Bitcoin pares Powell-fueled spike as privacy coins outperform: Crypto Markets Today

Bitcoin rose more than 2.3% overnight, peaking at around $92,400 before giving back those gains during the European session.

The rally was sparked by the threat of criminal charges against Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, which caused gold and silver to rise by 2% and 5.6%, respectively.

Nasdaq 100 futures fell by around 1% while the dollar index (DXY) weakened following the news, suggesting uncertainty among traders regarding interest rates in the future.

Despite bitcoin now trading back at the weekend level of $90,700, several altcoins managed to hold onto their gains. Privacy coins monero $XMR$575.35 and zcash ZEC$402.46 led the wider rally.

Monero advanced to a record and currently trades at $576 having risen by more than 12% since 21:00 UTC on Sunday, while zcash added 3.8%.

The outperformance of a few altcoins is reflected in CoinMarketCap's "altcoin season" indicator, which is now printing 30/100 to lift itself out of "bitcoin season" and into a neutral zone for the first time since Nov. 18.

Derivatives positioning

• Over $200 million in leveraged futures bets have been liquidated in 24 hours, with bullish bets accounting for 50% of the tally. The action indicates that the market pullback from the Asian session caught a lot of leveraged bets off guard.
• Volmex's implied volatility indexes for $BTC and $ETH remain under pressure, pointing to expectations for reduced price turbulence and uncertainty in the short-term.
• Open interest (OI) in futures tied to monero has increased to 369,000 $XMR, the most since February last year. This increase alongside a price rise points to influx of new capital in the market and validates the uptrend.
• The bullish positioning, however, is beginning to look overheated with annualized funding rates approaching 80%. That's the cost of holding bullish exposure.
• OI in $BTC, $ETH, XRP, $SOL, DOGE and other majors declined 1%-4% over 24 hours, indicating growing risk aversion.
• Funding rates for most major tokens remain moderately positive, indicating a bullish bias.
• On Deribit, $BTC and $ETH puts continued to trade at a premium to calls across all time frames, indicating a bias for downside protection.
• Block flows show preference for an "iron condor" strategy in $BTC, which is used when an asset is expected to stay within a stable, narrow price range with low volatility. In $ETH's case, calendar spreads dominated flows.

Token talk

• Privacy coins led the way on Monday as monero hit a record high and zcash continued its recovery from last week's governance dispute.
• Aerodrome Finance's native AERO token notched a 10% advance to $0.60 from Sunday evening's low of $0.545, although it gave back some of those gains and now trades at around $0.57.
• Solana's $SOL was the best performing among the major crypto tokens, sustaining a rise that puts it 2.7% higher than Sunday's low of $135.
• The gain can be attributed to increased memecoin activity, with token issuer platform Pump.fun topping $1.6 billion in trading volume over the past 24 hours, demonstrating a return of retail investors.
• Newly issued memecoins like whale guru surged by more than 146,000% after being issued on Jan. 11 after hitting $10.5 million in volume, leading to a flurry of new tokens being issued as creators attempt to capitalize on the latest hype.
• It wasn't all upside price action for the atlcoin sector. Lighter's LIT token fell more than 10% over the past 24 hours as excitement following the platform's airdrop waned.
• There was also an extended decline in Polygon's native POL token, which is now down by more than 15% from Saturday's peak of $0.1867.