Ether steadies after $540 million sell wave to outperform wider crypto market

The crypto market remains under pressure on Monday despite U.S. equity futures rising by around 0.25% since midnight UTC.

Bitcoin $BTC$68,770.50 trades at $68,710, having lost 0.1%. Altcoins such as HYPE, ZEC and XMR are down by more than 3%.

Ether $ETH$1,978.09 is one of Monday's outliers, rising by 0.43% since midnight as it claws its way back to $2,000 after a grueling weekend selloff was spurred by selling pressure from trader Garrett Jin.

Onchain data shows a wallet attributed to Jin deposited more than $540 million worth of ether to Binance over the weekend, leading to a disproportionate rise in sell volume compared with other exchanges.

That pressure translated into oversold conditions that ultimately set the scene for Monday's recovery.

Gold is changing hands at $5,000 on Monday, down from its Jan. 29 peak of $5,600 but outperforming silver and crypto, which are down by 36% and 21% respectively over the same period.

U.S. markets are closed on Monday due to a public holiday.

Derivatives positioning

• The crypto futures market continues to see capital outflows, with notional open interest (OI), or the dollar value of total open or active contracts, dropping to $98 billion.
• De-risking is seen across the board, with OI falling 1% and 2.7% in bitcoin and ether futures, respectively, over 24 hours. $XRP, $DOGE, SUI and ADA saw declines of 6% or more.
• OI in futures tied to gold token XAUT rose 8% as traders continued to deploy capital in traditional assets.
• $BTC and $ETH's 30-day implied volatility has reversed the massive pop from annualized 50% to nearly 100% earlier this month, when prices crashed. The reversal indicates a massive pricing out of volatility risks, supporting the case for price recovery.
• The spread between ether and bitcoin implied volatility indexes is beginning to widen, indicating expectations for bigger swings in ether.
• Funding rates for several alternative tokens, such as $XRP, TRX, $DOGE and $SOL, remain negative, indicating a trader preference for bearish, short positions. If the market remains resilient, these bears may feel compelled to square off their bets, potentially leading to a "short squeeze" higher.
• $SOL futures on CME show an annualized premium near zero, a sign of buy-side pressure fading fast. $BTC and $ETH futures are trading with slight premiums.
• On Deribit, someone paid $3 million in premium for the $75,000 strike bitcoin call option. The massive flow likely represents a bullish bet on the market.
• Still, put options tied to $BTC and $ETH remain pricier than calls across all time frames, a sign of lingering downside concerns.

Token talk

• The altcoin market experienced a familiar, low-liquidity drift lower on Sunday before a slight recovery on Monday morning.
• Popular memecoin $DOGE$0.1010 is down by more than 10% in the past 24 hours but has steadied since midnight UTC, while $XRP has risen by 1% by midnight despite losing 8% of its value since Sunday morning.
• Layer zero (ZRO) continues to lose momentum after its early February rally, falling by more than 34% over the past five days including a 10% drawdown in the past 24 hours. The plummet comes after the introduction of a native blockchain in collaboration with Wall Street veterans Citadel Securities and DTCC.
• The heavily bitcoin-weighted CoinDesk 5 (CD5) Index rose by 0.38% since midnight UTC while the altcoin-dominated CoinDesk 80 (CD80) lost 0.17% over the same period, demonstrating relative altcoin weakness.