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.