Profile picture
, 26 tweets, 9 min read Read on Twitter
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.
Missing some Tweet in this thread?
You can try to force a refresh.

Like this thread? Get email updates or save it to PDF!

Subscribe to skew
Profile picture

Get real-time email alerts when new unrolls are available from this author!

This content may be removed anytime!

Twitter may remove this content at anytime, convert it as a PDF, save and print for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video

1) Follow Thread Reader App on Twitter so you can easily mention us!

2) Go to a Twitter thread (series of Tweets by the same owner) and mention us with a keyword "unroll" @threadreaderapp unroll

You can practice here first or read more on our help page!

Follow Us on Twitter!

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just three indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3.00/month or $30.00/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!