Weekend selloff wipes out $290 billion before bitcoin steadies: Crypto Markets Today

The crypto market experienced a low liquidity sell-off over the weekend, driving bitcoin $BTC$77,737.65 to as low as $74,674 and ether $ETH$2,281.10 to $2,164, though both found support at levels not seen since between April and June last year and are now up around 1% since midnight UTC.

The selloff erased $290 billion worth of crypto market cap since the start of Saturday as the slide intensified over the course of the weekend.

U.S. equities are lower in pre-market trading with S&P 500 index futures down 0.58% and Nasdaq 100 futures down by 0.85% as risk assets fell across the board.

Gold and silver cooled after hitting record highs last week, each losing about 3.5% since midnight.

"The silver bubble well and truly popped on Friday after lenders upped their margin calls to speculators," Derren Nathan, Hargreaves Lansdown's head of equity research, wrote in a Monday morning note. "That followed Donald Trump’s nomination of Kevin Warsh, one of the more hawkish contenders in the race, for the top job at the Federal Reserve bank."

Derivatives positioning

• The market-wide futures open interest (OI) has dropped to $108.94 billion, the lowest since April, indicating growing aversion to leveraged bets. The tally peaked at $223 billion in October.
• Over $800 million worth of leveraged bets have been force-closed by exchanges in 24 hours. Most of these were bullish long plays.
• OI in $BTC and $ETH futures has dropped over 1% and 3%, respectively. Several coins such as SOL, DOGE, $SUI, ADA and LINK have seen increases in OI, possibly due to traders shorting the drop.
• ZEC, WLFI, TON, BCH and XLM markets have seen a net buying pressure, as indicated by positive cumulative volume delta (CVD) readings. Other majors, including bitcoin and ether, have negative CVD readings.
• On the CME, bitcoin futures opened lower at $77,730 from Friday's close of $84,105 following the weekend spot-price slide. Markets often fill the gaps, meaning the price could bounce above $80,000.
• On Deribit, the $75,000 put option is now just as popular as the $100,000 bet. Other puts at strikes $80,000 and $70,000 also show a significant built up of open interest. Together, they point to downside fears.
• Block flows featured demand for ether put butterfly strategy aimed at profiting from a broad range play. Traders seem to be anticipating consolidation following the recent drubbing. In $BTC, traders are chasing put spreads.

Token talk

• The altcoin market was not immune to the risk-off sentiment over the weekend as low liquidity conditions led to a wave of liquidations, with more than $300 million worth of ether positions forcibly closed over the past 24 hours.
• Privacy coin dash DASH$43.67 has now lost 25% of its value over the past week, while native blockchain tokens optimism OP$0.2301, $SUI$1.1201, ether $ETH$2,281.10 and XTZ$0.4618 al fell by more than 20% over the same period.
• One notable outlier is HyperLiquid's $HYPE, up by more than 40% over the past week and 13% from Saturday's low of $27.5.
• $HYPE climbed last week after significant volume across the frenetic precious metals markets, which presented another crypto use-case for traditional finance traders.
• Jupiter's JUP token was among the top performers since midnight UTC, rising by 7.9% after it fell by almost 25% over the weekend.
• Low liquidity altcoin markets, commonly assessed by a lack of market depth, mean that larger moves are often exaggerated in both directions as the demand for instant buyers and sellers isn't met with sufficient resting orders on the orderbook.