Bitcoin It last traded around $70,100, down 0.1% since midnight UTC.
The largest cryptocurrency has been stuck in a tight trading range between $71,700 and $69,000 over the past 48 hours as volatility begins to subside despite the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.
Oil prices rebounded to $100 a barrel on Thursday after reports that a sixth ship was attacked by Iran in the Strait of Hormuz, exacerbating concerns about global energy supplies.
However, the cryptocurrency market remains relatively calm. Hyperliquid’s HYPE token continued its rise to $40, up 2.5% since midnight, while MORPHO, ETHFI and XMR all recorded gains.
U.S. stock index futures continued to show weakness, with Nasdaq 100 and S&P 500 futures both down about 0.6% overnight. The U.S. dollar index (DXY) returned to 100 following the release of consumer price index (CPI) data on Wednesday, preventing any potential rate cuts.
Derivatives Positioning
- Cryptocurrency futures open interest (OI) increased by 2% in the past 24 hours to $102 billion.
- Bitcoin and Ethereum’s OI rose 2% and 4% respectively, while annualized perpetual funding rates and cumulative volume delta (CVD) remained flat to negative. This suggests that the recent increase in open interest is driven more by defensive bearish positions than aggressive long bets.
- Decentralized exchange Hyperliquid’s HYPE token is up 9% in 24 hours, extending its recent bull run. However, the rally has yet to spur demand for leveraged bets, as evidenced by futures OI, which remains steady near multi-month lows of around 40 million HYPE.
- Activity in Tether Gold (XAUT) continues to cool, with futures OI falling to 93.50 XAUT, the lowest level since February 28 and a significant decline from the March 2 high of 149.72K XAUT. This suggests that gold-related assets are slowly falling out of favor as spot gold’s rally stalls.
- The 30-day implied volatility indexes BVIV and EVIV for Bitcoin and Ethereum remained stable despite another rise in oil prices overnight and losses in U.S. stock futures.
- This firmness suggests traders are yet to see a meaningful shift in forward risk or cross-asset contagion across major cryptocurrencies.
- On Deribit, Bitcoin and Ethereum put options offer protection against market declines and continue to trade at a premium to call options. There is significant interest in $20,000 put options, betting that the spot price of BTC will fall below that level.
token talk
- Despite the risk-off environment in global markets, the altcoin market continues to show resilience.
- Decentralized finance (DeFi) token SKY is up 7.6% in the past 24 hours, while artificial intelligence-focused bittensor (TAO) is up about 4.5%.
- One coin that has failed to keep up with its peers is Midnight (NIGHT), a privacy coin set up by Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson. NIGHT is currently trading at $0.046, down 10% in the past 24 hours after listing on Binance on Tuesday where holders can sell.
- The altcoin-focused CoinDesk 80 (CD80) index was the best-performing benchmark over the past 24 hours, rising 2.5%, while the Bitcoin-focused CoinDesk 5 (CD5) gained just 0.9%.
- What’s next for the altcoin market depends on Bitcoin’s ability to break out of the current range above $74,000 with convincing volume, followed by a consolidation that will lead to investors turning to more speculative altcoins.
