Chart of The Day: ETH Options Skew Towards Puts

Options traders are seemingly bearish for ETH in the near-term as volume skews rather heavily towards puts as compared to BTC in the same expiry period. BTC options traders seem to be undecided on where the market will head in the near term.
Implied volatility (IV) continues to trend downwards, hitting new yearly lows over the weekend. IV tends to indicate the market’s sentiments on how likely the underlying asset is expected to move, lower means less likely, and higher means more likely.
All eyes will be on tomorrow’s CPI release, the first CPI since the start of the Russian-Ukraine war. The estimates are that US CPI hits 8.4%, making it a four-decade high in inflation, amidst a backdrop of war and supply-chain complications. The high inflation is likely to push the Fed to tighten monetary policy and raise rates quicker.
A contrarian view on why high ETH put volumes could be bullish here is that investors may be buying cheap protection ahead of CPI release as IV falls. Coupled with a continuous net outflow of ETH from exchanges, one can speculate that investors are continuing to accumulate ETH ahead of the merge.
For more markets coverage, see the excerpt below from our latest Monthly Chartbook.

Crypto Purgatory

[Excerpt from our Mar. Monthly Chartbook]

Bitcoin Market Trends

In the last 2 weeks, the GMMA confirmed a full bullish crossover between the short-term MA grouping (blue) and the long-term MA grouping (red). This is the first time that we have seen a confirmed bullish crossover with this tool since the November 2021 ATH, and all previous occurrences of this signal have proved to be fruitful for BTC returns in the next several weeks.
As BTC starts to lose momentum, we are looking for the long-term MA grouping (red) to act as support should price retest this area. This price area is roughly $42K-$43K, which coincides with the other support areas we highlighted, including the high volume support structure on the weekly timeframe and the dynamic HMA ribbon.

Accumulation Trends Favor More Hodlers

The first report Delphi ever published was back in December 2018 when we called the bottom in bitcoin’s price. One of the key indicators that gave us such conviction was our analysis on UTXO trends, specifically the trend in long-term holder behavior. We looked at the % of BTC that hadn’t moved in at least a year and found that each BTC price cycle tended to coincide with the trend in this metric.
Historically, we tend to see this percentage top out close to BTC price bottoms (and vice versa). During BTC bull runs, longer term holders sell into price strength; during bear markets, we see accumulation.
We saw the % of this dormant BTC supply start to bottom late last year just as prices were peaking. We’ve since seen a strong accumulation trend, which is typical of periods of bearish price action. This metric may not have peaked yet, but is certainly one to watch as it nears prior highs (~63%).

For more, Delphi members can see the full Monthly Chartbook here.

Krause House DAO: Empowering Basketball Fans to Buy and Govern an NBA Team

[Excerpt from The Delphi Podcast]

Flex Chapman is the Co-founder of Krause House DAO, a community of basketball fanatics aiming to buy and operate an NBA team. We discuss the feasibility of buying an NBA team, the implications of a fan-governed team, Krause House’s operational structure, and much more.
Resources:
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For more, you can see our latest Delphi Podcast releases here.

Notable Tweets

The Merge Alpha

The Merge – the most significant Ethereum upgrade ever.

Big events like this are often “sell the news” opportunities. Some claim this is what will happen with $ETH.

I disagree.

Here is why $ETH will melt faces after the Merge.
🧵👇

—korpi (@korpi87) April 11, 2022

ERC721R for NFT Refunds

1/ Super proud to introduce ERC721R: A new ERC721 standard moving the market from rugs to refunds.

http://erc721r.org

ERC721R allows minters to return the minted NFT for a refund.

🧵/15

—CryptoFighters Alliance ⚔️ (@CryptoFighters) April 10, 2022

anyCall, The Cross-Chain Messenger

1/#anyCall is officially live!
A generic cross-chain messaging protocol, for cross-chain Dapps
With just one transaction, #anyCall can send arbitrary data, like smart contracts, NFTs, messages, tokens, data, etc…to any other blockchain.

[1/5]

— Multichain (Previously Anyswap)(@MultichainOrg) April 11, 2022