No. 9Thursday, 29 October 20266 min read

Ether's December future pays 3.93%; a Treasury bill pays 4.18%

Bitcoin's pays 5.63%. The trade that absorbs ether inventory no longer covers cash.

BTC $80,077 -1.6%ETH $2,318 -2.1%SOL $100.23 -2.6%XRP $1.29 -2.9%

Good morning. Every major fell after the Federal Reserve held rates at 3.75% to 4.00% and two of its twelve voters asked for a rise. Bitcoin sits on the $80,000 line at $80,077. The number that matters is ether's carry: selling the December future against spot now earns less than Treasury bills.

The tape

24-hour change: IDOL +66.3%, INIT +18.8%, BNB -1.0%, BTC -1.6%, ETH -2.1%, SOL -2.6%, XRP -3.0%, Q -25.9%, JCT -27.6%, AXIS -39.8% — Every major red; last week's winners gave back a quarter or more. As of 10:09 UTC, 29 Oct 2026.

Bitcoin (BTC) $80,077, -1.6% on the day, -2.0% on the week, -4.4% over 30 days. Ether (ETH) $2,317.98, -2.1% and -14.3%. Solana (SOL) $100.23, -2.6% and -15.9%. XRP $1.29, -3.0% and -13.9%. BNB $746.51, -1.0%, the only major up on the week at +2.3%. Crypto value fell 3.3% to $2.70tn; bitcoin is 59.5% of it.

MEET48 (IDOL), a fan-voting platform on BNB Chain, led at +66.3% on $32.3m of volume against a $30.2m market value. The falls were last week's winners unwinding: Quack AI (Q), a governance service for software agents, -25.9% and -63.1% on the week; Janction (JCT), a graphics-card rental marketplace, -27.6%; Axis Robotics (AXIS), a robot-training data marketplace listed on Base this month, -39.8% on $146.3m of volume against a $22.5m float.

Where to look

Six things today, in order: the Fed's two dissenters, tomorrow's $9.3bn expiry, retail adding ether longs, the dollar supply shrinking, one fund buying alone, a halted chain rising.

30-day change in supply for the ten largest dollar tokens: USDC -$3.49bn, USDT -$2.84bn, USD1 -$526m, USDe -$367m, USDG -$99m, BUIDL -$65m, DAI -$44m, USDS +$4m, RLUSD +$87m, PYUSD +$281m — Two of the ten largest dollar tokens grew in 30 days; the other eight lost $7.43bn. As of 10:09 UTC, 29 Oct 2026.

01
The Fed held at 3.75% to 4.00% in a 10-2 vote, and both dissenters wanted a quarter-point rise.
Governor Lisa Cook and Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack were the two. The two-year Treasury note fell to 4.67% from 4.70% and the ten-year rose to 5.05% from 4.99%, widening the gap between them 9bp.
WatchThe 8-9 Dec meeting.
02
Tomorrow's bitcoin expiry holds 115,636 contracts, $9.3bn, and 80,637 of them are calls.
Puts number 34,999, a put/call ratio of 0.43, and the largest line is 19,951 contracts struck at $95,000, 18.6% above spot. Ether's expiry carries 269,531 contracts, $625m, its biggest line at $2,600.
WatchWhether that open interest rolls into 27 Nov or settles worthless.
03
Retail added ether longs into the fall: OKX accounts are 2.81 long per short, from 2.53 on Tuesday.
Bitcoin's ratio is 2.20 from 2.05. Ether open interest on OKX fell to $1.82bn from $1.88bn over the same day, so the ratio rose on a smaller book: shorts closed rather than longs arriving.
WatchEther below $2,238, the average holder's cost.
04
The dollar supply behind crypto fell $6.05bn in 30 days to $300.32bn, $1.02bn of it on Tuesday.

The deep dive

Ether's 25 December future pays 3.93% a year and a three-month Treasury bill pays 4.18%. Bitcoin's December future pays 5.63%, 145bp over the bill. We divided Deribit's 10:09 UTC marks by each asset's spot index and annualised the difference over the days left to expiry.

Annualised basis by expiry: bitcoin 5.44% to 5.63% across five expiries, ether 3.09% at 27 November rising to 4.73% by September 2027, against a flat 4.18% Treasury bill — Ether's curve crosses the bill only in June 2027; bitcoin's sits above it everywhere. As of 10:09 UTC, 29 Oct 2026.

The gap is not one contract. Ether prints 3.09% at the 27 November expiry, 3.93% at 25 December and 4.21% at 26 March 2027, all under the bill; bitcoin prints 5.44% to 5.63% across all five expiries. Perpetual funding agrees. Deribit's ether perpetual pays exactly zero this morning, its bitcoin perpetual 5.17% a year. On Binance, the largest venue, ether's pays 4.26% against bitcoin's 7.47%.

This is ether, not rates. The three-month bill moved 7bp in 30 days, from 4.25% on 29 September to 4.18% on 28 October.

One venue's marks could be wrong, or the front of the curve distorted by tomorrow's expiry. Neither holds: the December ether contract prints 4.90% on OKX, 4.28% on Binance and 2.33% on Bybit against bitcoin's 6.58%, 6.08% and 3.36%, and every expiry charted is 29 days out or more. The one-month bill at 4.07% also beats ether's December contract, by 14bp.

Every dated ether future on every venue holds $369m of open interest against bitcoin's $1.13bn, and ether funds lost $1.08bn over October's first three weeks. What would prove this wrong: ether's December basis back above 4.18% with that open interest growing.

The news

Utah charged the prediction market Kalshi and its two co-founders on 14 criminal counts, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission sued Utah back. Twelve counts are third-degree felonies for promoting online gambling, built on an undercover investigator betting on twelve games. The regulator claims exclusive authority over event contracts; Utah calls the same trades a crime.
Kamino began lending USD Coin against tokenised shares on Solana, and borrowers took 1.51 USDC. The Solana protocol accepts Backpack's Micron, SK Hynix, SpaceX and SanDisk tokens at 30% to 40% of value against a feed that holds the last New York print overnight. The plumbing works; the demand does not.
Crypto equities fell hard on a day bitcoin rose. Robinhood (HOOD) lost 10.3% on 28 October after missing on earnings, Circle (CRCL) 8.9%, Coinbase (COIN) 8.3% and Strategy (MSTR) 5.4%, while bitcoin closed 0.7% higher at $81,255. Strategy reports its third quarter after today's New York close.
Aave raised how much can be borrowed against bitcoin collateral. Wrapped bitcoin and Coinbase's cbBTC now borrow up to 81% of their value on the lending protocol's main Ethereum market, from 73%. A position at the new limit is liquidated by a 4.7% fall, against 6.4% before.

Token talk: Lido (LDO)

Lido's daily ether staking rewards, 1 July to 28 October 2026: rising from $995,000 to a peak of $1.90m on 29 September, then falling to $1.56m — Rewards routed per day; the step up on 20 Aug is a change in what the series counts. As of 10:09 UTC, 29 Oct 2026.

Lido (LDO) is the largest ether staking pool: deposit ether, get a token called stETH that earns the network's staking reward and stays tradeable, and Lido takes a cut. LDO votes on the rules and has no claim on the cash.

It is here because the deep dive runs through it. Staking through Lido pays 2.25% a year against 4.18% on a three-month bill, so the holder who cannot earn the carry cannot earn the yield either. Lido routed $1.56m of rewards on 28 October, down 17.5% from $1.90m on 29 September, and keeps 6.08%: $95,075 that day, $34.68m over a year.

9.69m stETH are outstanding, worth $22.47bn. LDO is $0.3638, down 3.5% on the day, 19.9% over 30 days and 59.9% over a year, at the bottom of its 30-day range. Its $302m market value is 8.7 times that annual revenue; 829.57m of the 1bn cap circulate. LDO is 95.0% below its August 2021 high of $7.30. Watch: daily rewards back above $1.80m, which sets the cut.

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.

Get the next edition at 06:30 ET.