EQUOS — Morning Update — October 29th

Amid rising coronavirus cases, the UK, France, Germany and a slew of other European countries are tightening containment measures or going into lockdown. The reality of a new infection wave is setting in.

European and American equities fell ‘en masse’ yesterday. The S&P fell by a large 3.5% while the EuroStoxx 50 was down about 4%. Big moves, reminiscent of the earlier pandemic scare and crash.

Treasuries were flat, with the 10-year still at around 0.77%. Gold was sold off, falling 1.6% through its range, now at $1,876. As it’s often the case in panic mode, it was interesting to see the dollar and the yen gain relative to their peers, with the Aussie as the worst performer.

In the crypto space, while we’re down, the steadiness is nice to see. While BTC is often seen -and is- the more volatile asset, we’re actually closing the session just 2.5% down, from $13,640 to the current $13,290. It’s great to see the BTC Futures open interest rise steadily and towards all-time highs — confirming once again that sophisticated traders are allocating more capital to the digital asset.

ETH fell by 3.4%, to $390 at the time of writing. LINK followed with the same intensity, down at $11.50. LTC was down 3%. XMR which had outperformed for most of September and October fell 5.25%, now at $126. Other alts are mostly down, with moves ranging from -1% to -3%.

While the risk-off move seen in crypto is undoubtedly a result of the risk-off moves in legacy markets, the overall feel is positive and good news keeps on pouring in.

Bitwise’s AUM is reported to have crossed $100M, which may sound small relative to Grayscale but shows the same trend: up.

We’re also hearing reports of more and more regulators looking at crypto and partnering up with private firms — this holds true from Fed officials and NYSE c-level members to more emerging countries like Brazil, Malaysia, or the Bahamas.