BNB

BNB Greenfield hits testnet, decentralized storage coming to BNB Chain

BNB Chain is calling for developers, validators and storage providers to begin testing its BNB Greenfield decentralized storage solution.

The BNB Chain ecosystem is set to integrate decentralized storage solutions, with testing of its BNB Greenfield beginning on April 10.

BNB Greenfield is modeled to emulate conventional Web2 cloud storage solutions, providing fast and cost-effective data services in combination with enhanced ownership and integration for Web3 applications and services.

The announcement of the testnet shared with Cointelegraph outlined initial features that will allow users and developers to begin using decentralized storage.

Data permission can be moved cross-chain to the BNB Smart Chain, allowing data to be turned into tradeable digital assets that can be integrated with a variety of decentralized finance (DeFi), nonfungible tokens (NFTs) and GameFi apps on the BNB Chain.

Users can create wallets and manage data on BNB Greenfield, while developers are able to exercise control over data assets. This includes the ability to set access and conditions both manually or programmatically.

A relayer links the BNB Chain and Greenfield, which allows BNB Chain decentralized applications (DApps) to integrate with Greenfield using a software development kit. The Binance ecosystem’s BNB (BNB) token will serve as the gas and governance token for BNB Greenfield. Validators will stake BNB, participate in network governance and earn revenue from storage fees.

Meanwhile, users create accounts, transfer BNB to manage storage resources, and use native cross-chain communication between BNB Chain and Greenfield.

The Greenfield testnet will see storage providers (SPs) work with validators to facilitate the platform’s storage services. SPs are responsible for storing actual data, while validators process metadata and financial ledger information through consensus algorithms.

To become an SP, a user must deposit a service stake on the Greenfield blockchain, which is then voted for by validators through the governance process. The design aims to ensure efficient user data storage, redundancy and security. Greenfield’s proof-of-stake mechanism institutes decentralized governance of the platform.

BNB Chain senior solution architect Victor Genin said that Greenfield is now open for SPs and users to begin stress testing the service on its Congo testnet:

“Developers will be able to choose to store data anywhere, from decentralized terminals to centralized storage services while validators will be instrumental in shaping the future of data ownership and utility in Web3.”

With over 1,400 active DApps and 200 million unique addresses across the BNB Chain, the firm envisions its data storage solution to serve a booming data economy. Data from Fortune Business Insights estimates that the global data storage market will be valued at over $777 billion by 2030.

Magazine: Web3 Gamer: Shrapnel wows at GDC, Undead Blocks hot take, Second Trip

BNB Chain on-chain activity bucks bear market downtrend in Q4: Messari

Average daily addresses on the Binance blockchain network grew by 30% year-on-year in Q4.

The Binance-native blockchain BNB Chain continued to show steady activity growth in the fourth quarter of last year despite the broader crypto bear market, according to recent research.

In a “State of BNB Chain Q4 2022” report published on Feb. 5, Messari researcher James Trautman revealed that the Binance network had continued with an “aggressive strategy to deploy financial and human capital across its ecosystem.”

Due to these ongoing updates and developments, average daily active addresses and transactions “bucked a downward trend and grew by 30% and 0.2%, respectively,” the researcher noted.

*BNB Chain daily active addresses. Source: Messari*

Bear markets are usually quiet periods in terms of on-chain activity, however, teams use this time to continue building and developing their products.

Trautman wrote that while “2022 was a tumultuous year for the crypto industry,” BNB Chain “lived up to its Build N’ Build name with network upgrades and ecosystem expansion that showed considerable strength through Q4.”

BscScan reports that daily transactions on BNB Chain have remained steady at around 3 million since mid-August. However, daily BEP-20 token transfers have seen an uptick in activity this year, with a 66% increase to just over 5 million on Feb. 5.

BNB Smart Chain unique addresses are currently at an all-time high of 250 million, according to BscScan. Average daily new unique addresses grew by 41.3% year-on-year.

Messari attributed the growth to the adoption of several ecosystem protocols such as Web3 onboarding protocol Hooked, a surge of DeFi activity on Venus Protocol and increased NFT activity on the OpenSea marketplace.

Meanwhile, BNB Chain DeFi total value locked has increased by 25% since the beginning of the year to reach $6.62 billion, according to DeFiLlama.

“BNB Chain executed a growth strategy that facilitated significant strides toward adoption. It made several upgrades to core functionality, integrated with strategic partners, and expanded into DeFi, NFTs, GameFi, and beyond,” said Trautman.

However, despite the uptick in user activity, financial performance was down. Average transaction fees decreased, which contributed to less revenue generation, it noted.

Network revenue declined 10% for the quarter but Messari stated that the fundamentals were still positive, concluding that:

“Ultimately, it was a positive sign that the catalysts for user growth came on the heels of a foundational user base and a more favorable valuation for BNB Chain’s network, especially after the FTX drama unfolded during Q4.”

Looking ahead, Trautman said that he expects BNB Chain to be able to continue its growth, including adding scaling solutions and boosting throughput.

The BNB Chain’s native token, BNB, has dropped 1.2% over the past 24 hours, falling to $326, according to Cointelegraph. The token has gained 25% over the past month but remains down 52.5% from its May 2021 all-time high of $686.

Bitcoin targets $16.7K amid fear BNB may ‘drag whole crypto market down’

Binance Coin “has nothing but air below it,” one analyst warns as BTC price action goes from bad to worse.

Bitcoin (BTC) looked set to ditch $17,000 after the Dec. 16 Wall Street open as United States equities continued to fall.

*BTC/USD 1-hour candle chart (Bitstamp). Source: TradingView*

Analyst: $240BNB “has nothing but air below it”

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView tracked new intraday lows of $16,743 for BTC/USD on Bitstamp.

The pair had abruptly dived nearly 3% earlier in the day, compounding losses, which immediately followed one-month highs.

Ongoing concerns over largest global exchange Binance pervaded the mood, these coming despite the best efforts of CEO, Changpeng Zhao, to dispel what he called “FUD.” As Cointelegraph reported, longtime crypto traders were similarly skeptical of the credibility of the “craziest rumors” about the crypto exchange sector.

Nonetheless, markets refused to give them a break, and beyond Bitcoin, warnings increased over the fate of Binance’s in-house token, Binance Coin (BNB).

BNB/USD fell to near $240 on the day, marking its lowest levels since July.

“BNB has nothing but air below it,” popular trader and analyst Matthew Hyland acknowledged.

“As the 3rd largest non-stable crypto, if it crashes here it’s going to drag the whole crypto market down with it.”

*BNB/USD 1-day candle chart (Binance). Source: TradingView*

The move fed into bearish traders’ longer-term plan, with Il Capo of Crypto notably already calling for a bottom below $50.

Pressure increased around Binance itself on the day, with its proof of reserves report deleted by auditor Mazars Group, which added that it would no longer work with crypto industry clients.

In a square-off on Twitter, meanwhile, Zhang publicly ridiculed a post from outspoken television personality Jim Cramer, who said that he “would trust my money more in Draftkings than i would binance.”

“Now we are safe!” Zhang responded.

Crypto limps lower with U.S. stocks

Beyond crypto, U.S. stocks saw another weak performance at the open, the S&P 500 down around 1.4% at the time of writing.

For Mike McGlone, senior commodity strategist at Bloomberg Intelligence, the situation was not as bad as it may seem.

“Normal Reversion Can Feel Like a Crash – The propensity for correlations to gravitate to 1-to-1 when the stock market declines may be a primary factor for all assets in 2023, particularly commodities,” he wrote in part of commentary alongside an explanatory chart.

*Bloomberg Commodity Spot Index vs. S&P 500 annotated chart. Source: Mike McGlone/ Twitter*

Earlier, McGlone nonetheless cautioned that the marked was displaying potential similarities to the period before the 1929 Wall Street Crash.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the authors’ alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Bitcoin targets $16.7K amid fear BNB may ‘drag whole crypto market down’

BNB “has nothing but air below it,” one analyst warns as BTC price action goes from bad to worse.

Bitcoin (BTC) looked set to ditch $17,000 after the Dec. 16 Wall Street open as United States equities continued to fall.

Analyst: $240 BNB “has nothing but air below it”

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView tracked new intraday lows of $16,743 for BTC/USD on Bitstamp.

The pair had abruptly dived nearly 3% earlier in the day, compounding losses, which immediately followed one-month highs.

Nonetheless, markets refused to give them a break, and beyond Bitcoin, warnings increased over the fate of Binance’s in-house token, BNB (BNB).

BNB/USD fell to near $240 on the day, marking its lowest levels since July.

“BNB has nothing but air below it,” popular trader and analyst Matthew Hyland acknowledged:

“As the 3rd largest non-stable crypto, if it crashes here it’s going to drag the whole crypto market down with it.”

The move fed into bearish traders’ longer-term plan, with Il Capo of Crypto notably already calling for a bottom below $50 .

Pressure increased around Binance itself on the day, with its proof of reserves report deleted by auditor Mazars Group, which added that it would no longer work with crypto industry clients.

“Now we are safe!” Zhang responded.

Crypto limps lower with U.S. stocks

Beyond crypto, U.S. stocks saw another weak performance at the open, with the S&P 500 down around 1.4% at the time of writing.

For Mike McGlone, senior commodity strategist at Bloomberg Intelligence, the situation was not as bad as it may seem.

Earlier, McGlone nonetheless cautioned that the market was displaying potential similarities to the period before the 1929 Wall Street Crash.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the authors’ alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

CryptoQuant verifies Binance’s reserves, reports no ‘FTX-like’ behavior

Binance has faced a FUD-storm this week but a new CryptoQuant audit has verified its proof of reserves.

Blockchain analytics provider CryptoQuant has released a report analyzing the recently released proof-of-reserves audit of the world’s largest crypto exchange, Binance.

Centralized exchanges have been cast into the spotlight over the past month following the collapse of FTX, none more so than Binance, which has been scrambling to reassure customers and investors that it has sufficient reserves and is fully backed.

A report by CryptoQuant released on Dec. 14 says its analysis confirms that Binance’s reserves are accounted for.

Earlier this month, Binance released a proof-of-reserves report but it was criticized as being an “agreed-upon procedure” and not a full audit.

Additionally, the report didn’t address the effectiveness of internal financial controls, according to the former chief of the Securities Exchange Commission’s Office of Internet Enforcement, John Reed Stark.

But CryptoQuant has backed the findings of audit firm Mazars, stating that liabilities reported by Binance are very close to its estimation of 99%.

“The report shows Binance’s BTC liabilities (customers deposits) are 97% collateralized by the exchange assets. Collateralization increases to 101% when the BTC lent to customers is accounted for.”

What does Binance’s Proof of Reserve (PoR) report tell us from an on-chain perspective?

A short thread @binance @cz_binance pic.twitter.com/2vAoOmFb63

— CryptoQuant.com (@cryptoquant_com) December 15, 2022

The analytics firm added that on-chain data suggests thatBinance’s Ether (ETH) and stablecoin reserves are “not showing ‘FTX-like’ behavior at this point.”

“Additionally, Binance has an acceptable ‘Clean Reserve,’ which means its own token, BNB, is still a low proportion of its total assets,” it reported.

According to data provider Nansen, around 10% of Binance reserves are held in its token. Binance currently holds $60.4 billion in total assets in its publicly disclosed addresses, and $6.2 billion of that total was BNB (BNB), Nansen reported.

Binance has faced a lot of FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) this week that led to $5 billion in withdrawals from the exchange on Dec. 13. Fears of a liquidity crisis and another bank run scenario started to escalate.

However, the situation stabilized the following day and CEO Changpeng Zhao reported that day’s outflows weren’t even in the top five largest for the exchange.

In a Twitter Spaces event, CZ also suggested that 99% of people were not equipped for self-custody of their crypto and that mospeople who attempted it would likely lose their coins one way or another.

Ankr deploys $15M to make users whole as Helio stablecoin recovers after exploit

Helio Protocol had a total value locked of approximately $90 million before the incident.

Stablecoin protocol Helio, which issues the U.S. dollar-pegged HAY stablecoin, said in a Dec. 7 tweet that it has bought back $3 million worth of bad debt in HAY thus far in the open market. The day prior, blockchain infrastructure platform Ankr stated it would allocate $15 million to buy back the bad debt resulting from its recent exploit and the resultant overcirculation of HAY.

A series of seemingly unrelated incidents occurred on Dec. 2 when a hacker manipulated vulnerabilities in Ankr’s smart contract code and compromised private keys after a technical upgrade. As a result, the hacker minted 20 trillion Ankr Reward Bearing Staked BNB (aBNBc), which was pegged to BNB (BNB), and dumped them, with the price of aBNBc plunging to less than $2 from around $300.

However, a trader then took advantage of an alleged hard-coding of pegged prices between aBNBc and BNB on Helio Protocol. The trader bought 183,885 aBNBc with only 10 BNB and used it as collateral to borrow 16 million HAY, which was then swapped for 15.5 million Binance USD (BUSD), earning a 5,209x profit from their original capital.

2/ Firstly, the team has already started our peg recovery process for $HAY, and this process is expected to be completed by Tuesday, December 6th UTC +4.

We expect HAY to be re-pegged, or at the very least, be close to the $1 mark.

— Helio Protocol ($HAY) (@Helio_Money) December 4, 2022

After the exploit, HAY lost its peg and fell to as low as $0.20 per coin before recovering most of its losses to trade at $0.96 at the time of publication. Immediately after the incident, the Helio team stated that it would be repurchasing the excess HAY and sending it to a burn address. Originally, users were able to mint HAY by depositing BNB as collateral at a ratio of 152%. The protocol had a total value locked of around $90 million before the incident.

Binance CEO shares ‘two big lessons’ after FTX’s liquidity crunch

CZ took to Twitter on Nov. 8 sharing “two big lessons” that crypto companies should learn amid the downfall of crypto exchange FTX.

Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao has shared his take on “two big lessons” to be learned from the FTX saga, saying cryptocurrency firms shouldn’t use their own tokens as collateral and should also keep “large reserves.”

In a Nov. 8 tweet, Zhao laid out two learnings after the significant “liquidity crunch” at FTX which has ultimately resulted in a non-binding letter of intent from Binance to acquire the struggling exchange.

Two big lessons:

1: Never use a token you created as collateral.

2: Don’t borrow if you run a crypto business. Don’t use capital “efficiently”. Have a large reserve.

Binance has never used BNB for collateral, and we have never taken on debt.

Stay #SAFU.

— CZ Binance (@cz_binance) November 8, 2022

Zhao shared that his first lesson is to ensure a firm’s collateral should not consist of a token that it has created, and claims his exchange’s token — Binance Coin (BNB) — has never been used as collateral for its services.

FTX’s liquidity issues appeared to have come after a Nov. 6 tweet from Zhao saying Binance would be liquidating its holdings of FTX token (FTT) following “recent revelations” related to reported ties between FTX and the trading firm Alameda Research showing the firm had significant FTT holdings.

While Binance does not currently disclose proof of what reserves it uses as collateral, Zhao mentioned in a Nov. 8 tweet that in an effort to be fully transparent Binance will soon provide proof of reserves, adding:

“Banks run on fractional reserves. Crypto exchanges should not.”

Zhao’s second lesson from the downfall of FTX is that crypto businesses shouldn’t be borrowing, and instead should opt to maintain large reserves — which could be in reference to FTX users complaining of sluggish withdrawals on Nov. 7, sparking rumors the exchange didn’t have enough to cover user funds.

Zhao’s tweet confirming Binance’s FTT holdings liquidation ended up triggering what some called a “bank-run” on the exchange, with analytics platform CryptoQuant data revealing that FTX’s Bitcoin (BTC) balance had fallen by 19,956 on Nov. 7 alone.

At the time of writing, FTT is down 75% in the last 24 hours, with the last price around $5.70 at the time of writing compared to its opening price of $22.14.

Binance CEO shares ‘two big lessons’ after FTX’s liquidity crunch

CZ took to Twitter on Nov. 8 sharing “two big lessons” that crypto companies should learn amid the downfall of crypto exchange FTX.

In a Nov. 8 tweet, Zhao laid out two learnings after the significant “liquidity crunch” at FTX, which has ultimately resulted in a non-binding letter of intent from Binance to acquire the struggling exchange.

Two big lessons:

1: Never use a token you created as collateral.

2: Don’t borrow if you run a crypto business. Don’t use capital “efficiently”. Have a large reserve.

Binance has never used BNB for collateral, and we have never taken on debt.

Stay #SAFU.

— CZ Binance (@cz_binance) November 8, 2022

Zhao shared that his first lesson is to ensure a firm’s collateral should not consist of a token that it has created and claims his exchange’s token — BNB (BNB) — has never been used as collateral for its services.

FTX’s liquidity issues appeared to have come after a Nov. 6 tweet from Zhao saying Binance would be liquidating its holdings of FTX Token (FTT) following “recent revelations” related to reported ties between FTX and the trading firm Alameda Research showing the firm had significant FTT holdings.

“Banks run on fractional reserves. Crypto exchanges should not.”

Zhao’s second lesson from the downfall of FTX is that crypto businesses shouldn’t be borrowing and instead should opt to maintain large reserves — which could be in reference to FTX users complaining of sluggish withdrawals on Nov. 7, sparking rumors the exchange didn’t have enough to cover user funds.

At the time of writing, FTT is down 75% in the last 24 hours, with the last price around $5.70 at the time of writing compared to its opening price of $22.14.

The market is hot, but Solana is not — Data explains why SOL price is lagging

SOL price has been in a three-month downtrend, but recent newsflow and events could trigger a reversal.

Solana (SOL) has been in a steady downtrend for the past three months, but some traders believe that it may have bottomed at $26.80 on Oct. 21. Lately, there h been a lot of speculation on the causes for the underperformance and some analysts are pointing to competition from Aptos Network.

*Solana price at FTX, USD. Source: TradingView*

The Aptos blockchain launched on Oct. 17 and it claims to handle three times more transactions per second than Solana. Yet, after four years of development and millions of dollars in funding, the debut of the layer-1 smart contract solution was rather unimpressive.

It is essential to highlight that Solana presently holds an $11.5 billion market capitalization at the $32 nominal price level, ranking it as the seventh largest cryptocurrency when excluding stablecoins. Despite its size, SOL’s year-to-date performance reflects a lackluster 82% drop, while the broader global market capitalization is down 56%.

Unfortunate events have negatively impacted SOL’s price

The downtrend accelerated on Oct. 11 after a leading decentralized finance application on the Solana Network suffered a $116 million hack.

Mango Markets’ oracle was attacked due to the low liquidity on the platform’s native Mango (MNGO) token which is used for collateral. To put things in perspective, the hack represented 9% of Solana’s total value locked (TVL) in smart contracts.

Other negative news emerged on Nov. 2 as German data center operator and cloud provider Hetzner started blocking crypto-related activity. The company’s terms of service prohibit customers from running nodes, mining and farming, plotting and storing blockchain data. Still, Solana nodes have other cloud storage providers to choose from, and Lido Finance confirmed that the risk for their validators had been mitigated.

A potentially promising partnership was announced on Nov. 2 after Instagram integrated support for Solana-based nonfungible tokens (NFTs), allowing users to create, sell and showcase their favorite digital arts and collectibles. SOL immediately reacted with a 5.7% pump in 15 minutes but retraced the entire movement over the next hour.

To get a more granular view of what is going on with SOL price, traders can also analyze Solana’s futures markets to understand whether the bearish newsflow has affected professional traders’ sentiment.

Derivatives metrics show an unusual degree of apathy

Whenever there is relevant growth in the number of derivatives contracts currently in play, it usually means more traders are involved. In futures markets, longs and shorts are balanced at all times, but having a larger number of active contracts — open interest — allows the participation of institutional investors who require a minimum market size.

*Solana futures open interest, USD. Source: Coinglass*

In the past 30 days, the total open interest on Solana has been reasonably steady at $440 million. As a comparison, Polygon (MATIC) aggregated futures position soared to $415 million from $153 million on Oct. 3.

BNB Chain’s token, BNB (BNB), displayed a similar trend reaching $485 million, up from $296 million on Oct. 3.

With that said, open interest doesn’t necessarily mean that professional investors are bullish or bearish. The futures annualized premium measures the difference between longer-term futures contracts and the current spot market levels.

The futures premium (basis rate) indicator should run between 4% to 8% to compensate traders for “locking in” the money until the contract expiry. Thus, levels below 2% are bearish, while numbers above 10% indicate excessive optimism.

*Solana annualized 3-month futures premium. Source: Laevitas.ch*

Data from Laevitas shows that Solana’s futures have been trading in backwardation for the past 30 days, meaning the futures’ contract price is lower than regular spot exchanges.

Ether (ETH) futures are trading at a 0.5% annualized basis, while Bitcoin’s (BTC) stands at 2%. The data is somewhat concerning for Solana since it signals a lack of interest from leverage buyers.

Rumors about Alameda Research could create more pressure

It is hard to pinpoint the reason for so much apathy about Solana and even the complete dominance of leverage short demand. Even more curious is Alameda Research’s influence on Solana projects. Alameda is the digital asset trading company spearheaded by Sam Bankman-Fried.

Recently, trader and Crypto Twitter influencer Hsaka raised concerns about whether the firm has been suppressing SOLs price even after bullish catalysts emerged.

Entire market catching a bid meanwhile Sol aimlessly meandering after two hyper bullish catalysts in such an environment.

Alameda washed up. https://t.co/FuGQvMfRcF

— Hsaka (@HsakaTrades) November 4, 2022

It’s probably highly unlikely that market participants will really find out Alameda Research’s impact on SOL price. Still, the theory raised by Hsaka could explain the rather unusual steady demand for leverage shorts and the negative basis rate. The arbitrage and market-making firm could have used derivatives instruments to reduce their exposure without selling SOL on the open market.

There are no signs that short sellers using SOL futures instruments are nearing liquidation or exhaustion, so their upper hand remains until the broader cryptocurrency market shows signs of strengthening.

The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.

2 key Ethereum price indicators point to traders opening long positions

Ether price is still at risk of falling below $1,000, but data points to traders opening fresh long positions.

Ether (ETH) price has been unable to close above $1,400 for the past 29 days and has been trading in a relatively tight $150 range. At the moment, the $1,250 support and the $1,400 resistance seem difficult to break, but two months ago, Ether was trading at $2,000. The current price range for Ether simply reflects how volatile cryptocurrencies can be.

From one side, investors are calm as Ether trades 50% above the $880 intraday low on June 18. However, the price is still down 65% year-to-date despite the most exciting upgrade in the network’s seven-year history.

More importantly, Ethereum’s biggest rival, BNB Chain, suffered a cross-chain security exploit on Oct. 6. The $568 million exploit caused BNB Smart Chain to temporarily suspend all transactions on the network, which holds $5.4 billion in smart contracts deposits.

Ether underperformed competing smart contract network coins such as Binance Chain’s BNB (BNB), Cardano’s ADA (ADA), and Solana’s (SOL) by 14% since September, even though its TVL in ETH terms increased by 9% during the period. This suggests that the Ethereum network’s issues, such as the $3 average transaction fees, weighed on the ETH price.

*Ether vs. MATIC, SOL, BNB: Source: TradingView*

Traders should look at Ether’s derivatives markets data to understand how whales and market makers are positioned.

Options traders remain moderately risk-averse

The 25% delta skew is a telling sign whenever professional traders overcharge for upside or downside protection. For example, if traders expected an Ether price crash, the options markets skew indicator would move above 12%. On the other hand, generalized excitement reflects a negative 12% skew.

*Ether 60-day options 25% delta skew: Source: Laevitas*

In layperson’s terms, the higher the index, the less inclined traders are to offer downside risk protection. The indicator has been signaling fear since Sept. 19, when it last held a value below 10%. That day marked the temporary bottom of a 28% weekly correction, as the $1,250 support strengthened after such a test.

Long-to-short data show traders adding longs

The top traders’ long-to-short net ratio excludes externalities that might have solely impacted the options markets. By aggregating the positions on the spot, perpetual and quarterly futures contracts, one can better understand whether professional traders are leaning bullish or bearish.

There are occasional methodological discrepancies between different exchanges, so viewers should monitor changes instead of absolute figures.

*Exchanges’ top traders Ether long-to-short ratio. Source: Coinglass*

Binance displayed a modest increase in its long-to-short ratio between Oct. 13 and 17, as the indicator moved from 1.04 to 1.07 in those four days. Thus, those traders slightly increased their bullish bets.

Huobi data shows a stable pattern as the long-to-short indicator stayed near 0.98 the whole time. Lastly, at the OKX exchange, the metric plunged to 0.72 on Oct. 13, largely favoring shorts only to rebound to the current 1.00.

On average, according to the long-to-short indicator, the top traders from those three exchanges have been increasing long positions since the $1,200 support test on Oct. 13.

Skew and leverage are critical to sustaining the $1,250 support

There was no significant improvement in pro traders’ derivatives positions despite Ether gaining 12% since the Oct. 13 crash down to $1,185. Moreover, options traders fear that a move below $1,250 remains feasible, considering the skew indicator remains above the 10% threshold.

If these whales and market makers had firm convictions of a sharp price correction, that would have been reflected in the top traders’ long-to-short ratio.

Investors should closely monitor both metrics. The 25% delta skew should remain at 18%, and the long-to-short ratio above 0.80 to sustain the $1,250 support strength. These indicators are a telling sign of whether the bearish sentiment from top traders is gaining momentum.