Cryptocurrency markets overall moved lower on Tuesday as Bitcoin Ethereum (ETH) is down 1% since midnight UTC at $80,800, with Ethereum (ETH) down 2% at $2,290.
U.S. stock futures also fell after U.S. President Donald Trump said a ceasefire with Iran “would take a lot of life support,” sending Brent crude soaring to $107 a barrel and the U.S. dollar index (DXY) rising 0.4%.
However, Bitcoin is still above the $76,000 line, according to Bitmine (BMNR) Chairman Tom Lee, who said that if Bitcoin can stay above that level by the end of the month, it will confirm the end of the bull market.
The altcoin market is a mixed bag, with most coins underperforming the two largest cryptocurrencies, while a small subset of the market, including Curve (CRV) and toncoin (TON) have bucked the bearish price action, rising between 5% and 10% in the past 24 hours.
Derivatives positioning
- Notional open interest (OI) in cryptocurrency futures across the market rose to $125 billion despite a 6% drop in trading volume to $174 million. These moves indicate a reduction in short-term speculation and traders gradually building positions.
- ZEC’s OI fell more than 10% to 1.9 million tokens from last week’s 4.5-month high of 2.48 million tokens. At the same time, the price of the coin fell from $642 to $550. This combination indicates the unwinding of bullish bets rather than the deployment of new capital flows for short or bearish investments.
- SUI, CORE and HBAR were the main contributors to the decline in other OIs. Meanwhile, Canton’s CC token’s open interest jumped more than 10%, with positive funding rates and a positive 24-hour OI-adjusted cumulative volume delta, indicating stronger buyer dominance.
- ETH and XMR were also the other major gainers on OI, although they had negative CVDs, suggesting sellers are dominating the price action with market orders rather than passive limit orders.
- The continued decline in Bitcoin’s 30-day implied volatility index BVIV has stopped this month and has stabilized near 40%. But there are no signs of a new rally, suggesting continued calm in the market, an environment conducive to further bullish price action.
- Wall Street’s volatility gauge, the VIX, which measures 30-day implied volatility in the S&P 500, has risen more than 10% this week to nearly 19 points. Although still below recent highs above 30, the slight increase is worth watching.
- On Deribit, 24-hour trading volume rankings show BTC call options with strike prices of $80,000, $82,000, and $84,000. These calls are bets that the price of Bitcoin will rise. It also includes puts, which are bets to fall, with strike prices of $65,000 and $74,000.
token talk
- All CoinDesk benchmarks are in the red since midnight UTC, led by the DeFi Select Index (DFX), down 2.7%, followed by the CoinDesk Computing Select Index (CPUS), down 2.3%.
- JUP, MON, and SEI were the worst-performing altcoins on the day, falling between 5.6% and 6.3% due to a continued lack of liquidity.
- It was one of the best-performing altcoins, rising 4.1%, marking a three-day winning streak.
- CRO’s rally can be attributed to a governance proposal that, if passed, would change the project’s token economics, replacing inflation-driven staking rewards with a system where yields are entirely funded by actual protocol revenue.
- CoinMarketCap’s “Altcoin Season” indicator stands at 50/100, its highest level since late March, as sentiment across the industry shows signs of improvement.