Crypto Market

BTC and ETH Market Insight

BlackRock was updating their proposals for a Bitcoin ETF despite the SEC postponing multiple Ethereum ETFs. With Bitcoin consolidating below $44K, the possibility of a downward correction below $40K was increasing as its bullish momentum appeared to be fading. Due to increased Ordinals minting, Bitcoin transaction fees have soared to an average cost of around $37.58, marking the highest level in more than two and a half years. $SOL temporarily suspassed $BNB to become the #4 token by market cap. This week's attention has been mainly on memecoins, particularly those built on Avalanche and Solana.

Options Market

As we headed into the holiday season where the volume tended to be lower, the front-end IVs decreased. IVs from Jan12 expiry and onward, on the other hand, remained bid as we enter the big event risk of ETF approval. Skew moved further in favour of calls, implying the market’s unabated demand for upside positions. ETH/BTC ratio rebounded about 6% from the low printed during the week as the market might have started positioning on ETH as a BTC ETF approval could benefit ETH given the market is forward-looking. Historically, ETH as a higher beta asset tended to outperform BTC as the bull markets progressed.  

Altcoins and Blockchain News

• According to The Block, the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority issued a joint circular to accept applications for crypto spot ETFs.
• Solana Web3 Mobile Saga: 20,000 devices sold out in US and EU.
• Bitcoin miner Marathon Digital has signed a purchase agreement to acquire two currently operating Bitcoin mining farms, totaling 390 MW of capacity, from subsidiaries of PBC for a total of $178.6 million.
• Data: Bitcoin NFT transaction volume reached US$730 million in the past month, surpassing Ethereum’s US$388 million
• Kaiko statistics show that SOL’s trading volume on Upbit has been higher than ETH’s trading volume for 55 consecutive days
• According to CoinDesk, the MetisDAO Foundation launched a US$100 million fund "Metis Ecological Development Fund" to accelerate the development of the ecosystem and will allocate 4.6 million METIS
• Binance launches Launchpool project NFPrompt (NFP), allowing users to stake BNB, FDUSD and TUSD
• Web3 fan platform Medallion completed $13.7 million in Series A financing, led by Dragonfly and Lightspeed Faction
• Korean game company Wemade and Singapore-based Whampoa Digital enter into strategic partnership to jointly launch US$100 million Wemade Web3 Fund
• Yolo Investments, a venture capital fund with AUM of over 600 million euros, announced the launch of a new flagship fund "Yolo Fund II LP", aiming to invest in global distributed games, financial technology and blockchain-related asset classes.  

Macro

The major indexes continued their weekly winning streak: the DJIA added +0.2%, the S&P 500 added +0.8%, and the NASDAQ +1.2%. The cooling inflation data led to a sharp decline in rates expectations in 2024, and now the market is expecting steeper rate cuts in the coming year. The benchmark 10-Year Treasury Note closed at 3.9%.