Equity Falls Further Amidst Further Uncertainties In The Banking Sector; US Court Orders SEC To Respond To Coinbase Petition

05 May 2023, Friday

5:21 AM

BTC	ETH	S&P Futures 500
$28,966.75	$1,881.25	$4,091.00
(-0.35%)	(-1.13%)	(-0.13%)
Note: All percentages shown above are referenced to the previous business work day's 09:00 (GMT+8)

GM Treehouser 🌳

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April 2023 Market Recap

Our Daily View

What We Are Covering Today

Stocks fall as investors turn to safe-haven assets amid economic uncertainty (more in Macro & TradFi)
US Court gives SEC 10 days to respond to Coinbase’s petition; Coinbase ceasing lending program on 10 May (more in DeFi & CeFi)
Unknown whale swaps almost all of his $3M holdings into PEPE (more in On-Chain)
IV continues to bleed lower alongside majors; BTC call skew outperforms ETH as the former remains a safe haven bid amidst banking crisis (more in Crypto Derivatives)
BTC and ETH display bullish momentum through ascending channels, with a symmetrical triangle breakout for BTC and strong buyer presence for ETH (more in Crypto Technical Analysis)

Macro & TradFi

U.S. stocks fell as government bonds and gold rallied on Thursday. The market continued to be plagued by anxieties surrounding the economic outlook and regional banks, despite assurances from the Federal Reserve that the banking system is sound and resilient. One of the highlights of the day was the earnings report from Apple, which reported its second straight quarter of declining revenue. While Mac and iPad sales declined, iPhone sales surged due to strong demand in emerging markets, showcasing the tech giant's resilience amidst economic uncertainty. Apple also exceeded analyst expectations in both revenue and earnings, posting $94.8 billion in sales and $22.6 billion in net income for its fiscal second quarter. As of Thursday, 80% of firms listed in the S&P 500 had released their earnings reports for the fourth quarter, with 78% of these companies surpassing the earnings estimates predicted by analysts, according to FactSet.

Worries about potential bank failures continued to grip the market after regulators seized First Republic Bank and struck a deal to sell the bulk of its operations to JPMorgan Chase. Shares of three midsize lenders - PacWest Bancorp, Western Alliance Bancorp, and First Horizon - fell more than 30%, while a broad index of regional banks dropped 3.5% to its lowest level since 2020.

The S&P 500 declined 0.7%, the DJIA declined 0.9%, and the Nasdaq Composite lost 0.5%. Investors also added to bets that the Fed would cut interest rates later in the year, indicating an anticipated slowdown in economic growth and inflation. The yield on the two-year U.S. Treasury note, which is sensitive to the near-term interest-rate outlook, fell to 0.727% from 0.939%, while interest-rate futures indicated a greater than 50% chance that the Fed would cut rates by the end of its July meeting. Meanwhile, the yield on the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury note fell to 3.350% from 3.401% on Wednesday, while gold settled near a record high at $2,048.00 per troy ounce.

DeFi & CeFi

US Court orders SEC to respond to Coinbase’s petition in 10 days
Coinbase Borrow will stop issuing new loans from 10 May onwards
Hamilton Lane offers Polygon-based tokenized access to second fund
SushiSwap rolls out V3 concentrated liquidity pools on 13 chains
ZkLink raises $10M ahead of mainnet launch
AlienSwap raises $12M led by NEXT Leader Capital and C² Ventures
Curve Finance crvUSD stablecoin redeployed due to mistake in deployment script
Blockchain audit company Statemind finds 120 total issues in Lido V2, which is expected to go live in mid-May
OrcDAO announces ORC-20 which is meant to be an enhanced version of BRC-20
OKX reveals $SUI trading incident and develops compensation plans
Alibaba Cloud builds metaverse launchpad on Avalanche

The US Court has issued an order for SEC to respond to Coinbase’s petition, which includes 50 specific questions on regulatory treatment of digital assets, within 10 days. Coinbase filed a lawsuit in April requesting the court to compel the SEC to publicly disclose its stance on a petition submitted back in July 2022. The SEC's response could potentially bring more regulatory clarity on cryptocurrency in the US.

Coinbase announced that Coinbase Borrow would cease to issue new loans from 10 May onwards. The lending program allows US-based customers to borrow up to $1M against 30% of their BTC holdings. This might be another move of Coinbase to move out of the US, along with opening an offshore crypto derivative exchange in Bermuda.

Hamilton Lane, an investment firm with $824B AUM, is offering tokenized access to their Senior Credit Opportunity (SCOPE) Fund through a partnership with Secrutize which acts as a feeder fund. This would be the second out of three funds that they are looking to tokenize. Tokenization allows for a lower minimum investment from $2M to $10K, and token holders can redeem their shares at the previous quarter's NAV per share with no additional transaction fees.

On-Chain

A whale movement was observed by @lookonchain, in which the whale exchanged almost all of its assets (including ~20.6 WBTC and ~20 ETH amongst others) for 1.72 trillion PEPE at an average buying price of $0.0000005533. This could be the whale riding the wave of positive sentiments following PEPE’s perpetual swap listings on Bitmex and Bybit the day prior. This also further pumps the demand for PEPE, which is currently trading at roughly $0.0000022.

Meanwhile, @santiment has just published the newest list of chains with the highest developer activities in the past 30 days. Santiment tracks developer activities by looking at the number of GitHub events that the project organization has generated, which include the number of code pushes, number of pull requests, number of wiki edits, amongst others. According to the data, Polkadot, Kusama, and Cardano remain to be the most developed projects, while Ethereum has taken a step back to near the end of the list in April.

Crypto Derivatives

BTC and ETH funding rates remain positive
30-day ATM IV fell to 48.28% and 48.27% for BTC and ETH respectively
30-day 25-delta skew fell to 2.72% and 0.60% for BTC and ETH respectively

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

Net Annualized APR	Perp (USDT pair)	Long on	Short On
9.77%	BNB	OKX	BINANCE
8.97%	ETH	DYDX	BYBIT
7.05%	DOGE	OKX	DYDX
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 $56.41M in liquidations with the majority coming from long liquidations.

On the options front, IV continues to bleed lower alongside majors. The term structure remains in contango, while the rear end of the curve continues to flatten. RV has been grinding lower in the last couple of days, giving carry trades breathing room as VRP returns to positive territory. The ETH-BTC IV spread is now trading at parity as BTC IV has outperformed ETH IV, owing mostly to recent events in the banking crisis, giving BTC the safe-haven bid in contrast to ETH.

This can be confirmed by looking at skew. While BTC's short-term skew is more volatile, fluctuating between positive and negative territory. Long-term skew on BTC, on the other hand, is more steady on the call side. Meanwhile, skew on ETH is much lower than on BTC, closer to puts, implying that any resurgence in ETH vol would be associated with the downside, particularly if crypto begins to recouple with risk assets.

On the flow side, heavy IV selling was observed with notable trades such as 250x BTC-29SEP23 26K/34K wide strangle sold and 4000x ETH-29SEP23-1900 straddle sold. Meanwhile, upside buying persists on BTC as call spreads and calls dominate across the tape (@tradeparadigm).

Finally, the VIX added 0.80% points, rising above the 20% handle for the first time since 28 March 2023. Meanwhile, the VIX1D remains bid above 20% as well, indicating high short-term volatility.

Crypto Technical Analysis

For BTC, on the 1-hour timeframe, the price bounced off the resistance at $28.8K, and a large green candle formed in the last hour. The higher highs and higher lows show an ascending channel for the price of BTC, presenting a potential upside of 0.85% at $29.5K.

On the 1-day chart, a symmetrical triangle has formed, with a breakout to the upside. The symmetrical triangle is a continuation pattern that suggests the prevailing trend is likely to continue once the price breaks out of the pattern. Looking at the nearest support and resistance zones, BTC could experience a potential upside of 7% to 30K and a potential downside of 4.4% to 28.8K. The RSI for the 1-hour and 1-day timeframes is 65.04 and 55.75, respectively, showing that buying pressure is currently dominating the market.

For ETH, on the 1-hour timeframe, the bullish momentum has carried through from BTC, and a large bullish candle has formed in the last hour, signaling that buyers are currently in control and pushing the price higher.

On the 1-day chart, a similar ascending channel pattern has emerged. If the price continues to follow the channel, there is an upside potential of 10% at $2.1K and a downside risk of 2.2% at $1.84K. These levels correspond to the upper and lower bounds of the channel, which can act as dynamic support and resistance. However, the $2K level remains a strong psychological resistance that needs to be broken for the channel to continue to be respected. Lastly, the RSI for the 1-hour and 1-day timeframes has increased to 63.15 and 55.03, respectively.

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