Bitcoin Trading was little changed on Wednesday after rising yesterday as the dollar weakened. ether Give up some of the gains.
Instead, progress is coming from other parts of the altcoin market. Hyperliquid’s native HYPE token extended gains, adding 11% since midnight UTC, while Solana Liquid’s staking token was up 11% The index surged 32%, its largest one-day gain since December 2023, according to CoinDesk.
The U.S. dollar index (DXY) fell to a four-year low on Tuesday and is well below a trend line dating back to 2011, despite President Donald Trump’s attempts to reassure markets by saying the dollar is “doing great” and that he is not “worried.”
The strength of the U.S. dollar has a direct impact on the cryptocurrency market, as most assets are traded against the U.S. dollar. Negative correlation was a key topic during the last bear market, when the U.S. dollar gained 22% between November 2021 and October 2022, while Bitcoin lost more than 70% of its value.
Derivatives Positioning
- Another $230 million in leveraged bullish cryptocurrency futures positions were liquidated in the past 24 hours, continuing a trend of consistent losses for bulls since Monday.
- Bitcoin and Ethereum 30-day and one-day implied volatility indices remain under pressure, suggesting traders are not expecting major turbulence even with a Fed rate decision looming.
- Notional open interest (OI) in futures related to the HYPE token surged more than 20% in USD terms in 24 hours. This largely reflects the increase in the token’s price, as as far as the token is concerned, it has remained largely unchanged around 57 million HYPE.
- OI for BTC, ETH, XRP and BNB rose 2%-4%.
- With the exception of ZEC and TRX, annualized funding rates for major currencies remain positive, indicating a bias in bullish positions.
- On Deribit, BTC and ETH put options continue to trade higher than call options. BTC put activity increased at the $85,000 strike price, indicating demand for downside hedging.
- Bitcoin’s block flows have been mixed, with traders chasing both put and call spreads. In the case of ETH, straddles and risk reversals are in high demand.
token talk
- While HYPE and JTO were the top-performing cryptocurrencies on Wednesday, the altcoin with the biggest gain was PIPPIN, a Solana-based memecoin and autonomous AI agent created by AI innovator Yohei Nakajima.
- According to Stalkchain data, PIPPIN has gained 64% in the past 24 hours and is the most purchased token by “smart money” investors.
- Decentralized exchange tokens and aster Also starting to rise, the former is up 3.11% since midnight UTC, with a 24-hour gain of 10.9%, while ASTER is trading at $0.69, up 5.7% since Tuesday morning.
- CoinDesk indices also show the strength of altcoins: the Bitcoin-focused CoinDesk 20 (CD20) Index has gained 2.47% in the past 24 hours and is up 2.38% since the beginning of the year, while the altcoin-focused CoinDesk 80 (CD80) Index has outperformed its peers, rising 3.7% in 24 hours and 7.3% since January 1.
- The optimism across the altcoin industry comes as Bitcoin remains stuck in a tight trading range – historically bullish periods for altcoins, as capital tends to shift to more speculative bets until Bitcoin somehow makes a decisive move.
