Share this blog:
Markets shrugged off the government shutdown last week as equities and crypto both rallied, with investors turning to dollar hedges like gold, stocks, and BTC. Despite missing jobs data, private estimates show a slowdown in growth but not a collapse, while volatility remains low but worth watching. With BTC and gold trending higher, the macro setup into year-end still looks risk-on. Read on to learn more in this week's Amberdata Derivatives Newsletter:
-
Wednesday 2:00pm - FOMC Minutes
*Various Fed Governors Speak throughout the week*
Visit Amberdata.io
Disclaimer: Nothing here is trading advice or solicitation. This is for educational purposes only.
Authors have holdings in BTC, ETH, and Derive and may change their holdings anytime.
MACRO Weekly Overview
Last week’s job’s report, the biggest headline number of the week, wasn’t released due to the government shutdown. This is an interesting wrinkle in the current macro economic environment… Risk-assets don’t seem to care however as the S&P500 closed the week +1.12% higher.
Chart: Revelio Labs NFP Private Estimate
(Click here for publication link)
In order to estimate the employment data, newsrooms and traders have been looking at the privately compiled data instead.
Wednesday’s release from ADP showed payrolls down -32,000.
ADP is the nation’s largest paycheck processor, although this impact doesn’t capture the offsetting effects of immigration reform on the total employment picture.
Revelio Labs on the other-hand is a workforce analytics company that aggregates and standardizes hundreds of millions of publicly available employment and profile records.
Their own NFP report is meant to be compared directly to the BLS NFP report and released around the same time.
Chart: Revelio Labs 3-month Summary
Taken altogether, the private sector composite NFP is assumed to show job creations of about +38k for the month of September. Before the government shutdown, the market expected NFP BLS payroll to come in at +51k (4.3% holding steady).
Overall, this continues to show a slowdown in job growth but not a disorderly “crash”, as private number estimates seem in-line.
The federal government has been shut down since October 1, 2025. The negotiations have continued to go nowhere, soon mass layoffs will start.
It will be interesting to see how this impacts markets going forward, my assumption last week was that it would be bearish overall for risk-assets, but it seems that maybe things could be bearish for the USD and therefore bullish “dollar-hedges” like gold, stocks and BTC?!
GLD +3.14% on the week
SPY +1.12% on the week
IBIT +12.71% on the week
Chart: VIX Term Structure (VixCentral.com)
(Click here for link)
The VIX remains relatively low YTD as cash Vix sits at 16.65 and the futures term structure displays a steep Contango for Vix.
I think Vix is something to pay attention too here, I continue to like the Vix upside hedges, especially with VVIX at 94.50%.
Next week is we have the FOMC minutes release and a ton of speaking engagements throughout the week from Fed Governors. This will be interesting from them, especially given their “data dependent” stance during a government shut-down.
BTC: $122,868 (+11.4% / 7-day)
ETH: $4,500 (+11.4% / 7-day)
SOL: $227.09 (+10.5% / 7-day)
Crypto Options Overview
Welp got the vol right but the wrong intuitive direction last week.
We finally had a massive jump in realized volatility for BTC as the market rose from $110k → $123k in less than a week on the back of the US government shutdown.
Gold rose higher as well, but actually underperformed BTC this time. Woo!
Chart: BTC RV vs IV (VRP chart)
Yeah… I just think this keeps going.
There’s no reason to fight these trends higher (Gold and BTC) and there isn’t any price action suggesting we don’t rally right into EOY.
As mentioned before, the largest risk I see for BTC and crypto is a risk-off event that creates a dash-for-cash in all sectors, but right now, that risk is easily hedgeable in the VIX complex.
Chart: Week-over-week BTC Term Structure change
We can see that the positive spot/vol correlation move last week brought the Bitcoin volatility term structure from Contango (light blue) → Flat (dark blue).
90-day IV however barely budged a couple points week-over-week and still provides a decent entry for EOY long exposure.
Chart: 90-day ∆25 RR-Skew
As recently mentioned on the TastyLive show, the longer duration ∆25 RR-skew looks interesting for upside exposure right now.
You can see in the chart above, 90-dte RR-Skew 12-month rolling, we are pretty low.
If we decompose the RR-Skew for 90-dte into the put and call components, we can see two extended moves in the past 12-months for each leg.
The Put Leg (orange) is rather elevated in terms for a ∆25P IV ratio to ATM IV.
At the same time, the call wing is also depressed.
TL:DR, call cheap, put expensive.
That said, keep in mind that the term structure volatility shows the December expiration ATM volatility as the most expensive fwd volatility jump point.
Chart: BTC ATM term structure
One way to hedge this… instead of buying the ∆25 RR-Skew outright, hedged (vol trade) or un-hedged (vol & delta trade).
Selling the OTM put and using the proceeds to buy multiple Call Spreads, instead of an outright OTM Call, can help minimize the term structure Vol expense, still capture upside.
Long story short, getting long BTC delta exposure makes sense in my mind. I don’t want to fight the trend.
There are interesting vol structures to capture this upside and if I need to hedge “risk-off” macro risk, I’ll do it in the VIX complex.
Paradigm Top Trades this Week
BTC Cumulative Taker Flow
ETH Cumulative Taker Flow
BTC Cumulative OI
ETH Cumulative OI
BTC
ETH
Options volume is booming on Derive XYZ, with OI surging fast - now at $489M.
More aggregator visibility is coming soon as we climb the rankings.
Our plan is the same: Regularly print $100m trades at market-leading prices for BTC & ETH options.
Chart: Bitcoin OI
Chart: Ethereum OI
AMBERDATA DISCLAIMER: The information provided in this research is for educational purposes only and is not investment or financial advice. Please do your own research before making any investment decisions. None of the information in this report constitutes, or should be relied on as a suggestion, offer, or other solicitation to engage in, or refrain from engaging, in any purchase, sale, or any other investment-related activity. Cryptocurrency investments are volatile and high risk in nature. Don’t invest more than what you can afford to lose.
