Bitcoin and ether (ETH) both rose about 0.9% overnight, while the broader altcoin market lagged on Thursday.
BTC recently traded at $67,000 after briefly touching $66,000 on Wednesday. Ether, at $1,970 after bouncing $1,924, is struggling to break through the psychological $2,000 price level.
Volatility has eased since the sale on February 5. Two subsequent weeks of consolidation have left investors wondering if this is the calm before another stormy downturn, or if the market is establishing a macro low before rising back towards 2025 levels.
World Liberty Financial’s Mar-a-Lago forum on Wednesday failed to provide a bullish catalyst despite the attendance of CFTC Chairman Michael Selig and executives from firms including Goldman Sachs.
From a macro perspective, bitcoin remains in a downtrend since hitting a record high of $126,600 in early October. It has recorded a series of lower highs and lower lows with periods of choppy consolidation between each major move.
Derivatives positioning
- Market momentum has stabilized with open interest holdings at $15.38 billion.
- It marks a transition from a lever screed to a stable floor.
- Retail sentiment shows a subtle recovery with funding rates flat turning positive (Binance back at 4%) while institutional conviction remains entrenched with three-month y-o-y continuing at 3%.
- The BTC options market has reached a 50/50 volume equilibrium between calls and puts. While the one-week 25-delta bias has risen up to 12%, the implied volatility (IV) term structure remains in short-term backwardation.
- The front-end rise in the IV curve confirms that traders are still paying a “panic premium” for immediate protection, even as longer tenors stabilize near 49%.
- Coinglass data shows $218 million in 24-hour liquidations, with a 77-23 split between longs and shorts. BTC ($75 million), ETH ($53 million) and others ($22 million) led the way in terms of fictitious liquidations.
- The Binance liquidation heatmap indicates $67,400 as a core liquidation level to monitor in the event of a price rally.
Token talk
- The Altcoin market is starting to suffer from the low liquidity trading environment.
- Shares of lost more than 10% of their value after selling off during Wednesday’s event in a classic “sell the news”.
- Axie Infinity (AXS) is retesting its February 6 lows after falling 5.9% since midnight UTC.
- Lending platform Morpho’s native MORPHO token has now given back all of Wednesday’s gains and is trading at $1.39 after losing 4.2% of its value overnight.
- A whopping 97 of the top 100 cryptocurrencies, not including stablecoins or tokenized gold tokens, are in the red over the past 24 hours as the market remains in “extreme fear” territory.
- The fear and greed index is currently at 11/100, up from February’s low of 6/100.
