bitcoin consolidated following Monday’s sell-off, trading at $62,600 after falling from $64,400 to $61,800 over the course of 24 hours.
Ether (ETH) followed the largest cryptocurrency, trading in a relatively tight range of $1,770-$1,790. Trading volume in ETH pairs increased 2.2% to $8.95 billion in the last 24 hours, suggesting a healthy balance between buyers and sellers rather than opposition to apathy.
Lighter (LIT) recovered from Monday’s slowdown, rising 5.7% since midnight UTC, as it looks to stage another rally following a 200% rise since May.
US stocks were mixed, with Nasdaq 100 futures up 0.31% and S&P 500 futures down 0.12%, reflecting uncertainty after US President Donald Trump said Iran would be hit by “very strong” attacks on Tuesday.
Gold extended its slide from January’s all-time high to languish around $4,020 an ounce, falling about 28% since January 29.
Derivatives positioning
- The positioning of Bitcoin derivatives remains practically unchanged. Open interest (OI) remained at $17.1 billion; the three-month annualized base remained at 3.8%; and annualized funding rates ranged between 0% and 8% in multiple locations, with Bybit’s previous negative outlier now aligned.
- No significant leverage was added in either direction and no signs of stress emerged in the funding structure.
- Options positioning remains biased toward buying, but continues to moderate. The 24-hour call/put ratio stands at 58/42, weaker than yesterday’s 64/36, and the one-week delta bias has further compressed to ~15% from 26% a week ago.
- The at-the-money term structure remains in contango (front end ~31-32%, long end ~43%), and Deribit’s implied volatility index, DVOL, at 37.43 is near multi-year lows. Low stress and slight buying bias, but options premium is quietly fading.
- Coinglass data shows $283 million in 24-hour liquidations, with a 74-26 split between long and short positions. BTC ($66 million) and ETH ($50 million) were the leaders in terms of notional settlements.
- The Binance liquidation heatmap indicates $61,300 as the central liquidation level to monitor in case of a price drop.
symbolic talk
- Ethena (ENA) mirrored the LIT surge on Tuesday, rising 5.7% to lead the altcoin market. However, unlike LIT, ENA is in a deep downtrend dating back to September, and has since lost over 90% of its value.
- There were also encouraging signs in the AI sector on Tuesday, with NEAR rising 3.3% and FET gaining 1.7%.
- JUP and WLFI continued to show weakness amid declining trading volume, falling 1.5% and 0.5%, respectively.
- CoinMarketCap’s “Altcoin Season” indicator paints a more positive picture with a reading of 54/100. It spent most of June below 50/100.
- A potentially bullish driver of altcoin price action could be the deep sell-off in the South Korean stock market. The KOSPI benchmark index has fallen 10% since Friday, creating an inverse correlation with the country’s crypto exchanges.
- Wu Blockchain reported that Upbit’s trading volume increased by 1,426% following KOSPI’s plight, indicating a possible reduction in machine chip trading that caused investors to abandon cryptocurrencies late last year.
