Crypto markets were little changed on Thursday, with Bitcoin Ethereum (ETH) rose less than 1% as investors consolidated following Wednesday’s breakout.
While Bitcoin held crucially above the $70,000 level, which had rejected previous rallies, it failed to achieve the upward move to $80,000 predicted by some analysts.
Global stock markets responded favorably to reports that Iran had secretly approached the United States in the hope of striking a deal to end the war in exchange for curbs on its missile production.
The U.S. dollar index (DXY) fell as a result, but is still up 3.5% since the end of January as traders try to rationalize potential interest rate changes from the Federal Reserve. Disruption in the Strait of Hormuz will fuel inflation, forcing the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates to keep deposit levels high.
Bitcoin typically rises when the U.S. dollar weakens and falls when the currency is bullish.
Derivatives positioning
- Bitcoin futures open interest (OI) has rebounded, with the number increasing to 680,000 BTC, the highest level in the past two weeks. This pattern confirms the rise in spot prices.
- Ethereum’s OI increased to 13.41 million ether, the highest level since January 31. Activity in XRP futures remains subdued, with OI sinking to recent lows below 1.7 billion XRP. The same goes for Solana’s SOL.
- Futures OI related to the gold token Tether gold (XAUT) and The fall continues as cryptocurrencies rise. As gold price gains stall, investors are likely to shift funds into major assets.
- Privacy-focused ZEC futures activity is also picking up, with total OI ending a two-month downward trend.
- Annualized perpetual funding rates for Bitcoin and Ethereum remain modestly positive, indicating a bullish bias. However, interest rates for XRP and SOL remain slightly negative.
- The 30-day implied volatility index for Bitcoin and Ethereum remained stable within the recent range, indicating market stability. Wall Street’s volatility index, VIX, has fallen back to 21% from Monday’s high of 28%.
- On Deribit, the bearish skew in Bitcoin and Ethereum options has weakened but persisted as activity increased for higher strike calls or bullish bets.
- Big flow in options features bullish calendar diagonal spread demand for Bitcoin and Ethereum.
token talk
- Layer-1 token MANTRA completed its token migration and rebranding, replacing the legacy OM token with the MANTRA code and implementing a 1:4 re-face value, causing the token price to increase by 25% in the past 24 hours.
- The bullish privacy coin narrative that started the year looked lackluster in February as ZEC, DASH, and
- Cryptocurrency majors have dominated market gains over the past 24 hours, with the CoinDesk 5 (CF5) and CoinDesk 10 (CD10) indexes both up about 3.1%. During the same period, the DeFi Selection Index and Computing Selection Index rose only 0.4% and 0.7% respectively.
- If Bitcoin can continue its march towards $80,000 and consolidate, profits may be diverted into more speculative altcoin bets, but for now the market remains cautious.
