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Last Updated:  
February 18, 2025
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Crypto Markets Daily Feb 18 2025

SOL is down 8% on the day, coinciding with the 90% drawdown in the Solana based LIBRA memecoin token. ETH on the other hand, rallied 8% yesterday before paring its gains back, resulting in an inverted at-the-money implied volatility term structure.

Daily Update:

  • Solana is down 8% on the day, having fallen from $204 on February 14th to now trading at $164.
  • Its move down has coincided with the Solana based memecoin token, $LIBRA, which was promoted by Argentinian President Javier Milei on the 14th of February losing 90% of its value within hours of reaching a $4.5B market-cap. According to various sources, insiders behind $LIBRA sold over $87M worth of the token before it peaked in price.
  • Hayden Davis, one insider linked with the launch, said in an interview yesterday that he is holding $100M associated with the project which he is using as “leverage with certain groups and parties”.
  • The effects of the memecoin launch have seemingly spread beyond just crypto – Argentina's main stock index, the S&P Merval, fell 5.58% yesterday, its largest single day decline since July.
  • In comparison, ETH rallied yesterday from a low of $2640 upwards of $2800 (an 8% move up). That move was reflected in the derivatives market, where ETH’s ATM implied volatility spiked at the front end resulting in an inversion. ETH’s spot price also pared back the majority of its gains later in the day and through today’s earlier hours too (now trading at just under $2700), as the rest of the market moved lower.
  • 200 million WLFI tokens have been purchased by a multi-signature wallet associated with Trump’s World Liberty Financial. This follows a $10 million USDC withdrawal from Binance.
  • Brevan Howard Digital has allocated $20 million to Kinto, an Ethereum based modular exchange via a funding round which also doubles up as access to their mining protocol.

This Week’s Calendar:

Charts Of The Day:

Figure 1. ETH 25-delta put-call skew at selected tenors. Source: Deribit, Block Scholes
Figure 2. ETH at-the-money implied volatility across selected tenors. Source: Deribit, Block Scholes
Figure 3. BTC at-the-money implied volatility across selected tenors. Source: Deribit, Block Scholes
Figure 4. Block Scholes BTC Sentimeter Index. Source: Block Scholes
Figure 5. Block Scholes ETH Sentimeter Index. Source: Block Scholes
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