That first Trump 2.0 Friday Feeling

Digital asset participants don't, in fact, have that much cause for complaint, right now,

Of course that hasn't prevented a degree of skepticism from creeping in; at the end of a week billed - at the most over-optimistic end - as potentially the most pivotal ever for crypto.

Naturally, that's left plenty of scope for disappointment.

One lightening rod for that sentiment seems to be the question of whether or not the newly installed crypto-friendly President will follow through on pledges to establish a Bitcoin Strategic Reserve.

To be fair, it seems likely any sort of strategic reserve would take a reasonable amount of time to establish.

Also, that incremental steps to that goal, are sensible.

Still, a national digital asset stockpile is not the same as a strategic reserve, hence one reason for Bitcoin's moderate fade.

It underscores the clear blue water between the current crypto market regime, and what prevailed little more than 18 months ago, that a week with a fresh $100k-plus record high, and the launch of a White House working group to look into a comprehensive crypto framework, could somehow be deemed as wanting.

Still, a quick glance at Bitcoin's primary CFTC-regulated options market, operated by the CME Group, reveals underlying institutional sentiment (i.e., backed by 'proper money') may be more sanguine than it looks.

CME BTC Options, like CME BTC Futures, settle to our CME CF Bitcoin Reference Rate (BRR).

CF Benchmarks' Head of Product, Thomas Erdösi, told Coindesk earlier in the week:

"Thirty-day topside skew in the bitcoin options market has reached levels not seen since the November election results," Thomas Erdösi, head of product at CF Benchmarks, told CoinDesk. "This reflects a strong bullish sentiment, with traders actively positioning for upside exposure across both short- and long-term maturities."

In other words, positions covering the period of approximately one month ahead are biased to calls, with bullish sentiment at an intensity not seen since before the U.S. election.

For now, at the very least, that suggests 'large traders' remain optimistic that there will be further reasons to justify bullish sentiment in the near term.