Altcoins jump as dollar slides, bitcoin holds steady: Crypto Markets Today

Bitcoin $BTC$90,002.22 traded little changed Wednesday after gaining yesterday as the dollar weakened. Ether $ETH$3,040.95 gave up some of its gains.

Instead, advances came from other parts of the altcoin market. Hyperliquid's native $HYPE token extended gains, adding 11% since midnight UTC, and Solana liquid staking token $JTO$0.3888 surged 32%, its biggest one-day gain since December 2023, according to CoinDesk data.

The Dollar Index (DXY) fell to a four-year low on Tuesday, crucially below a trendline dating back to 2011 despite an attempt by President Donald Trump to reassure markets by saying the dollar is "doing great," and that he is not "concerned."

Dollar strength or weakness has a direct impact on the crypto market because the majority of assets are traded against the U.S. currency. The inverse correlation was a key talking point in the previous bear market, when the dollar rose by 22% between November 2021 and October 2022 while bitcoin lost more than 70% of its value.

Dollar breaks trendline (TradingView)

Derivatives positioning

• Another $230 million in leveraged bullish crypto futures positions were liquidated in the past 24 hours, extending the trend of consistent long-side wipeouts since Monday.
• Bitcoin and ether 30-day and one-day implied volatility indexes remain under pressure, a sign traders do not expect major turbulence even as the Fed interest-rate decision looms.
• The notional open interest (OI) in futures tied to the $HYPE token has surged over 20% in dollar terms in 24 hours. That is largely reflective of price gains in the token, because in token terms it remains largely unchanged near 57 million $HYPE.
• OI in $BTC, $ETH, XRP and BNB has risen 2%-4%.
• Except ZEC, and TRX, annualized funding rates for majors remain positive, indicating a bias for bullish positioning.
• On Deribit, $BTC and $ETH puts continue to trade at a premium to calls. Activity has picked up in $BTC put options at the $85,000 strike, indicating a demand for downside hedges.
• Block flows in $BTC have been mixed, with traders chasing both put and call spreads. In $ETH's case, straddles and risk reversals were in demand.

Token talk

• While $HYPE and $JTO are among the top performers on Wednesday, the largest altcoin gain goes to PIPPIN, a Solana-based memecoin and autonomous AI agent created by AI innovator Yohei Nakajima.
• PIPPIN is up by 64% in the past 24 hours and is the most bought token by "smart money" investors, according to Stalkchain.
• Decentralized exchange tokens JUP$0.2258 and aster $ASTER$0.6920 also embarked on moves to the upside, with the former increasing by 3.11% since midnight UTC to notch a 24 hour gain of 10.9%, while $ASTER trades at $0.69 having risen by 5.7% since Tuesday morning.
• CoinDesk indexes are also indicating altcoin strength: The bitcoin-dominant CoinDesk 20 (CD20) Index is up by 2.47% in the past 24 hours and 2.38% since the turn of the year, while the altcoin heavy CoinDesk 80 (CD80) has outperformed its counterpart with a 3.7% 24-hour gain and a 7.3% increase since Jan. 1.
• The buoyant mood across the altcoin sector comes as bitcoin remains stuck in a tight trading range — historically a bullish period for altcoins because capital is often rotated to more speculative bets until bitcoin makes a decisive move one way or the other.