Bitcoin Bitcoin prices rose to $72,000 during the European session on Friday, up 2% since midnight UTC, outpacing gains in U.S. stock indexes.
Nasdaq 100 and S&P 500 futures fell in Asian trading before recovering. Both are now in the green. Meanwhile, the U.S. dollar index (DXY) moved above 100, a move that typically puts pressure on risk assets like cryptocurrencies and stocks.
Today, however, the cryptocurrency market seems relatively immune to this pressure, rallying across the board. The CoinDesk 20 Index (CD20) is up 1.1% since midnight.
If Bitcoin is able to break above $74,000, a level it has failed to break out of recently, and the volume is convincing, a breakout back to the $80,000 area could be triggered. Otherwise, it could return to the trading range it has been in since February 5.
Oil prices remained around $100 a barrel as the war in Iran continued to rage on Friday morning with new attacks in Tehran and Dubai.
Derivatives Positioning
- Cumulative futures open interest (OI) across the industry has increased 5% in the past 24 hours to $107.6 billion, indicating that Bitcoin and other tokens have remained stable and capital has continued to flow in amid the turmoil in global stock markets.
- Bitcoin (OI) rose to 687,200 BTC, its highest level since February 25. Ethereum (ETH) rose to 13.72 million, its highest level since January 30. The annualized perpetual funding rate and cumulative trading volume increments both remain positive, indicating that investors are leaning bullishly.
- XRP’s OI surged nearly 10% to $1.86 billion, its highest level since February 6. Combined with positive funding rates, this suggests investors are redeploying capital on bullish bets. Open interest also increased significantly in SOL, ADA and SUI futures.
- Bitcoin’s annualized 30-day implied volatility index (BVIV) fell to a two-week low of 55%, supporting continued gains in spot prices. Ethereum’s volatility is also declining. This stability contrasts with the wild swings in the U.S. Treasury market.
- Bitcoin puts remain more expensive than calls on Deribit, indicating lingering demand for downside protection. For ETH, the long put option premium has all but disappeared, suggesting a bullish reset.
- The block flow was characterized by demand for Bitcoin put spreads and Ethereum call spreads.
token talk
- The altcoin market also had a strong session on Friday. The US president-themed memecoin TRUMP surged more than 30% in 24 hours after announcing a “grand luncheon” with Donald Trump for 297 token holders.
- Artificial intelligence (AI) token Bittensor (TAO) and the Artificial Intelligence Super Intelligence Federation (FET) both rose 14% as investors continued to speculate on a broader market breakthrough.
- CoinMarketCap’s “Altcoin Season” index is currently at 40/100, the highest since January 9th.
- CoinDesk’s Compute Selection Index (CPUS) is the leading benchmark over the past 24 hours, gaining 6.5%. This was followed by the CoinDesk Memecoin Index (CDMEME) and the DeFi Select Index (DFX), which rose 4% and 3.7% respectively.
- One of the laggards over the past 24 hours is Guangzhou (CC). The institutional-focused Layer-1 network’s token is down 4%, bringing its losses over the past month to 11%.
