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Last Updated:  
November 4, 2025
5 min read

Crypto Wobbles Further

Having fallen below the $105K support level, BTC is now more than 15% below its $126K ATH, with sentiment in options markets tilting even more bearish. Short-dated BTC and ETH options have outperformed in the past 24 hours, with ETH's term structure of volatility inverting and vol smiles for both assets continue to skew further towards OTM puts. A number of Fed speakers yesterday also provided differing views on the path of monetary policy. San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly advocated for an "open mind" going into December, while Chicago Fed Chief Austan Goolsbee warned he is “nervous about the inflation side of the ledger" which is "trending the wrong way".

Find out our latest reports, listed below:

 

Market Snapshot: Overnight Moves:

Daily Updates:

  • Having traded between $105K and $115K for the past two weeks, BTC has now fallen below the $105K support level and is down more than 15% from its $126K ATH. 
  • Altcoins have fared even worse — ETH is down 7% over the past 24 hours trading below $3,500 while SOL has dropped double digits to $157. 
  • Sentiment in options markets reflect the same fear in spot prices. 
  • Short-dated options have outperformed over the past 24 hours as ATM implied volatility has spiked higher at the front end of the term structure. That increase in volatility expectations in the near term has inverted ETH’s term structure of volatility. 
  • The upwards move in vol expectations has coincided with a further skew towards out-the-money put options in both BTC and ETH volatility smiles. 
  • The 25-delta put-call skew ratio currently trades at -6.0% and -8.5% for 7-day BTC and ETH options, respectively. 
  • Funding rates on BTC contracts have also turned negative in the past 24 hours — dropping as low as -0.005 on an eight-hour basis. 
  • That heightened market uncertainty has occurred as BTC continues to underperform relative to US equities. The S&P 500 percent ended yesterday’s session up 0.17%. Over the past month it is up a slight 1.66% and 17% year to date. That compares to a -15% drop in BTC over the past 30 days and a +12% return year to date. 
  • Yesterday’s slight jump in the S&P 500 was driven primarily by the tech megacaps. Those rallied amidst further optimism in artificial intelligence. 
  • OpenAI announced it would pay Amazon Web Services for access to hundreds of thousands of graphic processing units from Nvidia in a seven-year deal. 
  • Equities also shrugged off a slowdown in US factory activity. The ISM Manufacturing Index fell from 49.1 in September to 48.7 in October, marking the eight consecutive monthly decline. Values below 50 indicate a contraction in the manufacturing sector which makes up just over 10% of the US economy. 
  • The survey’s employment gauge also declined for the ninth straight month, though the report showed that the index of prices for raw materials dropped nearly 4 points to 58 — that’s the lowest since the beginning of the year, indicating a slowdown in inflationary pressures. 
  • Talking on Yahoo Finance, Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee warned “I am nervous about the inflation side of the ledger, where you’ve seen inflation above the target for four and a half years and it’s trending the wrong way.”
  • As a result, Goolsbee said “I’m not decided going into the December meeting”.
  • While we covered in yesterday’s comment that some officials believe monetary policy is approaching the neutral rate of interest, Goolsbee said rates could come down a “fair amount” but “it would probably be most judicious to have the rates come down with inflation.”
  • While Goolsbee may be less certain of a December cut, San Francisco President Mary Daly said yesterday that the FOMC should “keep an open mind” about a December rate cut, to which markets currently assign a 68.1% probability.
  • President Trump told reporters on Air Force One that Nvidia’s most advanced chips, the Blackwell chip, will be reserved exclusively for US companies and won’t be available to China or any other non-US country. 
  • "The most advanced, we will not let anybody have them other than the United States”, Trump said.
  • Bitcoin accumulation treasury company, Strategy, is preparing to launch a Euro-denominated credit instrument under the ticker symbol STRE which will pay a 10% annual dividend, on a reference value of €100 per share (€10 per year per share), distributed quarterly starting December 31, 2025. 
  • The firm plans to issue 3.5M shares of its 10% Series A Perpetual Preferred Stock through an initial public offering, with proceeds directed toward general business activities and additional Bitcoin purchases. 
  • Any unpaid dividends will accrue interest at increasing rates up to 18% per annum until fully settled. If the company fails to pay a dividend on time, it will attempt to sell other classes of its stock, such as STRK, STRD, or new Class A common shares, to generate funds for the deferred payments.
  • Strategy continues its BTC accumulation, announcing the purchase of 397 BTC at an average price of $114,771 per BTC, (approximately $45.6M).
  • As of November 2, 2025 they hold 641,205 BTC, acquired for approximately $47.49B at an average cost of $74,057 per BTC.
  • Bitcoin mining company Cipher Mining has entered into a 15-year lease agreement with Amazon Web Services (AWS) worth approximately $5.5B, diversifying their income stream. Under this deal, Cipher will provide AWS with hosting capacity and infrastructure, leasing the space and power to support AWS’s AI workloads.

This Week's Calendar:

Charts of the Day:

Figure 1. Block Scholes BTC Risk-Appetite Index (white, left-hand axis) and BTC spot price (orange, right-hand axis)
Figure 2. Block Scholes ETH Risk-Appetite Index (white, left-hand axis) and ETH spot price (purple, right-hand axis)
Figure 3. BTC at-the-money implied volatility across selected tenors. Source: Deribit, Block Scholes
Figure 4. ETH at-the-money implied volatility across selected tenors. Source: Deribit, Block Scholes
Figure 5. BTC 25-delta put-call skew ratio across selected tenors. Source: Deribit, Block Scholes
Figure 6. ETH 25-delta put-call skew ratio across selected tenors. Source: Deribit, Block Scholes
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Find out our latest reports, listed below:

 

Market Snapshot: Overnight Moves:

Daily Updates:

  • Having traded between $105K and $115K for the past two weeks, BTC has now fallen below the $105K support level and is down more than 15% from its $126K ATH. 
  • Altcoins have fared even worse — ETH is down 7% over the past 24 hours trading below $3,500 while SOL has dropped double digits to $157. 
  • Sentiment in options markets reflect the same fear in spot prices. 
  • Short-dated options have outperformed over the past 24 hours as ATM implied volatility has spiked higher at the front end of the term structure. That increase in volatility expectations in the near term has inverted ETH’s term structure of volatility. 
  • The upwards move in vol expectations has coincided with a further skew towards out-the-money put options in both BTC and ETH volatility smiles. 
  • The 25-delta put-call skew ratio currently trades at -6.0% and -8.5% for 7-day BTC and ETH options, respectively. 
  • Funding rates on BTC contracts have also turned negative in the past 24 hours — dropping as low as -0.005 on an eight-hour basis.

Find out our latest reports, listed below:

 

Market Snapshot: Overnight Moves:

Daily Updates:

  • Having traded between $105K and $115K for the past two weeks, BTC has now fallen below the $105K support level and is down more than 15% from its $126K ATH. 
  • Altcoins have fared even worse — ETH is down 7% over the past 24 hours trading below $3,500 while SOL has dropped double digits to $157. 
  • Sentiment in options markets reflect the same fear in spot prices. 
  • Short-dated options have outperformed over the past 24 hours as ATM implied volatility has spiked higher at the front end of the term structure. That increase in volatility expectations in the near term has inverted ETH’s term structure of volatility. 
  • The upwards move in vol expectations has coincided with a further skew towards out-the-money put options in both BTC and ETH volatility smiles. 
  • The 25-delta put-call skew ratio currently trades at -6.0% and -8.5% for 7-day BTC and ETH options, respectively. 
  • Funding rates on BTC contracts have also turned negative in the past 24 hours — dropping as low as -0.005 on an eight-hour basis.