Bitcoin rose 0.3% to $58,700 on Wednesday, showing a hint of strength after dipping to $57,700, its lowest point since September 2024, shortly after midnight UTC.
Ether (ETH) is at $1,580 and has also seen a slight relief since 01:00 UTC.
US stock index futures are lower since midnight UTC, with S&P 500 futures and Nasdaq 100 futures in the red by 0.2%-0.4%
Risk assets such as crypto and technology stocks have struggled in recent weeks as concerns about impending inflation have lifted the US dollar and made traders cautious.
The Altcoin market has been hit the hardest because it lacks the liquidity and demand to handle rapid moves to the downside and liquidation cascades.
Derivatives positioning
- A total of $395 million in crypto futures bets have been liquidated in 24 hours, with bullish bets accounting for most of the tally. That’s hardly surprising given BTC’s plunge to lows below $58,000 early in the day.
- The real story is crude futures listed on crypto exchanges. They have seen $15 million worth of liquidations, the fifth largest figure among all tokens. The figure shows how popular TradFi trading has become on crypto exchanges.
- BTC futures open interest (OI) jumped to 768K BTC from 740K BTC a day ago. While the influx of money is encouraging, it is unclear whether the bias is for bullish or bearish bets. For example, the annualized fund rates are hovering near 5%, suggesting a bullish bias, while the 24-hour cumulative volume delta is negative, suggesting bears are more aggressive, trading market orders rather than passive limit orders.
- Gold perpetual futures OI hit a record 222K XAU tokens. This comes as the metal’s spot price is showing a bearish death cross, signaled by the 50-day simple moving average crossing below the 200-day SMA. Prominent gold ETFs are showing a similar bearish pattern.
- Bitcoin and ether’s 30-day implied volatility indices are steady after June’s double-digit gains. Bitcoin’s index, BVIV, is now bounded between the 200-day average as resistance and the 50-day as support. A break above the 200-day MA could mean new turbulence and a deeper price drop.
- At Deribit, bitcoin and ether puts remain more expensive than calls across all timeframes as traders seek downside protection.
- Key flows at over-the-counter Paradigm contained demand for bitcoin expiring in September, set at the $50,000 strike price. This is a bet that prices could drop below $50K by the end of the third quarter. Meanwhile, someone canceled a SOL option at the $86 strike. The token is currently trading around $75.
Token talk
- While the broader altcoin market struggles, Solana-based DeFi token jupiter (JUP) has posted a trend reversal, rising 11% since midnight UTC with a 55% increase in daily trading volume.
- The increase comes along with a jump in total value locked (TVL), with the protocol, a decentralized exchange (DEX) aggregator. TVL has increased to more than 20 million SOL from 13.9 million in May.
- Stellar lumens (XLM) extended gains, rising from $0.168 on Sunday to $0.196, up 17%.
- The strong performance of a few select altcoins kept CoinMarketCap’s “Altcoin Season” index stuck at around 48/100 after ending June little changed despite weakness across the sector.
- AI tokens have been the beneficiary of this weakness. Bittensor (TAO) lost 2.5% on Wednesday and is now down over 30% since June 15th.
