Crypto Strategy
235 Results
A NOSEDIVE IN VOLATILITY Equities are not the only asset class undergoing a noticeable decline in volatility. Both Bitcoin and Ethereum are following a similar path. Over the past two months, there has been a significant decrease in the implied volatilities of these blue chip cryptoassets, especially following the fallout from the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) crisis and the subsequent rally in prices following the Federal Reserve’s intervention. The sense...
LOOKS LIKE A PAUSE The Federal Reserve approved its 10th interest rate increase in just over a year, raising the Fed funds rate by 0.25 percentage points to a target range of 5%-5.25%. Many interpreted the Fed's comments as signaling a potential pause in the tightening cycle, mainly due to the removal of a sentence in the post-meeting statement. The statement no longer mentioned that "the Committee anticipates that some...
ETH MOVING SHANGHIGHER As we mentioned last week, the market was overly pessimistic regarding the supply-side effects of the upcoming Ethereum staking withdrawals. Factors such as existing liquidity for most stakers, withdrawal queue limitations, and a market that de-risked in anticipation of the Shapella upgrade all helped to reduce the likelihood of a sudden supply overhang. With this in mind, it seemed reasonable to expect an ETHBTC rally in the...
SHAPELLA ARRIVES We are now less than a week away from staking withdrawals being enabled on the Ethereum network. We have been discussing this topic frequently throughout our research, but to reiterate, we maintain that the market is overly pessimistic about the supply-side effects of this event. To reiterate the key points behind our rationale:LIQUIDITY ACCESS FOR MOST STAKERS: Approximately 60% of the staked ETH is through liquid staking providers...
BOND VOLATILITY MOVING LOWER IS GOOD FOR LIQUIDITY Over the past few weeks, we have discussed how the ongoing banking crisis, the Fed's language shift and easing monetary policies from major central banks have led to increased net liquidity in the U.S. and higher global USD liquidity. _Source: Bloomberg, Fundstrat_ One risk that these absolute liquidity levels face is a negation by the Fed’s reverse repo facility. The Reverse Repo...
DOVISH FED STATEMENT On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve raised the target Fed Funds rate range by 25 basis points (BPS), marking the ninth increase in just over a year. The FOMC statement hinted at a nearing end to rate hikes by removing the reference to "ongoing increases." According to the FOMC's updated forecast, there will be one more rate increase this year, and officials expect slower economic growth in 2023...
IT MIGHT NOT “TECHNICALLY” BE QE, BUT QT IS OVER A common refrain among Bitcoin advocates has been “short the banks, long BTC.” Over the past couple of weeks, we have seen the closest manifestation of this trade since the inception of the Bitcoin network. There remain apparent concerns about the health of the US banking system, specifically related to the duration mismatch issues plaguing traditional banking institutions and depositors'...
MOST SIGNIFICANT BANKING FAILURE SINCE THE GFC Our clients know the rationale behind our bullish perspective on crypto this year. Consumer prices are broadly trending lower, peak-tightening occurred last year (on a rate-of-change basis), and global liquidity conditions have been more favorable than many anticipated. We also felt comfortable that most of the “forced selling” from market participants exiting the ecosystem was behind us. Unfortunately, over the past few weeks,...
ANOTHER RINSE Last week, we talked about the futures market getting ahead of its skis, trading with increased leverage despite a continued lack of follow-through in spot market demand. Well, rates and the dollar have remained stubbornly high on the back of continued hawkish rhetoric from central bankers, and as we will discuss below, global liquidity has pulled back in recent weeks. Thus, bulls received another blow on Thursday evening...
BULLS OUT OVER THEIR SKIS IN THE SHORT TERM This was obviously a disappointing week for the bulls. We have yet to see the rollover in yields that we were anticipating in the near term, and as a result, crypto is starting to catch up with global equities. We can see below that an apparently overzealous derivatives market exacerbated the lack of follow-through in the spot market. Below we map...