The crypto market started the week in a volatile mood with bitcoin rising from $80,670 at 23:00 UTC on Sunday before peaking at $82,400 an hour later. The price subsequently fell to trade in a fairly tight range just below $81,000.
The move coincided with the weekly opening of bitcoin futures on the CME and US stock futures – a period that often triggers a frenzy of repositioning and a phenomenon called the “CME gap”, which occurs when the price opens at a different time than where it closed on Friday.
Due to the timing of the move, all crypto benchmarks are down on Monday with the broad CoinDesk 100 (CD100) leading the way with a 1.5% loss, while the bitcoin-dominant CoinDesk 5 (CD5) is down 0.6%.
Price action is also dictated by geopolitical developments in Iran. US President Donald Trump said Iran’s response to a peace proposal was “totally unacceptable”, leading to a rise in the price of oil and the dollar and a fall in risk assets.
Derivatives positioning
- Market-wide crypto futures open interest (OI) remains pegged just above $130 billion for the fourth straight day, pointing to a lack of fresh leverage and largely stalled momentum across the derivatives market.
- Centralized exchanges have liquidated over $400 million in leveraged futures bets, with shorts accounting for most of that amount.
- SUI’s OI has increased by 29%, confirming the double-digit increase in the token’s price. This, combined with positive funding rates and 24-hour OI-adjusted cumulative volume delta, points to increasing demand for bullish exposure.
- DOGE and HBAR are other notable OI gainers, while BTC and ETH futures OI remains broadly stable.
- OI in futures linked to the privacy-focused ZEC token is down 6%, a sign of capital outflows.
- Despite the US CPI and PPI releases coming later this week, the market remains calm, as evidenced by bitcoin’s 30-day implied volatility index, which is near three-month lows.
- On Deribit, bitcoin dominates the volume position at strikes ranging from $81,000 to $86,000. Call options are inherently bullish bets on the underlying asset.
- Block flows contained bitcoin long call condors, a strategy initiated to take advantage of low volatility and minimal price movement in the underlying asset.
Token talk
- Venice’s VVV token has more than doubled in the past month as traders reacted to a series of emission reductions, token burns, new products and the growing demand for artificial intelligence.
- The move started with a tender. Venice doubled its subscription-related burn rate in late April, with Pro, Pro+ and Max subscriptions on the platform now triggering $2, $5 and $10 VVV burns, respectively, according to VeniceStats data.
- Venice then reduced annual emissions of the token, which can be used for privacy-focused artificial intelligence, from 6 million tokens to 5 million on May 1, the first step in a planned reduction to 3 million in July, according to the project.
- The rally accelerated after StrikeRobot, which develops AI software for robots, said Venice would become a primary API backend for its robot products, starting with SR Agentic and SR Platform.
- Meanwhile, subscription revenue is increasing. Co-founder Jesse Proudman said Monday that subscription and credit purchases hit a record, topping the all-time high by 10%.
- VVV remains below its record high of $22.5 in January 2025. The token had fallen as much as 50% shortly after its debut due to insider trading concerns linked to early purchases by Aerodrome Finance contributors.
