The cryptocurrency market remained slow and weak on Wednesday as bitcoin and ether (ETH) fell less than 0.4% since midnight UTC and the CoinDesk 20 index (CD20) lost 0.9%, with 18 of its components falling.
The lack of a significant rebound will be the biggest concern, especially as US stock futures began to recover from Tuesday’s tech sell-off.
A portion of the altcoin market outperformed its peers, with Jupiter (JUP) and Monero (XMR) posting gains of between 2% and 4%, suggesting that investor appetite remains alive despite the bearish market conditions.
Bitcoin now needs to avoid falling back below the $60,000 psychological support level, which would trigger a return to a trading range not seen since late 2024, with $52,000 emerging as a key downside level.
Derivatives positioning
- Trading has slowed in the derivatives market, with volume falling 27% to $141 billion in the last 24 hours, while open interest rose 2% to $106 billion. Settlements totaled $158 million, the lowest figure in two weeks.
- BTC futures open interest (OI) remains stable at around 730,000 BTC for the eighth consecutive day, indicating consolidation at current levels.
- ETH futures are showing renewed action. OI rose to 14.3 million ETH, the most in two weeks and from a recent low of 13.74 million.
- The rise came as the spot price fell from about $1,780 to $1,650 over the past two days, a combination that usually indicates traders are shorting the rally. While funding rates remain slightly positive, showing some demand for bullish exposure, the 24-hour cumulative volume delta (CVD) is negative, a sign that the bears are leading the price action through market orders rather than passive limit orders.
- SOL futures are busier than ever, with OI at an all-time high of 77.68 million tokens. But both the funding rates and the 24-hour OI-adjusted CVD are negative, meaning the stock is driven by new short positions or bearish bets on the token.
- In contrast, the ZEC market is cooling rapidly, with OI retreating to 2 million tokens from around 2.55 million tokens last month.
- Overall, the bears appear to be leading the price action in most of the top 25 tokens, as evident from negative OI-adjusted CVDs for the second day in a row.
- Bitcoin’s 30-day implied volatility index (BVIV) has cooled to 43% from nearly 48% on Tuesday. Ether’s volatility index shows a similar pattern.
- On Deribit, the one-week bias widened to 10.9 volume points in favor of puts from about 7 points a day ago, a clear sign that bearish concerns are intensifying. The one-month bias also widened.
- Block flows into Paradigm featured a combined strategy that included call and put options at the $62,000 strike, both expiring on July 3. A combination buyer bets on high volatility.
symbolic talk
- While Monero and Jupiter performed well at dawn on Wednesday, the same cannot be said for companies like ethena (ENA), pump (PUMP), and stellar (XLM), which are down between 2.2% and 3.5% since midnight UTC.
- Ethena has now lost over 90% of its value since hitting an all-time high of $0.87 last September. The yield-generating DeFi platform undergoes a strategy that depends on bullish market conditions, including positive funding rates.
- Similar reductions have been observed in veteran tokens such as and which failed to reach their respective 2021 highs in the recent bull market, and have since effectively traded in a macro bearish trend.
- The US Dollar Index (DXY) continued to break new ground on Wednesday and is now challenging its May 2025 high. A strengthening dollar is often seen as a negative for risk assets, including altcoins, because it suggests investors are feeling safer with cash.
