The crypto market showed signs of a cautious recovery on Thursday with bitcoin trading at $77,900, up from Tuesday’s low of $76,100, and ether (ETH) at $2,130 after adding just 0.1% since midnight UTC.
The altcoin sector remains mixed. While Hyperliquid ( HYPE ) rose for a fifth straight day, adding 6.5% to a 53% gain over the past week, privacy coins gave back some of Wednesday’s gains.
U.S. stocks snapped a three-day losing streak on Wednesday, with the S&P 500 index 1.5% higher as investors awaited a strong earnings report from Nvidia ( NVDA ) , which beat forecasts with record quarterly revenue of $81.62 billion.
Oil prices fell as US President Donald Trump said a peace deal with Iran was in its “final phase”, giving a boost to risk assets.
Derivatives positioning
- Crypto futures volume rose 15% to $165.7 billion, open interest rose nearly 1% to $128 billion and liquidations jumped 72% to $266 million, ending a two-day streak of declining activity.
- Hyperliquid’s HYPE token led the top 100 coins with open interest to the highest level since February 19. Coupled with positive cumulative volume delta (CVD) and slightly positive financing, the rise suggests that aggressive market order buyers, not passive limit order buyers, are in control without yet showing signs of overheating.
- A similar bullish trend was evident in privacy coin zcash (ZEC), which has dominated daily open interest throughout the week.
- DASH futures are also heating up. Open interest jumped 38% to 1.98 million tokens, but the “boom-bust” price rejection at $54, along with negative CVD, suggests sellers are aggressively fading market orders.
- Negative CVDs in other assets such as XMR, SUI, TON, HBAR, M, BNB and CC further indicate that sellers are aggressive with market orders rather than passively trading via limit orders.
- Bitcoin futures market remains stagnant with open interest trapped in the 720K-750K BTC range for a seventh day. The lack of momentum is reflected in the ether (ETH) market.
- Ether’s 30-day implied volatility fell to a 2026 low of 53%, breaking through floor levels established in late 2024, while bitcoin’s BVIV held steady near 40%, suggesting broad calm amid macro risks.
- In the options market, a large block trade involved the sale of an XRP short straddle, representing a high-conviction bet on the token’s spot price remaining in the range around $1.40 until the end of June.
- For both BTC and ETH, the choke has emerged as the most preferred options strategy on Deribit over the past 24 hours, suggesting that traders are positioning for a breakout from the current low volatility regime.
Token talk
- HYPE is rightfully receiving praise this week with a gain of more than 20% in the past 24 hours as daily trading volume increased 135% to $1.3 billion.
- The CoinDesk Memecoin Select Index (CDMEME) fell 0.2% on Thursday and 0.9% over 24 hours. All of the other CoinDesk benchmarks are higher over a 24-hour period, while the CoinDesk Computing Select Index (CPUS) outperformed its peers.
- A cryptoanalyst named “skew” described the altcoin market as being in a “make or break” position this week, alluding to the total crypto market cap excl. bitcoin, which has posted a series of higher highs and higher lows since February.
- Speculation is rising again across several altcoin trading pairs, including doublezero (2Z), which has seen trading volume increase by more than 410%, leading to a 17% increase in the token over the past 24 hours.
