The cryptocurrency market has crawled higher following last week’s sell-off that saw BTC and ETH test important support levels.
BTC is now trading around $111,000 while ether is back above $4,000. There are also points of strength in the altcoin market; with LINK rising 14% and FLOKI posting a 27% gain in the last 24 hours.
Sentiment is improving after last week’s cascade of liquidations that temporarily wiped $500 billion from the cryptocurrency market. However, BTC and ETH must remain above their respective support levels of $110,000 and $4,000 to avoid continuation of the downtrend, which could accelerate as liquidity is low compared to earlier this month.
Derivatives positioning
- BTC options positioning remains firmly bullish, with a call open interest ratio of 0.66 and a large accumulation at the $140,000 strike price, where more than $2.4 billion in notional call exposure is concentrated. This indicates that traders continue to price in bullish momentum through the end of the year, even as spot volatility rises.
- Total open interest in bitcoin Deribit options has risen to 427,746 contracts, marking a yearly high. The Dec. 26 expiry ($14.3 billion notional) dominates, suggesting traders are extending bullish bets further down the curve while maintaining tactical flexibility in shorter-dated options.
- ETH options show similar positioning, with buying dominance around strike prices between $4,000 and $4,500 and increasing open interest until the end-December expirations, mirroring the structure of BTC.
symbolic talk
By Oliver Knight
- A rise in the value of several altcoins, particularly the popular memecoin floki, resulted in an improvement in sentiment across the cryptocurrency market on Monday, although CoinMarketCap’s altcoin seasonal index remains at 26/100, indicating investors’ preference for bitcoin over speculative plays.
- Bitcoin dominance, a metric used to assess how much of the total cryptocurrency market capitalization can be attributed to BTC, is at 58.8%, an increase from this time last month, when it was at 57.2%.
- While there were signs of recovery on Monday, several altcoins are still significantly below where they were a week ago. Synthetix is ​​down 30%, and others including FET, ASTER, and BNB are facing losses of between 15% and 25%.
- One of the drivers of the positive sentiment on Monday was LINK, which rose 14% after a number of wallets collectively withdrew $116 million in Binance tokens, indicating an accumulation after last week’s drop.
- The average crypto Relative Strength Index (RSI) is at 54.2/100, suggesting that the market is in a state of limbo as it distances itself from key support levels, but remains far from challenging major resistance levels.
