coindesk.com
The crypto market exhibited signs of optimism during the Asia session on Monday, with bitcoin BTC$91,979.72 rising above $92,000 having spent the weekend trapped in a tight range below $90,000.
The largest cryptocurrency has now reversed Friday's sell-off and is within striking distance of last week's high of $94,200.
U.S. equity index futures also posted a gain from Sunday evening's open, rising by around 0.2% as the market anticipated a Federal Reserve interest-rate cut on Wednesday, with probability of a 25 basis point cut standing at around 87%, according to CME data.
While bitcoin and ether ETH$3,143.27 are up 3%-4% over the past 24 hours, the altcoin market remains weak with a lack of speculative catalysts driving the action.
Derivatives positioning
- BTC's 30-day implied volatility index, BVIV, is holding steady at around 50%, showing no signs of panic ahead of the impending Fed decision.
- ASTER and ENA lead open interest growth in futures tied to the major tokens.
- Perpetual funding rates for major tokens, including BTC and ETH, continue to be positive, indicating a bias for bullish leveraged bets.
- The positive bias, however, could be in part due to the unwinding of the cash and carry arbitrage's short futures legs.
- On Deribit, bitcoin and ether puts continue to trade pricier than calls in a sign of lingering downside fears.
- In BTC's case, the $20K put is the second most popular options bet in the June 2026 expiry options.
- Block flows featured demand for BTC call spreads and strangles. In ETH's case, call calendar spreads have dominated the 24-hour flow.
Token talk
- The "altcoin season" indicator slumped to a record low of 19/100 on Monday, highlighting how investors are refusing to speculate on the tokens other than the market leaders following a grueling sell-off over the past few months.
- This behavior is also demonstrated by comparing the CoinDesk 20 (CD20) index with the CoinDesk 80 (CD80), the latter of which includes a wider basket of altcoins.
- The CD20 has risen 1.34% since Dec. 1 while the CD80 lost 1.37%.
- The memecoin and metaverse indexes are the worst performing sectors of the year, down by 53% and 62%, respectively. It appears the market has moved on from viral memes and cartoon character non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
- One sector that continues to perform well is privacy coins, zcash ZEC$385.95 gained the most out of the top 100 crypto tokens over the past 24 hours, rising by 17% to compound a 600% year-to-date rally.
- The same can't be said for TIA$0.5937, the native token of its namesake's data availability blockchain that has lost more than 87% of its value this year following a lack of activity and a recent round of layoffs.