Bitcoin holds above $80,000 after Wednesday’s jump as injective rallies on staked ETF listing

Bitcoin $BTC$80,267.57 slipped 0.2% to around $80,250 since midnight UTC, holding above $80,000 after Wednesday’s jump from around $78,000. Ether ETH$2,417.97 fell 0.4%, while the CoinDesk 80 Index gained 0.9%.

Wednesday’s rally came as oil dropped around 8% and U.S. stocks rose after the midterms. Over 24 hours, bitcoin has gained 2.5% and ether 4%. Brent crude oil is now trading at $95 per barrel, up slightly since Wednesday’s selloff.

U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs took in $74.6 million on Wednesday, ending a three-day outflow streak, according to Farside Investors. Stock futures were mixed early Thursday, with S&P 500 futures down 0.1% and Nasdaq-100 futures down 0.8%, ahead of jobless claims today and Friday’s jobs report.

Derivatives positioning

• Shorts liquidated: Market-wide crypto futures trading volume rose 15% in 24 hours to $244 billon and open interest only 1% to $139.9 billion, so most of the activity was trading in and out of positions, with little fresh money. Liquidations jumped 53% to $715 million, and about 65% of them were shorts, which means bearish plays were forced closed. The taker buy-sell volume ratio, which tracks market orders, flipped to a slight sell lean at 50.6%. Yesterday it was a slight buy lean.
• $BTC short squeeze: Bitcoin open interest rose just 0.3% against a 2.6% price gain. About 93% of the $267 million in liquidations were shorts. Read together, the two suggest the rally was driven largely by bearish positions being forced closed rather than fresh long positions entering the market. Still, remaining positioning leans bullish: funding is positive and higher than yesterday, meaning longs are paying shorts.
• $NEAR flips, $ZEC cools: $NEAR (Near Protocol) had the strongest market-order buying yesterday. Today it has the weakest. Its open interest fell 2.7% against a 1.1% price drop, so money left. Funding is positive, so longs pay shorts. $ZEC’s open interest rose 3.5% against a 3.6% price gain, so the 25% surge in new money from yesterday has not repeated. Volume fell 13%.
• CVD mixed: OI-normalized cumulative volume delta (CVD), which tracks market-order buying and selling, is mixed. Sui network’s SUI is among the most positive. $TRX, $GRAM and BNB are among the most negative.
• Funding rates lean bullish: Most coins are positive, so longs are paying shorts across the market. XMR (Monero) is still the most positive, but lower than yesterday. $GRAM and $TRX are the most negative, which means shorts pay longs.
• Skew collapse: Bitcoin's one-week skew, the extra premium paid for puts over calls, has fallen to about 2% from about 11% yesterday. Put premium has almost disappeared at the short end, so demand for downside protection is gone. One-week implied volatility, the price swings options traders expect, has drifted lower to about 33%.
• Calls take over in $BTC: Five of bitcoin's six most active options contracts are calls, at strikes of $78,000 to $85,000. Only one put made the list. Yesterday's list also had puts at $75,000 and $68,000. Ether is the opposite, with four of six being puts at strikes below its current price.

Token talk

• Injective $INJ$8.4179 led the CoinDesk 100, gaining around 6% since midnight UTC after Nasdaq approved the listing of Canary Capital’s staked $INJ ETF, which would trade as INJC, according to an SEC filing. The token is up around 10% over 24 hours.
• Venice token VVV$21.51, Wednesday’s top gainer, gave back 11% over 24 hours.
• Official trump (TRUMP) fell around 14% over 24 hours, the weakest of the top 100 on CoinMarketCap, and world liberty financial WLFI$0.04589 lost around 4%, both coinciding with the Democrats’ midterm wins.
• The CoinMarketCap fear and greed index rose to 42 from 37, back in neutral territory, and its altcoin season index stood at 49.