Bitcoin fell back below $80,000 late Thursday after the United States launched new airstrikes in Iran, sending Brent crude briefly topping $100 a barrel. barrel before giving back some of the gains in Asian and European hours.
The crypto market was already a bit jittery after strategy chairman Michael Saylor said the company would consider selling bitcoin to cover dividend payments from its STRC, a U-turn from its previous “never sell” strategy.
Ether (ETH) is trading at $2,280 after losing 0.2% since midnight UTC and around 2% over the past 24 hours, with other altcoins such as monero (XMR) and dash (DASH) losing between 4% and 5%.
The broader crypto recovery remains intact with bitcoin rising from $65,000 in late March, although it’s worth noting that a drop below $75,000 would nullify the recent string of higher lows and would signal a return to the piercing trading range.
Derivatives positioning
- The crypto futures market cooled for the second day in a row, with cumulative industry notional open interest down over 1.5% to $131.5 billion and trading volume down over 12% to $191 billion. Investors are clearly gearing down in the wake of bitcoin’s drop below $80,000 overnight.
- Exchanges have liquidated nearly $300 million in bets in 24 hours, with longs accounting for most of the tally. It shows that traders were positioned for continued price increases into the weekend, only to take the brunt of the unexpected market weakness.
- Open interest (OI) has fallen in most major tokens, including bitcoin and ether. Meme token DOGE’s OI has dropped by over 4%, the most among top 10 coins. TON is the standout, with OI increasing by 6%.
- For the second day in a row, OI-adjusted cumulative volume delta for most majors remains negative, a sign of traders aggressively shorting using market orders rather than passive limit orders.
- On Deribit, the most actively traded contract over the past 24 hours was a BTC $105,000 call option that expires on June 26. Market positioning has also changed, with the five most traded contracts now including put options at $80,000, $75,000 and $60,000 strikes. This marks a clear change from the previous three sessions where calls dominated trading activity.
- Bitcoin’s annualized 30-day implied volatility index, BVIV, remains near 40%, its lowest since late January, a sign of market calm ahead of the key US non-farm payrolls report.
Token talk
- Despite relative weakness across crypto majors and privacy coins, CoinDesk’s DeFi Select Index (DFX) rose more than 3% since midnight UTC, supported by an 8.2% increase in the price of ONDO.
- Ondo Finance is a real-world asset (RWA) project that completed its first cross-border redemption of US Treasuries on Thursday after working with JP Morgan, Mastercard and Ripple, which has driven price gains over the past 24 hours into Friday.
- The CoinDesk Memecoin Select Index (CDMEME) lost ground on Friday, sending a 0.1% swing to the downside to make it the only CoinDesk benchmark in the red.
- CoinMarketCap’s “altcoin season” indicator is at 42/100, significantly higher than in April, when it was as low as 31/100. The total market capitalization of altcoins in that period has increased from under $1 trillion to $1.05 trillion.
