SpaceX share tokens traded $178m and agreed to within 0.24%

Good morning. BTC fell 1.6% to $81,925 while spot ETFs took in $1.0bn over five sessions, so other holders sold more than the funds bought. Retail traders on OKX doubled their long bias into the drop, and $11bn of BTC options expire on 30 Oct: positioning is now the story, not price.

The tape

Bitcoin (BTC) $81,925, -1.6% on the day, -5.0% over 30 days. Ether (ETH) $2,408, -1.7% and -12.5%. Solana (SOL) $104.31, -1.9% and -11.4%. BTC's share of total crypto market value rose to 60.0%, the month's high: altcoins are falling faster than bitcoin.

Gainers: Lighter (LIT), a perpetual-futures exchange, +9.0%; Monero (XMR), the privacy coin, +8.3% and +19.7% on the week; Venice Token (VVV), an AI service token, +8.2%. Losers: ZKsync (ZK), an Ethereum rollup, -10.0%; Akedo (AKE), a game publisher, -26.2%.

Where to look

Six things today, in order: ETF inflows against price, retail longs doubling, the 30 Oct options expiry, futures basis above T-bills, Monero funding at 80%, stablecoin supply falling.

1. 01

   ETF inflows: $528m Tuesday, $1.0bn over five sessions, while BTC fell 1.6%.

   BlackRock's IBIT took $235m and Fidelity's FBTC $213m on Tuesday; Grayscale's GBTC, which has bled assets since 2024, took in $33m. The funds bought and the price still fell, so the selling came from somewhere else.

   WatchA second week of inflows with BTC holding $80,000 means the funds win; two outflow days in a row means they do not.

2. 02

   OKX long/short ratio: BTC 2.04, up from 1.21 a day earlier; ETH 2.92 from 1.58; SOL 2.62.

   Twice as many OKX accounts are long as short, and the ratio jumped overnight while prices fell. Retail is buying the dip with leverage, which is the setup for a flush lower.

   WatchA BTC daily close below $80,000 with the ratio above 2.0.

3. 03

   30 Oct BTC options expiry: 136,295 BTC of open interest, about $11.1bn at today's price.

   Calls outnumber puts 87,418 to 48,877, a put/call ratio of 0.56, and the 25 Dec expiry is similar at 0.61. The market is positioned for upside into a falling price.

   WatchIf BTC is below $80,000 into 30 Oct, call holders unwind and dealers' hedges add to selling.

4. 04

   Futures basis: about 5.3% annualised on Deribit's Nov and Jun contracts, against a 4.25% three-month T-bill.

The deep dive

Eight tokens that each represent one SpaceX share traded $178m in 24 hours against $270m of combined supply, and in the median hour of the last 30 days the highest and lowest were 0.24% apart. They trade on-chain, around the clock, but take their price from the New York stock, including when New York is closed.

We took hourly prices for every token over 30 days and measured the gap between the highest and lowest each hour. If on-chain trading set its own price, the gap would widen when the stock market is closed and there is no New York quote to copy. It does not: 0.25% during New York hours, 0.24% outside them, and 82% of all hours fall outside them. Seven Tesla (TSLA) tokens show the same pattern at 0.20%.

The reason is the price feed. Chainlink's feed for these tokens uses the stock's last price times a redemption multiplier, ignores the tokens' own trades, updates five days a week, and holds Friday's close all weekend.

The SpaceX stock itself has realised volatility near 81%, and 1.3bn shares became sellable today with 328m more on 24 Oct. What would prove this wrong: a weekend in which the tokens move away from Friday's close. The first test is this weekend.

The news

• PancakeSwap's fee overhaul is losing 1,229,898 votes to 22,205. The plan raised liquidity providers' fee share to 88% and cut daily CAKE emissions from 22,500 to 7,000. The vote closes 24 Oct; it will fail and emissions stay where they are.
• Solana's Alpenglow upgrade went live, cutting finality to about 150 milliseconds. SOL fell 1.9% on the day and is down 11.4% on the month; the chain holds $5.90bn of deposits against Ethereum's $49.76bn. The market is not paying for the upgrade yet.
• BTC implied volatility is 37.85 against realised volatility of 43%; ETH implied is 51.66. Options price less movement than bitcoin has delivered, so protection is cheap, and ETH options cost 1.4 times BTC's for an asset falling twice as fast.
• The US stablecoin rule takes effect 18 Jan 2027 and keeps the ban on issuers paying interest. Third-party yield is now case by case, with no safe harbour. At a 4.25% bill rate the $299.8bn float earns $12.7bn a year that issuers cannot pass to holders directly.

Token talk: Aptos (APT)

Aptos (APT) is a layer-1 blockchain built by former Meta engineers. APT pays transaction fees and is staked to secure the network; stakers are paid from new issuance, not from revenue.

It is here because its supply rules changed this month and the last cliff of its four-year investor unlock passed on 12 Oct. Governance capped supply at 2.1bn APT, cut the staking reward from 5.19% to 2.6% a year, raised gas prices tenfold and now burns all fees paid in APT; the foundation will permanently stake 210m APT. Net supply growth falls about 70%, to roughly 1.5% a year.

883m APT circulate, 42% of the cap; 1.21bn have been issued. Market value is $688m, fully diluted $944m. APT is down 76% over 12 months and sits 96.1% below its $19.92 high of Jan 2023. Burns offset about 10% of issuance, up from 0.2% before the change. Watch: whether validators stay at half the old reward.

Token Tape is written by an automated research desk built and supervised by Eric Manoukian. Figures are pulled live each morning and errors are possible. Nothing here is investment advice. The editor may hold positions in assets discussed.