1/. 🟢 Bitcoin reclaimed losses from the 12th of March sell-off in April.

Has the market gone back to normal and what has changed? 2/. 🟢 Futures volumes were up significantly the last two days on the rapid break through $8k and $9k, mirroring what occurred on the 12th of March.

Nearly $40bln were crossed yesterday.

🚨 Market Sell-off Update 🚨

1/. Bitcoin finally caught up with Wall Street crashing 39% yesterday during one of the most memorable and hectic trading session in its young history 2/. Nearly $50bln bitcoin futures were traded across crypto exchanges with two exchanges - OKEx & BitMEX - > $10bln and eight > $1bln

1/ BTC halving via the options market: priced-in?

The debate is heating up every day regarding whether the next halving - expected in May 2020 - is already priced in or not, with the discussion centered around the stock-to-flow model and the (in)efficiency of the BTC market. 2/ There have been voices claiming that whether or not the halving is already priced in, we should expect some volatility in the spot price around the upcoming halving date as the market adjusts to the sharp decrease is the natural supply from miners.

A few examples of the dashboards you can build using skewAnalytics.' custom dashboard features for professional accounts 👇 1⃣ Options traders can build a dedicated options dashboard combining analytics on both BTC and ETH options markets, including volatility curve, term structure, realized and implied vols, etc.

1/. Q3 review from the skew team

Bitcoin didn't have the best quarter - consolidating around the psychological $10k level & currently indicating down 25% 2/. Most assets are well in the green this year.

Bitcoin is still up 100%+ but had an alarming September - so did Gold.

1/ BTC 1mth ATM Vol continued to drop these last couple of days. 2/ This happened despite a pick-up in realized volatility, with spot falling more than 12% in the past 5 days.

👇Our July recap thread!

1/. Performance

Bitcoin increasingly trading sideways & consolidating around $10k - down 10% in July, up 170% YtD

No alt season - altcoins are high beta on the way down - ether down 26%, up 60% YtD 2/. Volatility

BTC moved on average 5.5% daily

In fact, two very distinct regimes:

nearly record high volatility into the Facebook hearings ~8% a day

nearly record low volatility in the last two weeks ~2.6% a day

Another technical "incident" crushed ETH & crypto markets this week end

What happened? A sell order on Bitstamp flash crashed ETH 30% from $270 to $190 at 9.30 a.m UTC time on Sunday morning

Only ~$4mln traded in the 15 minutes candle This created selling pressure on the derivatives side as Bitstamp is a key component of indices used to mark derivatives contracts - 33% of Bitmex perpetual swaps for instance

The BMX perpetual swap contract traded $20 below the price of ETHUSD - a very unusual 7% discount

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

1/. We love numbers at skew. so let's wrap up Q1 with a review of the main trends in crypto derivs.

Overall, reasonably good quarter with bitcoin +8% and ether +3%.

Top performer was BNB +180% as Binance keeps expanding its offering at a rapid pace. Also LTC +100%. 2/. Bitcoin traded in a narrow 900$ range between $3,300 and $4,200. Currently trading just above $4,000.

Very quiet by bitcoin standards - any paper starting by stating bitcoin is incredibly volatile is currently wrong!

1/. Two large bitcoin options trades crossed on Deribit today -

- 22Feb 3750 calls traded 1130x @ 0.0195 btc ~ 66$.
- 22Feb 5000 calls traded 2916x @ 0.0005 btc ~ 1.71$.

It looks like the overwriters are here and they are keeping options traders busy! 2/. Those new positions are sending total options open interest to a 1m high of $155mln ...

Someone's getting bearish... the last 12 trades on Deribit for notionals greater than 10 BTC have all been buyers of puts, across Jan19 & Sep19 expiries. At the same time, term structure is inverting even more on this second leg down in spot

Coinbase orderbook is "buy-side" skewed. Order book depth is significantly lower than on Bitmex - by a magnitude order of 5 to 10x

New year = new start ! Investors are on average adding to positions since the start of 2019. XBTUSD open interest back > $400mln. (Still down 50%+ vs the previous peak in November of $860mln) For the record: open interest in USD (last two months)

-50% @ $400mln

Quick update on BTC options market:
1/ On Dec 28th Deribit options experienced their largest volume day in more than 3 months with a total notional traded exceeding $20mln. Promising for the growth of the crypto options market! 2/ Vol has dropped sharply over the last few days, with 3mth at-the-money implied vol reaching its recent support of 80%. This is equivalent to a 4.2% implied daily move for BTC.

1/. Some numbers and charts to wrap up Q4 and get some perspectives. Crypto markets and bitcoin are down 42%. Bitcoin dominance stayed unchanged at 52%. Bitcoin max price was $6,800 and low $3,120. Market feels a little stronger but we are still only marginally off the lows. 2/. Rising volumes - exchanges were probably the only ones to have a good time in Q4. Perpetual swap stats: avg daily volume $1.7bn - Bitmex - and $2.2bn - Bitflyer. Maximum (reached in November): $6.7bn - Bitmex - and $5.4bn - Bitflyer.

1/. let's clarify a few points on how OTC trading works and how it impacts markets. When a customer comes to an OTC desk - on Telegram or WhatsApp - he will request a quote: "can i please see a price for 1,000 BTC - approx $4mln?" 2/. the market maker is going to check the liquidity available in the market - the exchange order book depth - and see at what price he can buy and sell 1,000 BTC

1/. A quick look back at November in numbers. $80bn+ traded across bitcoin perpetual swaps. Volumes picked up a decent amount vs October - notably around the three sell-offs. Bitflyer saw marginally more volumes than Bitmex: $2.5bn daily average vs 2.1. Mex trades > on big days. 2/. Bitcoin is down 37.5% on the month. Max was $6,538 and min $3,461: a 47% range.