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December 24, 2024
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Crypto Markets Daily Dec 24 2024

Altcoin holders are feeling a slight weight fall off their shoulders as ETH trades up 2% on the day, and SOL is up nearly 5%. Amongst the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market-cap (excluding stablecoins) only BTC is down. ETH’s term structure is also no longer inverted, with implied vol levels compressed close together at all tenors. MicroStrategy remains unphased, purchasing another 5,262 bitcoins last week. BTC and ETH Spot ETFs diverge.

Crypto
Derivatives
DeFi
Macro

ETH Resilience

Altcoin holders are feeling a slight weight fall off their shoulders as ETH trades up 2% on the day, and SOL is up nearly 5%. Amongst the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market-cap (excluding stablecoins) only BTC is down, trading at $94K, a 2% decline in the last 24 hours. We can hardly call this a rally yet for the alts – but it provides some respite following last week. 

ETH’s term structure is also no longer inverted, and has turned almost completely flat with implied vol levels compressed close together at all tenors. Continuing on from yesterday, we are back in a period where ETH’s ATM vol is at a premium to BTC across all tenors. See this in both charts below.

Figure 1. ETH at-the-money implied volatility for selected constant tenors. Source: Deribit, Block Scholes
Figure 2. BTC at-the-money implied volatility for selected constant tenors. Source: Deribit, Block Scholes

BTC’s front-end skew levels have returned back to positive territory, but ETH front-end skew was unable to hold its positive level for long, currently at -0.84% – suggesting subdued demand for OTM call options relative to OTM puts.

Figure 3. BTC 25-delta put-call skew for selected constant tenors. Source: Deribit, Block Scholes
Figure 4. ETH 25-delta put-call skew for selected constant tenors. Source: Deribit, Block Scholes

BTC’s recent price action does not seem to have phased MicroStrategy however. In a filing released yesterday, the tech company announced it had purchased another 5,262 bitcoins between Dec 16 and Dec 22, 2024, at an average price of approximately $106,662. At BTC’s current price, this marks a current loss of 13%, though we note MicroStrategy now holds approximately 444,262 bitcoins at an average price of $62,257 – so something tells us Michael Saylor won’t be too worried about that.

In terms of Spot ETFs, the BTC Funds saw a third consecutive trading day of outflows. On Monday, only BlackRock’s IBIT Fund saw positive inflows ($31.7M) whilst the overall net outflows across all BTC products was $226.5M. Though these outflows have been getting smaller each day, it is quite the sentiment shift considering BTC Spot ETFs in December only saw positive inflows, if we exclude the last three days. 

ETH Spot ETFs on the other hand have reversed the trend of the last two trading days and gained net inflows of $130.8M on Monday. This is slightly above the average net inflow of $118M for December.

Figure 5. Total BTC ETF inflows & MicroStrategy BTC purchases in millions of $’s (LHS) and BTC Spot price (RHS). Source: Farside Investors, Block Scholes
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Thahbib Rahman
Research Analyst
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ETH Resilience

Altcoin holders are feeling a slight weight fall off their shoulders as ETH trades up 2% on the day, and SOL is up nearly 5%. Amongst the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market-cap (excluding stablecoins) only BTC is down, trading at $94K, a 2% decline in the last 24 hours. We can hardly call this a rally yet for the alts – but it provides some respite following last week. 

ETH’s term structure is also no longer inverted, and has turned almost completely flat with implied vol levels compressed close together at all tenors. Continuing on from yesterday, we are back in a period where ETH’s ATM vol is at a premium to BTC across all tenors. See this in both charts below.

Figure 1. ETH at-the-money implied volatility for selected constant tenors. Source: Deribit, Block Scholes
Figure 2. BTC at-the-money implied volatility for selected constant tenors. Source: Deribit, Block Scholes
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ETH Resilience

Altcoin holders are feeling a slight weight fall off their shoulders as ETH trades up 2% on the day, and SOL is up nearly 5%. Amongst the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market-cap (excluding stablecoins) only BTC is down, trading at $94K, a 2% decline in the last 24 hours. We can hardly call this a rally yet for the alts – but it provides some respite following last week. 

ETH’s term structure is also no longer inverted, and has turned almost completely flat with implied vol levels compressed close together at all tenors. Continuing on from yesterday, we are back in a period where ETH’s ATM vol is at a premium to BTC across all tenors. See this in both charts below.

Figure 1. ETH at-the-money implied volatility for selected constant tenors. Source: Deribit, Block Scholes
Figure 2. BTC at-the-money implied volatility for selected constant tenors. Source: Deribit, Block Scholes

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Altcoin holders are feeling a slight weight fall off their shoulders as ETH trades up 2% on the day, and SOL is up nearly 5%. Amongst the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market-cap (excluding stablecoins) only BTC is down. ETH’s term structure is also no longer inverted, with implied vol levels compressed close together at all tenors. MicroStrategy remains unphased, purchasing another 5,262 bitcoins last week. BTC and ETH Spot ETFs diverge.