The crypto market continued to consolidate on Wednesday with crypto majors Bitcoin. and ether losing less than 1% while privacy tokens such as decred up 22%, DASH and XMR extended their market outperformance.
The overall crypto market cap declined 0.6% over the past 24 hours to $3.51 trillion, although it remains higher than on November 7, when it fell to $3.32 trillion.
A recent rise in volatility suggests a liquidity vacuum in the market persists following last month’s debt-driven explosion. This means that a news catalyst could cause significant swings in price action while the market remains paralyzed.
All eyes will be on the United States, where the government shutdown appears to be nearing its final stages. The government takeover could accelerate crypto policy changes and potentially dictate price action.
Positioning of derivative products
By Omkar Godbole
- Volmex’s BVIV index, which measures bitcoin’s 30-day implied volatility, remains high in the recent range, around 50%. Traders anticipate increased price turbulence in the near term due to low liquidity, macroeconomic concerns and put option buyers.
- Futures activity has been mixed, with tokens like HYPE, BCH, and SOL seeing 1-2% growth in open interest (OI) over the past 24 hours. Meanwhile, the OI in ETH, XRP, and BNB declined while BTC remained virtually stable.
- Annualized funding rates for BTC and ETH remain well below the 2025 average, indicating moderate demand for leverage and investor risk appetite.
- On the CME, the three-month annualized basis of SOL futures fell to 7%, the lowest since July, matching the premiums of BTC and ETH futures.
- On Deribit, options linked to BTC and ETH continue to show a bearish outlook in the short term.
- The block flows featured a trader selling a BTC put spread at the December expiration, while ether-linked call options, ranging from $4,000 to $7,000, were exercised.
Symbolic discussion
By Olivier Knight
- The altcoin market is showing signs of indecision on Wednesday after a volatile period that saw prices fall from crucial support levels on Friday to relative safety on Monday.
- The revival of privy coins continues to be the main narrative. Decreed showed a 22% gain during the sprint and monero also up sharply in the last 24 hours.
- There was also a notable 20% gain for canton (CC), the native token of the Canton Network blockchain, designed for institutions and backed by major banks.
- However, several of the biggest crypto tokens are in the red over the past 24 hours. Ether , and BNB are all down 1-2%. Solana showed more weakness with a downward trend of 3.6%.
- CoinMarketCap’s average Relative Strength Index (RSI) is 51.26/100, demonstrating that the market is neither oversold nor overbought and that a catalyst is needed to drive price action.
- The Fear and Greed Index, which analyzes market sentiment, falls back into scary territory at 26/100. It has been below 30 a few times over the past year, leading to a series of significant rebounds in March.
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