The crypto market bounced back from a mid-week lull on Thursday with bitcoin rose 1.2% since midnight UTC to $63,000, while ether (ETH) rose 0.75% to $1,755.
The move followed U.S. stock market gains as Nasdaq 100 index futures rose 2.6% over the past 24 hours despite escalating tensions between the U.S. and Iran.
The US Central Command said it hit 90 military targets in the latest round of airstrikes, which came 24 hours after President Donald Trump said the ceasefire was over.
Markets initially sold off at the time, but crypto remained resilient, rallying from oversold territory to extend a relatively hot streak since the turn of the month.
Bitcoin is now 9% higher than June’s close, and a selection of altcoins has continued to outperform with lighters (LIT) and ether.fi (ETHFI) up around 35% over the same period.
Derivatives positioning
- The crypto futures market takes a breather, with 24-hour volume down nearly 20% to $191 billion and open interest (OI) steady near $106 billion.
- Bitcoin’s overnight rally to nearly $63,000 is accompanied by a drop in open interest in major dollar- and USDT-denominated futures to 266K BTC from 272K BTC. These divergent trends show investors’ reluctance to take leveraged bets in such a volatile macroeconomic environment. The same goes for ether, XRP and solana.
- OI in Canton Network’s CC token futures rose for a third straight day, with the figure rising to 271 million tokens, the most since May 31. The token continues to slide and as noted yesterday, the simultaneous rise in futures OI points to an influx of short positions or bearish bets.
- Activity in perpetual futures that track the S&P 500 index is picking up again, with OI rising to the highest since SpaceX debuted on the Nasdaq nearly a month ago.
- BTC and ETH’s 30-day implied volatility indices are back under pressure, snapping a two-day winning streak as a sign of renewed options supply and expectations of market calm.
- On Deribit, BTC and ETH puts remain more expensive than calls across all timeframes, reflecting concerns about downside conditions. The mood on Wall Street is the opposite: The average bias in S&P 500 stock options shows a record bias for calls, or bullish bets.
