Bitcoin nears $72,000 as rising open interest signals growing leverage in choppy market

Bitcoin $BTC$71,452.75 rose 1.2% after midnight UTC, mirroring gains in U.S. equities, with Nasdaq 100 futures up by 1% over the same period.

The advances follow oil's retreat below $100 per barrel on Tuesday after U.S. President Donald Trump proposed a "15 point plan" to end the war in Iran, although Iranian officials dismissed Trump's statement as fake news.

The crypto market remains resilient to the conflict with consistent outperformance of traditional haven assets gold and silver since early February.

Bitcoin has forayed above $72,000 twice this month, each time followed by a selloff that sent prices to between $67,000 and $65,000.

Traders are opening short positions in this region, resulting in a disproportionate increase in open interest.

Portions of the altcoin market are outperforming bitcoin, with decentralized finance (DeFi) tokens LDO and ETHFI rising by between 2.5% and 3.5% since midnight.

Derivatives positioning

• Industry-wide crypto futures open interest (OI) rose to a one-week high of $112 billion.
• The top 10 tokens, including $BTC and $ETH, all registered increases of 4% or more in futures open interest in the past 24 hours.
• Ether OI jumped to 14.55 million $ETH, the most since Aug. 24. This, coupled with positive funding rates and cumulative volume delta, point to growing demand for bullish bets or longs.
• DOGE and $ZEC are other standout tokens with OI increases of over 10% in 24 hours.
• Bitcoin's 30-day implied volatility index, BVIV, dropped for a third straight day, nearing the weekly low of 53% to indicate a fading geopolitical risk premium. Ether's volatility is declining, too.
• On Deribit, $BTC and $ETH put skews continue to weaken, although overall pricing still shows downside concerns across all tenors.
• Friday's multibillion dollar expiry points to $75,000 as the potential magnet. The max pain theory suggests a potential bounce toward that level.

Token talk

• The CoinDesk Computing Select Index (CPUS) is the best-performing benchmark on Wednesday, rising by 1.9%. The bitcoin-heavy CoinDesk 20 (CD20) gained 0.9% over the same period.
• The CPUS Index is made up of AI tokens $TAO and $FET as well as chainlink $LINK$9.3671, which makes up 62% of the index weighting.
• $LINK is up by 1.5% while $TAO and $FET have increased by 4.9% and 2.9%, respectively.
• CoinMarketCap's "Altcoin Season" indicator remains at 48/100, in bullish territory after spending much of February languishing at around 22/100.
• On the flip side, privacy coins XMR and $ZEC fell, losing around 1% each as traders rotated between altcoin sectors to position themselves ahead of a potential breakout.