BTC and ETH Market Insight

The BTC market started 2023 strongly but has encountered significant resistance at $30k, causing a pullback to $28k.
Many holders were seeing their holdings recover above the acquisition price and the incentive for them to take profits grew. The mid-week rally in the crypto market was wiped out as the US banking crisis reappeared in the news, and the regulatory environment became increasingly stringent.
The desk also observed a rise in dormant addresses waking up, and the market appeared less decisive than earlier this year.
The capital favored Avalanche, Ethereum, and Optimism with $12.04m, $15.49m, and $28.56m respectively netflow onto the chains.

Options Market

Despite the violent spot move on Wednesday and Thursday, the reaction from implied volatility and skew was somewhat dismissive. Generally, such an abrupt and violent move would spark demand for options but IV only drifted marginally higher and cooled off on the recovery anon as we head for the weekend.
Near-term IV marked below 50 points for both BTC and ETH with ETH retaining its premium over BTC across the term structure.
Skew remained in a similar form with puts favored for ETH vs calls favored for BTC although the premium had nudged lower towards neutrality. Long gamma into the upcoming FOMC might not be a bad idea given the rising spot volatility and IV still trading at a discount to its RV.