Bitcoin, ether close out rough month amid Fed pivot; crypto stocks nosedive

In the wake of broader risk asset deleveraging in anticipation of upcoming Fed hikes, bitcoin (BTC-USD) and ethereum (ETH-USD) finish January on a weak note. M/M, bitcoin (BTC-USD) -20% fell even further from its mid-November record high at $69.4K, recently changing hands at $38.5K. Ether (ETH-USD) -30% also extended losses from its November peak at $4.9K on continued selling pressure, recently standing at $2.6K. Moreover, bitcoin's (BTC-USD) put-call ratio rose to a six-month high of 0.62 on Sunday, CoinDesk reported, citing data from Skew. This compared with 0.42 earlier in January. "The put-call ratio suggests demand for puts is currently high," Patrick Chu, director of institutional sales and trading at Paradigm, told CoinDesk. "We have seen a lot of risk reversal flow recently, where clients were buying puts/ selling calls," he added. A chunk of the bearish sentiment evolving around crypto assets can also be seen in the M/M nosedive in publicly-traded "bitcoin proxies."