Alchemy Pay To Offer Crypto Ramp And Payments For Offshore Chinese Yuan; US-Philippines Balikatan Military Exercise Sends Strong Message to China

11 Apr 2023, Tuesday

3:30 AM

Alchemy Pay To Offer Crypto Ramp And Payments For Offshore Chinese Yuan; US-Philippines Balikatan Military Exercise Sends Strong Message to China

BTC

ETH

S&P Futures 500

$29,898.25

$1,918.00

$4,139.75

(+5.27%)

 (+3.06%)

(+0.17%)

Note: All percentages shown above are referenced to the previous business work day's 09:00 (GMT+8)

GM Treehouser 🌳

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March 2023 Market Recap

Our Daily View

What We Are Covering Today

  • US and Philippines kick off the largest Balikatan military exercise in 30 years immediately after China’s drills around Taiwan (more in Macro & TradFi)
  • ROOK split treasury between DAO and MEV tech builders; AlchemyPay partners with CNHC to provide off-shore Chinese Yuan(more in DeFi & CeFi)
  • BTC whale observed with 22K BTC inflow to new addresses (more in On-Chain)
  • BTC call volume spiked; BTC options open interest surpasses futures for the first time (more in Crypto Derivatives)
  • BTC hits the psychological resistance zone with a large bull rally, moving the market upward (more in Crypto Technical Analysis)

Macro & TradFi

The US and the Philippines have launched the largest version of their annual Balikatan military exercise, in more than 30 years, with over 17,600 military personnel, to focus on developing maritime security and amphibious operations. The drills come a day after China’s drills around Taiwan and mark the culmination of US efforts to restore ties with the Philippines under President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., as both nations seek to push back against Chinese aggression in the South China Sea. The Philippines has vowed to pursue "collective defense" efforts with Washington around the South China Sea to counter Chinese incursions while maintaining good relations with both powers.

Meanwhile, World Bank President David Malpass has condemned Russia’s detention of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich on spying allegations, calling it a “brazen act” that violates freedom of the press. Malpass said the bank considers freedom of the press to be vital and includes ensuring the safety of journalists. Gershkovich has been held in a Moscow prison since March, and the Journal denies the espionage allegation. The State Department has designated Gershkovich as “wrongfully detained”, and more than three dozen top editors of news organizations signed a letter to the Russian ambassador to the US calling for his immediate release.

Lastly, major US markets were generally flat in the last trading session. Specifically, S&P 500, DJIA and NASDAQ moved by +0.09%, +0.30%, and -0.03% respectively. On the treasury notes, 2-year and 10-year Treasury yields have largely stayed the same as well, with the former currently at 3.978% and the latter at 3.411%.

DeFi & CeFi

  • ROOK to split its treasury between the community and MEV tech builders
  • Alchemy Pay and CNHC team up to provide crypto ramp and offshore Chinese Yuan payments
  • Winklevoss twins lent $100M to Gemini, according to Bloomberg
  • Bitget launches $100M Web3 fund aiming at Asian crypto startups
  • LABEL Foundation secures $1M in investment from DWF Labs
  • CryptoGPT raises $10M in funding led by DWF Labs
  • Sushi DEX recovers 100 $ETH after its weekend exploit
  • South Korean Crypto Exchange Gdac was hacked for $13M
  • Coinbase product lead, Vishal Gupta, is departing and plans to start new crypto project
  • Symbiosis integrates zkSync to improve transaction speed and reduce fees

Rook, a crypto project building tools to capture MEV on Ethereum, is proposing a vote to separate its tech from its governance token. The proposal includes splitting Rook's almost $50 million treasury in half between the key builders of Rook tech and a new community-run entity called Incubator DAO. The new DAO will replace Rook DAO and be fully independent, with members getting to decide on everything from the project's name to how to spend its nearly $25 million stash. Rook Labs will continue building the technology with its multisig signers controlling the remaining treasury. The proposal is a compromise between a team eager to build and token holders who feel ignored. The token price has almost tripled since late March.

Alchemy Pay has partnered with CNHC, the world's largest CNH (off-shore Chinese Yuan) stablecoin ecosystem. CNHC's stablecoin is pegged to the CNH at a 1:1 ratio and has full reserves securely stored in a depository institution located in Singapore. This partnership will enable users to buy or sell CNHC using various global fiat currencies through Alchemy Pay's ecosystem. Additionally, CNHC will be listed on Alchemy Pay's ramp, which supports adding payment scenarios and facilitating seamless transfer of CNHC between the traditional finance and crypto world. Alchemy Pay's payment gateway supports payments with Visa, MasterCard, Discover and Diners Club in 173 nations and Apple Pay, Google Pay, and popular mobile wallets in emerging markets. This partnership will provide a practical alternative for businesses and users worldwide, contributing to modernizing global payment systems.

On-Chain

BTC has just broken through the $29.2k mark for the first time since June 10th, 2022. According to @Santiment, this surge may be attributed to a large wallet acquiring a total of 22k $BTC ($655M) in 11 split transactions. Eight of these transactions occurred simultaneously at 17:28 UTC, while the other three occurred simultaneously at 18:25 UTC, indicating that these wallets likely belong to the same entity. As a result, the price of BTC is now at the $30K mark for the first time since June.

Meanwhile, in the Polygon (MATIC) market, there have been eight transactions worth $33M or more in the past week, which raises concerns about the movement of tokens to smart money. The figure below illustrates an exchange wallet address that sold over 100M MATIC last Wednesday, right at the local price top, indicating a correlation between the holdings of large wallets, illustrated in pink, and the price of MATIC, illustrated in yellow. This wallet has resumed accumulation today.

Currently, the MATIC supply remaining on exchanges is 7.1%, the lowest since its introduction four years ago, suggesting limited continued selling activity in the short term (@Santiment).

Crypto Derivatives

  • BTC and ETH funding rates remain positive
  • 30-day ATM IVs for BTC and ETH increased to 60.00% and 61.00% respectively
  • 30-day 25 delta call skew for BTC tightens to 3.05% while ETH flips to call premium at 3.57%

Top 3 CEX USDT perp funding rate arbitrage based on last 24-hour lookback:

Net Annualized APR

Perp (USDT pair)

Long on

Short On

12.38%

ETH

BINANCE

DYDX

10.72%

BTC

BYBIT

BINANCE

10.67%

BNB

BYBIT

BINANCE

Source: @CexyArbBot Telegram

1) Pairs observed include BTC, ETH, SOL, BNB, XRP, LTC, DOGE vs USDT perps 

2) CEX observed include Binance, Bybit, OKX & DYDX

@CexyArbBot allows you to customize CEX, 100+ pairs & lookback periods combo

The futures market saw $99.57M in liquidations in the last 24 hours, with shorts accounting for the majority at $82.94M as prices rallied.

In the options market, the term structure for both BTC and ETH remained relatively flat, while the kink in the near-term steepened. ETH skew flipped into call premium, indicating traders' bullish sentiment, likely in anticipation of the Shapella upgrade. The 7-day IV increased for both BTC and ETH, sitting at 63.7% and 67.53%, respectively, while RV continued to fall. Variance risk premium continued to widen and hit an ATH for the current year at 30.75% for BTC and 29.01% for ETH.

For the first time, open interest (OI) on BTC options ($10.3B) surpassed futures ($10B). Futures' open interest has been relatively flat throughout 2023 while investors continue to pile into call options as they speculate on higher $BTC prices.

On the flow side, BTC call options volume skyrocketed while put options volume remained tame. The end-of-week 14 Apr, end-of-month 28 Apr, and the following month's 26 May contracts attracted the majority of call volume. ETH volume remains normal despite the highly anticipated Shapella upgrade coming this Wednesday.

Upside buying came in strong for BTC, with notable trades including the purchase of 1.4K contracts of 26 May 38K calls and 700 contracts of 28 Apr 34K calls. Call calendars also appeared to be popular, with 1548 contracts of 28 Apr 32K/26 May 42K and 578 contracts of 28 Apr 31K/26 May 40K (@tradeparadigm).

Finally, the VIX rose to 18.97.

Crypto Technical Analysis

On the TA front, BTC has seen a huge pump that led the bullish movement in the entire crypto market. On the 4H timeframe, BTC broke through resistances at $28.4K and $28.8K. There are currently no significant resistances in sight until the $31K level at the 1D timeframe, representing a near 5% upside from the current level. However, $30K is an important psychological resistance zone that will largely determine the short-term price movement between further upside or a slight pullback. The RSI for BTC has entered the highly overbought zone, with values of 71.4 and 85.7 for 1D and 4H, respectively.

Turning to ETH, the bull rally was primarily driven by the BTC pump, resulting in a gain of over 5% since midnight. At the moment, ETH is testing the slight resistance at the local high of approximately $1.92K, with no clear sign of a breakout yet. If the price breaks through this level, it will likely test the upper trendline formed by the local higher highs at roughly $1.97K to $1.99K. However, a pullback is highly likely due to BTC's psychological resistance zone and the abnormally high 4H RSI of 74.1.

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