Weekly Market Commentary - Aug 29, 2025
Major stories:
Markets fell this week with BTC/USD ending at $108,400 and ETH/USD at $4,375. U.S. PCE inflation rose in line with expectations for July and U.S. consumer sentiment hit a three month low. The Fed is expected to cut rates in September and at least twice by the end of the year. President Trump ordered the firing of Fed governor Cook, though she has challenged the action in court.
Trading Update:
Funding rates on perpetual swaps are currently around 5% on Binance and OKX. BTC futures are trading at an annualized basis of 6% on Binance and OKX and 9% on CME. ETH futures are trading at a basis of 5% on Binance and OKX and 10% on CME. BTC ETFs had net inflows of $552M and ETH ETFs had net inflows of $1.15B. On Deribit, 3-month options implied volatility is currently at 39% for BTC and 68% for ETH.
Other News:
Binance Futures had a brief trading outage on Friday. Grayscale filed to convert its Avalanche Trust into a spot ETF. Bitwise filed to launch a spot Chainlink ETF. Bitcoin miner Hut 8 plans to double its power capacity through expansion in the United States. Aave launched its Horizon platform to allow stablecoin borrowing against real-world assets. Solana will vote on a new consensus update that will increase the network's resilience to adversarial validators. Strategy bought 3,081 BTC for $356.9M, BitMine bought 190,500 ETH, SharpLink Gaming bought 56,533 ETH and has $200M left for future purchases and Sharps Technology raised $400M to create a SOL treasury.
