Cryptocurrency markets extended their narrow trading range into Tuesday, limited by low volumes and a low-liquidity environment.
Bitcoin daily transaction volume Ethereum drops 25% in past 24 hours to $35 billion Volume fell 21% to $24.6 billion.
The drop in volatility can be attributed to general apathy in the cryptocurrency market, which has coincided with rising excitement in precious metals.
Gold is currently trading at $5,085 after hitting a series of record highs over the past week, while silver is up more than 57% since the start of the year as traders flock to safe-haven assets.
It can be clearly seen on the derivatives exchange HyperLiquid that the daily trading volume of silver futures is approaching $1 billion. This is more than all other assets except Bitcoin and Ethereum, although it is worth noting that the funding rate shows a negative deviation, indicating that traders are shorting rather than buying the potential top.
Risk aversion is likely to persist further after U.S. President Donald Trump imposed new 25% tariffs on South Korea on Monday following last week’s political joust with the European Union over Greenland.
derivatives
- More than $270 million in leveraged cryptocurrency futures bets have been liquidated by exchanges within 24 hours, with bearish trades (shorts) accounting for the majority. Data showed that after Bitcoin fell 7% last week, traders expected a deeper decline across the market, but they were caught off guard by the rebound from $86,000 to nearly $88,000.
- Volmex’s 30-day Bitcoin and Ethereum Implied Volatility Index remains near multi-month lows, indicating no signs of panic or fear, although flows and technical charts paint a bearish picture.
- Futures open interest (OI) related to the Hyperliquid HYPE token surged 30% to more than 57 million HYPE, approaching the all-time high of 57.44 million HYPE set in December. The decentralized exchange is said to have regained market share from rivals Aster and Lighter.
- The OI for ETH, SOL, XRP, and DOGE rose between 2% and 3%, while the OI for BTC was flat.
- Annualized perpetual financing rates remain modestly positive for most major companies, a sign of a bullish bias but nothing out of the ordinary. Rates on TRX and DOGE have turned negative, indicating the dominance of bears.
- On Deribit, BTC and ETH puts continue to trade at a premium to calls, indicating lingering concerns about a price drop. Some observers believe downside protection is a crowded trade right now, with call options looking relatively cheap for those with a bullish market view.
- Bearish directional positions such as put spreads and volatility bets, straddles, and wide straddles collectively accounted for nearly 50% of all BTC block trades in the 24 hours. When it comes to ETH, traders prefer Iron Condor, a strategy to profit from potentially range-bound markets.
token talk
- Huge volumes in the silver futures market have seen HyperLiquid’s native token HYPE rise more than 22% in the past 24 hours, with trading volume more than doubling to $510 million.
- Privacy coin zcash and Monero Up 4% and 3% respectively since midnight UTC, outperforming Bitcoin and cryptocurrency majors ETH, XPR and SOL, which are all down 0.4%-1%.
- Pump.fun’s native PUMP token has experienced a significant surge, surging 14.5% since midnight, as traders and token traders continue to try to extract value from the memecoin market despite overall market stability.
- According to DefiLlama, trading volume on Pump.fun has exceeded $10 billion in January, reaching its highest level since June with four days remaining in the month.
- The Bitcoin-focused CoinDesk 20 Index (CD20) is little changed since the start of the year, while the altcoin-focused CoinDesk 80 (CD80) Index is up 3.6%.
