Bitcoin fell for a fourth straight day to around $63,100, the lowest since Feb. 6’s $60,200, CoinDesk data shows.
The latest move to the downside coincides with risk-off sentiment from investors across global markets. US stocks have lost ground this week, with the dollar index (DXY) up 0.5% since Asian hours on Monday.
BTC is down 2.1% since midnight UTC and 4.7% over the past 24 hours. A break below $60,000 would trigger another round of liquidation and a possible leg down to as low as $52,500, a historic support level dating back to 2021.
The altcoin market also appears bruised and battered on Tuesday. lost 11.5% of its value over the past 24 hours with a 3% reduction since midnight UTC, while SUI, JUP, PUMP and WLFI all lost more than 2%.
Analysts describe price action as a “slow bleed” typical of past cryptocurrency bear markets, though it’s worth noting that the average crypto relative strength index (RSI) is flashing an “oversold” signal, meaning there’s potential for a bounce into the low $60,000 region.
Derivatives positioning
- Notional open interest in the crypto futures market fell by more than 4% to $92.5 billion, the lowest since early April 2025. The relentless slide shows continued de-risking by investors who are moving capital out of leveraged products.
- Exchanges have liquidated $360 million in leveraged bets in 24 hours. Bullish bets or longs faced the brunt, accounting for over 90% of total liquidations on several exchanges, including Hyperliquid, HTX, Aster, Bitmex and Bitfinex.
- Some traders appear to be shorting bitcoin in a weak market. This is evidenced by the increase in global open interest in bitcoin futures to 690.89K BTC, the highest since February 6. The same applies to ether.
- Annualized funding rates in perpetuals tied to major tokens remain below zero, indicating a bias for bearish, short positions. TRX and TRON have funding rates as low as -35%, a sign that the market is slowly becoming overcrowded with shorts.
- Bitcoin and ether’s 30-day implied volatility index has risen to two-week highs, indicating renewed market turmoil.
- On Deribit, bitcoin and ether put options are trading at over 10 volatility premium to call-outs to expiration at the end of March. This shows increased concern about an extended price sell-off.
- Block streams contained BTC put spreads and straddles. A put spread is a bearish strategy with a limited profit, limited loss profile. Straddles represent a bet on volatility.
Token talk
- With the exception of pippin (PIPPIN), an AI-related token that has doubled since the turn of the year after rising 7.7% in the past 24 hours, the altcoin market is suffering from a lack of bullish catalysts.
- The decentralized finance market (DeFi) has lost less total value locked (TVL) than the value of the assets has decreased, suggesting that traders and investors are moving to stablecoins to reduce risk.
- This has led to poor performance among DeFi tokens, with CoinDesk’s DeFi Select Index (DFX) losing 34.8% since the turn of the year to make it the worst-performing benchmark.
- Layer-1 tokens aptos , and all fell 5% to 8% over the past 24 hours as the altcoin market struggles with a lack of liquidity and relentless waves of selling pressure.
