Bitcoin rises as oil spikes, equities drop

Bitcoin $BTC$68,153.83 rose 2.8% since midnight UTC after global markets plunged when futures trading opened an hour earlier.

Nasdaq 100 and S&P 500 index futures both fell more than 1.5% since midnight as oil surged to as high as $115 per barrel, the most since June 2022. Precious metals also suffered. Gold and silver lost 1.6% and 1.1% respectively, eroding the haven narrative as investors flocked to the U.S. dollar.

Sentiment for bitcoin, meanwhile, is warming, and it has remained resilient to the war in Iran and subsequent supply disruptions through the Strait of Hormuz.

"While $BTC has yet to fully earn its digital gold narrative, its practical use case as a digital escape hatch is becoming increasingly relevant, particularly in Gulf countries, amid episodes of currency volatility and political uncertainty," trading firm QCP said in a note on Monday.

Derivatives positioning

• Exchanges have liquidated crypto futures bets worth nearly $400 million in 24 hours. Bearish bets on oil bore the brunt as prices for the so-called black gold rose to $115 per barrel.
• Open interest (OI) in bitcoin futures remains steady near weekly lows of around 650K $BTC, a sign the futures market is not participating in the Monday morning rally. OI in ether futures rose to 13 million ether.
• XRP's OI jumped to 1.72 billion tokens, the highest since Feb. 24, alongside a small uptick in SOL OI, both indicating capital inflows.
• OI in PAXG, AVAX, LTC and several other alternative tokens has declined over 24 hours. Investors seem to be de-risking on the price bounce.
• $BTC and $ETH's 30-day implied volatility indexes remain steady, reflecting market calm amid chaos in Asian equities and oil markets.
• On Deribit, bitcoin and ether puts continue to trade at a premium to calls, signaling persistent downside concerns. However, the premium remains largely unchanged from last week, suggesting the surge in oil prices hasn’t sparked an outsized demand for protective puts.
• The $BTC implied volatility term structure remains in backwardation, a sign traders are pricing higher volatility in the short term relative to the long term. That's consistent with the unknowns of the war.

Token talk

• The altcoin market was buoyant overnight with tokens including DASH, XMR and ZEC posting gains between 3.8% and 5.2%.
• Decentralized finance (DeFi) tokens also performed well. ETHFI and MORPHO have both outperformed bitcoin $BTC$68,153.83 and ether ($ETH) since midnight.
• CoinMarketCap's "Altcoin Season" indicator is now at 36/100, significantly higher than February's low of 22/100. A CoinDesk report on Friday suggested that the lack altcoin mentions on social media could be bullish in terms of a market reversal.
• The best performing benchmark of the past 24 hours was CoinDesk's Computing Select Index (CPUS), which includes chainlink LINK$8.7744 and bittensor (TAO) and is up by 2.7%, followed by the CoinDesk Smart Contract Platform Select Index (SCPXC), which rose by 0.92% since Sunday morning.
• On the flip side, institutional-focused token canton (CC) lost 3.4% of its value in the past 24 hours while WLD$0.3638, the token created by OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman, fell by around 2%.