Bitcoin is trading around $77,700, up 1.8% since midnight UTC, after rising from $75,650, a price that had served as an upper barrier during last week’s rally.
The rebound suggests a bullish shift, with $75,650 now serving as support — a level that could prove crucial if bitcoin is to make another attempt to break through $80,000.
Ether (ETH) is at $2,344 and its chart is showing more bearish signals than bitcoins, after making a series of lower highs since April 17.
The broader market is higher as US investors anticipate earnings from a wide range of technology companies. Alphabet ( GOOG ), Microsoft ( MSFT ), Amazon ( AMZN ) and Meta ( META ) are all due to report after the closing bell on Wednesday.
Nasdaq 100 futures are up 0.25% in premarket trading.
Derivatives positioning
- Bitcoin futures open interest (OI) fell to 715.60K BTC, the lowest since April 9 and notably below the monthly high of 800K BTC. The decline shows continued downside risk as the spot price rally slows near $80,000 and some analysts point to the potential for a continued bear market.
- OI has remained largely stable across ETH, SOL and XRP over the past 24 hours.
- Traders, meanwhile, continue to pour capital into DOGE futures, lifting OI by 18% in a single day to 16.06 billion tokens, the highest since October 10.
- With perpetual funding rates steady at around 4% y-o-y and the highest OI-adjusted cumulative volume delta among the majors, DOGE activity appears to be driven more by new directional positioning than overheated leverage, pointing to sustained bullish interest rather than a crowded, fragile trade.
- The Binance-listed SHIB futures are flashing a similar bullish setup. Rising activity in these non-serious tokens suggests a build-up of speculative froth, a pattern often seen ahead of broader market pullbacks.
- The crude oil futures market listed on Binance is also heating up, with open interest up 27% as prices top $100, providing headwinds for risk assets, including cryptocurrencies.
- The decline in bitcoin’s 30-day implied volatility index, BVIV, continues, and it is now probing three-month lows below 42%. It shows that the market has become desensitized to macro risks such as an Iran war and increased oil prices. The ether volatility index, EVIV, shows similar trends.
- The story in the Deribit-listed options market remains the same: puts for both BTC and ETH remain more expensive than calls, indicating downside concerns. These caveats are more pronounced in bitcoin than ether.
Token talk
- The altcoin market showed signs of strength on Wednesday, supported by previously oversold conditions.
- The CoinDesk Memecoin Select Index (CDMEME) is the best-performing benchmark, adding 2.3% since midnight UTC, while the DeFi Select Index (DFX) is up 2.2%.
- Bitcoin-dominant CoinDesk 20 (CD20) and CoinDesk 5 (CD5) both rose 1.7%.
- Popular memecoins DOGE, PEPE, and FLOKI were among the top-gaining altcoins in the CoinDesk 100 (CD100), rising 10%, 6.3%, and 6.2%, respectively.
- CoinMarketCap’s “Altcoin Season” indicator ticked up to 41/100 from 39/100 overnight, showing relative strength in the sector.
