Market participants remain cautious and are continuing to seek put options, or downside protection, in bitcoin. Deribit said that ETF holders and corporate treasuries are buying put options at the $60,000 strike expiring in six to 12 months.
Analysts said institutional flows are improving but not yet decisive, and traders should avoid taking big risks.
"Long-term investors may consider staggered accumulation (SIP-style allocation) near support zones rather than deploying lump sums at resistance," Vikram Subburaj, CEO of crypto exchange Giottus.com, said in an email to CoinDesk.
Derivatives positioning
- Cumulative crypto futures open interest (OI) has fallen back to recent multimonth lows of around $93.5 billion. The drop shows how quickly the optimism sparked by Wednesday's bitcoin price bounce has fizzled out.
- Major tokens, including bitcoin and ether, have seen capital outflows from futures as notional OI declined more than their spot prices.
- The market-wide long-short ratio continues to show a dominance of shorts, or bearish bets.
- OI in tether gold (XAUT) dropped another 11% extending the decline from early this week. Gold-linked assets seem to have fallen out of favor lately.
- Most large-cap tokens, including $BTC and $ETH, are again seeing negative perpetual funding rates. That means bearish plays are dominating the market once more.
- Participation in CME bitcoin futures is falling, as shown by open interest hitting the lowest levels this year.
- On Deribit, one-month bitcoin puts still trade at a 7% premium to calls in a sign of lingering concerns of further spot price declines. The same is true for ether.
- Bitcoin put spreads, a bearish strategy, accounted for 75% of the total block flow over 24 hours. In $ETH's case, traders chased put spreads and straddles (volatility strategies).
Token Talk
The DFINITY Foundation proposed burning 20% of cloud engine revenue, introducing a deflationary element tied directly to network usage for Internet Computer ($ICP).
The remaining 80% of revenue would be routed to node operators, replacing fixed emissions with performance-based incentives. The idea is to make $ICP’s token supply more responsive to real demand.
$ICP’s price moved up roughly 6% in the last 24-hour period, from around $2.41 to $2.56. It’s down from a high of $2.7 seen during the period. The price appears to be influenced not just by the foundation's proposal, but also by Nvidia’s blowout earnings.
Those earnings boosted sentiment surrounding artificial intelligence-linked assets, with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang saying AI is only getting better.
$ICP, often marketed as a decentralized alternative to traditional cloud AI infrastructure, was among several AI-linked tokens, including render (RENDER) and bittensor (TAO), to benefit from renewed investor interest in the sector.
coindesk.com
