Cryptocurrency markets retreated from potential danger on Thursday, with Bitcoin Up 3.9% from local lows of $65,600.
Prices rose overnight, with Bitcoin up 2%, Solana (SOL) up 2.7% and Ethereum (ETH) up 1.2% since midnight UTC.
However, the broader downtrend remains intact, with Bitcoin making a series of lower lows and lower highs, giving back all gains made in the 12 months to October 2025.
In the short-term, Bitcoin needs to move above $72,000 to confirm a bullish shift in its range-bound price action floating between support and resistance levels.
The U.S. Spot Bitcoin ETF has seen its largest drawdown this cycle, having withdrawn 100,300 BTC since October. This amounts to approximately $6.8 billion in additional selling pressure on an already fragile market.
Derivatives positioning:
- Market dynamics are stabilizing. Open interest rose to $15.8 billion, marking a move toward a firmer bottom as leverage clears out, retail sentiment is rebounding, and financing rates on all venues have turned from flat to positive, reaching 10% on Bybit and Hyperliquid.
- Institutional confidence remains solid, with the three-month annualized basis remaining at 3%.
- Sentiment in the BTC options market has shifted slightly, with 24-hour trading volume reaching 51/49 in favor of call options.
- While one-week 25-delta skewness has jumped to 17%, the implied volatility (IV) term structure remains in short-term backwardation.
- This continued front-end surge confirms that traders are still paying a “panic premium” for immediate protection even as longer-term terms stabilize around 49%.
- Coinglass data shows that the 24-hour liquidation amount was $179 million, and the ratio of longs to shorts was 56:44. BTC ($59 million), ETH ($46 million), and other currencies ($16 million) lead the way in terms of notional liquidations.
- The Binance liquidation heat map shows $68,400 as the core liquidation level to monitor if the price rises.
token talk
- Altcoins were active overnight, with lending token MORPHO up more than 12% since midnight UTC and artificial intelligence payment token KITE up 11%, extending a 30-day 153% gain.
- This rotation is also seen in DeFi tokens such as Jupiter (JUP), which is up more than 3.6% after hitting a seven-day low on Thursday.
- The CoinDesk Smart Contract Platform Select Index (SCPXC) was the best-performing benchmark over the past 24 hours, rising 2.25%, followed by CoinDesk’s Memecoin Index (CDMEME), which rose 2.2% over the same period.
- The Bitcoin-dominated CoinDesk 20 (CD20) rose 1% as gains from the crypto giants were more limited.
- Altcoins typically perform well during consolidation, as traders are free to shift capital toward more speculative bets without the risk of missing out on moves like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and XRP.