This week, our desk observed strong trading demand for small-cap altcoins across multiple zones.
In recent weeks, our desk has observed unusual demand for tokens with a monitoring tag on the exchange. IRISnet ($IRIS) is one of eleven tokens included in the monitoring tag extension, which was announced in early July. The IRIS price surged last Thursday on high volume, doubling in less than 48 hours. After reaching a one-month high of $0.024 on July 26, it gradually fell back, gaining 28.6% in the last seven days.
Book of Meme ($BOME) has increased by 17.3% in the last seven days, resulting in an increase in futures trading activity. On July 30, open interest in BOME futures reached a monthly high of $85 million on the exchange, rising by more than 100% in the last week.
JasmyCoin ($JASMY) is a cryptocurrency project by Tokyo-based Internet of Things (IoT) provider Jasmy Corporation. JASMY received a lot of attention on social media for its bullish momentum after the price rose to $0.029 last week. Most of the gain was reversed, leaving it with a 7.3% gain over the last seven days.
Overall Market
The above chart shows the BTC price movement in the 8-hour chart.
As we discussed last week, the BTC price has been moving within the bull flag for nearly five months. Following our report last week, BTC price rose and tested the upper boundary of the blue bull flag, but was rejected.
The $63,800 level served as the support level for the past two weeks. If this support level fails, the BTC price will rapidly move to the $60k strong support level, as there are no other strong supports in the way. If that occurs, we may have to wait another month before BTC recovers and breaks above this bull flag.
Macroeconomic conditions have continued to influence the BTC price over the last few days. As mentioned in our <Macro at a glance> section, two central banks made interest rate decisions on Wednesday.
The Bank of Japan decided to raise interest rates by 15 basis points at its July meeting, bringing its short-term rate to 0.25%. It also announced plans to cut its bond purchase amount in half by early 2026.
The Fed announced that it would keep its interest rate at 5.50%, as widely expected. Fed Chair Powell's dovish comments on the September rate cut boosted the US equities market, as the Nasdaq closed up 2.64%. However, the risk appetite sparked by the potential rate cut did not last long, as the Bitcoin price fell following Powell's speech.
Options Market
The above chart is the 25-delta skew for ETH options with various tenors.
The trading of Ethereum spot ETFs in the US market began on July 23. Grayscale's Ethereum Trust ETF experienced a massive outflow, while other ETFs only captured a fraction of it. The net outflow from ETH spot ETFs on the first trading day weighed heavily on the ETH price.
This price action was also seen in the options market. Our 25-delta skew chart above shows that the skew on the short-dated options fell sharply from +2 to -5 that day. It revealed that the market was skewed to selling calls and buying puts on the first trading day of ETH spot ETFs.
Although the ETH spot price recovered from its low of $3085 set last Thursday, market sentiment did not. As the chart shows, short-dated ETH options remain skewed to the downside. The 25-delta skew for 30-day expired options is also hovering near the zero mark.
Our desk believes the market sentiment on ETH is neutral, and it will take some time before the market turns bullish and drives the ETH price higher. We will continue to monitor the options market and share our view with you.
Macro at a glance
Last Thursday (24-07-24)
US GDP increased at a 2.8% annualised rate in the second quarter, exceeding the 2.0% forecast. That was twice the 1.4% growth rate in the first quarter.
The personal consumption expenditures (PEC) price index, a key Fed measure, increased by 2.6% in the quarter, down from 3.4% in Q1. Core PCE prices increased by 2.9%, down from 3.7%.
US initial jobless claims fell by 10,000 to 235,000, slightly lower than the estimated 237,000.
Durable goods orders unexpectedly fell 6.6% on a monthly basis in June, while economists forecasted 0.3% growth in the same period.
Last Friday (24-07-25)
The June personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index in the United States rose 0.1% month on month, meeting market expectations. The annual growth rate has slowed to 2.5% from 2.6% in May.
The core PCE price index rises 0.2%, as expected; it is up 2.6% annually, slightly more than the estimated 2.5%.
On Tuesday (24-07-30)
The German monthly CPI rose 0.3% in July, up from 0.1% in June. The annualised CPI growth rate was 2.3%, up from 2.2% in June.
The US CB consumer confidence index rose to 100.3 in July, up from 97.8 in June.
US job openings fell to 8.184 million in June from 8.230 million in May.
On Wednesday (24-07-31)
The Bank of Japan announced that it would raise its short-term interest rate to 0.25% from 0.10% and gradually reduce the amount of bonds purchased through its quantitative easing program to half the current rough target by early 2026.
In July, the Eurozone CPI changed by 0.0% month on month, down from 0.2% increase in June. The annualised CPI rose by 2.6%, slightly more than the 2.5% increase seen in June. Core CPI increased by 2.9% on an annualised basis, which is consistent with data from June.
The US ADP nonfarm payroll increased by only 122,000 in June, down from 155,000 in May.
The Federal Reserve maintained its key interest rate between 5.25% and 5.5%, citing "some further progress" toward its 2% inflation target. Fed Chair Jerome Powell said during his press conference that a rate cut in September is "on the table," as long as inflation data remains encouraging.
Convert Portal Volume Change
The above table shows the volume change on our Convert Portal by zone.
Last week, Ethereum spot ETFs began trading, and the market experienced a massive outflow from Grayscale's ETH Trust ETF. As a result, the ETH price fell more than 10% in three days, from $3540 to $3085, causing ETH-related altcoins to underperform.
Last week, our desk experienced high trading demand in the Storage zone. Storj ($STORJ) is a key driver of this zone's 41.0% growth.
The Monitoring zone's volume increased by 9.3% during the same time period. AirDAO ($AMB) and ForTube ($FOR) are the two tokens that are driving up volume in the zone.
We also saw a 7.3% increase in the POW zone, which was primarily driven by strong demand for Bitcoin. The BTC price remained relatively stable even as the ETH price fell sharply due to outflows from ETH ETFs.
Why trade OTC?
Binance offers our clients various ways to access OTC trading, including chat communication channels and the Binance OTC platform (https://www.binance.com/en/otc) for manual price quotations, Algo Orders, or automated price quotations via Binance Convert and Block Trade platform (https://www.binance.com/en/convert) and the Binance Convert OTC API.
