Bitcoin The Asian trading session cooled down on Thursday, trading as low as $68,600 after testing $70,000 during Wednesday’s intense US trading session.
As February comes to a close, the largest cryptocurrency remains within the trading range it has been trading in since the beginning of the month, testing $62,500 on Tuesday and $71,100 on February 15.
Notably, Bitcoin broke out of a similar trading range in January, with prices falling from $98,000 to $60,000 over the next three weeks, before forming lower highs during the recent bearish cycle, trapping breakout traders.
Some coins have outperformed the broader altcoin market. HYPE is up 4.3% since midnight UTC, back to $30, while privacy coin Decred (DCR) rose 4% to reach its highest level since November.
U.S. stock futures were little changed as Nvidia’s earnings failed to deliver sustained gains amid lingering concerns about overvaluation of artificial intelligence.
Derivatives positioning
- Total open interest (OI) in the cryptocurrency futures market increased by more than 6.6% to nearly $100 billion. This is a larger increase than the total cryptocurrency market capitalization, indicating that there is a large amount of new capital pouring into the market.
- ADA and ETH futures performed outstandingly, with OI increasing by 21% and 15% respectively. Several other altcoins were up 9%.
- Bitcoin’s OI grew by more than 3%, mainly due to higher spot prices.
- The 30-day implied volatility indexes BVIV and EVIV for BTC and ETH remain near weekly lows, indicating market calm and supporting continued price gains.
- Annualized perpetual funding rates for most coins, including Bitcoin and Ethereum, have stabilized at just above zero, signaling a renewed bias in bullish, long bets.
- On Deribit, a rebound in Bitcoin prices sparked demand for call options priced between $85,000 and $90,000. However, the overall options market continues to exhibit a bearish bias, suggesting downside reservations remain.
- The $60,000 put option remains the most popular bet, with more than $1.4 billion in notional open interest.
token talk
- Tier 1 Tokens Up 21% in the past 24 hours. While the move petered out during the European session, investors showed interest ahead of the network reward halving in March.
- Uniswap’s governance token (UNI) also surged, rising 15%. The move can be attributed to a new governance vote that proposes increasing the protocol’s revenue capture across multiple Layer 2 networks.
- One coin that has performed particularly poorly is the stock fell more than 6%, with the sell-off continuing into the European session. There are no obvious bearish catalysts for the move, which reflects the continued vulnerability of altcoins due to a lack of liquidity.
- Crypto Major Ethereum (ETH) is up about 8.5% since Wednesday morning. Coinalyze said these moves are interesting because open interest has increased for both assets, suggesting they are supported by leverage rather than spot buying.
