Cryptocurrency markets showed signs of cautious recovery on Thursday, with Bitcoin Ethereum (ETH) is trading at $77,900, up from Tuesday’s low of $76,100, and Ethereum (ETH) is trading at $2,130, up just 0.1% since midnight UTC.
The altcoin industry remains a mixed bag. While Hyperliquid (HYPE) posted its fifth consecutive day of gains, rising 6.5% and rising 53% over the past week, the privacy coin gave back some of Wednesday’s gains.
U.S. stocks ended three consecutive days of losses on Wednesday, with the S&P 500 rising 1.5% as investors expected a strong earnings report from Nvidia (NVDA), which beat expectations with record quarterly revenue of $81.62 billion.
Oil prices fell as U.S. President Donald Trump said a peace deal with Iran was in the “final stages,” boosting risk assets.
Derivatives positioning
- Cryptocurrency futures trading volume rose 15% to $165.7 billion, open interest rose nearly 1% to $128 billion, and liquidations surged 72% to $266 million, ending two consecutive days of declining trading activity.
- Hyperliquid’s HYPE token leads the top 100 coins, with open interest reaching its highest level since February 19. Coupled with positive cumulative volume delta (CVD) and slightly positive funding, this increase suggests that aggressive market order buyers, rather than passive limit order buyers, are taking control but are not yet showing signs of overheating.
- Privacy coin zcash (ZEC) is showing a similar bullish trend, with the coin dominating the daily open interest rankings this week.
- DASH futures are also heating up. Open interest surged 38% to 1.98 million tokens, but the $54 boom-bust price rejection, coupled with negative CVD, suggests sellers are taking advantage of market orders to aggressively fade the rally.
- Negative CVDs for other assets such as XMR, SUI, TON, HBAR, M, BNB, and CC are further evidence that sellers are actively taking advantage of market orders rather than passively trading through limit orders.
- The Bitcoin futures market remains stagnant, with open interest trapped in the 720,000-750,000 BTC range for the seventh day in a row. The lack of momentum is also reflected in the Ethereum (ETH) market.
- Ethereum’s 30-day implied volatility fell to a 2026 low of 53%, breaking the lower limit established in late 2024, while Bitcoin’s BVIV stabilized near 40%, indicating that macro risks are generally calm.
- In the options market, one large trade involved the sale of a short XRP straddle, representing a high degree of confidence that the token’s spot price will remain range-bound around $1.40 through the end of June.
- For both BTC and ETH, wide straddles have become the most popular options strategy on Deribit over the past 24 hours, suggesting that traders are preparing for a breakout of the current low-volatility regime.
token talk
- HYPE has rightfully received favorable reviews this week, rising more than 20% in the past 24 hours, with daily trading volume soaring 135% to $1.3 billion.
- The CoinDesk Memecoin Select Index (CDMEME) fell 0.2% on Thursday and was down 0.9% in 24 hours. All other CoinDesk benchmarks were higher over the 24-hour period, with the CoinDesk Computing Select Index (CPUS) outperforming its peers.
- A cryptocurrency analyst who goes by the pseudonym “skew” describes the altcoin market as being in a “make or break” situation this week, alluding to the total cryptocurrency market capitalization excluding Bitcoin, which has posted a series of higher highs and higher lows since February.
- Speculation is heating up again on several altcoin trading pairs, including doublezero (2Z), which saw its trading volume surge by more than 410%, causing the coin to gain 17% in the past 24 hours.
