Market View
With the halving right around the corner, leverage has been largely flushed out of the space. The sharp move downward in the wake of elevated Middle East conflicts the past weekend combined with the continued chop lower throughout this past week saw BTC perpetual futures funding rates briefly flip negative for the first time since October 2023. Funding rates have since remained near zero, and have flip-flopped across the zero mark multiple times in recent days. In our view, this could indicate some temporary short biases but not widespread panic. We think this directional uncertainty speaks to our thesis of bitcoin’s divergent roles both as a risk and a safe haven asset. While sellers on the margin appear to be primarily derisking, there have also been strong bids between the $60-62,000 levels.
That is not to say markets can not go lower, however. 2023 was the best full year for crypto from a maximum drawdown perspective with a peak drawdown of 20% and 27.4% for BTC and ETH respectively. Prior to this, the years with the smallest max drawdown was 2016 for BTC at 31.3% and 2021 for ETH at 57% (see Table 1). Drawdowns thus far in 2024 have been even smaller than those in 2023, and given the elevated levels of realized volatility YTD, a further move downwards is well within the realm of possibility.
Volatility has broadly been decreasing for the asset class since its inception more than 15 years ago, though a local bottom in realized 3-month volatility was reached in October 2023 (see Chart 1). Since then, there has been a steady reversal upwards with increasing volatility. We think if we continue to embark on a hawkish risk off environment, those who view bitcoin as a risk asset could continue to sell until they come into balance with the latter group that views bitcoin as a safe haven asset.
Indeed, short term traders on Deribit appear to be hedging for a further move downwards in the near term with an implied volatility premium for options below the strike price. What’s interesting, however, is that these premiums skew to the upside for longer dated options expiring in June 2024 and later. We think this is reflective of broader cyclical sentiment where we appear to be far from a cyclical peak, but have risk of further chops downward in the near term.
Onchain measures of leverage also reflect this positioning. Stablecoin deposit rates on Aave have come down more than 50% from their March peaks, but remain elevated beyond the late January 2024 lows of this year. In our view, this signals that traders still retain some leverage (and are thus constructive in the longer term), but have derisked their positions somewhat to survive a shorter term move to the downside.
