sell!

5/. Projections - Futures

- Futures markets are nicely upward slopping across exchanges
- December contracts are trading at ~4.5% premium to spot
- The futures curve was backward sloping for most of Q1 - for reasons such as lending activity and credit risk

6/. Projections - Options

The bitcoin options market indicates a probability of bitcoin > $20k by December of 13%

7/. Market participants - Retail vs Institutions

- Is the herd finally here?
- This Q2 rally doesn't look like the one of 2017, it feels more quiet
- Google trends for "bitcoin" globally are at 25% of what they were at the peak in 2017

8/. Market participants - Retail vs Institutions

- Same observation with number of tweets related to bitcoin

9/. Market participants - Retail vs Institutions

- CME has had two consecutive record volume days leading to the June expiry - > $1.5bln traded on each day
- Open interest doubled in June to ~$400mln
- ICE led Bakkt is starting testing in July

10/. Bitmex

- One of the only company that seems to thrive with both retail and institutions
- $1tn of derivatives contracts traded over the last year
- A new daily volume record for the perpetual swap of ~$15bln in June
- Open interest touched $1bln

11/. Bitmex

- Bitmex has ample liquidity - avg bid / offer spread for $1,000 BTC was 38bps this quarter - and is heavily used to recycle OTC flows
- Hard to ignore Bitmex for the SEC when evaluating if the market is ready for an ETF
- Funding is a good counter indicator

12/. Bitmex

- interesting to note the price of bitcoin peaked last week with the number of connected users on the platform

13/. Volatility market

- Options market is dominated by Amsterdam based Deribit
- Open interest has been structurally growing- up nearly 10x this year

14/. Volatility market

- Same picture for options volumes - making new highs every month
- Bitcoin options liquidity is still a fraction of underlying volumes and closer to the one of a mid cap stock

15/. Volatility market

- Interesting to note the options market is focused on the short term part of the curve - maturity < than two weeks
- A sign institutions have not yet entered this market

16/. Volatility market

- Bitcoin was much more volatile this quarter, moving on average daily 4.4% vs 2.3% in Q1

17/. Volatility market

- Implied volatility has been going up this quarter - currently sitting at the psychological 100% level
- Implies a 5% daily move over the next three months

18/. Stable coins

- USDT market cap doubled this year
- Bitfinex issued its own token LEO - bringing confidence back in Tether

19/. Stable coins

- The "regulated" alternatives have had a hard time catching up

20/. Stable coins

- As a result the market share of the contenders to Tether has been plunging this year
- The story might be a little different with Libra next year!

21/ Defi

- The amount of collateral held in Maker Dao rose from $200mln to $500mln
- Growth slowed down recently due to instability of the DAI peg and governance issues
- Blockstream and Crypto Garage settled a derivative contract on the Bitcoin blockchain!

22/. Find more real time data on our website: sk3w.co

- Would mention on that topic the incident with the Bitstamp fat finger in May which triggered liquidations on the perpetual swap

- Bitstamp, with thiner order book depth, accounts for 50% of the bitcoin price index used to settle the Bitmex contracts and trigger liquidations

23/. Three more interesting charts on daily seasonality over the last 6m

- Bitmex has the most volumes during US open
- Less volume during the night UTC time
- Similar patterns to traditional markets where US open is a busy time in equities & London is a global FX hub

24/. Seasonality - same patterns on Binance looking at BTCUSDT

- activity peaks during US hours
- week ends are more quiet - although they have been more active recently

25/. Seasonality - Coinbase BTCUSD

Activity is more skewed towards US hours as expected as the pair is only available to USD accounts.