Cryptocurrencies struggled to mirror bullish moves in stocks and precious metals on Wednesday, with BTC posting a modest gain while trading at $112,000, the lower side of its range.
Altcoins performed even worse as FET fell 6.2% after Ocean Protocol decided to leave the ASI Alliance and reportedly dump its tokens on Binance. There was also a 10% drop for MYX and a 4% move lower for CAKE, as the “altcoin season” index on CoinMarketCap fell to 38/100, despite being at 67/100 earlier this month.
Derivatives positioning
- XPL, ASTER, SUI, and LINK have seen a notable increase in futures open interest, while the top 10 tokens present a mixed performance overall.
- A whale address, named 0xc2a3, opened a 5x short on BTC worth $140 million on Hyperliquid.
- BTC futures open interest on Binance increased by $510 million during Asian hours as a trader moved $89 million in USDC to the exchange, possibly to short futures.
- Perpetual funding rates for major companies, including bitcoin and ether, remained stable to negative, implying a cautious sentiment.
- BTC futures activity on the CME remains subdued, while options open interest rose to an all-time high of 61.44K BTC. Positioning in ether options and futures remained elevated near all-time peaks.
- On Deribit, the short-term and short-term BTC options short-term bias increased slightly during overnight trading. Flows on the OTC Paradigm desk presented a long position on the $108,000 BTC sale expiring on October 18.
symbolic talk
By Oliver Knight
- formerly fetch.ai, has endured a grueling week; losing 43% of its value during a liquidation driven by Ocean Protocol’s decision to leave the Alliance.
- “As many of you have seen, Ocean Protocol has decided to move away from the ASI Alliance,” the company wrote on X. “In parallel, there has been notable market activity involving large transfers of FET tokens from wallets associated with Ocean Protocol to Binance.”
- The token suffered a sudden drop on October 10 along with the broader crypto market, but since then the price action has shown persistent selling behavior, with little to no respite for buyers.
- FET is now trading at $0.31, its lowest point in two years and has eroded all the bullish gains from the recent bull market.
- At one point in 2024, it had surpassed $3.11 amid a wave of bullish AI-related sentiment, but has since been missing a spark.
- The move reflects the bubbly nature of AI, with the IMF warning on Wednesday that if the AI bubble bursts it could rival the infamous dotcom bust.
