GSR資管負責人：判斷這輪反彈真偽，只需緊盯Aave上的一個數字

Compiled & Translated by: Shenchao TechFlow

Guest: Andy Baehr, Managing Director, Asset Management, GSR

Host: Steve Erlic, Head of Research, Sharplink

Podcast Source: Bits & Bips (an interview program under Unchained)

Original Title: Is This Crypto Rally Real? GSR's Andy Baehr Maps the Signals to Watch

Air Date: July 17, 2026

Conflict of Interest Statement: GSR is a leading global crypto market maker, with revenue dependent on market trading volume and volatility. Its asset management division recently launched a Core3 ETF (BESO) holding BTC/ETH/SOL. The guest's discussion focuses on the overall market trend and does not constitute a recommendation for any single asset.

Key Takeaways

Andy Baehr, formerly responsible for products and research at CoinDesk Indices and having held leadership roles in derivatives departments at Credit Suisse, BNP Paribas, Morgan Stanley, and Deutsche Bank, now manages the asset management business of GSR, one of the world's largest crypto market makers. His framework for measuring market conditions is simple: the market slides along a spectrum, with "ambivalence" at one end and "conviction" at the other. Currently, the market is stuck at the ambivalence end, where every rebound looks like a single-stage booster rocket – once the first stage burns out, there's no second stage. He offers three signals to track: DeFi lending rates, the unexpected passage of the CLARITY Act, and the formation of a consensus on the Fed's "hawkish peak." The most straightforward judgment is this: to see if the rally triggered by last week's CPI drop can last, just look at the USDC borrowing rate on Aave. It's currently around 3.75%, roughly equivalent to US Treasury yields. That number tells you everything about the current low energy levels.

Highlights and Key Quotes

What is "Fed Solstice"?

• "We haven't really seen a hawkish peak since 2022. Back then, the Fed was aggressively raising rates to absorb post-pandemic fiscal stimulus, making it tough for both crypto assets and stocks because we didn't know when the rate hikes would end."
• "Imagine a 'Fed Solstice' – that moment when we collectively feel, 'Okay, we know where the rate hikes will end.' Until then, it's hard to believe any rally can be sustained."
• "Once we cross that peak and can see the scenery on the other side of the hill, market sentiment can shift very quickly."

Three Levels of Market Energy

• "About 2/3 to 3/4 of the entire crypto market is derivatives trading, with only 1/4 to 1/3 being spot. Derivatives are crucial in determining price direction."
• "Last year's perfect rally had three phases: First, an ETH short squeeze; second, crypto-native traders flooding into spot and perpetuals after seeing a trend form; third, ETF inflows turning positive, with ETH ETF inflows even exceeding BTC's by May or June."
• "If a rally doesn't attract new layers of buying, it's just a single-stage booster rocket. It burns up and falls down."

Watch DeFi Lending Rates, Not Just Charts

• "After the November presidential election, Aave's lending rates spiked to over 20%. Now? They're roughly around the risk-free rate, 3.75% to 4.1%."
• "No credit spread means no one is willing to pay a premium to borrow and leverage. That's the most direct evidence of low energy."
• "Imagine Warsh has a particularly strong coffee one morning and decides to cut rates. Asset prices would go up, Bitcoin would go up. Then people would rush to borrow on Aave. Because it's a supply-demand priced pool, DeFi rates would spike instantly. That's when you know the market has real energy."

DAT Corporate Treasuries are Temporarily Absent

• "Strategy just sold nearly $500M worth of stock via an ATM and bought zero Bitcoin. They're keeping the cash to pay preferred dividends."
• "DATs are the type of buyers that join mid-rally, as shareholder sentiment takes time to transmit. But ETF capital is not permanent capital, as the last eight weeks have demonstrated."

CLARITY Act: From 75% to Under 40%

• "The longer something is delayed, the lower the probability of it ultimately getting done. We now need almost zero interference and a strong tailwind to get it done in just three weeks."
• "The Polymarket probability has dropped linearly from 75% in May to less than 40% now. Every day that passes without passage is a day wasted."
• "The ethics clause issue, in my view, is a 'tasty political snack' Democrats want to take home. The disclosure of the president's family profiting from digital assets only adds fuel to the fire."
• "But if it does pass, the market will treat it as a surprise. Surprise is one of the most potent emotions for driving price volatility. It's hard to imagine the market not rallying if it passes."

The Authenticity of the Rally: Don't Just Watch CPI

Steve Erlic: June CPI was up 3.5% YoY, core CPI was flat MoM for the first time in five years. This is the most direct trigger for the rally. But many reasons for the CPI drop look one-off and might not repeat next month. Kevin Warsh said at a congressional hearing, 'Inflation is a choice,' hinting he could stay hawkish. How do you view the nature of this rally?

Andy Baehr: We've been using the word "ambivalence" to describe the market's state for most of Q2 and even the end of Q1. Ambivalence doesn't mean the market doesn't care. It sees seemingly decent impulse rally attempts. You might even see a little bit of energy return to the perpetuals market, but then the rally quickly dissipates, liquidations happen, and you're back to square one.

Bitcoin, around the time of the Consensus conference in spring, pushed from around 79k through 80k, but then got smashed all the way down to around 61k, near the cost of production line. This process actually brought some energy back to the market, but we're still in this ambivalent phase.

The opposite of ambivalence is conviction – a state where you can reliably rely on a rally to continue and truly form a different momentum cycle. The key question is: is this just another single-stage booster rocket, or are we finally starting to see legs?

Stepping back, we are in an environment where we don't know where the "hawkish peak" is. The last time we had a similar situation was before 2022. Back then, the Fed was raising rates aggressively, and both crypto and stocks were struggling. Why? Because we didn't know where the hawkish ceiling was.

Imagine a "Fed Solstice." That moment when we collectively feel comfortable, knowing where the rate hikes will end. We have a new Fed Chair, people don't know him well, and he's clearly not someone who will soothe the market. Until collective perception truly reaches that point, it's hard to believe any rally can be reliably sustained.

Steve Erlic: What's your take on Warsh as Fed Chair? He doesn't want forward guidance or a dot plot. He wants the Fed to react to data. But at the same time, he has a president who wants low rates.

Andy Baehr: It's very clear this is not a Fed chair who will soothe the market. His inaugural statement declared independence in bold type. He won't try to comfort the market, nor will he overly disclose information to the market. This represents a brand new relationship for the world and the Fed chair.

His position is not easy either. Energy prices have calmed down for now, but geopolitical tensions could cause them to spike again very quickly. People are largely uncertain about what will happen, they just price expectations into interest rate futures. Whether it's earlier or later, and by how much, the rate hikes will come. We just don't know the endpoint.

For crypto, it ultimately comes down to two variables: inflation expectations and nominal interest rate expectations. In 2022, nominal rates accelerated upward, breaking through inflation expectations. This was very difficult for Bitcoin because expected real rates were rising. When expected real rates become better understood, a more favorable macro backdrop for Bitcoin will form. More practically, it will also give people a clearer picture of fiat funding costs, allowing them to provide more leverage into the crypto system. And the crypto market is desperate for leverage to restore the volatility and trading energy that have been declining since last October.

Stock Market is Rotating, Crypto is Left Out

Steve Erlic: Mag 7 continues to struggle, but AI stocks are surging. We're seeing a rotation into small-cap cyclical stocks like the Russell 2000. What does this mean for risk appetite? How does it affect your view of the crypto market?

Andy Baehr: This reminds me of crypto's performance in Q2. Even though Q2 was bad, small-cap crypto tokens actually outperformed BTC, ETH, and SOL. Even XRP was rallying, which is quite astonishing.

At CoinDesk, I worked on the CoinDesk 80 index, covering tokens ranked 21-100 by market cap. In any healthy or even just neutral market conditions, you should see large-cap tokens outperform small-caps, because the market's collective attention is on those more liquid, larger names. This is a reliable indicator of a normal market. Q2 showed the opposite: small-cap tokens fell less than large-caps. This suggests capital was rotating away from the flagship assets in ETFs, perpetuals markets, spot markets, and DAT corporate treasuries. This could be a sign of capitulation towards the end of Q2.

As for the rotation in the stock market, traders are chasing where the action is. Crypto lacks energy partly because other sectors have shinier things – the SpaceX IPO, Anthropic, OpenAI. Capital flows out of crypto ETFs to grab these opportunities.

Steve Erlic: From a trading desk perspective, how is smart money positioned now? Who steps in as structural buyers? ETF capital is not permanent, as the last eight weeks have proven. Stablecoin supply has shrunk by about $10 billion since May, the largest contraction since the Terra/Luna collapse. DAT corporate treasuries are also not in the buyer camp. Strategy just sold nearly $500M via an ATM, bought zero BTC, and kept the cash for preferred dividends. Metaplanet is in a similar boat.

Andy Baehr: We are bullish on DATs, they can indeed help complete the puzzle for the digital asset market: a treasury focused on a single digital asset combined with local skill in managing that asset. Your company and other well-run DATs offer equity investors an interesting way to gain digital asset exposure with added features.

But what role did DATs play in last year's perfect rally? They weren't the first in. The textbook progression of last year's rally was: First, an ETH short squeeze, where concentrated short ETH / long BTC hedge fund positions started to unwind. Second, crypto-native traders saw a trend forming and flooded into spot and perpetuals. Third, by May-June 2025, ETF flows reversed to net positive, and ETH ETF inflows even surpassed BTC's, which was stunning at the time. Then the GENIUS Act passage added more fuel for ETH, as so many stablecoins rely on the Ethereum network.

DATs are buyers that would join later, in the middle of the rally. It takes time for shareholder sentiment to transmit. Stock price appreciation creates the momentum for more token purchases. They are structural, more permanent holders, unlike the short-sighted ETF holders.

The Most Direct Signal: Watch DeFi Lending Rates

Steve Erlic: Are you seeing any specific signals changing? Like put/call ratios, DeFi rates picking up?

Andy Baehr: When I was at CoinDesk, I spent a lot of time looking at Aave rates. We even published a daily rate based on Aave. In the month following the November presidential election, these rates spiked to over 20%. Now? They're right around the risk-free rate, from SOFR to one-year Treasury yields, about 3.75% to 4.1%. DeFi has no credit spread over the money market, which means no one is in a rush to borrow and leverage.

The most interesting part is imagining a scenario: Warsh has a really strong coffee one morning, feels good, and announces a surprise rate cut. Asset prices would go up, Bitcoin would go up. Then people would flood onto Aave to borrow. Because it's a supply-demand priced pool, Aave's rates, every Vault on Morpho, all the lending pools on Gauntlet, Stakehouse, Beta, Concrete – they would all spike instantly. People would be desperate to add leverage.

Leverage is what truly pushes prices higher. It pushes them to levels that might trigger ETF inflows, might trigger DAT accumulation, might trigger long-term holders to enter. Until then, if you see DeFi rates hovering around the risk-free rate, that's low energy.

This is a very easy signal to monitor. These rate models are simple linear functions of supply and demand. The more supply that comes in, the lower the rate. The less demand, the lower the rate. When tons of supply floods these platforms saying "give me any yield," rates naturally sit at the lowest levels.

DeFi's Fixed Income Market is Quietly Forming

Steve Erlic: You briefly mentioned new on-chain fixed income products and Vaults. How are traders using these things now? How should a regular investor gauge market energy via DeFi rates?

Andy Baehr: Think about how most people interact with crypto assets. Buying and selling tokens, trading perpetuals or options – these are all based on assets, feeling more like stocks or commodities in the traditional world. These models aren't very good at creating a fixed income market, a money market, or building a yield curve parallel to the traditional one.

DeFi is slowly building fixed income solutions. No central bank, just supply and demand. DeFi money markets don't need large institutions to influence the next day's SOFR rate through overnight repos. It's just people buying and selling instantly. These activities are now clustering, allowing us to see roughly where stablecoin lending rates should be.

Vaults are a great wrapper. A manager identifies various lending pools, puts them into a portfolio, and this portfolio issues a token representing ownership or yield rights. Essentially, it's a money market fund. Of course, it's not a fund, not a security, largely unregulated. But it's 24/7, globally accessible. As long as people do their homework and understand what they're participating in, this is a highly efficient product.

From our perspective as asset managers, the manager of a