📈 BTC futures open interest on crypto exchanges soars to a one-year high; Crypto.com launched the Funding Arbitrage Bot on the Crypto.com Exchange

BTC futures open interest on crypto exchanges soars to a one-year high; Crypto.com launched the Funding Arbitrage Bot on the Crypto.com Exchange; SEC approved the NYSE and CBOE’s BTC ETF options listings.

Quick Take

• BTC futures open interest on crypto exchanges soars to a one-year high; Crypto.com launched the Funding Arbitrage Bot on the Crypto.com Exchange; SEC approved the NYSE and CBOE’s BTC ETF options listings.
• US spot Ether ETFs saw a US$79 million net inflow last week. Spot bitcoin ETFs had a weekly net inflow of $2.1 billion, the largest since March 2024.
• On the macro side, the ECB lowered interest rates by 0.25% to 3.25%, the first back-to-back rate cut in 13 years. Eurozone inflation fell to 1.8% in September, which came below the ECB’s 2% target for the first time in three years. In the US, retail sales increased by 0.4% in September, higher than the 0.3% Dow Jones forecast. The latest CME FedWatch Tool showed a 94% probability of a November rate cut in the US (vs 89% last week). China’s Q3 GDP grew 4.6% in Q3 2024 (vs 4.7% in Q2), the slowest pace since early 2023, partially driven by the weak property sector. 
• Notable updates: Immutable (IMX) announced permissionless deployment for Immutable zkEVM, Worldcoin (WLD) announced World Chain on mainnet, Stacks (STX) announced details of Nakamoto Activation; Sui (SUI) announced the launch of Deepbook version 3 and the DEEP token; the Crypto.com App listed Moo Deng (MOODENG), deBridge (DBR), and Goatseus Maximus (GOAT). 
• Notable events in the coming week: Canada’s BoC Interest Rate Decision, ECB President Lagarde’s speech

Weekly Market Index

All three indices increased last week. Price, volume, and volatility indices increased by +10.27%, +24.81%, and +17.36%, respectively.

Chart of the Week

The aggregated open interest of BTC futures (including perpetuals) across crypto exchanges rose to a one-year high of $31.79 billion on 19 October, according to the Block. Open interest of BTC futures measures the total number of outstanding contracts that have not been settled or closed in BTC future contracts; its increase typically suggests new money entering the market with bullish market sentiment.

This coincided with BTC rising to the $68,000-level on the same day and US spot BTC ETFs recording a $2.1 billion net inflow last week, the largest since March 2024.

Weekly Performance

BTC and ETH increased by +10.4% and +11.9%, respectively, in the past seven days. Prices for all other selected top market capitalisation tokens increased except AVAX (-0.6%). DOGE (+32.5%) and BCH (+16.3%) led the increase. 

The price increase in DOGE coincided with Elon Musk posting “D.O.G.E will fix it” on X in response to an article reporting that California officials rejected more SpaceX rocket launches from the state. D.O.G.E refers to the Department of Government Efficiency, an idea mentioned by Donald Trump for a government efficiency commission led by Musk if Trump wins the election in November.

Key categories all increased in market capitalisation change in the past seven days. The meme category led the rise. 

Notable Updates

News Highlights

Investment Vehicles

• US SEC approved applications from the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) to list options for spot Bitcoin ETFs. Options trading will be available for the 11 approved ETF providers on the NYSE. 
• Australia’s first ETF directly holding Ether, launched by Monochrome Asset Management, went live on Cboe Australia on 15 October. Monochrome Ethereum ETF (IETH) provides an in-kind subscription and redemption facility and is the only dual-access spot Ether ETF in Australia. 
• Grayscale filed with the US SEC to convert its Digital Large Cap Fund, which tracks multiple cryptocurrencies, into an ETF. The fund manages $524 million in assets, and is weighted 76% Bitcoin and 18% Ether, with the remainder in Solana (SOL), Avalanche (AVAX), and Ripple (XRP). 
• Canary Capital filed an S-1 registration with the US SEC to launch a Litecoin (LTC) ETF, less than a week after the company filed an application to launch an XRP ETF. 

Adoption

• Stripe integrated Paxos’s stablecoin payment platform into Stripe’s ‘Pay with Crypto’ product. This enables businesses on Stripe to receive payments in stablecoins and convert them to fiat currency or vice versa. Paxos’s platform currently supports PYUSD, USDC, and USDP for instant conversions.
• Thailand’s fourth-largest bank, Siam Commercial Bank, will begin offering stablecoin cross-border payment and remittance services together with fintech company Lightnet. This enables 24/7 cross-border transactions and reduced transaction costs. 

Regulations

• Central Bank of UAE (CBUAE) granted in-principle approval to AED Stablecoin LLC, allowing it to issue the first dirham-pegged stablecoin, AE Coin, in the UAE. This development is under the CBUAE’s Payment Token Service Regulation framework.

Others

• Crypto.com launched the Funding Arbitrage Bot on the web version of the Crypto.com Exchange. The bot allows users to automatically execute arbitrage trading strategies to potentially collect funding fees from the funding rate mechanism built into perpetual contracts, while hedging market risk with the same underlying asset. Users must be in jurisdictions approved for Derivatives trading in order to create an Arbitrage Bot.

Recent Research Reports

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• Research Roundup Newsletter [September 2024]: We present to you our latest issue of Research Roundup, featuring our deep dives into AI Agent in Crypto and Pair Trading.
• AI Agent in Crypto: This report looks into AI agents in the cryptocurrency realm. The landscape in crypto includes Agent Creation, Trading, Smart Wallets/Payments, Gaming, Social, Art/NFT, and Security.
• Pair Trading: Pair trading is a market-neutral strategy exploiting price movements between two correlated assets. Traders seek pairs with historical correlation, monitoring price spreads to identify long and short opportunities.

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Catalyst Calendar

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