Crypto Market

BTC and ETH Market Insight

Annual US inflation has dropped to 2.5% with a 0.2% monthly CPI increase. The Fed is now prioritizing employment data over inflation for decision-making. Crypto investors have largely priced in the inflation data and are maintaining their positions. Bitcoin rose above $60,000 following a rally in U.S. technology stocks.Negative funding rates, combined with a rise in open interest to the highest levels since late July, exposed the market to short squeezes. Weekly Bitcoin transactions of $100,000 or more have dropped 33.6% since March, while ETH transactions saw a more significant decline of 72.5% over the same period.

Options Market

The core CPI edged up by 0.3% month-on-month which is higher than the estimate of 0.2%. This potentially dented the probability of an aggressive 50 bps rate cut from Fed in next week’s FOMC. Yet, the uncertainty on the scope of a potential Fed rate cut continued to cloud over - the market is currently a 50-50 chance of a 25 bps and a 50 bps rate cut. The front-end implied vol drifted lower as the realised vol settled down. Nonetheless, with the uncertain Fed rate decision coming ahead, it is attractive to have gamma at the current level. Front-end skew shifted toward the neutrality with small premium on puts whereas long-term skew still suggested bullish view. ETH/BTC rate continued to show weakness and it is now moving toward 0.04 which is a key support level to watch. 

Altcoins and Blockchain News

• According to official sources, the perpetual contract DEX KiloEx supported by BinanceLabs has surpassed $13 million in TVL on Manta, with a total TVL exceeding $33 million. 

• Solana on-chain mining project Ore announced on social media that it has established Regolith Labs and completed a $3 million seed funding round, led by Foundation Capital with participation from Colosseum, Solana Ventures, B+J Studios, Dead King Society, and 3KVC.

• The stablecoin protocol Usual has released its roadmap, with the pre-launch phase expected to conclude around November 15th in sync with the Pills event. At that time, Usual's entire mechanism will be fully operational, and the protocol will enter a mature stage.

• Renewable energy company Fuse has announced the completion of a $12 million strategic financing round, led by Multicoin Capital with participation from Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko and others. 

• Pencils has announced a collaboration with the first self-custody Bitcoin staking protocol, Babylon.
  PayFi network Huma Finance has announced the completion of a $38 million financing round. Distributed Global led a portion of this equity financing round, with participation from Hashkey Capital, Folius Ventures, and the Stellar Development Foundation.

• DeepBrain Chain (DBC) and DeepLink Protocol (DLC) have officially signed a strategic cooperation agreement with the Internet PC Culture Association of Korea (IPCA). This collaboration aims to leverage the high-performance computing resources of idle Korean PC rooms to support the development of AI technology and the practical applications of blockchain technology.
  
  

Marco

The major benchmarks close the week with solid gains: the DJIA added +2.6%, the S&P 500 added +4.0% and the NASDAQ +6.0%. Growth stocks outperformed the value stocks, especially boosted by the technology giants. The market is ready for the first rate cut in September.