Crypto Market

BTC and ETH Market Insight

January's unadjusted CPI annual rate of 3.1% surpassed expectations, prompting the market to reassess Fed's potential interest rate cuts timing. However, the current crypto market sentiment is positive, with Bitcoin hitting a yearly peak and trading at around $52K. Ethereum is rapidly approaching the $3K mark, currently trading around $2800. This surge coincides with staking deposits on the Beacon Chain reaching $85B, locking up 25% of circulating supply on the Beacon Chain.

Options Market

BTC option flow surged this week - a combination of significant short covering and strategic buys in near-term options, fueled by upward market movements whereas ETH‘s flow remained unchanged. Front-end implied volatility saw a significant uptick with the term structure increasing across the board. Although ETH trailed behind BTC for the week, the outlook for ETH remains bullish, driven by ongoing innovation and the potential approval of an ETF by summer. As the market broadly anticipates ETH to catch up with the strong momentum of BTC, a noticeable amount of short-term calls in ETH were bought, pushing the call skew higher.

Altcoins and Blockchain News

• On February 18, Worldcoin posted on social platforms that the number of daily active users of World App, the wallet created for the Worldcoin project, exceeded 1 million.
  
• According to Rountescan data, the number of active addresses on the Berachain test network "Artio" has exceeded 8 million.
  
• According to data from Blast’s official website, its TVL is approximately US$1.803 billion, and the total number of users has exceeded 140,000.
  
• Binance Labs announces the first batch of projects for the sixth season of the incubation program, including NPFrompt, Ethena, Shogun.
  
• According to OpenSea data, the floor price of NFT series Pudgy Penguins exceeds Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC)
  
• Web3 knowledge sharing platform QnA3: TGE will be soon, and the points earned by users can be converted into tokens.
  
• USDe developer Ethena Labs completed a new round of financing of US$14 million, invested by Dragonfly and others.
  
• According to the PitchBook report, total venture capital investment in crypto-related companies reached $1.9 billion in the fourth quarter of 2023, a 2.5% increase from the previous quarter.
     

Macro

The major benchmarks ended modestly lower for the week as the discouraging inflation data for CPI/PPI  surprised the market: the DJIA lost -0.1%, the S&P 500 -0.4%, and the NASDAQ -1.3%. The Treasury bond yield also hit a recent high of 4.33% on Friday. The interest rate cuts are now expected to begin in June.