Crypto volatility cooled on Friday with bitcoin stuck between $77,500 and $78,500 since midnight UTC.
The muted price action follows a failed breakout attempt near $80,000 on Wednesday, though the broader trend remains constructive, with BTC price grinding higher through April, posting a series of higher highs and higher lows.
Ether (ETH) matched bitcoin’s performance on Friday, losing about 0.9% since midnight, while also remaining in a tight trading range.
US stock futures were mixed, with Nasdaq 100 futures up 0.5% on strong technology earnings and S&P 500 futures down 3 basis points.
The dollar index (DXY) was little changed despite comments from US President Donald Trump confirming that the ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon has been extended by three weeks. The dollar fell about 0.5% when the ceasefire was first announced on April 16.
Derivatives positioning
- Bitcoin futures open interest is down over 6% to 744.3K BTC in 24 hours as the spot price rally pulls back to $77,500 after failing to reach $80,000 early this week. The moves suggest traders are unwinding leveraged positions and bullish momentum is cooling in the near term.
- BTC’s 24-hour open interest-adjusted cumulative volume delta has turned negative, meaning sellers are hitting the bid more than buyers are lifting the ask over the period. Annualized perpetual funding rates remain slightly negative, indicating dominance of bearish short positions.
- Futures linked to other major cryptocurrencies such as ether (ETH), solana (SOL) and XRP (XRP) have seen weak trading over the past 24 hours.
- However, privacy-focused zcash (ZEC) stands out. Open interest in its futures is up nearly 7.5% to a 10-day high of 1.88 million tokens, while 24-hour trading volume is up 80%.
- The token also boasts one of the strongest positive CVD readings along with positive funding rates, indicating continued aggressive buying interest and bullish positioning in general.
- While BTC and ETH prices have come under pressure, investors likely see this as a brief pause in the rally. This is evident from the continued decline in bitcoin’s 30-day implied volatility index, BVIV. It has fallen to 42%, the lowest since January 31. ETH’s index has dipped below 65%, also the lowest since February 1st.
- On Deribit, reversals of bitcoin and ether risk continue to show a bias for put options across all timeframes. It shows continued downward hedging by market participants and upward volatility in selling via covered calls.
Token talk
- The CoinDesk Memecoin Index (CDMEME) was the only benchmark in the black on Friday, with a gain of less than 0.2%, while the DeFi Select Index (DFX) and Computing Select Index (CPUS) each lost around 1%.
- DeFi tokens lido (LDO) and led the sector’s losses, falling between 3% and 3.8% since midnight UTC as sentiment continues to suffer from last weekend’s $290 million KelpDAO exploit.
- Privacy coin zcash (ZEC) gave back 0.5% of its gains on Friday, but has continued to rise more than 7% over the past 24 hours, supported by Thursday’s listing on popular retail app Robinhood.
- CoinMarketCap’s “Altcoin Season” index ticked back to 39/100 on Friday as investors began making speculative bets while bitcoin remained range bound.
