Crypto Market

BTC and ETH Market Insight

The CPI rose in March, reaching its highest level since September 2023. As a result, the swaps markets showed reduced expectations of the Fed cutting interest rates in June. During the past weekend, Bitcoin dropped almost 5%, dragging down the whole market. It hit a low of just under $65,000, while Ethereum dipped to $3,100. This decline led to the liquidation of approximately $940 million worth of positions on major futures exchanges. On Wednesday, the SEC issued a warning to Uniswap, indicating its plans to take enforcement action against the platform.

Options Market

The sharp fall on both majors following a major correction in the equities markets on Friday evening sparked the rise in realised volatility. Implied volatility in BTC recovered a bit from this week’s downward trend. Similar to BTC, the implied volatility was trending lower but it remained at a more elevated level compared to BTC. Consequently, the ETH/BTC vol spread flipped back to an ETH premium. Front-end skew rose to favour puts as the dip fuelled the short covering. With the halving event getting closer, the realised volatility is expected to stay higher in the coming days.

Altcoins and Blockchain News

• According to The Block, Uniswap has increased the swap fee from 0.15% to 0.25% for transactions through its interface, excluding certain stablecoins and wrapped tokens. 

• According to data from L2BEAT, the current total value locked (TVL) in Ethereum Layer2 is temporarily reported at $35.53 billion with a 7-day decline of 16.1%.

• Austin Federa, the strategic lead of the Solana Foundation, stated that Solana will introduce three new mechanisms to prioritize transactions and alleviate network congestion.

• Swell posted on X platform stating that over $190 million has been deposited in the Swell L2 Pre-Launch program, with the top three assets being rswETH, PT-rswETH, and mswETH.

• According to Dune data, the total value bridged (TVB) by the Base Bridge has exceeded 495,832 ETH, valued at over 49.5 million USD, with a total of 515,425 bridging users.

• The floor price of the WZRD (Bitcoin Wizards) project token has risen to 0.28 BTC, with a 24-hour gain of 86.7%.

• According to official data, the 52nd Binance launchpool project, Omni Network (OMNI), has received deposits of over 18.46 million BNB and 3.158 billion FDUSD.

Macro

Investors were focused on inflation data this week, with Treasury yields rising to their highest level since November on Monday ahead of fresh inflation data. On Tuesday, the S&P 500 rose slightly before a report showed that consumer prices rose 3.4% in March from a year earlier, up from 3.2% in February. Wednesday brought a significant stock market decline following unexpected consumer-price index increases, intensifying concerns that the Federal Reserve may delay rate cuts. Thursday witnessed a market rebound driven by tech stocks, while on Friday, stocks declined broadly due to mounting inflation concerns and geopolitical tensions; the Dow Jones Industrial Average experienced its largest weekly loss since 2023. Financial shares declined, and higher projected interest rates negatively impacted bank stocks, although large banks reported better-than-expected first-quarter earnings. Gold futures also hit a new record high, signaling heightened investor uncertainty.