1/ This week, ETHBTC cross started moving towards our 0.0850 target level [view from 03 Aug Market Update
The outsized move higher in ETHUSD has been largely spot and vol driven (rather than leverage in futures)
2/ Spot demand from unprecedented transaction amounts in NFTs along with the constant buying of calls in large blocks. All this on the back of the EIP-1559 catalyst. With this recent push through 3800 we are starting to see some funding pressure as leveraged players..
3/ ..join in on the move higher. In spite of the decisive rally, the market remains wary of potential downside risk. We can see this from the risk reversal levels:
(a) BTC risk reversals have not broken out of range and remain close to par in spite of the call buying onslaught
4/
(b) ETH front-end risk reversals have flipped violently to the put side.
With the speed of this move higher, a sharp mean reversion move would not be too surprising.
5/ Generally speaking, BTC vols have been relatively muted as spot struggles to break above 50k. We expect BTC spot to be sticky around the 47-52k range for the following reasons:
6/
(i) 46,850 is the 50% Fibonacci retracement level from ATH of 64,900 in Apr to 28,800 low in Jun. This resistance level turned into a strong support level as evidenced in past 2 weeks
(ii) 46,850 also proved to be strong support when BTC corrected from ATHs in Apr this year
7/
(iii) We expect a good resistance at the 61.8% Fibonacci retracement level (51,110).
(iv) Downtrending RSI hints at possible lack of follow through.
8/ BTC realised vols remain low causing the implied-realised gap to widen. There has also been a slight steepening in the term structure with Dec vols remaining elevated. We remain short BTC gamma and vega against our long spot position.
9/ For ETH, we have squared up short vega and we are slightly long gamma here alongside long spot.
For alts like BCH, DOGE, ALGO, LUNA and SOL we are long both gamma and vega alongside long spot.
10/ Among the alts, SOL has had an outstanding rally. Fibonacci trend projections show that we are at the 1.618 extension at 115 level. With a likely TD 9 tomorrow, we anticipate an interim top at these levels. With vols this high, SOL calls might be a decent sell.
2/ Barely a year after our release of our Zombieland! (Part 1) report (qcp.capital/justcrypto/jusโฆ), we have now written a sequel.
And like all sequels, this one is much worse than the original.
3/ Last year we showed how the Terra/Luna crash almost turned the industry into a Zombieland - with many crypto institutions becoming zombie companies and threatening to take the rest of the industry down with them.
Hello everyone! Hereโs our market update for 30 March 2023 โ๏ธ
We are through the first quarter of 2023 now and what an eventful quarter itโs been.
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2/ Particularly for BTC which had been moving into the shadow of ETH for the good part of the last two years. Barring a major surprise tomorrow, BTC would have gained 70+% for the quarter, its best quarter since Q1 2021.
3/ BTC started climbing from Day 1 of 2023 (also the low of the yr) and was turbo charged by the probs in the US financial system this mth,which we wrote about (qcp.capital/featured-articโฆ) and will cover in more detail in next wk's release of the 6th ed of our quarterly, Just Crypto
This past week we have seen disruptions in the biggest global markets which nobody has witnessed before. Touchรฉ.
2/ 15 years ago on this same mid-March weekend, Bear Stearns went under and needed a bailout.
3/ Much closer to home, 3 years ago to the day yesterday, the Fed dropped rates to 0% and announced the first bazooka of $700bn in QE in response to the 2020 COVID lockdowns.
Happy Valentineโs Day (and CPI Day) to allโค๏ธ
We are now clearly in the post-FTX regime where BTC has a higher beta to macro news than crypto news.
2/ Instead there is growing institutional interest from TradFi, with CME now the second largest venue for BTC futures OI with a 17% share, and where these CME-trading institutions are largely macro-driven.
3/ What is clear since FTX is that there has been a clear and concerted push from the US authorities not just towards the regulation of crypto, but also the restriction of the crypto industry.
Today marks the first Fed decision of 2023, and more importantly, the first since the market began obsessing over the โFed Pivotโ.
2/ Enthusiasm over the pivot has driven the widest gap between FOMC rate forecasts and market pricing since last August's fateful Powell pushback at Jackson Hole (chart below).
And once again markets have set us up for another Jackson Hole part deux.
3/ Bullish retail sentiment, typically a contrarian indicator, has risen to the highest levels since last August into Jackson Hole.
In the blink of an eye, the first month-end option expiry of 2023 is here.
Market conditions are drastically different from the bearishness we saw in Q4 2022. The options market in its current state makes it seem like FTX never happened at all!
2 / The following are some key observations:
1. BTC risk reversals traded into positive territory (Calls more expensive than Puts) across multiple tenors last week for the first time since 2021.
3/ This is extremely unusual as BTC typically has persistent Put skew largely due to miner/treasury hedging activity.
It also shows how quickly market sentiment has flipped from bearish to bullish - a microcosm of what has been happening in macro markets as well.