Crypto Market

BTC and ETH Market Insight

China has implemented 34% reciprocal tariffs on goods from the United States. Powell stated that weak economic growth and rising inflation offset each other, prompting the Fed to maintain its expectation of two rate cuts in 2025. The S&P 500 ended the week down -9.1% in its largest weekly drop since March 2020, erasing -$4 TRILLION of market cap. US stocks have now erased a massive -$11 TRILLION since February 19th with recession odds ABOVE 60%. However, Bitcoin and altcoins have remained largely unaffected. In the last 24 hours, high-net-worth investors with over 10 BTC have increased their holdings.

Options Market

On the backdrop of the equity market plunging, BTC was holding rather well during the week until late Sunday where both BTC and ETH plummeted. Option flows saw overwhelming put buying. Calls are mostly sold to fund put buying. Front-end implied volatility spiked and the put skew rose to a more elevated level. One-week implied volatility for BTC moved to 66% and ETH to 93% as ETH once again got hit harder. This also pushed ETHBTC ratio to 0.02 mark - a new multi-year low. The market will closely monitor the development of the trade tension and stay volatile if any macro comes out.

Altcoins and Blockchain News

• Circle may consider delaying its IPO plans due to the impact of the trade war. 

   

• Grayscale has filed an S-1 form with the U.S. SEC for a Solana ETF. 

   

• FDT denies allegations by Justin Sun, while Binance states that the FDUSD audit report confirms full 1:1 reserve support.

   

• Hyperlane has disclosed details of its airdrop, with 57% of the token supply going to the community.

   

• Babylon has revealed its tokenomics: a total supply of 10 billion tokens, with 15% allocated for community incentives.

   

• ClearBank has partnered with Kraken to provide GBP clearing services for UK customers.

   

• PayPal offers SOL and LINK payment options for U.S. customers.

   

• Binance: Four users selling $1.05 million worth of spot ACT led to its price decline.

   

• FTX rejected claims totaling over $2.5 billion due to non-compliance with KYC requirements

Macro

The major indices fell sharply after Trump’s tariffs policy was announced: the DJIA lost 7.9%, the S&P 500 -9.1%, and the Nasdaq -10.0%. The Chinese administration responded with an equal 34% reciprocal tariffs on U.S. goods. The Shanghai Composite Index lost 0.28%, the CSI 300 -1.37% and the Hang Seng index -2.46%.