Bitcoin slips below $76,500 as U.S. strikes on Iran send oil above $93

Bitcoin $BTC$76,599.67 is trading around $76,500 after dropping more than 1% since midnight UTC and 3% over the past seven days, as heightened U.S. strikes on Iranian targets weighed on risk assets.

Brent crude jumped past $93 a barrel and West Texas Intermediate approached $90 as the conflict escalated. The Dollar Index (DXY) rose by 0.13% since midnight.

The 10-year Treasury yield climbed toward 4.8% on the inflation implications of higher energy costs, while Nasdaq 100 futures fell 0.31% and S&P 500 futures dropped 0.11%.

Derivatives positioning

• Sentiment turns bearish: The 24-hour long-short taker volume ratio flipped bearish, with shorts accounting for 51.5% of the flow, data from Coinglass shows. This follows consecutive days of neutral readings. Trading volume rose 19% to $203 billion over 24 hours, but open interest (OI) remains unchanged near $136 billion for a second day.
• $BTC positioning stays light: Despite bitcoin’s price decline, there's no sign of traders deploying leverage to short the falling market. Futures open interest stood unchanged over 24 hours at around 700,000 $BTC. Overall positioning remains light, with OI well below this year's peak of 801,000 $BTC.
• Ether shorts build up: Ether's case looks different, with open interest ticking up slightly alongside a decline in price, commonly read as a sign of shorts building in the market. The OI tally advanced to 13.72 million tokens, the most since Aug. 18, though still well below May's record 15.68 million tokens.
• Bears lead on order flow: The 24-hour cumulative volume deltas (CVD) for bitcoin and ether also point to bear leadership driving price action. The negative readings mean shorts are being executed at market price rather than through passive limit orders. That holds true across all major tokens except Uniswap's $UNI.
• $UNI rally continues, no signs of overheating: $UNI's price has surged another 4% in 24 hours, hitting a seven-month high of $6.37, while futures open interest stands at a record 89.44 million tokens, validating the rally in spot prices. The move doesn't look overheated, though, with annualized funding rates still below 10%, showing a bias toward bullish long bets without the overcrowding that often precedes a sudden long squeeze and price drop.
• $TRX shorts stay crowded: $TRX looks overcrowded on the bearish side for a second straight day, with funding rates around minus 85%.
• Volatility signals calm: $BTC's and $ETH's 30-day implied volatility indexes have erased the mid-August pop, pointing to expectations of market calm.
• Options flow turns cautious: On Deribit, the $70,000 $BTC put expiring Sept. 25 is the top 24-hour contract by volume, but the other four in the top five are calls, or bullish bets. In ether's case, the $2,200 put expiring Sept. 11 is the most traded, with the rest of the top five mostly puts as well. Puts are used by traders to hedge against or profit from a potential price slide in the underlying asset.

Token talk

• Ether.fi (ETHFI) led the altcoin market, climbing 4.63% since midnight to around 58.9 cents, one of the few tokens holding a bid as the broader market softened.
• Monero ($XMR) rose 2.27% to around $516, extending a run that has taken the privacy coin from $464 a week ago. $XMR has been among the most consistent performers of the past two weeks, largely detached from the moves driving the rest of the market.
• Rival privacy coin zcash (ZEC) is also in the black after adding 1% to $824.63, and has gained 71.23% over 30 days.
• Arbitrum ARB$0.1105 extended Tuesday's surge, rising a further 9.33% over 24 hours to 11.68 cents as revenue from Robinhood Chain continued to flow to the Arbitrum DAO treasury.
• Losses were led by DASH, down 4.72% since midnight to $41.82, with PUMP 3.54% lower at 0.4223 cents while NEAR slipped 2.29% to $1.8429. XRP was among the weaker large caps, falling 1.72% to $1.3281 and extending a 6.22% decline over the past week.