Chop Before the Pop: Solana, Fed Liquidity, and Year-End Setups

Greg Magadini from Amberdata was back on the tastycrypto show this week to calm our nerves and give his take on the recent chop fest in markets. Post-FOMC, Greg’s view is straightforward: the 25 bp cut was priced, but the bigger story is the Fed pausing its balance sheet reduction. Recycling maturities instead of shrinking the balance sheet eases some of the recent funding tightness and is liquidity-positive for hard assets, crypto included. Pair that with a tentative tariff de-escalation backdrop and broad global easing, and the macro skew looks constructive into year-end.

From the options lens, the crash on October 10th spiked vol, but the structural trend is of lower realized/imp vol since IBIT options went live remains in place, so it’s most likely we still see a grind higher with occasional air-pockets. 

This structure favors long-delta / short-vol expressions while owning a bit of the right-tail (call options). During the show, one trade idea he walked through was on IBIT into year-end. A broken-wing call fly (long 70 call, short 2× 80 calls, and long a farther OTM call like 110) that benefits if price drifts up and term structure softens. 

On single names, Greg also flagged unusual call buying in Circle (CRCL) and shared a long-dated barbell he likes conceptually. Selling a deep OTM put (e.g., 55 strike, Jan ’27) to help finance a wide call spread (e.g., 300/445). This gives you equity-like upside with defined risk. A compelling way to participate in the stablecoin growth theme without chasing price here.

Elsewhere, he’s cautious on the DAT/treasury-company complex beyond the blue chips. In high-vol assets, balance-sheet leverage and refi risk can create a sort of death spiral dynamic on a sharp drawdown. This can negatively impact treasury companies like MSTR, which he expects to generally underperform against BTC over time. 

Into year-end, Greg still sees Bitcoin dominance, while ETH and alts lag. Also, don’t sleep on big upside tails. These might be low probability events, but there is the possibility of bullish policy shocks and increased sovereign adoption, so it might make sense to own cheap upside calls for this reason.