Maple 2.0 Launched Amid Credit Defaults; Assets Cool After Hawkish Fed Remarks

15 Dec 2022, Thursday

2:38 AM

BTC	ETH	S&P Futures 500
$17,791.00	$1,304.75	$4,042.00
(-0.19%)	(-1.51%)	(-0.54%)
Note: All percentages shown above are referenced to the previous business work day's 09:00 (GMT+8)

GM Treehouser 🌳

Welcome to our Treehouse Daily newsletter (previously known as The Canopy Collective), where Treehouse brings you financial news and insights free daily! We believe you’ll find this helpful.

In case you have missed it, check out our latest insights piece 👇

Delta Neutral Strategies, The Neutralizer Of Your Portfolio

Our Daily View

What We Are Covering Today

Powell’s more-hawkish-than-expected stance sends indices retreating from CPI highs (more in Macro & TradFi)
Maple Finance releases Maple 2.0 update to the platform (more in DeFi & CeFi)
Whales continue to accumulate BTC and stablecoins (more in On-Chain)
BTC and ETH 7-day ATM IV fell drastically (more in Crypto Derivatives)
BTC and ETH reject key resistance levels, swinging lower post-FOMC (more in Crypto Technical Analysis)

Macro & TradFi

Chairman Powell turned out more hawkish than the stance priced in by Fed Funds futures, saying that Feb 2023 rate hike magnitude would be data-dependent thus leaving another 50bps hike open. Today the baton is passed onto ECB, whose decision is closely watched by traders after the European currency rallied 9 out of the past 10 weeks, strengthening more than 11% since the trough on Sept 26. China’s Nov industrial production number is also on the watch after the Central Economic Work Conference was first “postponed” and then resumed to normal scheduling, instigating talks about wavering determination towards reopening among the highest ranked.

US Stocks snapped 2-day rally after FOMC. NASDAQ lost 0.5%, S&P 0.37% and DOW 0.34%. Japan stocks opened ~0.5% lower to lead Asia markets to a weaker start. The US Treasury curve traded more resilient amid hawkish Powell - the 10y benchmark yields jumped as much as 10bps wider before recovering about half the loss. Both oil benchmarks extended rallies while gold consolidated.

DeFi & CeFi

Metamask now supports the purchase of ETH through PayPal
Maple Finance releases Maple 2.0
Binance resumes USDC withdrawals
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) releases paper criticizing the lack of regulation in crypto
Ava Labs releases Core Mobile crypto wallet on Android devices

Maple Finance has released version 2.0 of their platform, which focuses on diversifying borrowers and improving risk management parameters. Maple 2.0 introduces a quicker default process that allows pool delegates to declare an early default should a borrower breach any of the terms of the agreement, allowing delegates to liquidate loans and pursue recovery efforts more instantaneously. Additionally, the existing 30-day capital lock-up period will also be removed, allowing lenders to deposit and request withdrawals at any time. Maple believes that these updates will help the platform widen its range of institutional borrowers so that there will be fewer risks from sector concentration.

A paper released by OECD shed light on the risk involved in liquid staking, derivatives backed by illiquid locked assets and lending/borrowing protocols. It also analyzed the collapse of TerraUSD which found major price differences between CEXs and DEXs due to malfunctioning oracles on DEXs, allowing for profit from arbitrage.

On-Chain

Number of addresses holding 100 to 10,000 BTC have bought an additional $726m in BTC over the past 9 days. Assets such as USDT, BUSD and DAI have also seen a spike in buying activity from $100k to $10m wallets.

Elsewhere, the percentage of BTC supply that has been taken off centralized exchanges has been on the rise for almost 3 years. Over 88% of BTC supply has been moved on-chain (@WClementeIII).

Crypto Derivatives

BTC and ETH funding rates remain positive during US trading hours
BTC and ETH 7-day ATM IV fell from 52 to 39 and 73 to 54 respectively
BTC and ETH put skew tightened overnight

Total liquidations amounted to $58M with 53% belonging to long positions.

BTC term structure remains in contango, IV across expiries higher than last week. Put skew tightened for BTC falling from 8% to 6%. For ETH, term structure is in contango as well but IV has flattened out for far-dated expiries. ETH put skew fell from 8% to 6% as well.

On the flows side, BTC 30 June 2023 30K calls were the top traded instruments in the past 24 hours, while short strangles has been the most traded strategies together with bull diagonal calls. For ETH, 31 March 2023 1.9K and 2.4K calls were the most popularly traded yesterday while most traded bull call spreads.

Crypto Technical Analysis

Looking at TA, BTC maintained its hold, ticking 0.17% higher to $17.8K. BTC reached an intraday high of $18.4K after an anticipated 50 bps rate hike by the Fed, soaring past its 50-d MA level. However, it failed to break the resistance zone of $18.2K-$18.6K, dropping sharply during FOMC press conference. On the daily, RSI has held steady at 56 after breaking the neutral level. Currently, the next level of support can be found at $17.5K to stabilize the downturn.

ETH fell 1% to $1.31K, after reaching an intraday high of $1.35K. ETH was heavily rejected after an attempt to test the upper bound of its $1.3K-$1.34K resistance zone. Currently, ETH has given up all of its post-CPI gains and may find support at the $1.26K support level.

Join Our Christmas Quest 🎄

Stand to be 1 of 100 to walk away with 25 USDT!

Take Me to the Quest!

Daily Readings

TradFi

Crypto

Yours sincerely,
Treehouse Research 🌳

Share