Staking Withdrawal Page Added To Ethereum Website; US Shoots Down Fourth UFO After Spy Balloon Incident

13 Feb 2023, Monday

3:03 AM

BTC	ETH	S&P 500 Futures
$21,819.25	$1,518.00	$4,089.00
(+0.12%)	(-1.66%)	(-0.01%)
Note: All percentages shown above are referenced to the previous business work day's 09:00 (GMT+8)

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January 2023 Market Recap

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Our Daily View

What We Are Covering Today

US shoots down fourth UFO over Lake Huron while China is reportedly preparing to shoot down an object over Qingdao (more in Macro & TradFi)
Kraken stops its staking services to US clients; SushiSwap is launching a new derivative trading product on Cosmos ecosystem with its new acquisition (more in DeFi & CeFi)
BTC reaches inflection point as price crosses the 200-day SMA and realized price; Market order selling volume hits May-22 highs for ETH (more in On-Chain)
Most volume comes from the near-dated options expiring on 17 February for BTC (more in Crypto Derivatives)
Prices remain range bound; ETH forms golden cross with 50-day and 200-day SMA (more in Crypto Technical Analysis)

Macro & TradFi

The US has shot down a fourth unidentified flying object over Lake Huron, while China is reportedly preparing to shoot down an object over its own waters near Qingdao. India’s richest man, Adani's conglomerate has halved its revenue growth target and plans to hold off on fresh capital expenditure due to a decrease in investor confidence after the recent short-seller attack. Equity futures in Asia are indicating declines due to the worst week for US stocks and bonds this year. Israel's President Isaac Herzog warns of the country's imminent "constitutional and social collapse." Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon wishes he acted sooner to cut jobs. Meanwhile, corporate bonds had reversed most of 2022’s widening as government yields remained high but income investors piled back into yield instruments.

US markets closed on a weak footing again last Friday; NASDAQ sold off 0.83% while SPX & DOW better held off. Bonds were down as well; 10-year treasury yields traded 8bps wider to close around 3.75%. Oil traded more than 2.5% higher.

DeFi & CeFi

Aave V3 adds support for $rETH and $USDT
Stablecoin protocol Angle launches gold-backed stablecoin $agGOLD
Nexo stops offering its earn products to US clients following the settlement with the regulators
Paypal suspends its stablecoin project as its partner, Paxos, is under investigation by regulators
Optimism launches its official governance portal “Optimism Agora”
SushiSwap acquires Cosmos derivatives trading protocol Vortex
Staking withdrawal page added to the Ethereum main website
Kraken surrenders to SEC staking bank while Coinbase is still holding its positions to fight for “Economic Freedom”

Following the SEC ban on CEX’s “staking as a service” for US clients due to the product’s yield-bearing nature and its regulatory ambiguity, Kraken has announced that it will automatically unstake all assets staked by the US clients except forstETH which won’t be unstaked until the Shanghai upgrade takes effect. Soon after this announcement, Coinbase’s Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal told its customers that Coinbase will not be affected by this regulatory scrutiny since its yield-bearing products are “fundamentally different” from the on-chain staking services.

On the other hand, SushiSwap acquired the Cosmos-based derivative trading project “Vortex Protocol” on Saturday for an undisclosed amount. Specifically on Vortex, it is built on the Sei Network, a blockchain using the Cosmos SDK. This is an effort for Sushi to expand its product offerings and move to a new blockchain to capture more potential users. As a part of the announcement, Vortex will join under the Sushi umbrella as a new feature, with different names and brandings. Once both Sei and Vortex launch, it will make SushiSwap one of the first Ethereum dApp to move to the Cosmos ecosystem.

On Ethereum, leading into the anticipated Shanghai upgrade, a staking withdrawal page has also been added to the Ethereum website that outlines the unstaking process and the operation details of the staking reward.

On-Chain

For on-chain, bitcoin's price has surpassed both its realized price and the 200-day SMA, indicating a potential bullish reversal. This pattern has been seen before in previous market bottoms, and it could signal the start of a new long-term rising trend for Bitcoin. The last time this occurred was in December 2021 though the trend was short-lived. Before that, a break above the realized price and the 200-day SMA happened in 2019, 2015 and 2012 which preceded a long-term bull run. However, the current macroeconomic factors are a cause for concern, and it remains to be seen if Bitcoin can act as a store of value under these conditions.

Meanwhile, traders are selling Ethereum at an aggressive rate as indicated by the Net Taker Volume metric which measures the difference between Taker Buy and Sell Volume. The current negative value of the metric is the deepest since May 2022, indicating that traders are using market orders to exit their position regardless of the price impact. While Ethereum may bounce in the short term, the signal is particularly accurate when prices are still relatively high but Net Taker Volume is deep in the red. (@cryptoquant).

Crypto Derivatives

BTC and ETH funding rates remain positive
30-day ATM IV fell to 43.53% and 59.67% for BTC and ETH respectively
30-day 25d call skew rose to -0.60% and -3.20% 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
32.59%	XRP	OKX	BYBIT
13.91%	LTC	OKX	BINANCE
13.86%	BTC	OKX	BYBIT
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

For futures, total liquidations in the past 24H amounted to $61.06M, majority coming from longs at $41.67M.

On the options front, IV fell across the curve as term structure remains in contango for both BTC & ETH. Near-dated IV saw a larger drop as compared to longer-dated IV for both BTC & ETH. RV continues its fall, falling to 35.4 for BTC and 50.17 for ETH. Variance risk premium rose to 8.58% for BTC and to 11.84% for ETH.

On the flow front, volume comes mainly from the near-dated options expiring on 17 February. On the ETH side, the most popular strategy is the long straddle, with a notional of $9.09M over the past 24H, as traders look to capture volatility.

Lastly, the VIX held steady at 20.53.

Crypto Technical Analysis

Onto TA, BTC has been trading in the $21.5K-$22K range through the weekend after the price dipped on Friday. RSI is bearish on both the H4 and daily chart, at 38.3 and 47 respectively. If bearish momentum continues, the next support zone could be at the $20.7K level. Price is likely to consolidate prior to the inflation data on Tuesday.

As for ETH, price has been range bound between $1,500 and $1,550 through the weekends. If the $1,500 support is to be broken, the next support zone could be at $1,450-$1,475. H4 RSI seems to be recovering from its Friday lows where it dipped below 30 momentarily while daily RSI remains below the neutral level at 44. Meanwhile, on the daily timeframe, the 50-D SMA has crossed over the 200-D SMA.