Trump Pardons CZ

Find out our latest reports, listed below:

• Bybit x Block Scholes Quarterly Report: Rise of Perp DEXs — and how to catch the opportunity

• How did options markets react to the crypto selloff?

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• Metaplanet Is Selling Vol, Who Is Next?

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• Bybit x Block Scholes August Volatility Review

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Market Snapshot: Overnight Moves:

Daily Updates:

• BNB coin, the native token of the BNB Chain and originally launched as a utility token for the Binance exchange, rallied more than 7% yesterday to $1,150, outperforming the wider crypto market as President Trump issued a pardon for the exchange’s co-founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ). 
• According to White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt “President Trump exercised his constitutional authority by issuing a pardon for Mr. Zhao, who was prosecuted by the Biden administration in their war on cryptocurrency”. 
• The move in BNB, which is the third largest non-stablecoin crypto by market-cap, contrasted the still rangebound price action across most of the other majors, such as BTC and ETH. 
• After the fallout from the $19B flushout of leveraged positions on Oct 10, 2025, BTC has slowly dropped off from its ATH of $126K, and has traded sideways for two weeks since. Open interest in leveraged perpetual swap contracts on Bybit show no apparent willingness by traders to rebuild their positions — OI across BTC, ETH, SOL and 6 other tracked perps, fell from $16B on Oct 10, 2025 down towards $10B and has since stayed sideways at that level. 

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• Options markets also show a major change. Prior to the Friday liquidation of mid-October, BTC implied vol traded around the 30% mark for close to six months. Front end vol broke out aggressively after President Trump’s tariff threats against China and inverted the term structure of volatility. While that inversion did not hold for long, we’re now in a regime where IV levels trade between 41-45% across all maturities, a sign of increased demand for optionality at all tenors across the curve. 
• Interestingly, BTC options traders have reversed all of the bearish sentiment that they had priced in mid-week. On Wednesday, the 25-delta skew toward puts was as large as 11.5%. Now, the put-call skew ratio trades just below neutral levels. That marks a divergence from all other BTC tenors which are more strongly skewed towards puts, and a divergence from ETH 7-day skew which remains at -7%. 

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• After a long back and forth, the White House confirmed yesterday that President Trump will meet Chinese President Xi Jinping next Thursday at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in South Korea. That meeting will mark the first time the two leaders come face-to-face with one another since President Trump first began his second term as President. 
• Trump said earlier this week that the US will come to a “good deal” with China and that he and Xi have a “great relationship”. 
• Confirmation of the news helped US equities rally closer towards all-time high levels and end the day higher, with the S&P 500 jumping 0.58%. 
• Today, markets will be waiting for September’s CPI report which was due on Oct 15 and delayed by the ongoing US government shutdown. It is also the only major data print the Fed will receive before its FOMC meeting next week. Expectations are for the core CPI to rise 0.3% MoM, for a third consecutive month which will keep the annual core CPI at 3.1%.

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• Yesterday West Texas Intermediate crude oil prices jumped 5.5% after President Trump announced “massive” new sanctions on two of Russia’s largest oil producers, Rosneft and Lukoil on Oct 22. In a press release from the US Treasury department, the sanctions are “a result of Russia’s lack of serious commitment to a peace process to end the war in Ukraine.”
• The sanction means that all US or US-based entities are barred from transacting with the two sanctioned companies. 
• According to the International Energy Agency, Russia’s exports of crude oil account for 7% of global crude oil and refined fuel consumption. 

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• The S&P Global UK Manufacturing PMI rose to 49.6 in October 2025 from 46.2 in September, surpassing expectations of 46.6. 
• Meanwhile, the Flash UK Services PMI increased to 51.1 from 50.8, in line with forecasts of 51, marking a second consecutive month of expansion.

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• Revolut, Blockchain.com, and Bitcoin app Relai have all obtained Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) licenses, joining the first wave of compliant firms under the EU’s new crypto framework.
• Revolut’s license from Cyprus will let it market and expand its full crypto services across all 30 EEA markets. Blockchain.com, licensed in Malta, said regulatory clarity now enables it to scale institutional-grade products across Europe. Meanwhile, Switzerland’s Relai received approval from France’s AMF.

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• Aave DAO is considering a proposal from the Aave Chan Initiative (ACI) to establish a $50M annual AAVE token buyback program. If approved, the plan would allow ongoing buybacks through Aave’s Finance Committee and TokenLogic who would execute purchases of $250,000 to $1.75M in AAVE weekly, with flexibility to adjust based on market conditions and revenue.
• The buybacks would become a permanent, revenue-funded mechanism to support long-term token value through maintaining buy side pressure while increasing the treasury reserve.

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This Week’s Calendar:

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Charts of the Day:

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