Liberation Day Who?

Daily Updates:

• US stock-index futures today have picked up where equity markets left off on Friday’s close. Wall Street navigated a deluge of tariff headlines last week (including a confirmed trade deal with China) to reach new all-time highs. The S&P 500 rose 0.5% to close at 6,173. That’s the first new ATH since February, and a significant recovery from a 20% drop between mid-February and early-April, during the peak of the Liberation Day turmoil. 
• US treasuries (as measured by Bloomberg’s US Treasury Index) rose for the third consecutive week, as bets on the Federal Reserve cutting at least twice this year pulled treasury yields lower. 
• The market’s reinforcement that FOMC members will end up making at least two rate cuts came amidst a number of economic releases pointing towards a weaker economy: 

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• US consumer spending declined in May by the most since the start of the year as  personal consumption expenditures fell 0.3% month-on-month, after adjusting for inflation. 
• Q1 GDP for 2025 was revised down further, with the BEA estimating that the US economy shrank at an annual pace of 0.5%, an unexpected deterioration from the earlier estimate that showed a smaller 0.2% decline.
• Recurring jobless claims, a proxy for Americans receiving unemployment benefits, rose to their highest levels since late 2021.

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• Chair Powell’s current cautious approach and emphasis that he expects higher inflation over the summer was proven, at least partly, correct in last week’s PCE inflation report. 
• The PCE index rose to 2.3% in May, up from 2.1% in April, in line with expectations. However, the core PCE index rose 2.7% YoY, above the expected 2.6% and the previous month’s 2.5%. 

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• According to the University of Michigan, consumer sentiment hit a four-month high in June, with consumer expectations on inflation improving. 
• The final June sentiment index rose to 60.7 from 52.2 – that 8.5 point increase was the largest jump in sentiment so far this year. 
• According to Joanne Hsu, the director of the survey, “The improvement was broad-based across numerous facets of the economy”. 
• Consumers expect prices to rise by a (still significant) 5% over the next year, though that is down significantly from the 6.6% expected in May.

• According to Hsu, “With the recent moderation in both tariff levels and trade policy volatility, consumers now appear to believe that their worst fears may not come to pass and have moderated their expectations accordingly”.

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• BTC’s rally from $100K largely came to a stop by the middle of last week – since then, spot price has been consolidating around $108K. 
• BTC Spot ETF products saw over $2.2B of inflows over the past week, continuing a consecutive positive inflow streak that began on June 9. 

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• Over the weekend, implied volatility levels for BTC options picked up slightly, having dropped to as low as 27% for 7-day options on Friday. 
• At-the-money implied volatility for those tenors now trades at 34% while volatility smiles maintain a moderately bullish skew towards OTM calls. 
• Additionally, both funding rates for BTC perpetual contracts and short-tenor BTC spot yields have ticked up over the weekend. For the former, rates have increased from neutral levels to a high of 0.009% on an eight-hour basis, and for the latter, the yield on 7-day futures rose from Friday’s 0.75% low to 4.6%.

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• Japanese investment firm Metaplanet has expanded its Bitcoin position with the acquisition of 1,005 BTC for approximately $108.1M, bringing its total holdings to 13,350 BTC.
• CEO SImon Gerovich shared the update today, on Monday 30th of June, highlighting that the firm has added 10,000 BTC in just three months, up from 3,350 BTC at its most 
• recent shareholder meeting. The average purchase price was $107,601 per bitcoin, giving its total Bitcoin holdings a current market value of approximately $1.4B.
• This move positions Metaplanet as the seventh-largest publicly listed corporate holder of Bitcoin.
• The company has also set a revised long-term target of holding over 210,00 BTC by the end of 2027.

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• The BNB Chain upgrade, the Maxwell hardfork, has been rolled out successfully on its  mainnet. It aims to cut block time production in half, from 1.5 seconds to 0.75 seconds and improve validator efficiency.  
• The upgrade consists of three major proposals: BEP-524: Reducing block production intervals;  BEP-563: Improves validator communication and BEP-564: Enhances block retrieval between nodes.

This Week’s Calendar:

Charts of the Day:

Figure 1. BTC at-the-money implied volatility across selected tenors. Source: Deribit, Block Scholes

Figure 2. ETH at-the-money implied volatility across selected tenors. Source: Deribit, Block Scholes

Figure 3. BTC 25-delta put-call skew ratio across selected tenors. Source: Deribit, Block Scholes

Figure 4. ETH 25-delta put-call skew ratio across selected tenors. Source: Deribit, Block Scholes