Just as the market anticipated BTC/ETH will continue its consolidation and volatility, similar to the past few days, a sudden surge in BTC occurred after the 16:00 settlement today. BTC swiftly climbed back to the 31,000 level and even touched ~31,500, almost the highest price in the past 13 months. This rapid rise in BTC price restored the market's volatility, mitigating the earlier decline throughout the day. Despite the market continued to fall after yesterday's options settlement, prices managed to readjust before the settlement. Consequently, BTC and ETH were ultimately delivered at 30,826.49 (+0.14%) and 1,926.9 (-0.52%) respectively.
The crypto market has been lacking upward momentum in recent days, and once again testing the critical thresholds of 30,000 and 1,900, causing some investors to lose patience gradually. The volatility of intraday options has increased, and the volatility skew for short to mid term options is skewed towards put options, and ETH 25dRR has returned to negative territory. Consequently, retail investors have shifted their focus to put options, leading to a rare P/C Ratio of 1.21 for BTC options. Traders have been actively acquiring a significant number of put options expiring this Friday, particularly in the strike price range of 28,000 to 30,000. Additionally, within the last 24 hours, approximately 1,400 31,000-C options were sold on Deribit, with the majority expiring at the end of this month.
On the other hand, block traders continue to adhere to a bullish long-term investment strategy. Significant purchases were made in the form of Call Spreads for BTC 29Dec23/29Mar24 and ETH 25Aug23/29Dec23, constituting the most significant strategies for these two currencies yesterday. Furthermore, towards the end of July, there was trading activity involving a bearish volatility strategy utilizing Short Strangle/Straddle. The volatility of ETH 28Jul23 decreased by -3% to reach a low of 40.80.
