Crypto Market

BTC and ETH Market Insight

Bitcoin just experienced the fourth Halving in its history, which has cut the miner block reward from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC. The recent major selloff of altcoins marked the first significant downturn since the uptrend began. This decline, which commenced last weekend, appears to have been instigated by geopolitical tensions between Israel and Iran. Altcoins experienced a sharp sell-off even though BTC didn't decrease significantly.

Options Market

The market sentiment had been dominated by a potential escalation of Iranian attack on Israel. This resulted in a dramatic increase in realised volatility for both BTC and ETH. 7-day realised volatility hit 85 at high for BTC and 102 for ETH. Historically, uncertainties on geopolitical conflict could lead to continued volatility. It might be wise to be cautious selling near-term gamma as implied vols now trade at a cheap discount vs RV. Front-end skew also shifted further to favour puts due to rising interest in short-term downside protection and gamma-short covering.

Altcoins and Blockchain News

• On April 20, 2024, at 8:09 AM Hong Kong time, Bitcoin successfully completed its fourth halving at block height 840,000. The mining reward on the Bitcoin network was reduced from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC.

• Friend.tech announced on their social media platform that V2 version has completed the audit and will be officially released on April 29.

• Ether.fi stated in a post that they now support native restaking on Layer2 networks like Blast and Mode, and this feature will soon expand to Linea, Base, and Optimism.

• TON will provide a user incentive of 11 million Toncoin to early adopters of on-chain USDT. Some of it will be used for USDT mining in the Telegram wallet, while another portion will incentivize USDT liquidity in the TON ecosystem's two major DEXs, ston.fi and DeDust.

• Blast ecosystem DEX project Thruster completed a $7 million seed funding round at a valuation of $70 million. The round was led by Pantera Capital, with participation from OKX Ventures, Mirana Ventures, ParaFi Capital, and others.

• Ondo Finance announced a partnership with Noble Chain, a Cosmos-based asset issuance chain, to introduce its tokenized products into the Cosmos ecosystem.

• Web3 full-stack wallet SafePal announced the completion of Runes protocol integration. In the coming weeks, they will gradually launch Runes, Atomicals, Ordinal, RGB++ engraving, and trading markets.

• According to sources cited by Indian media The Economic Times, Binance is preparing to pay a fine of around $2 million to re-enter the Indian market.

Macro

Stocks fell on Monday due to increased Middle East tensions and rising U.S. Treasury yields; however, early trading saw a climb after minimal damage from Iran's attack on Israel. Despite positive retail sales, increased bond yields resulted in a bumpy path for the market, with reduced expectations for interest rate cuts. On Tuesday, markets responded to Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell's remarks, causing choppiness in stock and bond trading. By Wednesday, stocks continued to sell off amid doubts about imminent interest-rate cuts. Thursday saw bond yields rise and stocks slump. Friday's sell-off marked significant weekly declines and the overall trend depicts a decline in stocks due to geopolitical concerns and changing expectations around interest rates.