The crypto market fell Thursday, with bitcoin losing 0.7% since midnight UTC to trade recently at $77,600.
The decline comes after the largest cryptocurrency hit its highest point since January on Wednesday before sellers stepped in just beneath the $80,000 level of resistance.
Oil prices rose by 1.5% to $103 per barrel overnight following reports that the U.S. had seized three Iranian tankers in Asian waters, leading to a drop in risk asset prices.
Ether (ETH) lost 2.5% and now trades at $2,320 having tested $2,500 over the weekend.
The broader market remains optimistic, with bitcoin appearing to have broken out of a two-month range to the upside. It had languished between $63,000 and $75,000 since early February.
U.S. stock futures are down on Thursday with S&P 500 and Nasdaq 500 futures both losing 0.5% apiece overnight.
Derivatives positioning
- While bitcoin’s futures open interest (OI) slipped to 775K BTC from a record near 800K BTC on Wednesday, it remains at historically elevated levels. Negative perpetual funding rates suggest leveraged bets remain tilted to the bearish side.
- This combination is rare. As a result, some analysts are calling BTC’s current advance a “most hated” rally, suggesting it could accelerate if bearish traders are forced to unwind their positions.
- Open interest in DOGE has climbed above 14 billion tokens, a level seen only once since October. However, the token’s funding rates are skewed positive, suggesting growing demand for bullish bets.
- BCH, LINK and LTC are other coins with declining OI pointing to an outflow of capital from the market.
- The cumulative volume delta (CVD) signals caution, showing that more trades have been initiated by sellers hitting bids than by buyers lifting offers over the past 24 hours across most major altcoins, including XRP, SOL and ETH. Meanwhile, BTC, M and CRO are the only assets with positive CVD readings. This suggests the broader market is not yet fully participating in bitcoin’s rally.
- Bitcoin and ether’s 30-day implied volatility indices continue to stay flat around the recently hit 2.5-month lows. In other words, calm prevails even as the U.S.-Iran ceasefire talks head nowhere and oil markets remain disrupted.
- On Deribit, BTC and ETH puts continue to be pricier than calls in a sign of lingering downside concerns. Over the past 24 hours, demand has been concentrated in BTC call options, bullish bets, at strikes from $80,000 to $85,000.
Token talk
- CoinDesk’s DeFi Select Index (DFX) is the worst-performing benchmark on Thursday, having lost 2.7% since midnight UTC, while the bitcoin-dominant CoinDesk 20 (CD20) is down by 1.1%.
- CoinMarketCap’s “Altcoin Season” index fell to 32/100 on Thursday, its lowest in 10 days, as investors showed a preference for bitcoin after Wednesday’s attempt to break $80,000.
- One token to buck Thursday’s bearish price action was spark (SPK), which increased by more than 70% after it was listed on Upbit, South Korea’s largest cryptocurrency exchange.
- Privacy coin monero (XMR) rose by 3.3% since midnight, outperforming its peers DASH and ZEC, which are both in the red.
- DeFi tokens morpho and aave led the sector’s move to the downside, losing 4.6% and 2.8%, respectively, as negative sentiment continues to plague the industry following the weekend’s $290 million KelpDAO exploit.
