Crypto Markets Hold Sideways

Find out our latest reports, listed below:

• Metaplanet Is Selling Vol, Who Is Next?

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• Bybit x Block Scholes August Volatility Review

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• Bybit x Block Scholes Quarterly Report: What will drive crypto in Q3 2025?

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Market Snapshot: Overnight Moves:

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Daily Updates:

• In spite of another day of strong ETF inflows ($440.7M yesterday), Bitcoin was unable to find significant demand above the $123K region. As such, it remained in sideways trading between $121 and $123K over the past 24 hours. ETH equally traded sideways between $4,400 and $4,500 yesterday.

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• In our latest weekly Analytics Report with Bybit (look out for that this Friday), we noted that despite the recent run at an ATH of $126K, positioning in derivatives markets  indicate that it was a fragile rally. Firstly, BTC spot quickly pulled back from the highs and secondly, despite the ATH, open interest in Bybit perpetual futures contracts struggled to even recover to the levels they fell from during the long liquidation event on Sep 22, 2025. That suggests signs of profit taking both in spot and perp positions and that the rally was potentially driven by another source of buyers: one possible explanation could be Spot ETF inflows — which had their second strongest week of buying last week on record.
• We also note that the move was met with neutral-to-modestly positive funding rates and suppressed volumes across BTC, ETH and SOL options contracts — all surprising given an ATH move.
• After temporarily skewing in favour of calls earlier this week, volatility smiles for BTC are once more titled towards a premium for puts across the term structure — that bearish sentiment is also reflected in ETH smiles, where only 180-day contracts have a slight call skew.

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• While dip buying wasn’t apparent in the crypto majors, it was seen in US equities which rebounded in the mid-week trading session. The S&P 500 rose 0.58% and the Nasdaq-100 jumped over a full percentage point. That brings the benchmark S&P 500 up 15% year-to-date and more than 35% from its April tariff lows.
• US treasury yields across the curve were largely unchanged, with the yield on 10-year bonds trading at 4.13%, with the 2-year yield up 1bps to 3.58%.
• The US dollar strengthened slightly reaching its highest level since the first of August, though it remains 9% lower on the year.

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• That dip buying on Wall Street was despite an array of different views among committee members on the FOMC.
• In the September Summary of Economic Projections, the median dot plot indicated the likelihood of another 50bps of cuts left for the year, e.g., a 25bps cut per remaining meeting (October and December).
• While there was broad-based support for the September cut (“almost all participants supported reducing the target range for the federal funds rate ¼ percentage point at this meeting”), the minutes from that meeting, released yesterday, showed some diverging views on the outlook further out.
• According to the minutes:

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“Participants generally assessed that recent readings of these indicators did not show a sharp deterioration in labor market conditions. A few participants, though, saw recently released labor market data, including revisions to previously released data and the BLS’s preliminary estimate of the payroll employment benchmark revision, as indicating that labor market conditions had been softening for longer than was previously reported.”

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“A couple of participants expressed the view that, excluding the effects of this year’s tariff increases, inflation would be close to target. A few other participants, however, emphasized that progress of inflation toward the Committee’s 2 percent objective had stalled, even excluding the effects of this year’s tariff increases.”

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“A few participants stated there was merit in keeping the federal funds rate unchanged at this meeting or that they could have supported such a decision”

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“A majority of participants emphasized upside risks to their outlooks for inflation”, though noted “that downside risks to employment were elevated and had increased”

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• PayPay Corporation, a SoftBank Corp. Group company, one of Japan’s largest digital payment platforms, has acquired a 40% equity stake in Binance Japan, the local subsidiary of global crypto exchange Binance.
• As part of the partnership, Binance Japan users will be able to buy cryptocurrencies using PayPay Money, the digital wallet service, directly in the Binance app, as well as withdraw funds in the same way. Both companies plan to co-develop services that make Web3 more accessible in Japan.

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• Coinbase has officially launched DEX trading within its app for U.S. users, excluding New York. The new feature allows users to trade tokens immediately after their onchain launch, giving access to assets before they’re formally listed on Coinbase.
• With the rollout, users can trade a range of Base-native tokens, including assets from projects such as Virtuals AI Agents, Reserve Protocol DTFs, SoSo Value Indices, Auki Labs, and Super Champs.

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• Citi Ventures announced that they made an investment in BVNK, a stablecoin infrastructure to enterprises, due to high interest from banks in tokenized dollars for payments and settlement.
• BVNK, whose platform processes over $20B annually, supports stablecoin services for clients such as Worldpay, Flywire, and dLocal.

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This Week’s Calendar:

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Charts of the Day:

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