An Ounce of Hopium for ETH Bulls
- It’s been a terrible month for crypto from all angles. Open interest for ETH futures and options is down nearly 40% since the start of September. The market is crippled by fear, but, thankfully, there is a silver lining.
- Options open interest fell as dramatically as it did at the end of this month due to a large number of recent expiries (September monthlies, Q3 quarterlies). Further, given the amount of open interest wiped out, this is indeed a meaningful deleveraging, giving ETH more room to push towards the upside. That is, once the fear starts to subside.
- A large amount of put buying in the Oct. 8 options expiry caused the short-term put-call skew to shoot up. For those who need a refresher, the 25 delta put-call skew measures the pricing of puts and calls that have a delta of 0.25/-0.25. It helps establish relative pricing between calls and puts that offer investors similar exposure to the upside (calls) or downside (puts).
- Key on-chain data points for ETH still look fairly bullish. Transaction fees are still on the higher side, albeit fairly volatile. And daily interactions with smart contracts has stabilized at an elevated level. As we noted in yesterday’s daily, this is in stark contrast to Bitcoin, which is seeing its lowest daily fee collections in over 20 months.
Why China’s Latest ‘Bitcoin Ban’ Is Bullish for DeFi
- Last week, China “banned Bitcoin” yet again, or that’s how a large chunk of mainstream news outlets reported it. More accurately, as Decrypt wrote, the Chinese government reiterated that it deems crypto transactions as illegal. (Bloomberg framed it as China “widening” its existing ban on crypto transactions.)
- The Chinese crypto community, including DeFi protocols, is taking a “better safe than sorry” approach by blocking Chinese users. The risk of being investigated is just too high, both in terms of physical and business safety.
- Centralized exchanges: Both Huobi and Binance halted new registrations from China. Huobi also deleted China from its list of countries / regions on Apple Store.
- DeFi projects: Loopring, a zk-rollup protocol, and Debank, a DeFi wallet, have stopped Chinese IP addresses from accessing them.
Coinbase Pro to add support for Avalanche’s AVAX token
- Coinbase Pro will soon allow account holders to start trading Avalanche (AVAX) tokens on its platform, the exchange announced on Sept. 29 in a blog post.
- Coinbase Pro users are now able to transfer so-called C-Chain AVAX tokens into their account, and AVAX trading will begin “on or after” 9 a.m. Pacific time on Sept. 30, provided that liquidity requirements on the platform are met. The asset is not currently available on the standard Coinbase platform or its consumer apps, the company said.
DEX aggregator 1inch blocks out US trades in preparation for separate American platform
- As of September 29, the decentralized exchange aggregator 1inch has begun geofencing U.S. IP addresses.
- Though the platform’s terms of use have apparently restricted U.S. users since April, that restriction has only recently come online on a technical level.
Twitter exec reveals test footage of verification tools for NFT profile pictures
- Twitter’s head of consumer product marketing Justin Taylor released a video showcasing unreleased, in-development tools for users who want to have an NFT profile picture.
- The video was recorded by Mada Aflak, Senior Software Engineer at Twitter. In the video, Aflak shows how users must click on “Change photo” for their profile picture. An option to “Select NFT” will emerge, allowing the user to connect a digital wallet from Coinbase, Metamask, or other sources. The user selects the NFT they want as a profile picture – which will have a checkmark verifying the blockchain to which the NFT belongs.
Cloned CryptoPunks are back on OpenSea marketplace after DMCA counter notice
- Nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace OpenSea is once again listing the Polygon-based copy of CryptoPunks after a successful Digital Millennium Copyright Act counter-notice.
- In a Tuesday announcement on Twitter, the PolygonPunks project said its NFT collectibles were back on OpenSea after responding to a DMCA takedown notice from Larva Labs, the creator of CryptoPunks. The punks were booted from OpenSea in August after becoming one of the most popular collections on the marketplace.
Celer (CELR) gains 400% after traders embrace its multi-chain ‘cBridge 2.0’ solution
- CELR soars to a new all-time high following the launch of its cross-chain bridge that allows traders to jump back and forth between various layer-1 and layer-2 platforms.
