Are cryptocurrencies playing catch up to VIX's collapse?

Bitcoin is surging back above $9000 this morning - after testing and failing on Monday - seemingly tracking VIX's plunge into VIX options expiration today...

The catalyst for the leg higher appears to be South Korea once again as regulators downplayed any threats of a ban.

As Bloomberg reports, South Korea’s government gave the strongest signal yet that it will allow cryptocurrency exchanges to keep operating in the country, a welcome development for traders who had feared an outright ban in one of the world’s biggest markets for digital assets.

Policy makers will focus on making cryptocurrency trading transparent rather than outlawing it altogether, Hong Nam-ki, minister of the Office for Government Policy Coordination, said in a video a posted on the presidential website. It was the government’s first coordinated response to the public uproar over a justice ministry proposal in December to shut digital-asset exchanges.

From last Friday's close, Litecoin is the biggest winner (spiking after this morning's headlines), but all major cryptos are higher on the week...

Ethereum remains the only major in the green for 2018...

But as we have noted previously, this rebound is very much the norm, seasonally as China's lunar new year approaches...