13 September 2021

Market Recap

Following last Tuesday’s flash crash, market spent the week consolidating. The flash crash was rather unexpected, as usual signs of exuberance, including funding rate (Chart 1), Kimchi premium, and GBTC premium, were absent; quickly rising futures open interest (Chart 2) and prices were slightly concerning but not dealbreakers.

6 September 2021

Market Recap

Both bitcoin and ether broke out of their consolidation zone — bitcoin broke through $50k resistance on 9/5 amidst thin weekend liquidity, while ether has been consolidating since bulldozing through $3,400 on 9/1/2021. ETHBTC is now at upper range of 0.055–0.082 zone. Pretty much everything went up last week, so as long as one has some crypto exposure, s/he would’ve done pretty well, but alternative Layer-1 tokens ($SOL +41%, $DOT +33%, FTM +102%) and Web3-related tokens ($LINK +30%, $FIL +56%) especially did well. Ethereum DeFi protocols continued to lag behind its counterparts (DPI +15%), and…

30 August 2021

Market Recap

Nothing much has changed in the last week — broader crypto market continues to hover above $2tn market cap, while BTC and ETH are trading sideways. Market continues to be idiosyncratic, with the moon ($LUNA, +25%) and the sun ($SOL, +34%) outperforming, with reflexive relationship between TVL and token value. Satori was more interested in $RAY (leading DEX on the Solana blockchain), as large price differences were observed across platforms on Friday (20% higher on Binance vs. FTX); we turned bullish upon the observation. Move higher in $RAY (+40% since Friday) led $SOL (+15%) and…

23 August 2021

Market Recap

With little negative news and trend being our friend, crypto bull market playbook continues to unfold. Big 2 are largely quiet — ETH is continuing to consolidate, and BTC is testing $50k, following piercing through $48k resistance level. It is, however, Layer-1 season now — smart-contract platforms like $AVAX (+176%) and $ATOM (+41%) outperformed with the launch of liquidity mining programme and first DEX, respectively. Other platforms like $ADA (+29%), $DOT (+22%), $SOL (+37%), $LUNA (+43%) did well as well. Kimchi premium and GBTC premium remain little changed from last week (Chart 1, 2), but…

16 August 2021

Market Recap

You know it’s bull market when bad news are discounted — passing of infrastrcture bill with no change to the definition of crypto ‘broker’ and biggest DeFi hack in history ($662mio) did little to stem crypto rally, and retail favourites/legacy tokens like Cardano (+52%), XRP (+68%), DOGE (+41%), and Polygon (+39%) outperformed BTC (+10%) and ETH (+13%). Funding rate also turned positive (‘Top 5 Crypto KPI’), but other indicators, such as Kimchi premium and GBTC premium — common gauges for exuberance — remained under control (Chart 1, 2).

9 August 2021

Market Recap

Instead of being ‘buy the rumour, sell the fact’ event, London upgrade proved a catalyst for move higher in crypto, as market participants clamoured to gain exposure with an important riskevent past and safe; amount of ether being burned probably helped too. Given ether has rallied >80% and bitcoin >50% from 7/20 local bottom with very little pullback, some retracement has been expected; however, funding remains relatively neutral (Chart 1) and open interest remains at reasonable levels (Chart 2), so we think further short squeeze is possible.

2 August 2021

Market Recap

Ethereum’s on-chain activity is heating up ahead of London upgrade on Wednesday. Following market crash in May, on-chain activity cooled down (Chart 1) as demand for dog-themed tokens and yield-generating opportunities diminished.

NFT boom, led by explosive growth in Axie Infinity ($AXS) usage and revenue, and new NFT collections such as ‘Stoner Cats’, ‘The Vogu Collective’ and ‘Animetas’, is now leading Ethereum’s on-chain activities (Chart 2).

26 July 2021

Market Recap

Cascade of short crypto liquidations (Chart 1), 85% of which were bitcoin positions, pushed spot higher, bringing bitcoin to briefly trade over $39,000 today for the first time since June 17.

As mentioned in Friday’s letter, BTC has broken above declining trendline from 6/15, and with further breakout from hourly rising wedge (Chart 2), bitcoin price quickly from $32,500 to $38,000 on thin weekend/Monday morning liquidity. Bitcoin outperformed in this bout of rally, but we expect rest of the alts to play catchup should the rally be sustained.