By Omkar Godbole (All times ET unless otherwise noted)
Bitcoin and the broader crypto market remained resilient on Monday as a rise in oil prices above $100 jolted Asian markets and triggered a drop in US stock futures. Crypto calm could be shattered if bitcoin moves outside the $60,000-$75,000 range, data on major market participants’ positions suggests.
However, it is solidly within that range at the moment. The leading cryptocurrency by market capitalization is up over 3% since early Asian hours to trade around $68,000. The rally follows a week of back-and-forth action that saw the price rise to nearly $74,000 but fall back to $67,000 over the weekend. The CoinDesk 20 index (CD20), ether (ETH), XRP (XRP), solana (SOL) saw similar gains.
This resilience to the war in the Middle East and the risk-off vote in global equities likely stems from the previous outperformance of US stocks and the cryptocurrency’s oversold status. Nothing reflects crypto calm better than BTC’s 30-day implied volatility index, BVIV, which remains steady around 60%. Wall Street’s volatility index, meanwhile, has seen the stock VIX, oil VIX and gold VIX all rise to multi-week highs, indicating panic in traditional markets.
Bitcoin market makers – the entities tasked with creating order book liquidity and ensuring smooth trading – are “short gamma” at $60,000 and $75,000. This means that if the market moves beyond these levels, they can trade in the direction of the price movement to rebalance their net exposure back to neutral. In other words, they can sell BTC when the price falls and buy when it rises, accentuating volatility.
“If we look at the Deribit GEX (gamma exposure chart), we see that traders are missing a lot of gamma at the $60,000 level and $75,000 levels … essentially the ceiling and floor of the box. Should markets actually trade above the box, negative gamma will make things worse from a dealer rebalancing perspective,” said Amberdata’s Director of Deriviniatives in an email from Greg Magadiniatives.
He added that traders are looking at the same levels and have hedged their own exposure at the ceiling and floor. Pay attention!
Read more: For analysis of today’s activity in altcoins and derivatives, see Crypto Markets Today
What to see
For a more comprehensive list of events this week, see CoinDesk’s “Crypto Week Ahead.”
- Crypto
- March 9: Solstice and Kamino announce a new product or feature.
- Macro
- Earnings (Estimated based on FactSet data)
- March 9: Sharplink (SBET), pre-market, $0.31
Token Events
For a more comprehensive list of events this week, see CoinDesk’s “Crypto Week Ahead.”
- Governance votes and calls
- Convex Finance votes for Curve Ownership DAO Voting ID: 1358 which will board GHO as a Pegkeeper with a debt cap of 3 million crvUSD. Voting ends March 9.
- Lido DAO votes to make the Delegate Incentive Program (DIP 2.0) a permanent governance mechanism. Voting ends March 9.
- Lido DAO votes to approve a one-time allocation of $5 million DAO Treasury to the upcoming Lido Earn ETH and USD Vaults. Voting ends March 9.
- The Lido DAO votes on whether Stakin (recently acquired by The Tie) should continue to act as a node operator and whether to approve updating Stakin’s on-chain name and reward address. Voting ends March 9.
- Unlocks
- The token is launched
- March 9: Nexira’s (NEXI) token generation event takes place, token to be listed on KuCoin.
Conferences
For a more comprehensive list of events this week, see CoinDesk’s “Crypto Week Ahead.”
Market movements
- BTC is up 0.68% as of 16 ET Sunday at $67,649.34 (24 hours: -0.36%)
- ETH is up 1.89% to $1,995.45 (24h: +1.12%)
- CoinDesk 20 is up 1.04% to 1,943.48 (24h: +0.12%)
- Ether CESR Composite Staking Rate is down 9 bps to 2.64%
- BTC funding rate is at -0.0025% (-5.8613% annualized) on Binance
- DXY is up 0.30% to 99.2812
- Gold futures are down 0.70% at $5,110.00
- Silver futures are up 0.21% at $84.00
- The Nikkei 225 closed up 5.20% at 52,728.72
- The Hang Seng closed up 1.35% at 25,408.46
- The FTSE 100 is down 1.22% to 10,159.26
- The Euro Stoxx 50 has fallen 1.70% to 5,622.84
- The DJIA closed Friday down 0.95% at 47,501.55
- The S&P 500 closed up 1.33% at 6,740.02
- The Nasdaq Composite closed up 1.59% at 22,387.68
- The S&P/TSX Composite closed up 1.57% at 33,083.70
- The US 10-year Treasury yield rose 4 bps to 4.18%
- E-mini S&P 500 futures are down 0.90% at 6,682.75
- E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are down 0.96% at 24,434.00
- E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average futures are down 1.04% at 47,024.00
Bitcoin statistics
- BTC Dominance: 59.04% (0.62%)
- Ether to bitcoin ratio: 0.02951 (0.51%)
- Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 1,005 EH/s
- Hash price (spot): $29.61
- Total fees: 1.96 BTC / $131,828
- CME Futures open interest: 100,675 BTC
- BTC priced in gold: 13.3 oz.
- BTC vs Gold Market Cap: 4.56%
Technical Analysis
- The chart shows daily swings in bitcoin’s 30-day implied volatility index, BVIV, in candlestick format.
- The index is hovering near the upper end of its recent range.
- A potential breakout would mean higher volatility and risk aversion, leading to losses in bitcoin.
Crypto stocks
- Coinbase Global (COIN): closed Friday at $197.22 (-4.13%), -0.84% at $195.57 in premarket
- Galaxy Digital (GLXY): closed at $20.56 (-9.57%), -0.17% at $20.52
- MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $8.01 (-8.67%), -0.12% at $8.00
- Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $14.16 (-9.20%), -1.38% at $13.97
- Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $14.86 (-7.13%), -0.54% at $14.78
- CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $9.21 (-7.44%), -0.43% at $9.17
- Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $10.90 (-2.50%)
- CoinShares Bitcoin Mining ETF (WGMI): closed at $36.07 (-8.10%), -0.80% at $35.78
- Circle Internet Group (CRCL): closed at $101.91 (-3.62%), +1.24% at $103.17
- Bullish (BLSH): closed at $34.96 (-0.17%), -1.34% at $34.49
Crypto Treasury Companies
- Strategy (MSTR): closed at $133.53 (-4.49%), +0.25% at $133.86
- Strive Asset Management (ASST): closed at $8.70 (-5.95%), -0.23% at $8.68
- Sharplink (SBET): closed at $7.36 (-7.19%), +2.45% at $7.54
- Upexi (UPXI): closed at $0.90 (-6.44%), +4.44% at $0.94
- Lite Strategy (LITS): closed at $1.14 (+0.88%)
ETF Flows
Spot BTC ETFs
- Daily net flows: -$348.9 million
- Cumulative net flows: $55.35 billion
- Total BTC holdings ~ 1.28M
Spot ETH ETFs
- Daily net flows: -$82.9 million
- Cumulative net flows: $11.66 billion
- Total ETH holdings ~ 5.64 million
Source: Farside Investors
