bitcoin is trading near $66,500 after adding 1.1% since midnight UTC and more than 5% from the weekend low of $63,000.
The cryptocurrency market is back in the middle of a trading range that has persisted since early February, with a volatile last week testing $70,000 on the upside and $62,500 on the downside.
The weekend price action was driven by the military strikes that killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, prompting retaliatory attacks and raising concerns about potential disruptions to traffic in the Strait of Hormuz.
According to trading firm QCP, the strike triggered approximately $300 million in long liquidations, but the scale of forced selling was relatively contained, suggesting markets were already positioned for a volatile weekend.
The rally pushed investors toward traditional havens, sending gold and silver to their highest levels in more than a month. Oil rose 13% to $82 a barrel, the highest price since July 2024.
US stock index futures fell, with S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 futures falling 1.1% and 1.5%, respectively, as of midnight UTC.
The cryptocurrency market showed resilience with most of the losses occurring on Saturday, when the US markets were closed.
Derivatives positioning
- The consequences of the war with Iran have been more contained than one might expect. While cumulative crypto futures open interest has fallen 2% to $93.78 billion, it remains above the recent low of $92.40 billion.
- Centralized exchanges have liquidated more than $300 million in leveraged bets in 24 hours, with bullish bets accounting for the bulk of the tally.
- Annualized perpetual funding rates for major cryptocurrencies including bitcoin and ether are little changed to negative, indicating a slightly bearish bias.
- Still, the market shows no signs of panic, as evidenced by Bitcoin’s 30-day annualized implied volatility index, BVIV. It remains stable at around 58.8%, well within the price range seen last week. The same goes for the ether volatility index.
- On Deribit, short-term bitcoin call options are trading at an 8% to 10% volatility premium to call options, a sign of greater downside concerns. The $60,000 put option, or bearish bet, remains the most popular in the stock market.
- Block flows presented demand for bitcoin sale spreads.
symbolic talk
- The altcoin market largely followed bitcoin over the weekend, but one of the fastest to recover was the MORPHO lending token, which continued its impressive two-week streak with a 5% jump in the last 24 hours, having risen 2.6% since midnight UTC.
- Decentralized finance (DeFi) tokens JUP, AAVE and LDO are all in the black as speculative appetite remains relatively strong despite a global shift towards safe-haven investments.
- Hyperliquid’s HYPE token rose more than 29% on Saturday to break the February downtrend. While it lost 3.8% on Monday, losing 3.8% remains above the crucial $30 support level.
- The DeFi token linked to the family of US President Donald Trump, prolonged its declines, falling 2.5% in value since midnight. It is now down more than 44% since mid-January following a series of lower highs and lower lows.
- CoinDesk’s DeFi Select Index (DFX) is the only positive benchmark in the last 24 hours. The worst performers were the CoinDesk Computing Select Index (CPUS) and the CoinDesk Smart Contract Platform Select Capped Index (SCPXC), which fell 1.87% and 1.71%, respectively.
