The crypto market ends the week in a healthier position than where it started, with bitcoin trading at $61,600 after rising 6.5% from Tuesday’s near two-year low of $57,750.
Still, the biggest cryptocurrency’s gains on Friday were muted from Thursday’s 2.6% advance, which benefited from weak US jobs data that dampened expectations of a Federal Reserve rate hike.
The interest rate outlook reverberated for a second day as the US entered a long weekend with closed stock markets. Ether (ETH) rose for the third day in a row to add 11.5% since Tuesday and 2.6% on Friday alone. Other altcoins advanced as well, too zcash (ZEC) and dash (DASH) all gain between 2.2% and 3.1%.
Still, the broader market structure remains bearish across the majority of crypto tokens after a series of lower highs and lower lows. For bitcoin to reverse the downtrend, it needs to trade back above $67,000 and then take out $81,000, which was the local high in May.
Derivatives positioning
- Ether replaced bitcoin as the largest token for 24-hour liquidations. A total of $417 million in crypto futures bets were liquidated in 24 hours, of which $160.80 million is from the ether market. BTC, a distant second, reached $97 million. This shows how bearish positioning on ether was.
- Ether futures open interest (OI) was still at 14.31 million, the highest since June 10, with annual funding rates of nearly 10% and the highest 24-hour cumulative volume delta (CVD) among the majors. The combination points to increasing demand for bullish exposure in the market, a sign that traders expect continued price increases.
- OI in DOGE futures totaled 14.13 billion tokens, the highest since May 16. The number has been rising since June 28, a sign of renewed demand for leverage. The DOGE situation looks like ether’s bullish picture.
- While ETH and DOGE have led to growth in OI over 24 hours, futures linked to HBAR and ZEC have seen the opposite. HBAR has the most negative 24-hour CVD among the majors, a sign that bears are becoming more aggressive in shorting market orders than passive limit orders.
- Most tokens have positive CVD, a sign of bulls’ leadership in the market.
- Both the bitcoin and ether 30-day implied volatility indices continue to slide, reversing the June pop, signaling market calm and potential for continued bullish price action.
- On Deribit, the most traded 24 hour BTC options are calls at strikes ranging from $60,000 to $70,000. Call options represent a bullish bet on the market. Ether options are showing a similar bullish sentiment, with the $2,500 call seeing the most activity.
- Block flows featured a large BTC long call condor, a strategy betting on a range between $66,000 and $68,000 until July 17.
Token talk
- Uniswap (UNI) led gains in altcoins following Thursday’s announcement confirming that it will be the primary automated market maker (AMM) for the Robinhood layer-2 blockchain.
- UNI is up more than 11% in the past 24 hours with daily trading volume doubling to $320 million, still reaping the benefits of its tie-up with Robinhood announced on July 1.
- AI tokens FET, RENDER and TAO also showed positive signs on Friday, rising between 1.5% and 2.3% since midnight UTC after weeks of selling pressure.
- CoinMarketCap’s “Altcoin Season” indicator is at 46/100, still firmly in the neutral zone it has occupied for the past month, as the market awaits a return to risk-on sentiment.
- Solana (SOL) is leading the rally among crypto majors. It is now up more than 17% over the past week and is trading at $80 after falling as low as $68 the week before.
