Crypto Research

IDIOSYNCRATIC OPPORTUNITIES ABOUND The euphoric part of the bull market for crypto was largely about finding the fastest horse paired with one’s relative risk appetite. Unfortunately, in a bear market, most horses, notably the weaker or tired ones, no longer want to race. However, the past few months have revealed that ample opportunities exist to find the few horses that have some giddy-up in them. The two environments require fundamentally...

COINS DO NOT CARE ABOUT EPS As we have addressed over the past month, cryptoassets were nonreactive to the onslaught of gruesome tech earnings this week. At the time of writing, bitcoin, ether, and the rest of the crypto ecosystem have vastly outpaced the Nasdaq. As we can see below, a major contributing factor to crypto doing so well is yields rolling over for the first time since early October....

EARNINGS REVISITED Below is a chart that is both slightly jarring and fairly intuitive at the same time. The jarring aspect is obviously the rapid ascent of the expected terminal fed funds rate over the past six months. The intuitive part is that bitcoin does not like tightening monetary conditions and has steadily declined in direct opposition to the expected terminal rate. Note that we are using the futures market...

CPI STILL HOT For the second consecutive month, inflation was much hotter than analysts had anticipated. Despite headline CPI easing for the third consecutive month, the headline figure of 8.2% came in above the market consensus of 8.1%, and Core CPI accelerated to 6.6%, the highest in 40 years. Despite some relief in goods inflation, the numbers were not highly constructive for risk markets (or so it would seem). _Source:...

MACRO UPDATE The narrative in macro-land skewed negative this week until a strong jobs report on Friday morning.JOLTs data showed a big surprise to the downside, as job openings declined 10% in August. A job opening total of 10 million was materially lower than the 11 million consensus estimate and was the most significant 1-month decline since the start of COVID. Fewer job openings suggested a softening labor market.ISM Manufacturing...

CRYPTO CONTINUES TO SHOW RELATIVE STRENGTH It was an eventful week in global macro (this is now the default opening line of every note), as consequential headlines rolled across the tape at a rapid clip. Among them:Signs of slowing demand appeared in Apple’s revised agreement with suppliers, and early signs of potential deflation were on display in Nike’s surging inventories.Despite this, the Fed’s preferred inflation figure, PCE, came in extra...

FED RAISED RATES ABOVE FUTURES This week, the Fed went ahead and raised interest rates another 75 bps in its attempt to stimy demand and bring down the prices of consumer goods. While the rate hike was already priced in by the market, the Fed’s revised dot plot was not. The Federal Reserve’s forecast for rates (green line below) was well above the futures market expectations. Thus, asset prices continued...

THE GOOD In what was undoubtedly one of the greatest instances of long-term collaboration and a celebration of human ingenuity, the Ethereum network finally converted from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake in the early morning hours on Thursday. Contrary to most of the Testnet Merges, there were essentially no hiccups, as the execution layer seamlessly merged with the Beacon Chain and miners powered down their GPUs for the final time (or migrated...

FASTEN YOUR SEATBELTS Just like that, we are less than a week away from one of the most consequential events in crypto history. If you are tired of hearing us talk about the Merge, trust us when we say we are also somewhat fatigued and are excited for what lies ahead for crypto in the post-Merge era. As of writing, the Merge is scheduled to take place on Wednesday, September...

SO LONG SUMMER As the sun sets on a tumultuous summer, we bring you a note filled with resolve as we continue to discuss the opportunity that remains on the table for those positioning ahead of the Merge. For those wishing to review a comprehensive summary on the matter, we invite you to check out the report we released this week. Despite the recent selling pressure across risk assets, we...

DESPITE MARKET PULLBACK, JACKSON HOLE WAS NOTHING OF SUBSTANCE Fed Chair Jerome Powell took to the microphone on Friday afternoon for the first time since he announced the Fed’s prior 75 bps rate increase. Powell has mastered the art of tactful political speech, as he used 10 minutes of words to say nothing of substance. While there was a small corner of the market that thought Powell would cavalierly announce...