Crypto Market

BTC and ETH Market Insight

Treasury yields declined and $DXY lost strength from its recent high point. Despite US job data that surpassed expectations and hawkish remarks from Fed officials, Bitcoin did not go any lower, still trading near $27.8k. The altcoin markets seemed underperforming. The trading volumes of DEX on the leading protocols have hit fresh lows in September, marking the fifth consecutive month of decline. The primary reason for this could be attributed to weak demand. Besides the trading volume, ETH/BTC was a nice indicator for the total macro altcoin market and it kept going lower this week.

Options Market

According to data from Deribit, only 5.5% of the time in the past 12 months has the IV volatility of BTC been lower than it is now. Despite the US NFP data that initially impacted the risk markets and concerns towards traditional markets, the buyers of BTC calls kept bullish and added more 29k-33k positions expiring in November, and also bought December 31k-37k BTC call spread.

Altcoins and Blockchain News

• On October 7th, hackers who attacked HTX returned 4,999 ETH, and HTX subsequently sent 250 ETH as a white hat bounty to the attacker.
• According to Lookonchain monitoring, Vitalik's associated address transferred another 1,000 ETH, potentially depositing it into Bitstamp. This address has already deposited a total of 4,400 ETH into Bitstamp in the past two months.
• The friend.tech fork project Stars Arena was hacked, resulting in a loss of approximately $2.9 million. The official statement mentioned that they have acquired resources to compensate for the losses incurred by the breach.
• Pendle Finance has opened voting for the Arbitrum Short-Term Incentive Program (STIP). The Arbitrum STIP has a budget of 50 million ARB tokens specifically allocated for providing incentive grants to eligible protocols.
• StarkWare announced a delay of over five months for the initial unlock date of its native StarkNet (STRK) token. The new unlock date is April 15, 2024. The previously planned unlock date was November 29, 2023.
  DWF Labs has invested $7.5 million in AirDAO with a one-year lock-up period and a 36-month unlocking period to promote wider adoption of the AirDAO ecosystem.
• Game development studio Mythical Games has partnered with McLaren to launch the blockchain-based game Nitro Nation World Tour on Apple and Android platforms.
• Web3 social protocol Phaver has completed a $7 million funding round with participation from Polygon Ventures, Nomad Capital, Foresight Ventures, and others. Phaver has integrated its technology or "social graph" with decentralized social network ecosystems Lens Protocol and Web3 social network CyberConnect.
  

Macro

Despite the significant rise in US treasury yields and a drop in bond prices, equities have managed to maintain their strength. In the past, US Treasuries and equities have exhibited an almost perfect correlation while trading. However, currently, the gap between US Treasuries has widened substantially. Consequently, either equity valuations must decrease, or bond prices must increase.