The crypto market retreated from potential danger Thursday with bitcoin up 3.9% from a local low of $65,600.
Prices rose overnight, with bitcoin up 2% since midnight UTC, solana (SOL) up 2.7% and ether (ETH) up 1.2%.
However, the broader downtrend remains intact with bitcoin printing a series of lower lows and lower highs to give back all the gains it made in the 12 months ending October 2025.
In the near term, bitcoin needs to break above $72,000 to confirm a bullish shift from the range-bound price action that has seen it float between support and resistance.
Spot bitcoin ETFs in the US posted their biggest draw this cycle with 100,300 BTC in payouts since October. That equates to about $6.8 billion in additional selling pressure in an already fragile market.
Derivatives positioning:
- Market dynamics are stabilizing. Open interest rose to $15.8 billion, signaling a shift from leverage cleanup to a firmer floor, and retail sentiment is picking up, with funding rates flat to positive across all venues and hitting 10% at Bybit and Hyperliquid.
- The institutional conviction remains entrenched and the three-month annual basis remains at 3%.
- The BTC options market is showing a slight shift in sentiment, with 24-hour volume reaching a 51/49 split in favor of calls.
- While the one-week 25-delta bias has jumped to 17%, the implied volatility (IV) term structure remains in short-term pullback.
- This sustained front-end increase confirms that traders are still paying a “panic premium” for immediate protection, even as longer tenors stabilize near 49%.
- Coinglass data shows $179 million in 24-hour liquidations, with a 56-44 split between longs and shorts. BTC ($59 million), ETH ($46 million) and others ($16 million) led the way in terms of fictitious liquidations.
- The Binance liquidation heatmap indicates $68,400 as a core liquidation level to monitor in the event of a price rally.
Token talk
- Altcoins were buoyant overnight, with lending token MORPHO up more than 12% since midnight UTC and AI payment token KITE adding 11%, extending its 30-day rally of 153%.
- The rotation was also seen among DeFi tokens such as jupiter (JUP), which jumped more than 3.6% after hitting its lowest point in seven days on Thursday.
- The CoinDesk Smart Contract Platform Select Index (SCPXC) was the best-performing benchmark over the past 24 hours, up 2.25%, closely followed by CoinDesk’s Memecoin Index (CDMEME), up 2.2% over the same period.
- The bitcoin-dominant CoinDesk 20 (CD20) rose 1% as crypto majors posted more subdued gains.
- Altcoins typically do well during periods of consolidation, as traders have the freedom to rotate capital to more speculative bets without risking missing a move on e.g. bitcoin, ether and XRP.
