The crypto market moved away from potential danger on Thursday, with bitcoin rising 3.9% from a local low of $65,600.
Prices advanced overnight, with bitcoin adding 2% since midnight UTC, solana (SOL) gaining 2.7% and ether (ETH) rising 1.2%.
However, the broader downtrend remains intact, as Bitcoin prints a series of lower lows and highs to give back all the gains it made in the 12 months ending in October 2025.
In the short term, Bitcoin needs to break above $72,000 to confirm a bullish price action shift within the range that has seen it float between support and resistance.
US bitcoin spot ETFs have seen their biggest drawdown this cycle, with 100,300 BTC in withdrawals since October. That equates to about $6.8 billion of additional selling pressure in an already fragile market.
Positioning of derivatives:
- Market dynamics are stabilizing. Open interest rose to $15.8 billion, signaling a shift from clearing leverage to a firmer floor, and retail sentiment is recovering, with funding rates turning flat to positive across the board and hitting 10% on Bybit and Hyperliquid.
- Institutional conviction remains anchored, and the three-month annualized base remains at 3%.
- The BTC options market is showing a slight change in sentiment, with 24-hour volume reaching a 51/49 split in favor of calls.
- While the 25-week delta bias has jumped to 17%, the term structure of implied volatility (IV) remains in near-term backwardation.
- This persistent initial spike confirms that traders are still paying a “panic premium” for immediate protection, even as longer-term terms stabilize near 49%.
- Coinglass data shows $179 million in 24-hour liquidations, with a 56-44 split between long and short positions. BTC ($59 million), ETH ($46 million), and others ($16 million) were the leaders in terms of notional settlements.
- The Binance settlement heatmap indicates $68,400 as the core settlement level to monitor in case of a price surge.
symbolic talk
- Altcoins strengthened overnight, with lending token MORPHO rising over 12% since midnight UTC and AI payments token KITE adding 11%, extending its 30-day rally of 153%.
- The rotation was also seen among DeFi tokens such as Jupiter (JUP), which jumped over 3.6% after hitting a seven-day low on Thursday.
- The CoinDesk Smart Contract Platform Select Index (SCPXC) was the best-performing benchmark index over the past 24 hours, posting a gain of 2.25%, closely followed by the CoinDesk Memecoin Index (CDMEME), with an increase of 2.2% over the same period.
- The bitcoin-dominant CoinDesk 20 (CD20) gained 1% as major cryptocurrencies posted more moderate gains.
- Altcoins typically perform well during periods of consolidation as traders are free to rotate capital toward more speculative bets without risking missing a move in bitcoin, ether, and XRP.
