Crypto Vol Depressed As Yield Strategies Dominate #106

Jasper De Maere, OTC trader at Wintermute, joins Imran and Dave. He moved from traditional sales & trading and equity research at Morgan Stanley into crypto research at Outlier Ventures before joining Wintermute’s OTC desk. He flags options volumes surging 5x year-over-year on the desk, driven mainly by yield-generating strategies such as covered calls and cash-secured puts from long holders, plus targeted catalyst trades. Delta One remains the core business. Points discussed include Bitcoin in an accumulation zone with persistent structural supply pressure, but slow institutional buying continues to provide support. Miners face profitability challenges for the first time in a halving epoch with negative four-year BTC returns on held rewards; energy costs and smart treasury management (including options) are now critical, and some are pivoting toward AI data centers. The market is shifting from isolated projects toward deeper TradFi integration through tokenization, stablecoins, and AI agents, with capital likely concentrating in quality revenue-generating protocols.

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