Bitcoin was trading at $69,500 mid-morning in Europe after giving up Tuesday’s gains following a rejection at $71,750.
The largest cryptocurrency has fallen 0.55% since midnight UTC, a loss overshadowed by several altcoins, along with zcash (ZEC) and aave. down 4.5% and 2.1% respectively.
Gold and the dollar were little changed, while U.S. stock index futures added 0.15%.
Price developments are still driven by the US-Israeli war against Iran, which continues to rage even after US President Donald Trump’s contradictory comments on Tuesday.
As a result, oil remained volatile, falling as low as $81 a barrel on Tuesday before rebounding to $89 during Wednesday’s European session.
Positioning of derivative products
- Bitcoin’s inability to build momentum above $70,000 has proven costly for bulls holding leveraged long bets. Over the past 24 hours, more than $220 million in crypto futures bets have been liquidated, with long positions accounting for the majority of the total.
- Open interest (OI) on dollar-denominated Bitcoin futures on major exchanges fell to 226,000 BTC from 233,000 BTC. This indicates that the overnight price drop did not really allow traders to short the falling market. The same dynamics are seen in solana (SOL) and ether (ETH) futures.
- Activity on XRP futures continues to grow, with open interest reaching 1.74 billion tokens, the highest since February 23.
- Generally speaking, OI has declined in most alt tokens over the past 24 hours, a sign of further capital outflows.
- TRX, CC, and XMR are distinguished by a bullish combination of positive annualized funding rates and cumulative volume delta (CVD), indicating active buying in the futures market. Most other coins have flat to negative funding rates and CVDs.
- Bitcoin’s 30-day implied volatility index, BVIV, fell for the third day in a row, but its main averages – the 50-, 100- and 200-day measures – are now on top of each other. This is a bullish signal, which means volatility could increase.
- The same goes for the Ether Volatility Index. Additionally, Wall Street’s VIX index is up 4% to 26%, indicating high stock volatility that could spill over into cryptocurrencies.
- On the CME, open interest in BTC futures fell to $7.39 billion, the lowest since September 2024, alongside a similarly sharp decline in ETH futures. Clearly, institutional appetite for both tokens remains low.
- On Deribit, BTC and ETH protective puts continue to trade at higher prices than calls, although demand for downside protection has weakened significantly since early last month. On decentralized exchange Derive, traders are increasingly betting on a rally above $80,000, alongside put selling on Deribit, Derive told CoinDesk.
Symbolic discussion
- Tokenized Internet Computer AI (ICP) dominated a mixed sector of altcoins on Wednesday, rising more than 8% after its listing on Korean exchange Upbit. Daily trading volume rose from $65 million to $267 million after the listing as retail investors flocked.
- Continuing the theme of AI, surged, recording a 6% gain over the past 24 hours.
- AI’s positive performance can be attributed in part to a rare blog post from Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who argues that AI is an industrial construct comparable to electrification.
- The rest of the altcoin market retreated on Wednesday, with decentralized finance (DeFi) token curve (CRV) and Jupiter (JUP) losing 6.5% each over the past 24 hours.
- Cryptocurrency sentiment is slowly improving as the Fear and Greed Index is at 25/100, moving into “fear” territory after more than a month stuck in the “extreme fear” zone.
- This rise is a result of the relative strength of the crypto market since the start of the Iran war, with bitcoin and the market as a whole. outperformance of precious metals and US stocks since March 1.
