By Omkar Godbole (All times ET unless otherwise noted)
bitcoin and the broader crypto market remained resilient on Monday as an oil price surge above $100 shook Asian markets and sent US stock futures tumbling. The crypto calm may be broken if bitcoin moves outside the range of $60,000 to $75,000, data on the positions of major market participants suggests.
However, at the moment it is solidly within that range. The leading cryptocurrency by market value is up more than 3% since early Asia to trade around $68,000. The rally follows a week of back-and-forth action that saw the price rise to nearly $74,000 only to fall back to $67,000 over the weekend. The CoinDesk 20 index (CD20), ether (ETH), XRP (XRP), solana (SOL) saw similar increases.
This resistance to the war in the Middle East and the risk-off sentiment in global stocks is likely due to the past outperformance of US stocks and the oversold status of the cryptocurrency. Nothing reflects crypto calm better than BTC’s 30-day implied volatility index, BVIV, which remains stable around 60%. Meanwhile, Wall Street’s volatility indices, the stock VIX, the oil VIX and the gold VIX, have risen to multi-week highs, indicating panic in traditional markets.
Bitcoin market makers, those entities in charge of creating liquidity in the order book and ensuring smooth trading, have a “short gamma” of $60,000 and $75,000. This means that if the market breaks above those levels, they could trade in the direction of the price movement to rebalance their net exposure to neutral. In other words, they can sell BTC when its price goes down and buy when it goes up, accentuating volatility.
“If we look at the Deribit GEX (gamma exposure chart), we see that traders are short a lot of gamma at the $60,000 level and at the $75,000 levels…essentially the top and bottom of the box. If markets actually trade beyond the box, negative gamma will make things worse from a trader rebalancing perspective,” Amberdata head of derivatives Greg Magadini said in an email.
He added that traders are looking at the same levels and have hedged their own exposure at the top and bottom. Stay alert!
Read more: For an analysis of current activity in altcoins and derivatives, see Crypto Markets Today
What to watch
For a more complete list of this week’s events, check out CoinDesk’s “Crypto Week Ahead.”
- Crypto
- March 9: Solstice and Kamino will announce a new product or feature.
- Macro
- Earnings (Estimates based on FactSet data)
- March 9: Sharplink (SBET), premarket, $0.31
symbolic events
For a more complete list of this week’s events, check out CoinDesk’s “Crypto Week Ahead.”
- Governance votes and calls
- Convex Finance is voting on Curve Ownership DAO Voting ID: 1358, which would incorporate GHO as a Pegkeeper with a debt limit of 3 million crvUSD. Voting ends March 9.
- Lido DAO is voting to make the Delegate Incentive Program (DIP 2.0) a permanent governance mechanism. Voting ends March 9.
- Lido DAO is voting to authorize a one-time Treasury DAO allocation of $5 million in the upcoming Lido Earn ETH and USD vaults. Voting ends March 9.
- Lido DAO is voting on whether Stakin (recently acquired by The Tie) should continue operating as a node operator and whether to approve updating Stakin’s on-chain name and reward address. Voting ends March 9.
- Unlock
- Token releases
- March 9 – Nexira (NEXI) token generation event happens, the token will be listed on KuCoin.
Conferences
For a more complete list of this week’s events, check out CoinDesk’s “Crypto Week Ahead.”
Market movements
- BTC is up 0.68% as of 4 pm ET Sunday to $67,649.34 (24 hours: -0.36%)
- ETH is up 1.89% to $1,995.45 (24 hours: +1.12%)
- CoinDesk 20 rose 1.04% to 1,943.48 (24 hours: +0.12%)
- Ether CESR Composite Staking Rate is down 9 basis points to 2.64%
- BTC funding rate is at -0.0025% (-5.8613% annualized) on Binance
- DXY rises 0.30% to 99.2812
- Gold futures fall 0.70% to $5,110.00
- Silver futures rise 0.21% to $84.00
- The Nikkei 225 closed down 5.20% at 52,728.72
- Hang Seng closed down 1.35% at 25,408.46
- The FTSE 100 is down 1.22% at 10,159.26
- The Euro Stoxx 50 falls 1.70% to 5,622.84
- DJIA closed Friday down 0.95% at 47,501.55
- The S&P 500 closed down 1.33% at 6,740.02
- Nasdaq Composite closed down 1.59% at 22,387.68
- S&P/TSX Composite closed down 1.57% at 33,083.70
- The 10-year US Treasury rate rises 4 basis points to 4.18%
- E-mini S&P 500 futures down 0.90% at 6,682.75
- E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures down 0.96% to 24,434.00
- E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average futures down 1.04% to 47,024.00
Bitcoin Statistics
- BTC dominance: 59.04% (0.62%)
- Ether-bitcoin ratio: 0.02951 (0.51%)
- Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 1,005 EH/s
- Hashprice (spot): $29.61
- Total fees: 1.96 BTC / $131,828
- CME Futures Open Interest: 100,675 BTC
- BTC priced in gold: 13.3 oz.
- BTC market capitalization against gold: 4.56%
Technical analysis
- The chart shows daily swings in bitcoin’s 30-day implied volatility index, BVIV, in candlestick format.
- The index is near the upper end of its recent range.
- A potential breakout would mean increased volatility and risk aversion, leading to losses in bitcoin.
Crypto Stocks
- Coinbase Global (COIN): closed on Friday at $197.22 (-4.13%), -0.84% to $195.57 in the previous market
- Galaxy Digital (GLXY): closed at $20.56 (-9.57%), -0.17% at $20.52
- MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $8.01 (-8.67%), -0.12% at $8.00
- Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $14.16 (-9.20%), -1.38% at $13.97
- Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $14.86 (-7.13%), -0.54% at $14.78
- CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $9.21 (-7.44%), -0.43% at $9.17
- Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $10.90 (-2.50%)
- CoinShares Bitcoin Mining ETF (WGMI): closed at $36.07 (-8.10%), -0.80% at $35.78
- Circle Internet Group (CRCL): closed at $101.91 (-3.62%), +1.24% to $103.17
- Bullish (BLSH): closed at $34.96 (-0.17%), -1.34% at $34.49
Crypto treasury companies
- Strategy (MSTR): closed at $133.53 (-4.49%), +0.25% at $133.86
- Strive Asset Management (ASST): closed at $8.70 (-5.95%), -0.23% at $8.68
- Sharplink (SBET): closed at $7.36 (-7.19%), +2.45% at $7.54
- Upexi (UPXI): closed at $0.90 (-6.44%), +4.44% to $0.94
- Lite Strategy (LITS): closed at $1.14 (+0.88%)
ETF Flows
BTC Spot ETF
- Daily net flows: -$348.9 million
- Accumulated net flows: $55.35 billion
- Total BTC holdings ~1.28 million
ETH Spot ETF
- Daily net flows: -$82.9 million
- Accumulated net flows: $11.66 billion
- Total ETH holdings ~5.64 million
Source: Farside Investors
