Crypto × AI Morning Brief #11 | Fed Holds Rates 10–2, December Hike Probability Rises to 86%
The Fed held rates steady on Wednesday, but two members voted for a hike, pushing the probability of a December hike to 86%. That same evening, Alphabet's free cash flow turned negative at $9.07 billion, and its shares fell more than 10% after hours. Rising rate-hike expectations and falling AI stocks meant that even three consecutive days of net inflows into BTC ETFs failed to lift prices. BTC traded between 80,397 and 81,823 over 24 hours. ━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🔥 Today's 3 Most Important Things 1) The Fed voted 10–2 to hold rates at 3.75%–4%; the probability of a December rate hike is 86%. In September, the Fed raised rates for the first time since 2023. This time, it paused as expected. Governor Cook and Cleveland Fed President Hammack favored another 25-basis-point hike. CME data show the probability of a December hike rose to 86%, up from 76% a week ago and 78% the previous day.
Quant Trading Brief #200 | Short VVV on a rebound below 24.47; long XPIN on a pullback
━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🔁 Yesterday's review The HUMA long reached Target 1 after triggering, with a maximum unrealized profit of 15.05%; it is now up 9.62%. BTW short has triggered and is still open, with a maximum unrealized profit of 6.63%; it is now up 3.19%. AIN, which is watch-only with no trade, fell as much as 19.15% in a day. Over the past 30 days, 12 trades have closed: 6 reached Target 1 and 6 hit their stop-loss. ━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📊 Market overview Today I have one short and one long position, both small, with VVV as the priority. BTC is up 0.62% since the previous update, but the long-position share has fallen from 67.3% to 65.5%, suggesting some long positions are being closed as the price rises.
Crypto × AI Morning Briefing #10 | BTC ETFs swing to $110M in net inflows; ETH ETFs see $88.58M in outflows
US spot BTC ETFs saw $110 million in net inflows on Monday, ending combined net outflows of $770 million on Thursday and Friday last week. ETH spot ETFs saw $88.58 million in net outflows the same day. The Nasdaq rose 1.2% on Tuesday as AI stocks rebounded for a second consecutive day, while BTC gained just 0.95% to close at $80,910. Ahead of Thursday’s early-morning rate decision, direction still depends on ETF flows and rate expectations. ━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🔥 3 biggest stories today 1) BTC ETFs see $110 million in net inflows; ETH ETFs see $88.58 million in net outflows Farside data shows that BTC spot ETFs saw $110 million in net inflows on Monday, around one-sixth of the $636 million in net outflows last Thursday. October’s cumulative net outflows narrowed to about $200 million. ETH spot ETFs saw $88.58 million in net outflows: BlackRock’s ETHA had $104.7 million in outflows, Fidelity’s FETH saw $16.13 million in inflows, and the other funds were roughly flat.
Perpetuals Quant Brief #199 | CHIP reached Target 1 yesterday; short BTW and long HUMA today
━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🔁 Yesterday’s recap The CHIP long reached Target 1 after triggering, with a maximum unrealized profit of 10.43%; it’s still up 8.15%. The ORDER short hit its stop loss after triggering, but the price later pulled back and is now 8.74% below where it was when selected. Q, which we’re only watching and not trading, can drop as much as 74.91% in a day. Over the past 30 days, 11 trades have closed: 5 reached Target 1 and 6 hit their stop losses. ━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📊 Market overview Today I’m taking one long and one short with small positions, prioritizing HUMA. BTC is up 0.91% from the previous update, but the 1-hour taker buy/sell ratio is only 0.8, with more selling than buying, so the rebound is weak.
Crypto × AI Morning Brief #9 | Strategy Pauses BTC Buying; ETFs See $770M in Outflows Over Two Days
BTC spot ETFs saw combined net outflows of $773.5 million last Thursday and Friday. Strategy also made no BTC purchases last week, meaning both major buyer groups—ETFs and publicly listed companies—slowed at the same time. On Monday, Anthropic's IPO filing helped lift the Nasdaq 0.82%. BTC closed at $80,151, almost unchanged from its opening price. Ahead of the Fed's rate decision, the market's direction will depend mainly on rate expectations and fund flows. ━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🔥 Today's 3 Most Important Stories 1) Strategy pauses buying for a week, average price: $75,446 From October 19 to 25, Strategy neither bought nor sold BTC, ending its five-week buying streak and holding 848,517 BTC; during the same period, it spent $204.9 million buying back preferred shares. This came after MSCI proposed this month that it might remove companies like these from its indexes, making it harder for them to issue shares to buy crypto. Bitmine added just 10,452 ETH last week, using more of its funds for stock buybacks.
Quantitative Futures Brief #198|CHIP Long as Open Interest Rises 44%; Short ORDER on Rebound
━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🔁 Yesterday in review The ENA long was triggered and reached Target 1, with a maximum unrealized profit of 5.71%; it is still up 2.79%. The BULLA long was triggered and hit its stop-loss, after which the price rose to 66% above its level when selected—the stop was set too tight. APR, which was watch-only, fell as much as 22.97% in a day and is now 20.05% below its price when selected. Over the past 30 days, 9 trades have settled: 4 reached Target 1 and 5 hit their stop-losses. ━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📊 Overall market today BTC is only a little over 900 points above its 7-day low of 79,179. On the 1-hour chart, aggressive sell orders outnumber buy orders. I’m taking one long and one short today, with small positions; CHIP is the priority.
Crypto × AI Morning Brief #8 | Fed rate decision Thursday; BTC weekly close at 80,154
The Fed will announce its rate decision at 2 a.m. Thursday. All 100 economists surveyed by Reuters expect a December rate hike. BTC closed last week at 80,154, down 2.4% for the week, and traded in a narrow range of 79,846 to 81,034 on Sunday. This week’s direction will depend on rate-hike expectations and the performance of U.S. AI stocks. ━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🔥 The 3 biggest stories today 1) Fed rate decision early Thursday; all 100 economists expect a December rate hike In a Reuters poll conducted October 16–20, 94 economists expected rates to remain at 3.75% to 4.00% this week, while all 100 expected a December rate hike—up from less than half in last month’s poll. The Fed already raised rates by 25 basis points in September.
Contract Quant Brief #197 | ENA Trading Volume: $258M; Long on a Pullback to 0.20024
━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🔁 Yesterday in Review The AKE short reached Target 1, then exited at the entry price, with a maximum unrealized profit of 10.64%. The DOS long was stopped out after triggering; after the stop-out, the price went on to rise 5.43% above its level when selected. JCT, which I only watched and didn’t trade, rose as much as 18.64% and fell as much as 16.03% during the day. It’s now 11.91% below its level when selected. 7 trades have settled in the past 30 days: 3 reached Target 1, and 4 were stopped out. ━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📊 Today's Market Overview Today I’m placing only two pullback long orders, with ENA as the priority, using small positions. BTC is currently at 80,122, down 0.86% from the previous reading. It’s near the lower end of its 7-day range, just 17% up from the bottom, and less than 1,000 points above the 7-day low of 79,179.
Crypto × AI Morning Brief #7 | BTC falls below $80,000; $404 million in long positions liquidated in 4 hours
On Saturday, the U.S. evacuated personnel from embassies and bases in several Middle Eastern countries. BTC fell below $80,000 for the first time in over a month, with $404 million in long positions liquidated within 4 hours. In the previous two trading days, spot BTC ETFs saw combined net outflows of $774 million. Geopolitical risks, ETF redemptions, and leveraged positions being unwound all converged over the same weekend. Ahead of Thursday’s Fed rate decision, short-term volatility is being driven mainly by news from the Middle East. ━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🔥 Today’s 3 biggest stories 1) BTC falls below $80,000; $404 million in long positions liquidated in 4 hours From 8 a.m. to noon ET on Saturday, $404 million in long positions were liquidated—the highest 4-hour total since the night of October 14. BTC hit a low of $79,220 on Binance spot, while 24-hour liquidations across the market reached $815 million, up 218% from the previous day.
Futures Quant Brief #196 | AKE down 19.7%: short the rebound; go long DOS on a pullback
━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🔁 Yesterday in Review The ARIA long reached Target 2 after triggering, with a maximum unrealized gain of 22.6%. ERA didn't return to the entry zone, so the trade wasn't triggered; it later rose as much as 35%. IRYS, which I watched but didn't trade, fell 47.4% in a day. 5 trades closed in the past 30 days: 2 hit Target 1, and 3 were stopped out. ━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📊 Today's Market Overview I'm keeping my positions light today, with one short and one long; prioritizing a short on AKE. BTC is currently at 80,818, down 0.39% from the previous reading and sitting 29% of the way up from the bottom of its 7-day range. A break above 81,079 (the 24-hour high) puts 81,470 and 81,950 in view. A drop below 80,462 would likely lead to a retest of 79,179, the 7-day low.
There are quite a few zero-fee perpetuals exchanges around lately. Let’s talk about Bullet (X: @Bulletxyz).
Bullet was previously known as Zeta Markets, one of the earliest order-book perpetual DEXs on Solana, launched in 2021. It received investments from Jump and Electric Capital, and Solana founder Anatoly was also one of its angel investors. The account dates back to Zeta’s 2021 days, and its followers include core Solana projects and figures such as Solana’s official account, Phantom, Jupiter, and Wintermute’s CEO.
It has built a dedicated trading-only chain on Solana: matching happens on its own chain, while settlement goes back to Solana. The goal is straightforward: make on-chain trading feel closer to trading on a centralized exchange. In its own tests, the median time from order placement to confirmation was 9.4 ms.
As for fees, both opening and closing positions are completely free—there are no fees for maker or taker orders. The official line is that it “only makes money while you hold a position,” meaning it will eventually take a cut of funding fees.
Markets go beyond BTC, ETH, SOL, and HYPE, with perpetual contracts for U.S. stocks, commodities, and indices as well. Margin can be posted in stablecoins, cryptocurrencies, or RWAs.
The Bullet Royale trading competition is underway: - $20,000 total prize pool, split across two rounds - Round one runs from 10/21 to 10/28, with $10,000 in prizes - Rankings are based on profit in USD; first place wins $3,000, and the top 20 all receive prizes
By the way, here’s how it differs from the recently popular Papertrade: Papertrade bets against the protocol’s liquidity pool, offers 1,000x leverage, and only supports BTC and ETH. Bullet uses a real order book, where users trade with one another, and its leverage is much more conservative. Both tout zero fees, but they take completely different approaches.
Crypto × AI Morning Brief #6 | BTC ETFs see $636M in single-day outflows, the largest since June
Spot BTC ETFs saw $636 million in net outflows on Thursday, their largest single-day outflow since June, wiping out nearly 60% of the roughly $1.08 billion in inflows over the previous three days. On the same day, Brent crude rose to its highest level since April, while credit risks for AI computing companies continued to climb. The three developments combined to push BTC back toward the $80,000 mark. ━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🔥 The 3 biggest stories today 1) BTC ETFs swing to $636 million in net outflows What happened: BlackRock’s IBIT saw $254 million in net outflows, Fidelity’s FBTC $218 million, and ARKB $109 million. Morgan Stanley’s MSBT was the only fund to see net inflows, at $2.3 million. October flows have now swung to net outflows of about $176 million.
Quant Futures Brief #195|M up 10.8%, going long ERA and ARIA today
━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🔁 Yesterday’s Recap The M long reached Target 1 after triggering, with a maximum unrealized profit of 12.35%; it’s now up 10.83%. The ZEC short hit its stop-loss after triggering, with a maximum unrealized profit of just 2.23%. MAGMA, which I was watching but didn’t trade, fell 23.4% in a day. ━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📊 Market Overview Today Today I’m only taking pullback long positions on two altcoins, with small position sizes. BTC is down 0.31% over 24 hours, currently at 81,133—another 0.2% lower than the previous update—and sitting in the lower 15% of its 7-day range. A move above 81,470 puts 81,950 in view; a break below 81,051 will likely send price to test the 24-hour low of 80,461, which is also the 7-day low.
Crypto × AI Morning Brief #5 | Nasdaq down 2.6%, BTC back to $81,500
BTC spot ETFs saw combined net inflows of about $1.07 billion in the first three days of this week. On Thursday, BTC still fell from $84,808 to around $81,100, dragged down by a sell-off in U.S. AI stocks and rising oil prices. ETF buying failed to hold $84,000; for now, the short-term direction depends on U.S. stocks. ━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🔥 The 3 most important things today 1) Meta issues new shares to raise money; U.S. AI stocks fall across the board What happened: After its earnings report on Wednesday, Meta announced it would create a new class of non-voting Class C shares to fund AI investments. Free cash flow in the third quarter was -$2.12 billion, the first negative reading in more than a decade. On Thursday, Meta fell about 7%, Nvidia fell 4%, the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index fell 6.7%, and the Nasdaq fell 2.6%—its biggest drop since June 5.
Quantitative Futures Brief #194 | BTC down 3.3% to 81,300; short ZEC, long M
━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🔁 Yesterday’s recap In the previous issue, both trades—NEAR and ENA—hit their stop losses after entry. Their maximum unrealized gains were just 2.1% and 2.2%, respectively, before both coins fell more than 7%. BULLA, which we watched but didn’t trade, fell 29% in a day. ━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📊 Market overview I’m bearish today, with shorts taking priority over longs. BTC is down 3.27% in 24 hours at 81,300, near the bottom 16% of its 7-day range. Yet the share of traders who are long has risen from 50.4% a day ago to 67.6%—retail traders are adding longs as prices fall. A move above 81,538 puts 82,045 in view; a break below 80,889 (the 24-hour low) will likely send it to test the 7-day low of 80,622.
Crypto × AI Morning Brief #4 | $665M flowed into IBIT in one day as ETH funds saw outflows for 5 straight days
BTC climbed back above $84,000 on Wednesday, and nearly all the money behind it came from one source: BlackRock. If you hold ETH, this week's fund flows aren't working in your favor. ━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🔥 The 3 most important things today 1) Money flows into BTC funds and out of ETH funds What happened: On Monday, spot BTC ETFs saw net inflows of $527 million. IBIT alone brought in $665 million, while Fidelity and Grayscale saw $139 million flow out. On Tuesday, inflows fell to just $23.16 million, down 96%. What it means for crypto: ETH funds have seen outflows for five consecutive days. On Monday, BlackRock clients bought IBIT and sold $95.4 million of ETHA. Money is shifting from ETH to BTC, which is likely to keep ETH under pressure against BTC in the short term.
Perpetual Futures Quant Briefing #193 | Bitcoin Stalls at 84,875; Long NEAR and ENA Today
━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📊 Market Overview Today Bitcoin touched 84,875 last night, its highest level in a week, but failed to hold and fell back to 84,063. A day ago, 60.5% of accounts were long; now it’s down to just 50.4%. Retail traders have already largely exited, while large traders still hold 62.2% long positions. The issue is that aggressive selling has been noticeably heavier over the past hour, with a buy/sell ratio of just 0.69. Only look for new highs if 84,875 holds. If 83,227 breaks, price may first dip to 82,689 to sweep long stops. Retail traders are still 69.5% long on Ether, a more crowded position than large traders’ 62.1%. The 2,477–2,500 area may be tough to break through; if 2,456 doesn’t hold, price could retest 2,436.
Perpetuals Quant Brief #192|COMP ~5% above 20 MA · OI +94%, prioritized; IOST downgraded after OI 1h +197%
Screening criteria: continuation market. The two highest-scoring tokens, IOST and ARIA, are up approx. 41%/45% on the day and are approx. 14%/15% above the 20 MA, already in the extended zone. COMP is up approx. 20% on the day, approx. 4.9% above the 20 MA, and has pulled back approx. -1.4% over 6h, while OI is still +94% over 1h. Among tokens with similar strength, prioritize COMP, which is closer to its moving average and whose short-term momentum is cooling. Don’t chase at the peak of an extension. Main decision: prioritize COMP; consider ARIA only for a test in the pullback zone; remove IOST from the official Top list due to OI 1h +197% and keep it under observation only. 【Top 1 · COMP】 Current price 25.87|Daily gain approx. 19.6%|1h nearly flat|6h -1.4%|Approx. 4.9% above the 20 MA|Approx. 11.4% above the 50 MA|Funding rate approx. 0.0085%|Trading volume approx. 90 million U|OI 1h +94%|ATR approx. 1.24
Futures Quant Brief #191|NEAR volume 610M, 2% from 50-MA takes priority; ELSA downgraded as 1h OI surges 51%
【Market Overview】 regime=continuation. Funding rates across the screened assets are generally low (NEAR≈0.0026%, SIREN/ELSA≈0.005%), with no notable leverage crowding. The difference lies in market structure: trading volume, distance from moving averages, and 1h OI are not aligned, so they cannot be ranked by daily gains alone. Conclusion: NEAR is the only primary pick; SIREN is the runner-up, for trades only when it returns near its moving average. ELSA is downgraded to an alternate to watch because of an unusually large increase in 1h OI and weakening momentum over 6h; it is excluded from the formal position plan. ———————————————— Top 1|NEAR (current price approx. 5.007) Daily gain approx. +3.0%, 6h approx. +5.2%, 1h approx. -0.1%. Trading volume approx. 611 million USDT, dwarfing others in the same group. Approx. +2.9% from the 20-period moving average and +1.7% from the 50-period moving average: the trend remains intact and is not yet seriously overextended. 1h OI approx. -1.7%, more consistent with positions being absorbed along the trend than with a buildup of excessive leverage at the peak.
Crypto × AI Morning Brief #3|BTC holds around $81.5K · ETF outflows continue · Claude reconstructs NIST seed
Crypto × AI Morning Brief, Issue 3 BTC holds around $81.5K · ETF outflows continue · Claude reconstructs NIST curve seed ———————— I. Market and flows ———————— BTC spot was around $81,500–$81,700 (based on public index/weekly summary figures, at the time of drafting). Range-bound over the weekend; it had briefly dipped below $80,000 earlier, then moved back above $81,000 and traded sideways. ETH was around $2,400–$2,425, with the weekly trend still weak. SOL was around $103–$105. Flows: · Figures for 10/16 (as cited by Wu Shuo and others): BTC spot ETFs saw net outflows of about $82.39 million, mainly from IBIT.