Crypto Market

BTC and ETH Market Insight

The BTC ETF prematurely pushed the market toward the 2021 high, leading to a particularly challenging eight-month range with five unsuccessful breakout attempts. Donald Trump won the US election, causing risk assets to surge and Bitcoin to reach new all-time highs. Sufficient fundamentals and positive catalysts under a Trump presidency could outweigh the consensus, and an ATH break could significantly drive retail FOMO. the Fed lowered interest rates for the second time in the current cutting cycle. $ETH has finally spiked relative to $BTC and $SOL over the weekend. $SOL surpasses $BNB in market cap, becoming the 4th largest cryptocurrency.

Options Market

A decisive Trump win boosted BTC to new ATH. Front-end implied volatility reset to normals as expected - BTC back to sub 50 handle and ETH back to 60s. The volatility carry completely flipped to the negative zone compared to 30+ positive carry last week. Call skew all turned favourable to calls as the market embraced a pro-crypto government with expectations of deregulation and national strategic crypto stockpile. A confirmed 25 bps rate cut by the Fed further boosted the risk-on sentiment. Dec. and Mar. upside structures traded in good sizes as the broad market got more convincingly bullish in the space. ETH had a nice bounce back post-election  from 0.035 low to 0.04 as of writing  - broke 2,800 pivot level and now holding firm above 3k handle.

Altcoins and Blockchain News

• Binance Labs announced an investment in the DeSci project BIO Protocol, with the investment amount undisclosed. This investment marks Binance Labs' first venture into the DeSci field.

• According to DefiLlama data, the total market value of stablecoins has grown by 3.04% over the past week, reaching $1,781.15 billion, the highest level since May 2022.

• Nethermind, an Ethereum ecosystem developer, has introduced the Ethereum L2 network Surge Rollup, designed as an ultra Rollup for developers, builders, and autonomous agents to push Ethereum's limits.

• Polymarket mentioned future token airdrops.

• Web3 shopping app Bion announced the completion of a new round of strategic financing, with TON Ventures participating. Specific funding amounts and valuation data have not been disclosed yet.

• According to Scam Sniffer monitoring, malicious software "EdtiProAI" is using X (Twitter) ads to reach potential victims, posing a risk to users who install "EdtiProAI" and expose their wallet private keys.

• ZeusNode is set to launch within two weeks. ZeusNode aims to facilitate interactions between Bitcoin and Solana. Guardian entities hold private keys and are responsible for signing transaction proposals. ZEUS holders can delegate to Guardians to support Solana's development.

• Polygon and the PayPal-backed startup Magic Labs announced on Thursday that they will launch a new cross-chain network called Newton. The platform aims to make the decentralized application experience seamless across multiple blockchains, akin to browsing the internet.

Marco

The major indices moved to new record highs following the election result: the DJIA added +4.6%, the S&P 500 added +4.7% and the Nasdaq +5.7%. Chinese equities also surged after the new stimulus measures were announced: the Shanghai Composite Index added +5.51%, the CSI 300 +5.5% and the Hang Seng index +1.08%.