bitcoin rose 2.8% since midnight UTC after global markets plunged when futures trading opened an hour earlier.
Nasdaq 100 and S&P 500 index futures fell more than 1.5% since midnight as oil rose as high as $115 a barrel, the most since June 2022. Precious metals also suffered. Gold and silver lost 1.6% and 1.1% respectively, eroding the haven narrative as investors flocked to the US dollar.
Meanwhile, sentiment towards bitcoin is warming and has remained resilient to the war in Iran and subsequent supply disruptions across the Strait of Hormuz.
“While BTC has yet to fully earn its digital gold narrative, its practical use case as a digital escape hatch is becoming increasingly relevant, particularly in Gulf countries, amid bouts of monetary volatility and political uncertainty,” trading firm QCP said in a note on Monday.
Derivatives positioning
- Exchanges have liquidated nearly $400 million worth of crypto futures bets in 24 hours. Bearish bets on oil took the brunt, as prices of so-called black gold rose to $115 per barrel.
- Open interest (OI) in bitcoin futures remains stable near weekly lows around 650,000 BTC, a sign that the futures market is not participating in Monday morning’s rally. The OI in ether futures increased to 13 million ether.
- XRP OI jumped to 1.72 billion tokens, the highest since February 24, along with a small rally in SOL OI, both indicative of capital inflows.
- OI in PAXG, AVAX, LTC and several other alt tokens has decreased in 24 hours. Investors appear to be reducing risk as prices rebound.
- BTC and ETH 30-day implied volatility indices remain stable, reflecting market calm amid chaos in Asian oil and stock markets.
- On Deribit, bitcoin and ether put options continue to trade at a premium to call options, indicating persistent bearish concerns. However, the premium remains virtually unchanged from last week, suggesting that rising oil prices have not sparked huge demand for protection options.
- BTC’s implied volatility term structure remains in reverse, a sign that traders are pricing in higher volatility in the short term compared to the long term. That is consistent with the unknowns of war.
symbolic talk
- The altcoin market remained buoyant overnight with tokens such as DASH, XMR, and ZEC posting gains of between 3.8% and 5.2%.
- Decentralized finance (DeFi) tokens also performed well. ETHFI and MORPHO have surpassed bitcoin and ether (ETH) since midnight.
- CoinMarketCap’s “Altcoin Season” indicator is now at 36/100, significantly higher than the February low of 22/100. A CoinDesk report on Friday suggested that the lack of mentions of altcoins on social media could be bullish in terms of a market reversal.
- The best performing benchmark of the last 24 hours was CoinDesk’s Computing Select Index (CPUS), which includes chainlink and bittensor (TAO) and is up 2.7%, followed by the CoinDesk Smart Contract Platform Select Index (SCPXC), which is up 0.92% since Sunday morning.
- On the other hand, the institution-focused token canton (CC) lost 3.4% of its value in the last 24 hours, while the token created by OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman fell around 2%.
