Please note that Premia/Kyan does not provide investment advice, and nothing herein should be construed as such. Anyone considering trading or holding derivatives or crypto assets should be aware that the risk of loss can be very high, and it is upon each individual to seek advice from an appropriate professional advisor.

BTC ATM IV

ETH ATM IV

When talking to various traders over the holidays about their 2026 views, oh boy did they vary. From a 2026 bear market to praises of new all-time highs. Traders and their ideas constantly change and adapt to the information they were fed, but there wasn't any consensus across the board. From retail to whales, I heard it all.

I will say, I have no magic ball, and I'm no wizard, but I do have some thoughts coming into 2026. You had 2025 close red, profit taking and tax loss harvesting hit illiquid books, and now, in the first few days of 2026, we have new year, new flows, with just a straight TWAP turned on since the first. This is crypto, it is volatile, and a month's gain can be wiped out in a matter of hours. That's the game we play. I'm not here to tell you which side to be on, but I hope you turn down the leverage in 2026. The game isn't crypto memes spx6900, it's survival. You're trading against the best of the best now, and of course everyone can get lucky every once in a while, but if you don't have a system and you're just gambling, you won't survive. As always, someone has to lose for us to win.

On the institutional front, you have every big-name CEO shilling blockchain, tokenization, and 24hr trading. BlackRock has BUIDL, Robinhood is using Arbitrum, stablecoins are processing record volumes, the list goes on. Everything is pointing to us still being early, but this wasn't reflected last year as the world focused on real gold, chips, and tech.

The ingredients are there for something interesting to unfold. You have a “new” administration that's publicly crypto friendly, potential regulatory clarity that could unlock more institutional capital sitting on the sidelines, and the infrastructure buildout that happened in 2024 and 2025 finally ready to be stress tested. ETH ETF staking approvals could be the catalyst that changes the narrative around Ethereum, while Bitcoin continues to eat up treasury balance sheets as more corporations follow the MicroStrategy playbook. The big question is whether altcoins can finally catch a bid that sticks, or if we see another year of Bitcoin dominance while everything else bleeds. Derivatives markets are maturing, basis trading is back in, and the smart money is positioning for volatility in either direction. The setup is there, but execution is everything. 2026 could be the year crypto finally delivers on the promises of institutional adoption, or it could be another year of chopping around while everyone waits for the next catalyst. Either way, buckle up.

Look, I get it, everyone wants the 100x on some dog coin or the next Solana killer (we dont need to kill Solana, its already down 2712 times a week), but the reality is we're in a different environment now. Liquidity is tighter, the Fed isn't printing like they used to, and when institutional money flows in, it's going straight to Bitcoin and maybe ETH. The retail frenzy that pumped bags in 2021 isn't coming back the same way. Attention spans are shorter… sometimes hours… narratives flip faster, and there's too much supply hitting the market every single day. New L1s, new memes, new "revolutionary" projects that all look the same. The market is oversaturated and fragmented. Sure, you might catch a pump here and there, some weekend pump-and-dump that feels good in the moment, but come Monday when real markets open, that bid disappears. If you do get lucky and catch one of those moves, take the win, book profits, and rotate back into majors or stables. Don't be the person holding bags of tokens that won't exist in six months or days… because you got greedy. Preservation of capital beats chasing the next shiny thing every single time. Survival…

After October 10th, 2025, something broke in the market that never really recovered. You had that liquidity crunch hit, leveraged positions got wrecked, and the bid just vanished. What followed was months of grinding lower, failed bounces that couldn't hold, and volume that dried up to levels we hadn't seen in years. You were probably better off stepping away post 10/10… The momentum that carried us through the first part of the year completely evaporated. Retail got destroyed and stopped showing up, whales went risk-off, and the market just bled into year end. Every rally got sold, every narrative died on arrival, and by the time we hit December, it felt like everyone was just waiting for the year to be over. Books were so thin… thin… It was a masterclass in how quickly sentiment can shift in crypto. That crunch in October set the tone for the rest of the year, and trying to fight it was a losing battle. Sometimes the best trade is no trade at all, and 2025 taught a lot of people that lesson the hard way.

Lighter finally dropped its token after what felt like forever, and we're trading right back at launch prices. I ran a poll on Twitter with hundreds of votes, split 50/50 between people who dumped everything and those who didn't sell a single token. No in between, just two extremes. The airdrop farmers took their exit liquidity, the believers are holding bags, and now the token actually has to prove itself. The market is pricing in whether Lighter can compete with established DEXs or if it bleeds out like every other launch in this environment. We wait and see if this thing has legs, but when half the recipients sold on day one, that's not exactly screaming confidence. I am happy to be wrong here, we need stronger competitors in the space, with real teams building real projects.

We've watched central banks stack gold for years, diversifying away from dollar dependence, hedging against inflation, building reserves that can't be printed away. Now Bitcoin is sitting there as digital gold with a fixed supply, a perfect settlement layer, and no counterparty risk. The question isn't if it makes sense for central banks to accumulate BTC, it's when the first domino falls. Once one major central bank announces a Bitcoin reserve, the game theory kicks in and everyone else has to follow or risk being left behind. El Salvador already did it, others are whispering about it, and with a crypto-friendly US administration, the conditions are ripe. But will they actually pull the trigger in 2026, or will we be asking this same question in 2027? Something to think about… It only takes one to start…

Trump's second term brought a complete 180 on US crypto policy. The SEC under Paul Atkins dropped enforcement cases against Coinbase and Binance, banks got clarity on custody services, and the shift went from prosecution to framework building. The GENIUS Act passed in July 2025, creating the first federal stablecoin framework with reserve requirements and audit standards set to be implemented by mid 2026. The big one is the CLARITY Act, with Senate hearings scheduled for January 15th that could finally end the SEC and CFTC turf war by defining Bitcoin and Ethereum as commodities under CFTC oversight. The catch is the November 2026 midterms, if Democrats take Congress, this entire regulatory momentum could stall. The window to get things done is narrow, and everything hinges on moving fast before the political landscape potentially shifts again.

So here we are, staring down 2026 with more questions than answers. The regulatory framework is finally taking shape, and institutional players are talking the talk. But the market doesn't care about what should happen, it cares about what does happen. We had traders split 50/50 on their views, we watched Lighter's airdrop get dumped by half its recipients on day one, and we're coming off a brutal end to 2025 where liquidity dried up and nothing could hold a bid. The ingredients are there for something interesting, but so were they in 2024 and we know how that played out. Memes and alts will probably bleed unless you're quick enough to catch a pump and rotate back to majors. Central banks might start the Bitcoin accumulation race, or they might keep talking about it for another year. The CLARITY Act could pass and change everything, or midterms could kill the momentum. What I do know is this: survival is the game in 2026. Turn down the leverage, take profits when you get them, and remember that someone has to lose for us to win. Stay safe out there pimps

Thank you to all the readers who make this newsletter possible, we are sitting at about 8,000+ email sign ups, and thousands of readers every 2 weeks. As for the Options Talk Show, if you or someone you know wants to be a guest, feel free to DM me, we are booking out March 2026!

Note: We will be releasing a Venezuela Update and what it means for our coins this week in short form! Stay tuned!

Note: email sign-ups get the newsletter 20ish minutes before.

Recap:

Join The Marty Community Telegram: https://t.me/optionswithmarty

Mind you there is never a paid group, all information is free and we will never ask you for money. The Telegram is always free and provides a community for people to chat and learn.