The Bitcoin market dominance rate, which tracks the largest cryptocurrency's share of the total digital asset market, rose to 51.2% on Tuesday, near a 26-month high of 52% reached at the end of June. The world’s largest cryptocurrency has gained 66% year to date, compared with the second largest cryptocurrency by market value, ether, which has gained 32%. According to LMAX Digital, ether’s underperformance against bitcoin is due to ether’s recent “healthy increase” in ether supply over the past month. LMAX also notes that “decreased transaction activity on Ethereum means less ether being burned, which has translated to an increase in the overall supply,” as a contributing factor to ether’s underperformance.

Bitcoin Dominance Rate (TradingView)

Bitstamp, the longest-running cryptocurrency exchange, says it’s in talks to help three large European banks begin offering crypto services around the first quarter of next year. The news, revealed by a senior executive during an interview with CoinDesk, suggests the European Union’s major crypto regulatory effort, called Markets in Crypto Assets, or MiCA, is easing the way for conventional financial firms to get into digital assets. That’s a stark contrast with the U.S., where regulators are cracking down, thus keeping old-school firms hesitant and forcing crypto companies to consider moving elsewhere.

Lawyers for Sam Bankman-Fried want to quiz FTX co-founder Gary Wang about his reliance on legal advice when agreeing to a series of loans from linked hedge fund Alameda Research, according to a legal filing made late Monday night. The letter, sent as Bankman-Fried’s trial enters its second week, seeks carve-outs from a judge who’s previously proved reluctant to let the crypto tycoon blame the alleged fraud on his lawyers. Prosecutors have already probed Wang about the $200 million- $300 million loan he received from Alameda, which he used to make venture investments and buy himself a house in the Bahamas.

A message from Bitget

Crypto traders seem unperturbed by the escalating tensions in the Middle East, which threaten to add risks to the already murky global economic outlook.

That's the message from the order flow in the bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) options market, which shows a bias for selling options, a strategy aimed at profiting from low volatility or price turbulence.

"On an aggregate basis, it becomes evident that Deribit option order books exhibit a bias towards selling volatility. This is indicated by the bid/ask ratio consistently leaning below one, where a ratio less than one suggests a preference for selling. In contrast, a ratio greater than one indicates a preference for buying," crypto quant researcher Samneet Chepal told CoinDesk.

- Omkar Godbole

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