Arena Blog

An honest story from our bulk backtests.

CME announced on May 5, 2026 the launch of regulated Bitcoin volatility futures starting June 1. Traders will be able to trade volatility in isolation, without taking a directional bet on the BTC price. What this means technically, who benefits, and why it's a bigger step for crypto than the headline suggests.

Strategy's STRC has been tradable as a token on Ethereum, BNB Chain, and Solana since May 5, 2026. Advertised yield: 11.5%. Real net yield for most international investors: between 5.9% and 8%. The tokenization structure permanently costs 15 percentage points of withholding tax compared to direct purchase.

We tested our RSI/SMA strategy on 77 actively trading Binance BTC-pairs (XAUT and WBTC excluded). 92% of them lost against BTC over 8 years. The strategy still beats Buy & Hold on 88% of pairs — through getting out, not through outperformance.

Grid bots promise profit from sideways markets — but without the right range they fail. We show with two real BTC backtests (2024 and 2025) when grid wins, and when buy-and-hold dominates.

Buy now or wait for the dip? Both camps believe in rising prices — yet pursue opposite strategies. An expected-value calculation reveals which one actually wins, and under which conditions the math flips.

Long-Term Holders hold 71% of all Bitcoin. ETFs and Treasury Companies buy price-inelastically. What happens when this inelastic demand meets a structurally shrinking float?

We ran our RSI/SMA strategy across the entire Binance USDT spot universe — 269 assets instead of 50. The picture that emerges is uncomfortable.

Bitwise's Jeff Park predicts an IBIT-led volatility rally. We dissect his argument — and examine what would actually need to happen for the thesis to play out.

On April 25, options on BlackRock's Bitcoin ETF IBIT held more open interest than Deribit for the first time. Why this moment changes what the classic Max Pain calculation actually tells us — and how we plan to handle it in our tooling.

Gold has had three great bull waves since 1971. Bitcoin has run through four in just 17 years. The fifth is starting now — and it has no precedent.

Tokenized commodities are a $5.3B market — almost entirely gold. But silver, oil, and copper on-chain are now growing fast. What that technically means — and why these tokens can't (yet) be backtested like a classic ETF.