By Omkar Godbole (All times ET unless otherwise noted)
Crypto Market Sentiment Remains Shaky After Bitcoin Crash Quick reversal from early Tuesday’s peak to $114,000, with most altcoins mimicking the breakout and drop. The CoinDesk 20 index is little changed in 24 hours even as gold’s rally stalled, raising hopes of a rotation into digital assets.
The two-way price action liquidated $600 million worth of crypto futures bets. According to CryptoQuant, this represents a three-sigma liquidation event: the liquidation volume was three standard deviations away from the average, marking it as an extreme outlier and an indicator of higher volatility.
Meanwhile, the ratio of open interest (OI) in bitcoin options to futures OI rose to the highest level since late 2023. That’s usually a sign that amplified price swings are coming. Furthermore, bitcoin’s 30-day implied volatility indices, BVIV and DVOL, remain elevated (see Technical Analysis section), maintaining the gains seen after the October 10 crash and underscoring the lingering uncertainty.
“These fluctuations do nothing to improve the mood of cryptocurrency investors,” Alex Kuptsikevich, chief market analyst at FxPro, said in an email.
Lingering nervousness, reflected in the Crypto Fear & Greed index falling to 25, could be a good entry point. “At current levels, the ‘buy when everyone is afraid’ rule may work, or there may be a shift toward a more intense sell-off after three months of stagnation,” he said.
In other news, Japan’s newly elected Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi is said to be preparing an economic stimulus package that exceeds last year’s $92 billion to help households cope with inflation. Observers, including Arthur Hayes, CIO of Maelstrom Fund, see the move as adding to BTC’s upward trajectory.
In industry news, the WSJ said cryptocurrency trading firm FalconX is acquiring ETF manager 21Shares, and the combined company will develop funds focused on derivatives and structured products. A Bloomberg report noted that some of Asia’s largest stock exchanges have become averse to digital asset treasury companies.
As for traditional markets, the dollar index maintained its weekly gains and gold fell for a second day, almost testing the $4,000 per ounce price mark. Stay alert!
What to watch
For a more complete list of this week’s events, check out CoinDesk’s “Crypto Week Ahead.”
- Crypto
- October 22, 11 am: Circle is hosting a Zoom webinar called “Inside the Circle Payments Network (CPN)” to explain how financial institutions can leverage CPN for fast, stablecoin-friendly settlements.
- October 22: David Sacks, White House IA and Crypto Czar, meets with members of the Republican Senate Banking Committee to discuss the advancement of legislation on cryptocurrency market structure.
- October 22: Two industry roundtables on cryptocurrency regulation in the US Senate, one hosted by Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and the other by Republican Senator Tim Scott.
- October 22: Zilliqa (ZIL) will activate its mainnet upgrade, Zilliqa 2.0, with a hard fork at block 11,998,800.
- Macro
- October 22, 8 am: Mexico Aug. Economic Activity. Year-on-year estimate -1%, monthly estimate 0.1%.
- Earnings (Estimates based on FactSet data)
- October 22: Tesla (TSLA), post-market.
symbolic events
For a more complete list of this week’s events, check out CoinDesk’s “Crypto Week Ahead.”
- Governance votes and calls
- Unlock
- October 22: Scroll (SCR) to unlock 43.42% of its circulating supply worth $13.56 million.
- October 22 – MultiBank Group (MBG) will unlock 11.97% of its circulating supply worth $16.31 million.
- Token releases
- October 22: Turtle (TURTLE) will appear on Binance.
- October 22: to appear on Coinbase.
Conferences
For a more complete list of this week’s events, check out CoinDesk’s “Crypto Week Ahead.”
symbolic talk
By Oliver Knight
- continued its rise on Wednesday, leading the otherwise weak altcoin market with a 9.2% bullish move in 24 hours.
- The privacy token is up a staggering 461% in the last month and continues to hit record highs.
- The catalyst behind ZEC’s rise is rising sentiment around the growth of protected tokens, which currently represent 27.5% of the total supply.
- Shielding is a privacy mechanism that masks transactions. Protected tokens must be held in a non-custodial wallet, in other words, not on an exchange.
- With so much supply in private portfolios, the premise is that salable supply is restricted.
- Combine a reduction in supply with increasing demand and this is the result: a relentless upward rally that has outperformed almost every crypto token in circulation.
- ZEC’s gain has been a rare sign of optimism in recent weeks as several other tokens have fallen to multi-month lows.
- ASTER, which was often dubbed the platform of the day in September, sank below $1.00 on Tuesday to compound a 33% drop over the past week.
- Recently emitted plasma The tokens have also found themselves on the sell side of order books, with demand and enthusiasm quickly fading, resulting in a 25% drop over the past seven days.
Derivatives positioning
- Futures open interest (OI) has increased by 22% to $303 million in the last 24 hours, leading the growth in some select major coins such as ENA, BCH, HYPE, ADA, AVAX and BTC.
- Futures linked to LINK, XPL and PUMP saw capital outflows, reflecting increased risk aversion among investors amid volatile market swings.
- Annualized perpetual funding rates for most major cryptocurrencies, including BTC and ETH, remain close to zero, indicating a balanced derivatives market.
- The BTC order book heatmap showed a cluster of sell orders of around $111,000 on the Binance-listed offender BTC/USDT.
- On the CME, OI in ether futures hit a record high of 2.43 million ETH, and OI in options remained stable near the lifetime peak of 297,000 ETH. BTC, however, continued to lag in terms of OI futures, which remained at around 142,000, significantly below the peak of over 200,000 at the end of last year. The divergence points to institutional investors’ preference for ETH over BTC.
- On Deribit, flows featured short squeezes and call overwriting strategies on BTC, with some demand for puts as protection against deeper declines. In the case of ETH, the focus was on put spreads and close-dated calendar spreads, according to Wintermute.
- In the case of BTC, puts trade at a premium over calls across all time frames. However, TH options showed optimism beyond the December expiry.
Market movements
- BTC is down 2.59% since 4 pm ET on Tuesday to $108,002.87 (24 hours: -0.51%)
- ETH is down 3% to $3,838.34 (24 hours: -0.98%)
- CoinDesk 20 is down 3.3% to 3,549.42 (24 hours: -0.78%)
- Ether CESR Composite Staking Rate is down 1bp to 2.83%
- BTC funding rate is 0.0036% (3.9946% annualized) on Binance
- DXY remains unchanged at 99.01
- Gold futures fall 0.7% to $4,080.50
- Silver futures unchanged at $47.69
- The Nikkei 225 closed unchanged at 49,307.79
- Hang Seng closed down 0.94% at 25,781.77
- The FTSE rises 0.75% to 9,497.77
- The Euro Stoxx 50 falls 0.35% to 5,667.02
- The DJIA closed Tuesday up 0.47% at 46,924.74
- The S&P 500 closed unchanged at 6,735.35
- Nasdaq Composite closed down 0.16% at 22,953.67
- S&P/TSX Composite closed down 1.73% at 29,888.82
- The S&P 40 Latin America closed with a fall of 1.24% to 2,880.55
- The US 10-year Treasury rate remains unchanged at 3.955%
- E-mini S&P 500 futures unchanged at 6,775.50
- E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures down 0.15% at 25,257.50
- The E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average is unchanged at 47,133.00
Bitcoin Statistics
- BTC dominance: 59.75% (unchanged)
- Ether-bitcoin ratio: 0.03568 (-0.21%)
- Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 1,107 EH/s
- Hashprice (spot): $46.57
- Total fees: 2.95 BTC / $324,895
- CME Futures Open Interest: 142,385 BTC
- BTC priced in gold: 25.7 oz.
- BTC market capitalization against gold: 7.26%
Technical analysis
- BTC’s 30-day implied volatility indices, DVOL and BVIV, have surpassed their respective 200-day simple moving averages for the first time since April.
- These breakdowns indicate expectations for further price turbulence over the next four weeks.
Crypto Stocks
- Coinbase Global (COIN): closed on Tuesday at $338.62 (-1.5%), -2.02% to $331.78 in premarket
- Circle Internet (CRCL): closed at $129.85 (-0.73%), -1.34% at $128.11
- Galaxy Digital (GLXY): closed at $42.86 (+8.1%), -5.27% to $40.60
- Bullish (BLSH): closed at $57.27 (-2.54%), -2.97% at $55.57
- MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $20.07 (-3.18%), -2.64% at $19.54
- Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $20.67 (-6.09%), -2.9% at $20.07
- Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $19.23 (+2.23%), -2.18% to $18.81
- CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $18.77 (-7.99%), -3.89% at $18.04
- CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $56.01 (-6.29%), -4.77% to $53.34
- Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $24.68 (-5.55%)
Crypto treasury companies
- Strategy (MSTR): closed at $301.91 (+1.79%), -2.29% to $295.00
- Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed at $23.51 (-0.59%)
- SharpLink Gaming (SBET): closed at $14.34 (-3.04%), -2.51% at $13.98
- Upexi (UPXI): closed at $5.09 (-11.01%), -3.54% at $4.91
- Lite Strategy (LITS): closed at $1.95 (-1.52%)
ETF Flows
BTC Spot ETF
- Daily net flows: $477.2 million
- Accumulated net flows: 61,940 million dollars
- Total BTC holdings ~1.35 million
ETH Spot ETF
- Daily net flows: $141.7 million
- Accumulated net flows: $14.61 billion
- Total ETH holdings ~6.74 million
Source: Farside Investors
while you were sleeping
