bitcoin and ether (ETH) rose about 0.9% overnight, while the broader altcoin market lagged on Thursday.
BTC was recently trading at $67,000 after a brief touch of $66,000 on Wednesday. Ether, at $1,970 after bouncing off $1,924, is struggling to break above the psychological price level of $2,000.
Volatility has decreased since the February 5 sell-off. The subsequent two weeks of consolidation have left investors wondering if this is the calm before another stormy move lower, or if the market is setting a macroeconomic bottom before rallying back toward 2025 levels.
World Liberty Financial’s Mar-a-Lago forum on Wednesday failed to provide a bullish catalyst even though CFTC Chairman Michael Selig and executives from companies such as Goldman Sachs were in attendance.
From a macro perspective, bitcoin remains in a downtrend since hitting an all-time high of $126,600 in early October. It has recorded a series of lower highs and lower lows with periods of choppy consolidation between each major move.
Derivatives positioning
- Market dynamics have stabilized with open interest of $15.38 billion.
- That marks a transition from a leverage cleanup to a stable floor.
- Retail sentiment shows a subtle rebound with funding rates turning flat to positive (Binance returns to 4%), while institutional conviction remains anchored with a three-month annualized base persisting at 3%.
- The BTC options market has reached a 50/50 volume balance between calls and puts. While the 25-week delta bias has increased to 12%, the term structure of implied volatility (IV) remains in near-term backwardation.
- The initial spike in Curve IV confirms that traders are still paying a “panic premium” for immediate protection, even as longer-term tenors stabilize near 49%.
- Coinglass data shows $218 million in 24-hour liquidations, with a 77-23 split between long and short positions. BTC ($75 million), ETH ($53 million), and others ($22 million) were the leaders in terms of notional settlements.
- The Binance settlement heatmap indicates $67,400 as the central settlement level to monitor in case of a price surge.
symbolic talk
- The altcoin market is starting to suffer in the low liquidity trading environment.
- Actions of They lost more than 10% of their value after selling off during Wednesday’s event in a classic “selling the news” move.
- Axie Infinity (AXS) is retesting its February 6 lows after falling 5.9% since midnight UTC.
- Lending platform Morpho’s native MORPHO token has now given back all of Wednesday’s gains, trading at $1.39 after losing 4.2% of its value overnight.
- A whopping 97 of the top 100 cryptocurrencies, not including stablecoins or tokenized gold tokens, are in the red over the past 24 hours as the market remains in “extreme fear” territory.
- The fear and greed index is currently at 11/100, up from February’s low of 6/100.
