The crypto market fell on Thursday with bitcoin lost 0.7% since midnight UTC to trade recently at $77,600.
The drop comes after the major cryptocurrency hit its highest point since January on Wednesday before sellers stepped in just below the $80,000 resistance level.
Oil prices rose 1.5% to $103 a barrel. barrel overnight after reports that the U.S. had seized three Iranian tankers in Asian waters led to a fall in the prices of risky assets.
Ether (ETH) lost 2.5% and is now trading at $2,320 after testing $2,500 over the weekend.
The broader market remains upbeat, with bitcoin appearing to have broken out of a two-month range to the upside. It had languished between $63,000 and $75,000 since early February.
US stock futures fell on Thursday with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 500 futures both losing 0.5% apiece overnight.
Derivatives positioning
- While bitcoin futures open interest (OI) fell to 775K BTC from a record near 800K BTC on Wednesday, it remains at historically elevated levels. Negative perpetual funding rates suggest that leveraged bets remain tilted to the bearish side.
- This combination is rare. As a result, some analysts are calling BTC’s current advance a “most hated” rally, suggesting it could accelerate if bearish traders are forced to liquidate their positions.
- Open interest in DOGE has risen above 14 billion tokens, a level seen only once since October. However, the token’s funding rates are skewed positive, suggesting rising demand for bullish bets.
- BCH, LINK and LTC are other coins with falling OI, pointing to an outflow of capital from the market.
- The cumulative volume delta (CVD) signals caution, showing that more trades have been initiated by sellers bidding than by buyers raising bids over the past 24 hours across most major altcoins, including XRP, SOL, and ETH. Meanwhile, BTC, M and CRO are the only assets with positive CVD readings. This suggests that the broader market is yet to fully participate in bitcoin’s rally.
- Bitcoin and ether’s 30-day implied volatility index continues to remain flat around the recently hit 2.5-month lows. In other words, calm reigns even as US-Iran ceasefire talks go nowhere and oil markets remain jittery.
- On Deribit, BTC and ETH puts remain more expensive than calls, a sign of continued downside concerns. Over the past 24 hours, demand has been concentrated in BTC call options, bullish bets, at strikes from $80,000 to $85,000.
Token talk
- CoinDesk’s DeFi Select Index (DFX) is the worst-performing benchmark on Thursday, having lost 2.7% since midnight UTC, while the bitcoin-dominant CoinDesk 20 (CD20) is down 1.1%.
- CoinMarketCap’s “Altcoin Season” index fell to 32/100 on Thursday, a 10-day low, as investors showed a preference for bitcoin after Wednesday’s attempt to break $80,000.
- Symbolic of Thursday’s bearish price action was spark (SPK), which surged more than 70% after it was listed on Upbit, South Korea’s largest cryptocurrency exchange.
- Privacy coin monero (XMR) is up 3.3% since midnight, outperforming its peers DASH and ZEC, which are both in the red.
- DeFi tokens morpho and aave led the sector’s move to the downside, losing 4.6% and 2.8% respectively, as negative sentiment continues to plague the industry following the weekend’s $290 million KelpDAO exploit.
