BTC continues to trade rangebound, even after an exciting rally that occurred on Tuesday. The war of words on X continues between the White House and China, with the Trump team nuking the rally on Tuesday after BTC hit a high of $114,180 intraday. Options markets are displaying short term steepness in term structure showing an increase in near-term volatility, with skew pushing negative as market participants position themselves for protection while price direction remains uncertain. BTC is trading above its 200 day SMA of roughly $108,300, but well below critical levels in the 50 and 100 day SMA’s. With Microstrategy (Nasdaq: MSTR)  announcing much smaller purchases of bitcoin than in the past, and BTC flows on the lower side this week so far (roughly $340m through EOD Wednesday), the market needs a catalyst to decide more directional movement. Back to the crab market we go, for now.

Ethereum is showing more weakness in the current market structure than Bitcoin, with implied volatility falling below realized volatility, eliminating positive carry for options traders and showing that the market expects the Ether price to grind downwards in the near term. This does offer interesting trade structures in derivatives for those sophisticated enough to take advantage of options and futures markets, with those who view the volatility at an attractive enough level to take some long exposure.

Meanwhile, Solana is up 5% on the day so far, as traders see Solana continuously staying above its 200 day moving average, and constant new ecosystem developments enticing more activity occurring on-chain. The token launch platforms of pump.fun and bonk have been seeing much more activity since the wipeout of October 10th, along with the likes of Jupiter releasing a new version of their platform.

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