The crypto market showed signs of a cautious recovery on Thursday, with bitcoin trading at $77,900, up from Tuesday’s low of $76,100, and ether (ETH) at $2,130 after adding just 0.1% since midnight UTC.
The altcoin sector remains mixed. While Hyperliquid (HYPE) rose for the fifth day in a row, adding 6.5% to achieve a 53% gain over the past week, privacy coins gave back a portion of Wednesday’s gains.
US stocks snapped a three-day losing streak on Wednesday, with the S&P 500 index rising 1.5% as investors anticipated a strong earnings report from Nvidia (NVDA), which beat forecasts with record quarterly revenue of $81.62 billion.
Oil prices fell as US President Donald Trump said a peace deal with Iran was in its “final stages”, giving a boost to risk assets.
Derivatives positioning
- Cryptocurrency futures volume rose 15% to $165.7 billion, open interest rose nearly 1% to $128 billion and liquidations rose 72% to $266 million, ending a two-day streak of declining activity.
- Hyperliquid’s HYPE token led the top 100 coins with open interest reaching the highest level since February 19. Coupled with a positive cumulative volume delta (CVD) and slightly positive funding, the rise suggests that aggressive buyers of market orders, not passive buyers of limit orders, are in control without yet showing signs of overheating.
- A similar bullish trend was evident in the zcash privacy coin (ZEC), which has dominated the daily open interest rankings all week.
- DASH futures are also heating up. Open interest increased 38% to 1.98 million tokens, but the rejection of the “boom-bust” price at $54, along with negative CVD, suggests that sellers are aggressively fading rallies with market orders.
- Negative CVDs on other assets such as XMR, SUI, TON, HBAR, M, BNB, and CC further indicate that sellers are being aggressive with market orders rather than passively trading through limit orders.
- The Bitcoin futures market remains stagnant with open interest stuck in the 720,000 to 750,000 BTC range for the seventh day. The lack of momentum is reflected in the ether (ETH) market.
- Ether’s 30-day implied volatility fell to a 2026 low of 53%, surpassing lows set in late 2024, while bitcoin’s BVIV held steady near 40%, suggesting widespread calm amid macroeconomic risks.
- In the options market, a large block trade involved the sale of a short XRP, representing a high-conviction bet on the token’s spot price remaining in a range of around $1.40 until the end of June.
- For both BTC and ETH, the strangle has become the most favored options strategy on Deribit in the last 24 hours, suggesting that traders are positioning themselves for a break from the current low volatility regime.
symbolic talk
- HYPE is receiving justified plaudits this week, with a gain of over 20% in the last 24 hours as daily trading volume has increased 135% to $1.3 billion.
- The CoinDesk Memecoin Select Index (CDMEME) fell 0.2% on Thursday and 0.9% in 24 hours. All other CoinDesk benchmarks are higher over a 24-hour period, while the CoinDesk Computing Select Index (CPUS) outperformed its peers.
- A cryptocurrency analyst with the pseudonym “skew” described the altcoin market as being in a “make or break” position this week, alluding to the total cryptocurrency market capitalization excluding bitcoin, which has recorded a series of higher highs and lower lows since February.
- Speculation is rising again in several altcoin trading pairs, including doublezero (2Z), which has seen an increase in trading volume of over 410%, leading to a 17% rise in the token in the last 24 hours.
