BTC Skew Finally Turns Positive

Find our most recent reports in collaboration with Bybit below:

• Bybit x Block Scholes Quarterly Report: What will drive crypto in Q3 2025?

• Bybit x Block Scholes July Volatility Review

• Bybit x Block Scholes Quarterly Report: Altcoin season and the evolving role of Bitcoin

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Daily Updates:

• The bullish price action of the past 24 hours has bolstered a recovery in the skew of BTC’s volatility smile for short-tenor options. Having leaned towards OTM puts almost entirely over the past 30 days (see Charts Of The Day), traders are now finally showing a slight preference for upside participation. However, that bullish sentiment has only reached as far as 7-day maturities, with tenors across the rest of the term structure remaining skewed towards OTM puts.
• 7-day skew for BTC options currently trades slightly above 1%, having touched 1.7% earlier in the day. Additionally, 7-day ETH options now have a balanced tilt, after being skewed towards puts since late August.

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• Yesterday, August inflation data came in a touch higher than expected, resulting in a slight market selloff across risk-on assets. That selloff quickly rebounded as traders were not derailed enough by the numbers to change their views on a September rate cut next week or their expectations for rate cuts beyond September.
• However the inflation reading was also released at the same time as a separate jobs market report which showed further signs of cooling in the labour market.

• Underlying inflation, as measured by the core CPI, which strips out volatile components, rose 0.3% from July and 3.1% on an annual basis — in line with economist expectations. The headline month-over-month figure however exceeded expectations slightly, clocking a 0.4% increase against an expected 0.3%, and double the pace of July. That pushed the annual headline inflation rate up to 2.9%, 0.2 percentage points higher than the July print.
• Despite the higher headline print, once more there were limited signs of tariff pressures in the report. Core goods prices excluding new and used vehicles rose 0.13%, the least since March this year.
• The weekly jobless-claims report showed that the number of Americans filing for initial unemployment claims rose by 27,000 to 263,000 in the week ending Sep 6, 2025 — the highest since October 2021.

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• BTC and the S&P 500 initially sold off following the release with BTC falling from $114K. That proved to be a very temporary knee-jerk reaction — something we have noted often is the case with macroeconomic data releases — and since then, it rallied as high as $116K earlier today.
• ETH reclaimed the $4,500 mark and is up nearly 3% over the past 24 hours, while the rest of the crypto market has seen a far larger outperformance. SOL for example is trading 6.7% higher on the day. Part of that outperformance may be attributed to the announcement that Galaxy Digital acquired more than 2.3M SOL (approx. $530M) in the past 24 hours, according to on-chain data.
• The move follows Galaxy’s participation in a $1.65B private placement for Forward Industries, alongside Jump Crypto and Multicoin Capital. Forward is transitioning into a Solana-focused digital asset treasury company.
• Both BTC and ETH were supported by renewed interest in their respective Spot ETF funds. Bitcoin ETFs purchased $552.7M worth of the asset, after recording inflows of $741.5M on Wednesday.
• Ethereum Spot ETFs are now reversing what was a six-day outflow streak. Yesterday, they purchased $113.1M of Ether — the third straight inflow day.

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• By the end of the trading session, a slew of US equity benchmarks also reached all-time highs, including the S&P 500, Nasdaq-100 and Dow Jones.
• The market response illustrates the Fed’s dual mandate tug of war. Inflation is still hot, and still well above the 2% target, however, labour market weakness adds to the evidence of a shift towards the “maximum employment” half of the Fed’s mandate.
• The yield on the US 10-year treasury yield even briefly fell below 4% for the first time since April, when President Trump first announced his Liberation Day tariffs, while the dollar weakened further and is down 10% so far this year.

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• Revenue from tariffs in the US recorded a new monthly high in August according to data from the Treasury Department.
• Customs duties climbed to $30B last month, a 296% surge compared to August last year, however the monthly budget deficit still registered $345B.

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• Yesterday, BlackRock announced its plans to explore the tokenisation of exchange-traded funds (ETFs).
• The firm is considering issuing ETFs as blockchain-based tokens, potentially covering equities and other real-world assets, subject to regulatory approval.

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• Crypto exchange Gemini today announced it had raised $425M in its initial public offering. The company sold 15.18M Class A shares at $28 each, above the expected $24–$26 range, and began trading the same day on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker GEMI.
• Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, and Cantor led the offering, which also includes a 30-day over-allotment option for underwriters to purchase an additional 750,000 shares. Nasdaq Inc. separately agreed to buy $50M in stock at the IPO price.
• With the listing, Gemini becomes the third U.S.-listed crypto exchange, joining Coinbase and Bullish.

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This Week’s Calendar:

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Charts of the Day:

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