The crypto market remains under pressure on Monday despite US stock futures gaining around 0.25% since midnight UTC.
Bitcoin trading at $68,710, having lost 0.1%. Altcoins such as HYPE, ZEC and XMR have fallen by more than 3%.
Ether is one of Monday’s outliers, up 0.43% since midnight as it heads back toward $2,000 after a grueling weekend selloff was spurred by selling pressure from trader Garrett Jin.
Onchain data shows that a wallet attributed to Jin deposited more than $540 million in ether to Binance over the weekend, leading to a disproportionate increase in sales volume compared to other exchanges.
That pressure translated into oversold conditions that ultimately set the stage for Monday’s recovery.
Gold changes hands at $5,000 on Monday, down from its Jan. 29 peak of $5,600, but outperforming silver and crypto, which are down 36% and 21% respectively over the same period.
US markets are closed on Monday for a holiday.
Derivatives positioning
- The crypto futures market continues to see capital outflows, with theoretical open interest (OI), or the dollar value of total open or active contracts, falling to $98 billion.
- De-risking is seen across the board, with OI falling 1% and 2.7% in bitcoin and ether futures respectively over 24 hours. XRP, DOGE, SUI and ADA saw declines of 6% or more.
- OI in futures linked to the gold token XAUT rose 8% as traders continued to put capital into traditional assets.
- BTC and ETH’s 30-day implied volatility has reversed the massive pop from annualized 50% to nearly 100% earlier this month as prices crashed. The reversal indicates massive pricing of volatility risks, supporting the case for price recovery.
- The spread between implied volatility indices for ether and bitcoin is starting to widen, indicating expectations for greater volatility in ether.
- Funding rates for several alternative tokens, such as XRP, TRX, DOGE and SOL, remain negative, indicating a trader’s preference for bearish, short positions. If the market remains resilient, these bears may feel compelled to offset their bets, potentially leading to a “short squeeze” higher.
- SOL futures on the CME show an annual premium close to zero, a sign that buy-side pressure is fading fast. BTC and ETH futures trade at small premiums.
- On Deribit, someone paid $3 million in premium for a $75,000 strike bitcoin call option. The massive flow probably represents a bullish effort in the market.
- Still, put options pegged to BTC and ETH remain more expensive than calls across all timeframes, a sign of persistent downside concerns.
Token talk
- The altcoin market saw a familiar low-liquidity drift lower on Sunday before a slight rebound on Monday morning.
- Popular memecoin is down more than 10% in the past 24 hours but has stabilized since midnight UTC, while XRP is up 1% at midnight despite losing 8% of its value since Sunday morning.
- Layer zero (ZRO) continues to lose momentum after its rally in early February, falling more than 34% over the past five days, including a 10% reduction in the past 24 hours. The drop comes after the introduction of a native blockchain in collaboration with Wall Street veterans Citadel Securities and DTCC.
- The heavily bitcoin-weighted CoinDesk 5 (CD5) index was up 0.38% since midnight UTC, while the altcoin-dominated CoinDesk 80 (CD80) lost 0.17% over the same period, showing relative altcoin weakness.
