Bitcoin is trading near $66,500 after adding 1.1% since midnight UTC and more than 5% from the weekend low of $63,000.
The crypto market is back in the middle of a trading range that has persisted since the start of February, with a volatile last week testing $70,000 to the upside and $62,500 to the downside.
Weekend price action was driven by the military strikes that killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, sparking retaliatory strikes and raising concerns about potential disruption to traffic in the Strait of Hormuz.
According to trading firm QCP, the strike triggered about $300 million in long liquidations — but the extent of forced selling was relatively limited, suggesting markets were already positioned for a volatile weekend.
The escalation pushed investors toward traditional havens, sending gold and silver to their highest levels in more than a month. Oil rose 13% to $82 a barrel. barrel, the highest price since July 2024.
U.S. stock index futures fell, with S&P 500 futures and the Nasdaq 100 down 1.1% and 1.5%, respectively, since midnight UTC.
The crypto market showed resilience, with most of the losses occurring on Saturday when US markets were closed.
Derivatives positioning
- The fallout from the Iran war has been more contained than one might have expected. While the cumulative open interest in crypto futures is down 2% to $93.78 billion, it remains above the recent low of $92.40 billion.
- Over $300 million in leveraged bets have been liquidated by centralized exchanges in 24 hours, with bullish bets accounting for most of the tally.
- Annualized perpetual funding rates for major cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin and ether, have slightly changed to negative, indicating a slightly bearish bias.
- Still, the market is showing no signs of panic, as evidenced by the bitcoin 30-day annualized implied volatility index, BVIV. It remains stable at around 58.8%, well within the price range seen last week. The same applies to the ether volatility index.
- On Deribit, short-term bitcoin puts traded at an 8%-10% volatility premium to calls, a sign of heightened downside concerns. The $60,000 put, or bearish bet, remains the most popular on the exchange.
- Block flows contained demand for bitcoin put spreads.
Token talk
- The altcoin market largely trailed bitcoin over the weekend, but one of the fastest to recover was lending token MORPHO, which continued its impressive two-week streak with a 5% jump over the past 24 hours, up 2.6% since midnight UTC.
- Decentralized finance (DeFi) tokens JUP, AAVE and LDO are all in the black as speculative appetite remains relatively strong despite a global shift to garden investments.
- Hyperliquid’s HYPE token surged more than 29% on Saturday to snap February’s downtrend. While it lost 3.8% on Monday, it remains above the crucial $30 support level.
- The DeFi token linked to US President Donald Trump’s family extended declines, shedding 2.5% of its value since midnight. It is now down more than 44% since mid-January after a series of lower highs and lows.
- CoinDesk’s DeFi Select (DFX) Index is the only benchmark positive over the past 24 hours. The worst performers were the CoinDesk Computing Select Index (CPUS) and the CoinDesk Smart Contract Platform Select Capped Index (SCPXC), down 1.87% and 1.71% respectively.
