Threaten First, Back Down Later?

Daily Updates:

• In his first round of promised letters with higher tariff rates on trading partners, President Trump notified a slew of countries including Japan and South Korea of his intention to impose 25% levies on their goods. 
• Other nations Trump outlined his tariff plans for included South Africa, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Kazakhstan and Cambodia. 
• However, Trump still appears to be open to additional negotiations – at the White House the President signed an executive order that officially delays the tariff imposition date from the initial July 9 deadline until August 1, in order to give the nations more time to strike a deal. 

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• Speaking at the White House, Trump said “We’ve made a deal with the United Kingdom, we’ve made a deal with China, we’re close to making a deal with India”. He added that “Others we met with, we don’t think we’re going to be able to make a deal. So we just send them a letter”. 
• Nonetheless, Trump once more opened the door to further delays, stating that the new August deadline was “not 100% firm” – ““Maybe adjust a little bit, depending”, he said. 
• The tariff rates would not include any sectoral-specific tariffs that his administration is planning to implement on top of the baseline tariff, or any sectoral tariffs that have already been implemented. 

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• US equities fell on the day, following their rally to several new all-time highs in the past week. Both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq 100 index dropped 0.79%, respectively, while the dollar extended gains and is now up 0.63% over the past five days. 
• Shares in Asia posted modest gains however as both the Nikkei-225 and the CSI-300 index closed higher, as Trump continues to leave the door open for further talks.

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• According to Bloomberg, the European Union is looking to negotiate a preliminary trade deal with the US that will allow it to lock in a 10% tariff rate beyond August 1, until a permanent solution is agreed. That 10% will not be on all EU products either, with certain key goods such as aircrafts, aircraft parts and wine and spirits to be excluded. The proposal is also seeking to lower Trump’s 25% tariff on automobile and car parts, and his 50% tariff on steel and aluminium.
• Should the EU fail to negotiate a deal, it risks a 50% tariff on most of its products exported to the US.

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• Crypto spot prices have mostly fallen over the past 24 hours across the top 10 tokens by market cap. BTC is down 0.6%, trading at $108.3K, while ETH is above $2,500, though down 1.16%. 
• Among the top 10 crypto-currencies by market cap, XRP is the only token that is in the green, trading at $2.3 and up 0.26%. 
• At-the-money implied volatility for 7-day BTC and ETH options both dropped more than 4 percentage points since yesterday, as BTC IV once more trades close to 30%.
• Both BTC and ETH’s term structures of volatility are positively sloped, though ETH options continue to maintain their near-two times outright vol premium. 
• Perpetual funding rates surged to a high of 0.017% for BTC contracts before dropping all the way back down to neutral levels at the end of the day. 

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• Bitcoin accumulation treasury, Strategy™ (Nasdaq: MSTR) has announced a new at-the-market (ATM) equity offering of up to $4.2B in its 10.00% Series A Perpetual Stride Preferred Stock (STRD Stock). 
• This follows an initial offering of STRD In Jun 2025 where approximately $1.0B net was raised.
• Net proceeds will go towards further purchases of bitcoin and “may also use” the capital for dividend payment to holders of its 10.00% Series A Perpetual Strife Preferred Stock, $0.001 par value per share and 8.00% Series A Perpetual Strike Preferred Stock, $0.001 par value per share. 
• Cash dividends on Strategy's preferred stocks are expected to be funded primarily through additional capital raising activities, as opposed to selling bitcoins for cash flow. 

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• Crypto.com has partnered with TON Foundation to introduce institutional-grade custody and staking services for TON Blockchain assets.

This Week’s Calendar:

Charts of the Day:

Figure 1. BTC at-the-money implied volatility across selected tenors. Source: Deribit, Block Scholes

Figure 2. ETH at-the-money implied volatility across selected tenors. Source: Deribit, Block Scholes

Figure 3. BTC 25-delta put-call skew ratio across selected tenors. Source: Deribit, Block Scholes

Figure 4. ETH 25-delta put-call skew ratio across selected tenors. Source: Deribit, Block Scholes