The crypto market continues to trade within a tight range on Wednesday with bitcoin up 0.9% to around $68,000 since midnight UTC.
The major cryptocurrency has held between $65,100 and $72,000 since February 6 as market volatility has reduced following a February 5 selloff that took BTC to its lowest point since October 2024.
The Altcoin market runs its own race. Monero (XMR) and showing gains of 3% and 1.7% respectively since midnight, while zcash (ZEC) and hyperliquid (HYPE) lost 3.5% and 1.1% in the same period.
The muted performance across the crypto market comes as US stocks begin to emerge from trouble – S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 index futures are up 0.57% and 0.66% since midnight UTC, as investors await hints on monetary policy when the Fed publishes its meeting minutes later Wednesday.
Derivatives
- Market dynamics have shifted towards stabilization as open interest holds steady at $15.5 billion, marking a transition from leverage cleanup to a stable bottom.
- While retail sentiment has cooled with funding rates flat to slightly negative (Binance at -0.11%), institutional conviction remains entrenched and the three-month annualized basis remains at 3%.
- The BTC options market has reached a state of relative equilibrium with 24-hour volume split 49/51 between calls and puts.
- While the one-week 25-delta skew has eased further to 11%, the implied volatility (IV) term structure in the near term remains backward-looking, as evidenced by the sharp front-end rise in the IV curve before leveling off near 49% for longer-dated tenors.
- Coinglass data shows $193 million in 24-hour liquidations, with a 62-38 split between longs and shorts. BTC ($72 million), ETH ($52 million) and others ($12 million) led the way in terms of fictitious liquidations.
- The Binance liquidation heatmap indicates $68,800 as a core liquidation level to monitor in the event of a price rally.
Token talk
- The “Altcoin Season” indicator has risen to 34/100, up from lows of 22/100 on February 8, indicating relative strength across the altcoin market despite relatively low levels of volatility.
- The best asset on Wednesday has been The Trump family backed DeFi token, which is up 8.8% since midnight and 18.52% over the past 24 hours.
- Investors are betting on WLFI ahead of the projects’ crypto forum at Mar-a-Lago on Wednesday, where executives from Goldman Sachs, Nasdaq and Franklin Templeton, among others, will attend.
- It should be noted that rallies leading up to real-world events or announcements often result in a “sell the news” scenario as those who “buy the rumor” race to secure profits.
- Lending platform Morpho’s native MORPHO token has also been on a bullish run of late, rising 36% in the past week and 7% in the past 24 hours as traders try to capitalize on an otherwise flat market.
