Cryptocurrency volatility cooled on Friday, with bitcoin stuck between $77,500 and $78,500 since midnight UTC.
The muted price action follows a failed breakout attempt near $80,000 on Wednesday, although the broader trend remains constructive, with BTC price rallying throughout April and printing a series of higher highs and higher lows.
Ether (ETH) matched bitcoin’s performance on Friday, losing around 0.9% since midnight while remaining in a tight trading range.
US stock futures were mixed, with Nasdaq 100 futures up 0.5% on strong tech gains and S&P 500 futures down 3 basis points.
The Dollar Index (DXY) was little changed despite comments from US President Donald Trump confirming that the ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon has been extended by three weeks. The dollar fell about 0.5% when the ceasefire was first announced on April 16.
Derivatives positioning
- Bitcoin futures open interest has declined more than 6% to 744.3k BTC in 24 hours as the spot price rally retreats to $77,500 after failing to reach $80,000 earlier this week. The moves suggest that traders are unwinding leveraged positions and that bullish momentum is cooling in the near term.
- BTC’s 24-hour open interest-adjusted cumulative volume delta has turned negative, meaning sellers are moving closer to supply than buyers are raising demand during the period. Annualized perpetual funding rates remain slightly negative, indicating a dominance of bearish short positions.
- Futures tied to other major cryptocurrencies, such as ether (ETH), solana (SOL), and XRP (XRP), have seen lackluster trading over the past 24 hours.
- However, privacy-focused zcash (ZEC) stands out. Open interest in its futures is up nearly 7.5% to a 10-day high of 1.88 million tokens, while 24-hour trading volume is up 80%.
- The token also boasts one of the strongest positive CVD readings along with positive funding rates, indicating aggressive and sustained buying interest and overall bullish positioning.
- While BTC and ETH prices have come under pressure, investors are likely to view this as a brief pause in the rally. This is evident by the continued decline of bitcoin’s 30-day implied volatility index, BVIV. It has fallen to 42%, the lowest level since January 31. The ETH index has fallen below 65%, also the lowest since February 1.
- On Deribit, bitcoin and ether risk reversals continue to show a bias towards puts on all time frames. It shows persistent short covering by market players and selling of upside volatility through covered calls.
symbolic talk
- The CoinDesk Memecoin Index (CDMEME) was the only positive benchmark on Friday, posting a gain of less than 0.2%, while the DeFi Select Index (DFX) and the Computing Select Index (CPUS) lost around 1% each.
- Lido DeFi Tokens (LDO) and led sector losses, falling between 3% and 3.8% since midnight UTC, as sentiment continues to suffer following last weekend’s $290 million KelpDAO exploit.
- Privacy coin Zcash (ZEC) regained 0.5% of its gains on Friday, but is still up more than 7% in the past 24 hours, boosted by Thursday’s trading on the popular retail trading app Robinhood.
- CoinMarketCap’s “Altcoin Season” index rose again to 39/100 on Friday as investors began making speculative bets while bitcoin remained range-bound.
