Ethereum, from empty positions to panic! On December 5th, Matrix on Target's weekly report threw out a statement: The crypto market has entered a "position vacuum".
Both BTC and ETH have pushed leverage to the floor, with futures long and short positions hitting this year's low range. This is not alarmism, but rather the most familiar prelude to 2024—last time the market was this "clean", ETH surged from $1800 to $3800, achieving a 38% increase in less than two months.
Now, history is echoing, yet no one dares to go all in. Data is more honest than sentiment. Since May, ETH futures open interest has skyrocketed from $8 billion to $16 billion, with doubled leverage accompanied by a cold call option ratio—last week, only 35.8% of the options trading volume was real money buying calls, while the rest were sellers pocketing premiums. The market is shouting "bull", but the wallets are saying "fear".
The Dencun upgrade has transformed Ethereum from an inflationary asset into a supersonic money-burning machine, turning net issuance negative, with the real destruction brought by skyrocketing Rollup fees being harsher than during the 2021 EIP-1559 period. But what about the price? It's still circling around $3200-$3300, like an orphan forgotten by capital.
The reason is simple: the bull market in government bonds has taken away all liquidity. The yield on 10-year US Treasuries has dropped from 4.7% to 4.2%, and institutions would rather shove their money into "risk-free" assets than act as the market's backstop for crypto. Once a responsive buyer for spot ETFs, now it has become tepid water maintaining transactions. But the vacuum will eventually be filled.
Light positions + high certainty events (continued rate cuts + Ethereum's ultrasonic deflation), this is the complete replication script for the 38% rally in Q2 2024. Only this time, the market has learned to fear, to hesitate, to first make you doubt life, and then make you chase it to the sky. Ethereum is not dead, it is just holding back. When the first truly starving capital steps in, $3200 may become the most ridiculous joke of the coming years.
Don't ask if it's worth going all in, just ask one question: Do you still dare to believe when light on positions like in March this year, and dare to run when heavily positioned? History won't simply repeat itself, but it always astonishingly rhymes.
This time, who will blink first. @加密黄哥 $ETH
