coindesk.com
Bitcoin $BTC$78,695.33 is holding around $79,000, down about 1.2% over the last 24 hours, as traders took profits after the largest cryptocurrency rallied 23% in seven days. The wider CoinDesk 20 (CD20) index fell 2.1% over the last 24 hours.
Underlying demand, nevertheless, remains firm. U.S.-listed spot bitcoin ETFs took in $314 million on Tuesday in a seventh straight day of net inflows, bringing the month-to-date total to over $3 billion, according to SoSoValue data.
Still, the speed of the rally is starting to leave the market exposed. Alternative.me’s Crypto Fear & Greed Index jumped to 74 from 27 less than two weeks earlier before easing back.
Pedro Fontes, a research analyst at Mercado Bitcoin, identified $82,000 and $85,000 as the next resistance levels and said some consolidation would be natural after such a vertical advance.
Gold, meanwhile, is little changed near $4,630 an ounce after reaching a three-month high. Asian equities advanced and U.S. stock futures are little changed ahead of inflation data and Nvidia’s NVDA$213.85·At close results coming after the market closes. Oil dropped for a third consecutive session.
Derivatives positioning
- Bearish volume signal: The taker long-short volume ratio flipped bearish ahead of key data releases. Shorts now account for 51.64% of the 24-hour flow. Takers are market participants who pull liquidity from the order book by trading at available prices.
- Constructive signal from $BTC futures: Bitcoin’s spot price pulled back to $78,500 while futures open interest (OI) continued to decline, falling below 700,000 $BTC. The combination of lower spot prices and shrinking OI is a constructive signal. It suggests traders are unwinding positions rather than aggressively opening new shorts against the dip. Ether and XRP markets did much the same.
- Slight uptick in $SOL OI: Open interest in $SOL futures is up for the third straight day, though, at 65.53 million tokens, the tally is only at a one-week high.
- Record activity in $SUI: Futures tied to $SUI are more popular than ever, with OI hovering at a record high of 838 million tokens. That’s not necessarily good news because the token’s spot price has dropped over 5% in 24 hours. The combination points to a build up of short positions, or bearish plays. $SUI’s negative 24-hour OI-adjusted cumulative volume delta (CVD) also points to bearish leadership in the market.
- Bearishness in the broader market: CVD, in fact, is negative for most of the largest tokens, a sign that are growing number of shorts being executed at available market prices rather than passive limit orders.
- Volatility indexes retreat: Bitcoin’s 30-day implied volatility index, BVIV, continues to reverse the recent spike, signaling a market calm. Traders probably expect $BTC to trade around $80,000 in a typical consolidation following a big move higher. Ether’s index, EVIV, shows a similar trend.
- Bullish options volume: On Deribit, traders are increasingly chasing bitcoin call options at strike prices ranging from $82,000 to $100,000. Call options provide a bullish exposure to the underlying asset without having to actually own it. The same dynamic holds true for ether.
Token talk
- Pyth Network PYTH$0.05345 is a standout performer over the last 24-hour period, rising 11% ahead of a Pyth Core infrastructure upgrade. The upgrade promises higher-frequency price updates, additional feeds and lower latency.
- LayerZero $ZRO$1.1602 also saw double-digit gains after unveiling ATLAS, a trading and settlement engine whose fee model uses 75% of remaining revenue to buy and burn $ZRO.
- Blue-chip cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin $BTC$78,695.33, ether ETH$2,468.25 and solana ($SOL) saw modest declines as traders took profits after a major weekly gain.
- Privacy-centric Zcash ($ZEC) dropped 7.3% in 24 hours in a sell-the-news reversal after Grayscale’s spot $ZEC ETF started trading. $ZEC had gained roughly 56% over the preceding week.
- INJ, ENA and VIRTUAL declined 6.8%, 6.5% and 5.2%, respectively.