Optimism rose among derivatives traders as bitcoin broke back through $70,000. Is the market setting up for another leg down, or will we finally break through the ATH convincingly?
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Bitcoin rallied on Monday despite negative ETF flows
Bitcoin climbed steadily throughout last week, accompanied by shallow positive net inflows to global BTC ETPs. Somewhat uncharacteristically, crypto prices rallied yesterday despite BTC ETFs experiencing the first significant net outflows in the last 10 trading days. This shows that while ETP flows are highly important for price discovery, they are not everything.
CME premiums spiked after yesterday’s rally
Premiums on CME futures fell throughout last week despite BTC’s steady rise from last Tuesday’s $65,000. However, yesterday’s rally injected renewed optimism into CME traders. The annualized BTC premium rose from a three-month low of 9% on Friday to 13.5% on Monday. Funding rates for Ethereum futures continue to trail bitcoin futures as traders, speaking with their money, expect the previous months’ underperformance to continue.
Active market participants on CME continue to unwind positions
Retail traders entered the market aggressively with leverage over the weekend. When prices turned sour on Monday, this led to a quick liquidation cascade towards $65,000. Is the market now fully deleveraged, or is it more downside liquidation potential?lg...more
In this report, we present a framework aiming to describe which factors are relevant for bitcoin's price discovery, the interplay between them, and how their importance varies over time.lg...more
There are short-term factors like the new U.S. ETFs and the upcoming Bitcoin halving. But the longer-term case rests on larger macro factors, says Torbjørn Bull Jenssen.lg...more