coindesk.com
The crypto market entered a period of consolidation on Thursday following bitcoin's BTC$96,613.70 decisive breakout two days ago.
The largest cryptocurrency remains above the critical $94,500 level, which is now a level of support after being a point of rejection since November.
Wenny Cai, COO and co-founder of SynFutures, said in an email that bitcoin's trading range between $90,000 and $100,000 is symbolic of the asset becoming a "sophisticated macro hedge against central-bank volatility."
This week's breakout comes at a time of political turmoil and internet blackouts in Iran, leading to a narrative emerging around the importance of an asset class that is permissionless without intermediaries.
The altcoin market is experiencing a period of profit-taking, with memecoins pepe (PEPE) and BONK$0.0₄1069 suffering drawdowns of between 5.9% and 8% over the past 24 hours. Selling pressure intensified since midnight as pepe fell by a further 2.8%.
Derivatives positioning
- Bitcoin's price rally keeps wiping out big leveraged bearish bets. Exchanges have liquidated $260 million in bearish crypto positions over 24 hours, compared with $190 million in bullish positions.
- Still, open interest (OI) in crypto futures has climbed to $147.01 billion, the most since Nov. 11, a sign that demand for leveraged products is picking up.
- Among the top five tokens, BTC and SOL have seen an uptick in OI in the past 24 hours, while XRP, DOGE and ETH experienced capital outflows. The divergence points to a selective deployment of capital rather than broad-based risk-taking.
- Open interest in FARTCOIN, the meme token, dropped 11% after Wednesday's sharp rise to suggest a decline in speculative frenzy.
- U.S. Treasury market volatility has fallen to its lowest since October 2021, offering positive signals for risk assets. Bitcoin and ether ETH$3,346.29 volatility is dropping too.
- Open interest in BTC futures listed on the CME climbed to 123,720 BTC, the highest in four weeks, alongside a sharp uptick in the ETF inflows. The combination of rising futures activity and spot ETF inflows indicates renewed institutional interest in cash-and-carry arbitrage.
- On Deribit, the $100,000 call option, a bullish bet that the spot price will top that level, continues to attract demand. Open interest locked in this bet is now well above $2 billion.
- Block flows in bitcoin featured a long position in the $90,000 put expiring Jan. 26, financed by selling the $104,000 strike call. Traders also chased call spreads.
- In ETH's case, a large bull call spread crossed the tap, betting on a rally to $4,100.
Token talk
- While the majority of altcoins either consolidated or fell on Thursday, a small corner of the market continues to show strength, so-called dinosaur coins.
- Dinosaur coins are assets that debuted in or before 2018 and have survived multiple bear markets. In this case, BCH$621.98, dash DASH$81.88, XTZ$0.5889 and ether ETH$3,346.29 were among the top performers in the past 24 hours, remaining firmly in the black despite traders taking profits across other trading pairs.
- XTZ is up by 2.68% since midnight UTC on the back of a 47% increase in daily trading volume to $44 million, while BCH rose by 6.3% since 01:00 UTC as it extends a bullish run dating back to April last year.
- On the other side of the coin, derivatives exchange Lighter's LIT token fell again on Thursday, tumbling by more than 10% since midnight despite news that the exchange had rolled out staking features.
- The selloff follows a trend that saw most new tokens lose around 70% of their value in 2025. LIT was distributed via an airdrop on Dec. 23 and has since lost 56% of its value.
- The CoinDesk 80 Index (CD80), which is weighted heavily towards altcoins, is down by 1.2% since midnight, underperforming the bitcoin-dominant CoinDesk 20 (CD20), which is down 0.4% over the same period, demonstrating relative weakness among altcoins.