bitcoin it is trading around $77,700, up 1.8% since midnight UTC, after recovering from $75,650, a price that had served as an upper barrier during last week’s rally.
The bounce suggests a bullish shift, with $75,650 now acting as support, a level that could prove crucial if bitcoin is to make another attempt to break above $80,000.
Ether (ETH) is at $2,344, and its chart shows more bearish signs than bitcoin’s, having hit a series of lower highs since April 17.
The broader market is bullish as U.S. investors anticipate plenty of profits from technology companies. Alphabet (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), Amazon (AMZN), and Meta (META) are due to report after the closing bell on Wednesday.
Nasdaq 100 futures rose 0.25% in premarket trading.
Derivatives positioning
- Bitcoin futures open interest (OI) fell to 715.60 thousand BTC, the lowest since April 9 and notably below the monthly high of 800 thousand BTC. The decline shows a steady reduction in risk as the spot price rally slows near $80,000, with some analysts pointing to the possibility of a continued bear market.
- OI has remained virtually stable on ETH, SOL, and XRP over the past 24 hours.
- Meanwhile, traders continue to pour capital into DOGE futures, raising OI by 18% in a single day to 16.06 billion tokens, the highest level since October 10.
- With perpetual funding rates stable at around 4% annualized and the highest OI-adjusted cumulative volume delta among major companies, DOGE activity appears to be driven more by new directional positioning than overheated leverage, pointing to sustained bullish interest rather than fragile, crowded trading.
- SHIB futures listed on Binance are showing a similar bullish setup. The increasing activity of these non-serious tokens suggests a buildup of speculative froth, a pattern often seen before broader market pullbacks.
- The Binance-listed crude oil futures market is also heating up, with open interest rising 27% as prices rise above $100, posing a headwind for risk assets including cryptocurrencies.
- The decline in Bitcoin’s 30-day implied volatility index, BVIV, continues and is now testing three-month lows below 42%. It shows that the market has become desensitized to macroeconomic risks such as a war with Iran and high oil prices. The ether volatility index, EVIV, shows similar trends.
- The story in the options market listed on Deribit remains the same: put options for BTC and ETH remain more expensive than call options, indicating bearish concerns. These reserves are more pronounced in bitcoin than in ether.
symbolic talk
- The altcoin market showed signs of strength on Wednesday, buoyed by previous oversold conditions.
- The CoinDesk Memecoin Select Index (CDMEME) is the best-performing benchmark, adding 2.3% since midnight UTC, while the DeFi Select Index (DFX) gained 2.2%.
- Bitcoin dominant CoinDesk 20 (CD20) and CoinDesk 5 (CD5) rose 1.7%.
- Popular memecoins DOGE, PEPE, and FLOKI were among the top-gaining altcoins on CoinDesk 100 (CD100), advancing 10%, 6.3%, and 6.2%, respectively.
- CoinMarketCap’s “Altcoin Season” indicator rose to 41/100 from 39/100 overnight, demonstrating relative strength in the sector.
