The crypto market is trading sluggishly within the range it has held for two months with bitcoin changing hands at $69,000 and ether (ETH) at $2,130.
The range-bound prices date back to February 6, with several highs between $72,000 and $75,000 and lows between $62,000 and $65,000.
A similar two-month pattern occurred between November and January before a price crash, leading analysts to suggest a similar scenario could play out this time around.
Much still depends on the conflict in Iran, where US President Donald Trump’s threats of “annihilation” have so far fallen on deaf ears. Brent crude remains at $107 a barrel, which will have a knock-on effect on inflation over the year unless it declines.
Derivatives positioning
- The market continues to consolidate as bitcoin open interest (OI) stabilizes at $16.7 billion, little changed from last week and indicates that speculative activity remains flat.
- Funding rates have moved into a neutral range of 0%-6% after a period of negative funding that likely fueled the initial relief surge through short covering.
- With the three-month annual basis also little changed during the week, institutional sentiment remains cautious, suggesting that while immediate downside pressure has eased, the major players are not yet positioned for a major breakout.
- Options sentiment stabilizes as call dominance hits 47% and one-week bias falls to 16% from 19% last week. However, the implied volatility period structure’s front-end backwardation confirms that traders still prioritize immediate downside protection over long-term growth expectations.
- CoinGlass data shows $163 million in 24-hour liquidations, with a 60-40 split between longs and shorts. BTC ($64 million), ETH ($35 million) and others ($16 million) led the way in terms of fictitious liquidations.
- The Binance liquidation heatmap indicates $69,500 as a core level to monitor in the event of a price rally.
Token talk
- The altcoin market has been surprisingly strong recently, despite broader market apathy. Since midnight, UTC privacy tokens zcash (ZEC) and dash (DASH) are up 6.7% and 3.1% respectively, and there were also notable gains for FET, PUMP and RENDER.
- The bitcoin-dominant CoinDesk 20 (CD20) index rose 0.3% on Tuesday, while it was outperformed by the CoinDesk Memecoin Index (CDMEME) and the CoinDesk Computing Select Index (CPUS), a sign of altcoins’ relative strength compared to the crypto majors.
- However, the recent performance of altcoins has not been uniform. AI tokens, privacy tokens and the likes of HYPE and ALGO have performed well while other market segments have declined. Over the past 90 days, ethena (ENA) has lost 66% of its value, while TIA, LDO, SUI and ARB have all fallen by more than 50%.
- That’s a departure from previous cycles where altcoins moved in unison. It now appears that the market is maturing to a point where assets can move based on the real world, as opposed to hype and overzealous roadmaps.
