LMAX Digital volumes have been trending lower this week. Total notional volume for Wednesday came in at $335 million, 24% below 30-day average volume.

Bitcoin volume printed $211 million on Wednesday, 20% below 30-day average volume. Ether volume printed $68 million, 44% below 30-day average volume.

Looking at average position size over the past 30 days, we’re seeing average bitcoin position size at $7,538 and average position size for ether at 2,805.

Volatility has been in correction mode after peaking out at a yearly high in March. We’re looking at average daily ranges in bitcoin and ether of $914 and $65 respectively.

We haven’t seen much activity in crypto markets this week, with most of the price action classified as choppy and consolidative. That being said, crypto has been well supported into dips.

Into Thursday, we can see two drivers behind the latest round of support, one of which helps to reconcile bitcoin’s outperformance relative to ether.

The first driver can be attributed to broad based risk on flow and that correlation that shows crypto sometimes wanting to trade higher when stocks trade higher.

It seems a lot of this is coming from optimism around a potential agreement between congressional leaders on the debt ceiling.

The second driver, which would account for the mentioned bitcoin outperformance, is the news of stablecoin Tether announcing plans to allocate 15% of its net realized operating profits to purchase bitcoin.

On another positive note, it’s worth mentioning LMAX Digital’s recent partnership with Zodia custody to provide an institutional-grade trading infrastructure and custody solution to CoinShares. Please check out the full press release HERE.

Technically speaking, as per this week’s chart analysis, we retain a constructive outlook while the bitcoin market holds up above last Friday’s high, with the focus on a market that has held up on a close basis into range support and could be turning back up.