• After surging to a two-week high since the ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) should not have rejected the application by Grayscale to convert the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) to a spot exchange-traded fund (ETF), BTC lost all its gains, falling as much as 9% to 25,655. 

  • This was after the SEC delayed the decision on all 7 spot BTC ETF applications filed by applicants including, Blackrock, amongst others.

  • On the other hand, the race to launch spot-backed ETFs continued with the first spot ETH ETF exchange filings from Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest and 21Shares and VanEck.

  • CyberConnect’s CYBER Web3 social network token saw a pump >250% to $16.20 as traders jumped in to capitalise these moves, with funding rates on various exchanges surging to extreme levels.

Options Market  

  • Following BTC’s correction to its current levels, the front-end implied volatility (IV) of BTC fell significantly this week from 39.2% to 32.2%, almost on par with that of ETH. 

  • As highlighted in our weekly report last week on the relatively large discount ETH IV was trading at, the gap has corrected across the expiries this week, closing the spread and even turning slightly positive on the front end. 

  • In a more benign environment, expect this gap to continue to close and for IVs in ETH options to tick up slightly ahead of BTC options. Developments in the ETH ETF space may also spur a bit more action here in the weeks ahead. 

  • The 25-delta skewness of BTC options with various expiration dates is shown in the chart above.

  • Traders have turned more bearish over the medium term with the 25-delta skew in the near to medium term 7-day, 30-day trending lower and even the 60-day expiry dipping temporarily to negative range.

  • Interestingly, the gap in the skewness in the 180-day BTC expiry from the other expiries continues to widen, indicating that sentiment on a more bullish long term BTC price outlook continues to strengthen. 

Macro at a glance 

  • Last Friday Sep 1, 2023

    • The US reported a beat in non-farm payrolls of +187k ahead of the expected 170k, though this was coupled with a higher unemployment rate of 3.8% in August (vs 3.5% the month before). This could be seen as some normalisation and cooling being seen in the US labour market. 

    • US economic activity in the manufacturing sector saw its 10th consecutive month of contraction with the ISM Manufacturing PMI for August at 47.6, up 1.2 from July and ahead of expectations of 47.

  • Last Tuesday Sep 5, 2023 

    • The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) held rates steady at 4.10% for a third consecutive month in a widely expected pause, with the RBA seeing consistent signs of inflation progressing towards the 2-3% target range by 2025. This was the final meeting chaired by Governor Philip Lowe with his term set to end on September 18.  

  • Last Wednesday Sep 6, 2023

    • Australia’s 2Q GDP beat expectations up 2.1% y/y (vs 1.8% expected), and 0.4% q/q (vs 0.3% expected). The resilient growth figures support the likelihood of rates being kept high for longer through to 2024. 

  • Thursday Sep 7, 2023

    • China’s trade slump continues with another monthly decline in both imports and exports in August, though falling less than expected. Exports fell 8.8% y/y, lower than the expected 9.2% y/y fall . Imports fell by 7.3% y/y in August, also beating expectations of a 9% y/y fall.

Convert Portal Volume Breakdown

  • The above table shows the volume breakdown of our Convert Portal. 

  • Stablecoin swap saw a large surge from 9% to 16% following the introduction of  the 1:1 conversion of BUSD to FDUSD. Users are encouraged to convert their BUSD assets prior to February 2024, while Binance highlights that BUSD will always be backed 1:1 by USD.

  • As the market found more footing this week, crypto-to-crypto transactions saw a slight uptick to 13.2% from 12.2% a week ago, indicating more rotation within the space. 

  • This was coupled with the fall in Crypto to Stablecoin volumes from 35% a week ago to 32.5%, reinforcing the direction that traders are HODL-ing, with trends indicating less holding or rotating to stablecoin. 

Why trade OTC?  

Binance offers our clients various ways to access OTC trading, including chat communication channels and the Block Trading platform (https://www.binance.com/en/OTC-Trading) for manual price quotations, or automated price quotations via our Binance Convert and the Binance Convert OTC API. For manual price quotations, you may visit our Block Trading Platform, where you can RFQ (request-for-quote) and trade directly with our OTC trading team via a live chat, or reach out to us via our email at liquidity@binance.com for our trading desk to get in touch with you and get started. 

Alternatively, OTC trades may also be automatically quoted on Binance Convert and via API, offering users a quick and simple way to execute trades across 60,000+ pairs with one simple click. Binance Convert supports over 350 tokens listed on the exchange including fiat pairs. Begin trading from as little as 1 USD. To start, simply navigate to the Binance Convert (https://www.binance.com/en/convert), select the coins you wish to trade, preview and confirm the quote with settlement reflecting almost instantly in your wallet balance. For details and access to  Binance Convert OTC API, please refer to our Convert Endpoints (https://binance-docs.github.io/apidocs/spot/en/#convert-endpoints) and reach out to us at liquidity@binance.com if you have any questions or require assistance.

Visit Binance OTC and Execution Solutions (https://www.binance.com/en/otc) to get more information on our OTC products and solutions. 

Experience the main benefits of Binance Convert and OTC Trading: 

  • Fast & Competitive Pricing 

  • Instant settlement 

  • Widest availability of coins 

  • Bespoke service with unique market insights 

  • Zero fees and slippage 

Email: Liquidity@binance.com 

Join our Telegram to stay up to date with the markets!