Bitcoin traded at $62,800 on Monday, a remarkable turnaround from July 1, when it dipped below $58,000 to its lowest level since September 2024 and raised concerns of a decline toward $50,000.
Ether (ETH) staged a similar rally, trading at $1,760 after pegging around $1,550 last week. The two largest cryptocurrencies edged higher at Sunday’s futures open, but have given back about 1% of those gains since midnight UTC.
The pullback represents a departure from traditional markets, with Nasdaq 100 and S&P 500 index futures trading up 1% and 0.5%, respectively, after the long weekend.
The altcoin market is fragmented. Lighter (LIT) continues to impress, now up more than 50% over the past week, while and are both nursing losses of around 4% in the past 24 hours.
Derivatives positioning
- The futures market is stable with open interest in bitcoin ether (ETH), solana (SOL) and XRP (XRP) largely unchanged over the past 24 hours, likely due to the extended US weekend.
- Open interest for has jumped to 7.14 million tokens, the most since May 12. It is unclear whether the capital inflow is bullish or bearish. Key indicators are sending mixed signals: Positive funding rates point to bullish sentiment, yet 24-hour cumulative volume delta (CVD) has turned negative, indicating sellers have been more aggressive in hitting market orders rather than sending passive limit orders.
- Open interest in Lighter DEX’s LIT token is also rising, reaching one-month highs as the bullish tokenomics review supports the price.
- Bitcoin and ether’s 30-day implied volatility indices, BVIV and EVIV, remain under pressure after double-digit weekly declines, reflecting continued options supply. It points to expectations of calmer market conditions, which often accompany price increases.
- On Deribit, BTC and ETH puts continue to trade at a premium to calls, signaling continued downside concerns – although the gap has narrowed since early last month.
- Volume shows no clear bias as BTC’s $60K put and $70K call rank among the most traded strikes over the past 24 hours.
Token talk
- Lighter’s (LIT) recent barnstorming rally continued Monday, adding 5% since midnight UTC and taking its 24-hour gain to 13.5%, building on momentum as traders look for the next hyperliquid (HYPE).
- LIT is the native symbol of its namesake decentralized derivatives exchange, which according to DefiLlama has collected $40 billion in trading volume over the past 30 days.
- It was also a strong start to the week for PYTH, up 6% since midnight UTC as traders rotate bitcoin gains into more speculative altcoin bets.
- CoinMarketCap’s Altcoin Season indicator ticked up to 52/100 on Monday, the highest level in the past three months, suggesting that optimism is returning to the altcoin sector.
- However, this indicator is lagging due to poor performance from a section of the market including JITO, BEAT and STABLE, which have each lost between 5% and 13% over the past week, with further losses on Monday.
