Is Blast Off Season About To Start?

Bitcoin seasonality, Solana catching fire, and tastycrypto wallet demo.

*|MC_PREVIEW_TEXT|* Good morning my tasty friends, I hope ya'll are having a great weekend.  I said ya'll because I'm in the great state of Texas this weekend. Anyways, I digress… In this edition of the tastycrypto email we're taking a look at Bitcoin Seasonality, Solana heating up, and for those of you curious about self-custody, we held a great tastycrpto app demo on the show this week.  But first, what's going on in the markets?  Performance Dashboard   Bitcoin has again started the month of October by taking a dump, in similar fashion to months prior. Should this pattern continue, we might expect range bound trading with both the low 50s and high 60s in play. This is also what's indicated by current levels of implied volatility.  Between an improving liquidity backdrop and heightened geo-political risk, there are countervailing forces at work, but ahead of the weekend, it's clear no one is rushing to add to positions amidst missiles flying in the Middle East.  In my opinion, longer-term price action is still structurally bullish and pullbacks present opportunities to buy the dips, but you've gotta pick your spots. I'm looking closer to 50 than trying to scoop up the first crack of 60, should it happen BTC in particular struggled to find much direction over the summer and the chop fest continues with no clear catalyst on the horizon, at least not ahead of the US election. That said, Q4 has historically been a bullish period (more on that in a minute), so here's to hoping we get a little bullish surprise. Estimated trading ranges for the week can be found in the table below. They Better Not Cancel Uptober! It sure hasn't been the best start to the month for crypto, but it could all be about to change. It is October after all. What does October, or what some are calling Uptober, have to do with crypto? Well historically, this is the time of year where bitcoin and the broader crypto market often exhibit some serious bullish seasonality. Seasonality is used to describe an observable pattern in financial markets, where certain assets tend to perform better (or worse) during specific times of the year.  In Bitcoin's case, the data going back to 2016 shows that Q4 is historically its best quarter by a long shot. Let's break it down: Since 2016, Bitcoin's 4th quarter has been the best performing quarter, with average returns of 55%. That's not a typo. October through December is where Bitcoin tends to shine, or at least this is what we've observed in the past. Sure, October has been off to a slow start, but this doesn't mean a Q4 bull run is now out of the question. November is the real star of the show, with average returns of nearly 35% during that month alone. So, if you're second guessing Uptober, November has historically been the month to watch. On the flip side, Q3 is typically the worst-performing quarter, with September being the only month with negative average returns since 2016. But here's what's got my attention: when Bitcoin finishes September in the green, the Q4 returns historically shoot up to 145% on average. And guess what? Last month was Bitcoin's best September since 2013. Yes, the historical data is compelling, but no, it doesn't mean history will repeat, or even rhyme, though it is hard to ignore. If the final quarter of this year is anything remotely close to year's past, we could be in for a massive Q4 rally.  Beyond price performance, seasonal patterns can also be be observed when analyzing volatility, as Q4 often brings with it, significant volatility. By significant, I mean an average whopping 114%, in realized terms.  Again, this doesn't mean it's going to happen again, but I'd say the odds are… decent. In the words of Maya Angelou, "You can't really know where you're going until you know you've been."  Watch the tastycrypto show Solana Catching Fire Avid viewers of the tastycrypto show know we're fans of the Solana network and we've been keeping tabs on its impressive growth, watching it rise from the ashes of the FTX market collapse. In a market where most tokens have been largely overshadowed by bitcoin dominance, Solana is one of the few tokens keeping pace with BItcoin's price performance, and for good reason. Let's take a closer look at what's going on under the hood. First up, decentralized exchange trading volumes on Solana are surging. Over the past week, Solana DEX volume exploded by almost 50%, hitting $7.87 billion. For context Ethereum saw a 1.3% increase in on chain trading activity during the same time period.  High-speed, low-cost transactions are driving traders to Solana, with Solana native exchanges such as Raydium (a 90% increase in volume), Orca, and Phoenix leading the charge. While Ethereum is still number 1 in total volume, Solana has momentum. Last week, Solana DEX volume recorded a monthly high of $1.34 billion in a single day and since then, it's consistently been pushing over the $1 billion mark on a daily basis.  Now, let's talk infrastructure—Solana's Firedancer validator client is live on the testnet, and it's looking like a game changer. Developed by Jump Trading, Firedancer is designed to make Solana more decentralized and far more performant. How much more? We're talking 1 million transactions per second in a test environment.  Compare that to the 3,000 TPS Solana typically handles, and you can see why Firedancer has everyone buzzing. Once it hits mainnet, Solana could finally shed the "mainnet-beta" status it's had for years. It's a big step forward for decentralization, performance, and overall network resilience. But the story doesn't end there. In what might be the clearest sign of network growth, Solana's on-chain activity has tripled over the last 30 days, with Daily Active Addresses (DAA) hitting a record high of 5.4 million on September 9.  In fact, Solana's daily transactions outpaced Ethereum, Cardano, and Binance Smart Chain, clocking in at 40.3 million transactions.  Even more impressive, 22.88 million new addresses were created, which accounts for 57% of all new addresses created in August. Serious growth.  The Solana ecosystem is rapidly evolving, and the pieces are falling into place. DEX volume is surging, the Firedancer client is set to take the network to the next level, and on-chain activity is hitting all-time highs.  Solana's got momentum—now let's see if it translates to a higher SOL price over time.  Solana now on tastycrypto Learn More About tastycrypto Beyond markets and our typical shenanigans on the tastycrypto show, we held a demo of the web version of the tastycrypto wallet app this week.  The tastycrypto app is a self-custody crypto wallet with a ton of features that make it easy to manage your crypto on-chain and access opportunities across DeFi. For those of you who are tastytrade brokerage customers, you can also log in to your tastytrade account and quickly transfer crypto purchased through the brokerage for use directly onchain, in your tastycrypto wallet.  tastycrypto puts you in control of your crypto and is available on mobile devices and as a browser extension. If you'd like to learn more about the features and see how it works, I highly suggest checking out the demo here.  tastycrypto on Youtube Buy Crypto Stay tasty, Ryan Contact |  Blog  |   Learn If you no longer want to receive our communications, please click here. tastycrypto is provided solely by tasty Software Solutions, LLC. tasty Software Solutions, LLC is a separate but affiliate company of tastylive, Inc. and tastytrade, Inc. Neither tastylive, Inc. nor tastytrade, Inc. are responsible for the products or services provided by tasty Software Solutions, LLC. Cryptocurrency trading is not suitable for all investors due to the number of risks involved, including volatile market prices, illiquid market conditions, lack of regulatory oversight, market manipulation, and other risks. tastylive, Inc., 19 N. Sangamon St., Chicago, IL 60607, United States