(48/52) Weekly Market Insights: Will Bitcoin Options Trigger a Gamma Squeeze?

Hot News

• Bitcoin prices surged 9% last week, coming within $400 of the critical $100,000 mark. The rally was likely driven by the launch of IBIT options trading, which helped boost liquidity, and by SEC Chairman Gary Gensler’s announcement that he will step down on January 20, 2025, fueling optimism about potential regulatory changes.
• Blackrock Bitcoin ETF, IBIT, began trading options on Nasdaq, with a notional volume of $1.9 billion on the first day, including 289,000 call options and 65,000 put options. The Chicago Board Options Exchange (Cboe) also announced that it will soon launch cash-settled Bitcoin ETF options.

Macro Outlook

• U.S. market trading hours will be shortened this week, with the Thanksgiving holiday ending on Thursday and trading ending early at 1 p.m. on Friday for the Black Friday event.
• Market sentiment has changed slightly, with the market's probability of a 25 basis point rate cut in December falling to 50.9% from 61.9% a week ago. In addition, expectations for the direction of Fed policy show a 51.7% probability of three rate cuts (75 basis points in total) by the end of 2025.

The upcoming economic calendar includes:

• Wednesday, November 27 3:00 AM: FOMC Minutes
• Wednesday, November 27, 9:30 p.m.: U.S. October core PCE price index, October durable goods orders, second estimate of third quarter GDP, October personal income and spending

Cryptocurrency Market Quick Facts

• The Trump administration reportedly plans to set up a cryptocurrency advisory committee to promote crypto legislation, coordinate multi-agency regulation and implement a Bitcoin reserve strategy.
• Trump Media & Technology Group, which is in talks to acquire centralized cryptocurrency exchange Bakkt, has also filed a trademark application for a “TruthFi” platform designed to support crypto payments, custody and trading of digital assets.
• MicroStrategy acquired another 51,780 bitcoins and completed a $3 billion convertible bond issuance with a coupon rate of 0% and a conversion premium of 55%.
• Bitwise registered the Solana spot ETF in Delaware.
• Binance launched BFUSD with an annualized yield of 19.5%. This new type of yield asset can be used as collateral for its leveraged trading, and the quotation for each user is limited according to the VIP level. Coinbase announced that the annualized yield of USDC in its Coinbase wallet is 4.7%.
• Tether has launched Hadron, a tokenization platform for a variety of real-world assets including bonds, commodities, stocks, other stablecoins, and loyalty points.
• Tether minted another 5 billion USDT last week, while Ethena's USDe supply increased by approximately 700 million, marking a 20% weekly growth rate and reaching an all-time high.

Layer 1 and Layer 2 Public Chains

• Astar Network announced the launch of Astar Evolution 1.5, which integrates ASTR with OP Hyperchain and Soneium decentralized applications (dApps).
• IOTA announced the launch of IOTA Rebased, an upgrade to its mainnet to enable parallel processing of MoveVM and EVM.
• Taiko launched Multi-Proofs on the mainnet, implementing multi-ZK proofs powered by RiscZero and Succinct.
• Startnet launches Startnet v0.13.3, which reduces Blob gas transaction costs by 5 times.
• Mode has launched the AI Agent App Store, which aims to provide a platform for the discovery and use of AI agents in DeFi.

Dapps

• Sky Protocol announced that it will increase the Sky Savings Rate to 8.5%.
• Ethena announced a partnership with Deribit to introduce USDe to the platform as derivatives margin collateral and earn returns.
• Elixir has launched the deUSD RWA Institutional Program, in partnership with Securitize, to allow BUIDL and other RWA holders seamless access to DeFi.
• dYdX launched MegaVault, providing liquidity and earning income from position profits and losses, trading fee revenue share, and other incentives.
• Injective officially launched iAgent, providing developers with an SDK to create their own on-chain AI agents.
• INFINIT has launched the INFINIT Launcher, which enables token issuance to be initiated and work with AI agents in minutes.
• TARS AI, the AI architecture protocol on Solana, announced that the team has officially joined the NVIDIA developer program, opening 150 advanced SDKs to accelerate development.
• The testnet for Memecoin money market Blendy is now live.
• The ORA Foundation launched the ORA token with a total supply of 333 million, which is intended for initial model issuance (IMO) access, node staking and governance. The foundation plans to raise funds through DAICO, a fundraising model proposed by Vitalik in 2018 that allows token holders to release raised funds to the project team in stages.
• The cloud gaming DePIN protocol YOM and the decentralized computing protocol aZEN have both announced their migration from Solana to Peaq Network.
• Morpho Labs’ MORPHO token is now live, and according to DeFiLlama data, its FDV is approximately $700 million, and its TVL has reached an all-time high of $3.4 billion.
• McDonald's has partnered with Doodles to roll out on 1.1 million coffee cups across the US.

Governance/Project Updates

• Starknet’s STRK staking is expected to go live on the mainnet this week.
• Ethereum’s second-layer network Zircuit is expected to enable transferability of ZRC tokens on November 25.
• Jupiter will hold its first Jupuary vote from November 25th to 29th, proposing two additional Jupuary airdrops of 700 million JUP (51.85% of the current circulating supply) with no lock-up period.
• Avalanche is expected to release the Fuji9000 upgrade on November 25, which will be the last upgrade before the Avalanche9000 upgrade.
• Chromia is expected to launch the Asgrad upgrade on December 3, launching Chromia Extensions, which aims to expand Chromia's modular framework.
• Magic Eden, the dominant NFT marketplace on Solana and Bitcoin, plans to release its ME token on December 10.
• Jito proposes to allow JTO to be staked in the Node Consensus Network (NCN) and distribute 15 basis points of Jito Tips to JTO stakers through TipRouter.
• Aave proposed to buy $4 million worth of INST tokens to establish a friendly partnership with Instadapp. INST tokens rose by about 20% on the day, with a FDV of $463 million.
• Monad will reportedly roll out its public testnet in phases.

Token Unlock

• GRASS tokens will be unlocked on November 28th, representing 1.52% of the total token supply.
• IMX tokens will be unlocked on November 29th, representing 1.46% of the total token supply.
• OP tokens will be unlocked on November 30th, representing 2.56% of the total token supply.
• TAI tokens will be unlocked on December 2, accounting for 6.5% of the total token supply.
• SUI tokens will be unlocked on December 3rd, representing 2.87% of the total token supply.
• JTO tokens will be unlocked on December 7th, representing 103.9% of the total token supply.
• IO tokens will be unlocked on December 11th, accounting for 2.88% of the total token supply.
• APT tokens will be unlocked on December 12th, representing 2.11% of the total token supply.