Daily Update:

• BTC’s rangebound movements around the $102K mark have been accompanied by slower activity in derivatives markets. Implied volatility levels are currently moving sideways, and BTC’s term structure is flat. The recent shakeout in the markets following DeepSeek’s supposedly cheaper and more efficient LLM has not affected long-tenor vol smiles which still indicate strong, positive sentiment in the long term and preference for OTM calls. However, the same cannot be said for short tenors – skew is currently neutral around 0%. Interestingly, the 25-delta skew for the 30-day tenor has detached from other short-tenors, and is currently strongly skewed towards calls.

• The governor of Czech’s Central Bank is reportedly planning to include bitcoin in the country’s official reserves, subject to approval from a seven-member committee. This would make it the first Western central bank known to hold Bitcoin on its balance sheet. According to the Financial Times, the plan could include allocating 5% of total foreign reserves ($146B) to Bitcoin. Japanese investment firm Metaplanet also announced plans to purchase 10,000 bitcoins by 2025 and 21,000 by 2026. The company is, to date, the 15th largest corporate holder of Bitcoin.

• DeFi has seen some interesting developments: U.S. and E.U. Treasury-Bill RWAs are now live on Arbitrum, a layer-2 for Ethereum, in a partnership with fintech Spiko. Similar plans have been revealed for T-biills on the XRP Ledger, with the anticipated launch of Ondo Short-Term US Government Treasuries (OUSG) within the next 6 months.

• BTC Spot ETFs saw a mere $18.4M in inflows yesterday – the lowest single-day inflow since the 31st of December in 2024. ETH Spot ETFs on the other hand were flat.

This Week’s Calendar:

Charts Of The Day: