Sentiment Coming Back?

Daily Updates:

• Earlier this week we covered how three crypto firms, (Galaxy Digital, Multicoin Capital and Jump Crypto) announced plans to raise $1B to form the largest digital asset treasury reserve for SOL tokens. In yesterday’s comment, we noted how Trump Media and Technology Group and Crypto.com plan to create the “first and largest publicly traded CRO treasury company”.
• The recent frenzy may be focused on altcoin digital asset treasuries, however the playbook began with Michael Saylor’s Strategy, and was later by Japanese firm Metaplanet — dubbed as ‘Asia’s Strategy’. 
• Yesterday Metaplanet announced plans to raise $880M by issuing new shares in overseas markets in order to buy more Bitcoin.
• The hotel-operator-turned Bitcoin treasury aims to issue 555M shares, with the proceeds used to fund Bitcoin purchases, as well as options trading on the cryptocurrency. According to the filing: “Holding BTC does not generate interest or yield by itself. Therefore, as part of its Bitcoin treasury operations, the Company has been generating revenue by selling put options”, and the company will use some of the funds to continue doing so.

• After trending lower for most of the week, cryptocurrencies posted some gains yesterday, with Ether leading the way. ETH rose from $4.3K to a high of $4.6K before paring back some of those gains. Having underperformed for a significant part of the current bull run, in recent months ETH has staged a major comeback. It is up more than 200% from its April lows, against a 45% rise in BTC over the same period.
• That has gone a long way in reversing the downward trending relationship of ETH when priced in terms of BTC that began back in 2022. The ETH / BTC pair bottomed out in April 2025 at 0.019 and is currently at 0.041. 
• A rally during the Asian equity market open in BTC now sees it trade at $113K. Yesterday we outlined the isolated bearishness that we had been seeing in BTC’s spot price and its options markets. It had failed to recover to its pre-Jackson Hole rally level and options markets were far more bearish in their positioning relative to ETH. 
• Today we see this has changed — or at least BTC has caught up with the wider risk-on sentiment. It is now above its pre-Jackson Hole level and while put options still demand a premium over calls, that premium is now far smaller, compared to the -8% skew yesterday. 

• US equity markets mainly traded sideways yesterday, though a modest 0.24% gain was enough to close the S&P 500 index at a record high. 
• Interestingly, markets are currently pricing in the lowest levels of volatility in the stock market so far this year. The VIX closed at 14.85 yesterday after falling to its lowest level of the year on Friday, as risk-on assets temporarily surged after Chair Powell’s speech. 
• Equity markets were largely on hold awaiting for the results of Nvidia’s revenue earnings, given that the company makes up an immense 7% of the entire S&P 500 index alone. 
• Shares of Nvidia stock slid more than 5% in after hours trading, despite the company recording a revenue of $46.7B against estimates of $46.2B — suggesting market optimism had been for the chipmaker to exceed estimates by a significant margin.

• Short-dated US Treasuries continued their climb higher as markets continue to bet on a Fed easing in September. The 2-year treasury yield fell 2bps to 3.59%, while market-implied odds for a September rate cut are currently at 88.7%.
• Long-dated bond yields in the US and across the world in general however have been on the rise — driven by growing concerns about inflation and government spending.
• The yield on 30-year Treasuries increased to 4.9% coinciding with President Trump’s decision to fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook. 
• In the UK, 30-year gilt yields are close to a 27-year high, while Japanese 30-year yields rise to an all-time high of 3.2% earlier this week. 
• While the moves in each region have some unique drivers, a common theme across the regions is political problems and ballooning levels of government borrowing and deficits. 

Charts of the Day:

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