Major European digital asset manager CoinShares is expanding its product portfolio with a new physically-backed Ether (ETH) exchange-traded product, or ETP. Called CoinShares Physical Ethereum (ETHE), the new investment product is launching with around $75 million in assets under management. Announcing the news Wednesday, CoinShares said that each unit of ETHE is backed with 0.03 ETH at launch. The news comes shortly after CoinShares launched its first physically backed Bitcoin (BTC) ETP, CoinShares Physical Bitcoin (BITC), in January. Similar to BITC, the new ETH ETP will be initially listed on SIX Swiss Exchange. The new product intends to provide investors …

In the past 48 hours, Bitcoin's (BTC) price has dropped by $13,360 and more than $2.6 billion worth of futures contracts have been liquidated. When including altcoins, the total sum of liquidations equaled $5.9 billion. After marking a record-high open interest at $19.5 billion on Feb. 21, the metric has stabilized at $16.5 billion. This means that half of the terminated leverage positions have been reopened. According to the top traders' long-to-short data and various funding rate indicators, retail traders took the largest hit. Top traders bought the dip The top traders' long-to-short indicator is calculated by using clients' consolidated …

Bitcoin seems to be struggling at the $58,000 level, which is leading some traders to fear a more significant correction could take place. While Bitcoin's (BTC) 2021 performance has been incredibly strong, its current 696% gain and comments from United States Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen suggesting that cryptocurrencies are used to finance terrorism may be enough to have investors feeling a bit cautious. Reducing open position sizes is usually the method most investors use to reduce exposure, but another way to manage risk is to use BTC options contracts to provide protection. Buying a put (sell) option is the easiest …

Bitcoin's (BTC) sudden $11,500 drop liquidated more than $1.64 billion worth of BTC futures contracts. This massive figure represents 8.5% of the total $19.5 billion in open interest, which coincidentally had just reached its all-time high. Although these are significant figures, they are proportionally lower than the $1-billion futures liquidation on Nov. 26, 2020. At that time, the 16% correction that followed Bitcoin price testing a $16,300 low reduced the open interest by 17%. In light of today's big price move, investors' positive expectations regarding Bitcoin remain unfazed, as both the futures contracts funding rate and the options 25% delta …

21Shares, a Switzerland-based provider of cryptocurrency exchange-traded products, or ETPs, has recorded a 100% growth in assets under management over the past two weeks. The company announced Monday that it has passed the $1 billion mark in assets under management across its diversified 12 crypto-asset ETPs. 21Shares CEO Hany Rashwan said that the company has seen a meteoric rise in its crypto ETP products recently, doubling its AUM in less than two weeks. The company previously announced that 21Shares broke $500 million in AUM on Feb. 8. According to the announcement, the massive surge in 21Shares’ crypto ETP business is …

This week Ether (ETH) price finally broke through the $2,000 level as aggressive institutional inflow through Grayscale Investments products and declining exchange reserves signaled that buying pressure was increasing. While many traders are skilled at using perpetual futures and the basic margin investing tools available on most exchanges, they may be unaware of additional instruments that can be used to maximize their gains. One simple way, albeit expensive, is buying Ether call option contracts. For example, a March 26 call option with a $1,760 strike trades at $340. In the current situation, the holder would only profit if Ether trades …

After a 160% increase over the past 3 months, the open interest on Bitcoin (BTC) options reached a new record-high at $12 billion. While this number might seem unusually high, it makes sense that the figure would increase as Bitcoin’s market capitalization surpassed $1 trillion. Although Friday's $3.2 billion expiry could negatively impact the market, these options are split among calls (neutral-to-bullish) and the more bearish put options. As shown in the chart above, Deribit exchange leads the market by holding an 85% market share. For the Feb. 26 expiry, 58,500 BTC contracts remain open and this is equivalent to …

In the last 24-hours, Ether (ETH) rallied above $1,900 to a new all-time high and this breakout reflects a strong 45% gain for just February alone. Aside from Ether following Bitcoin's (BTC) bullish momentum, the move has been partially fueled by the news that BlackRock is considering future cryptocurrency investments and Microstrategy's $900 million convertible notes offer to buy more Bitcoin. The growing popularity of decentralized exchanges (DEX) has also been a huge booster of Ether price and earlier this week Uniswap reached $100 billion in cumulative volume. This signals just how relevant the Ethereum-based DeFi ecosystem has become. The …

Bitcoin’s (BTC) abysmal December 2017 futures launch quickly fell short of investors expectations and even though the CME BTC market has surpassed $2.5 billion in open interest, the initial launch has reinforced the narrative that this week’s CME ETH futures launch will be equally bearish in the short term. Prior to the CME BTC futures launch, Bitcoin had already gained 1,900% for the year, a rally which some analysts argue was propelled by the expectation of regulated futures. Now that the CME ETH futures have launched, investors are watching closely to see if Ether (ETH) will face a similar situation …

Bitcoin (BTC) price posted a 25% gain after this week’s news of Tesla’s $1.5 billion BTC investment came out. Prior to this reveal, BTC was lagging behind Ether’s (ETH) performance by 7.5% but the numerous bullish events of the past few days helped BTC to hit a new all-time high at $48,900. Previous to Tesla’s announcement, BTC price was trading in the $30,000 to $41,500 range for nearly 3 weeks and once the price broke out one would expect pro traders and arbitrage desks to follow the bullish trend. Rather than flipping long, many of the top traders opened short …

The price of Bitcoin (BTC) achieved a new all-time high on Feb. 11 as it surpassed $48,500 across major exchanges. Since then, the dominant cryptocurrency has been consolidating, showing no real momentum to break out of the record-high in the near future. But analysts are not fazed by the consolidation after breaking past a new peak. Generally, market commentators say that when an asset moves slowly or consolidates after an explosive move upward, it is a sign of a healthy market. For Bitcoin, stabilizing following a strong impulse rally to a record-high is critical at this current juncture due to …

The crypto derivatives market is dominated by Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH), with the main platforms being Huobi, Chicago Mercantile Exchange, OKEx, Bybit and Deribit. The CME has also dipped in the Ether pool by launching its Ether futures on Feb. 8, which amounted to $30 million notional volumes on the first day. Prior to this launch, there was a huge $1-billion options expiry on Feb. 5, which lead to bulls targeting the $40,000 price range, according to the underlying options data. But this expiry was superseded by Elon Musk tweeting in support of Bitcoin just after the expiry event; …