bitcoin rose 0.3% to $58,700 on Wednesday, showing a hint of strength after falling to $57,700, the lowest point since September 2024, shortly after midnight UTC.
Ether (ETH) is at $1,580, having also seen a slight relief bounce since 01:00 UTC.
US stock index futures are lower since midnight UTC, with S&P 500 futures and Nasdaq 100 futures in the red between 0.2% and 0.4%.
Risk assets such as cryptocurrencies and technology stocks have been struggling in recent weeks as concerns about impending inflation have boosted the US dollar and made traders cautious.
The altcoin market has been the hardest hit because it lacks the liquidity and demand to deal with precipitous bearish moves and liquidation cascades.
Derivatives positioning
- A total of $395 million in crypto futures bets have been settled in 24 hours, with bullish plays making up the majority of the total. This is not surprising given BTC’s drop to lows below $58,000 earlier in the day.
- The real story is crude oil futures trading on crypto exchanges. They have seen liquidations worth $15 million, the fifth largest figure among all tokens. The figure shows how popular TradFi trading has become on crypto exchanges.
- BTC futures open interest (OI) jumped to 768,000 BTC from 740,000 BTC a day ago. While the influx of money is encouraging, it is unclear whether the bias is toward bullish or bearish bets. For example, annualized funding rates are around 5%, suggesting a bullish bias, while the 24-hour cumulative volume delta is negative, suggesting that the bears are being more aggressive and trading market orders rather than passive limit orders.
- OI gold perpetual futures hit a record high of 222,000 XAU tokens. This comes as the metal’s spot price shows a bearish death cross, signaled by the 50-day simple moving average crossing below the 200-day SMA. Prominent gold ETFs are showing a similar bearish pattern.
- Bitcoin and Ethereum 30-day implied volatility indices remain stable after June’s double-digit gains. The Bitcoin index, BVIV, is now capped between the 200-day average as resistance and the 50-day average as support. A break above the 200-day moving average could mean fresh turmoil and a deeper price drop.
- On Deribit, bitcoin and ether puts remain more expensive than calls across all time frames as traders look for downside protection.
- Key flows on the Paradigm over-the-counter counter included demand for bitcoin expiring in September at the strike price of $50,000. This is a bet that prices could fall below $50,000 by the end of the third quarter. Meanwhile, someone raised a call option on SOL at the strike price of $86. The token is currently trading around $75.
symbolic talk
- While the broader altcoin market is struggling, the Solana-based Jupiter (JUP) DeFi token has seen a trend reversal, surging 11% since midnight UTC with a 55% increase in daily trading volume.
- The increase is accompanied by a jump in total value locked (TVL), with the protocol, a decentralized exchange (DEX) aggregator. TVL has increased to more than 20 million SOL from 13.9 million in May.
- Stellar Lumens (XLM) extended its gains, rising from $0.168 on Sunday to $0.196, an increase of 17%.
- Strong performance from a few select altcoins kept CoinMarketCap’s “Altcoin Season” index stable at around 48/100 after ending June little changed despite weakness across the sector.
- AI tokens have been the recipients of that weakness. Bittensor (TAO) lost 2.5% on Wednesday and is now down over 30% since June 15.
