The crypto market took another leg higher on Friday with bitcoin traded at $64,400, up 2% since midnight UTC.
The largest cryptocurrency is currently at the price it failed to penetrate on Monday. If it can break past this level, it is likely to advance towards the June 15 high of $67,250.
Ether (ETH) outperformed bitcoin, rising 2.6% to $1,790 as it appears to snap a trend of sequential lower highs and lower lows.
There were also notable gains across the altcoin sector ahead of the weekend, typically a period of lower liquidity. Zcash (ZEC) and aave both rose about 5% as optimism has slowly crept back into more speculative bets after months of waning sentiment.
Crypto deviated from US stocks, with S&P 500 index futures and Nasdaq 100 futures down 0.1% and 0.4%, respectively.
Derivatives positioning
- Crypto derivatives markets are showing signs of stabilization, with speculation easing and long-term positioning increasing.
- 24-hour volume fell 7% to $140 billion, while open interest (OI) rose 3% to $110.52 billion. This shift suggests that the recovery is driven more by strategic positioning than by high-frequency speculative activity.
- Cumulative OI in bitcoin USD- and USDT-denominated futures on major exchanges is up slightly, from 262K to 272K, as the spot price topped $64,000. When read together with positive funding rates and positive 24-hour OI-adjusted cumulative volume delta (CVD), the OI increase indicates a growing bias for bullish bets.
- Ether has yet to see a meaningful increase in futures OI, a sign that traders are still staying away from leverage.
- In the broader market, most tokens have positive 24-hour CVDs, a sign that buyers are becoming more aggressive and trading market orders instead of passive limit orders. This set expectations for continued price increases ahead.
- Confirmatory signals come from option-based implied volatility indices linked to BTC and ETH, which continue to decline. It’s a sign that traders expect calm in the market, a feature of rallies. BTC’s index, BVIV, fell to 38.5 early today, the lowest since June 6.
- In the options market on Deribit, put spreads continue to weaken as the price increase eases concerns on the downside. Calls at $62,000, $65,000 and $67,000 are among the most traded instruments, along with the $56,000 put. A call represents a bullish bet on the market.
