Bitcoin remains near $75,000 as it hits a supply wall as institutional demand remains steady, with traders assessing progress in U.S.-Iran peace talks amid a two-week ceasefire.
The CoinDesk 20 Index (CD20) is up about 1.9% in the past 24 hours, compared to 1% for bitcoin, amid reports of a ceasefire extension, improving risk sentiment.
These increases come alongside a weaker U.S. dollar, which has fallen to its lowest level in nearly six weeks, and an easing in Treasury yields, conditions that often support cryptocurrency prices by reducing the relative attractiveness of holding cash. Gold also rose, reflecting a balance between risk appetite and hedging demand.
The context nevertheless remains tense. The US blockade of Iranian ports and Iran’s threats to disrupt shipping routes in the Persian Gulf and neighboring waterways continue to darken the outlook for the global economy.
Energy supply shocks have already started to fuel inflation expectations, a factor that could shift central bank policy and ripple through crypto markets.
Onchain data also shows that Bitcoin supply tends to appear when prices reach key cost basis levels for short-term holders. That’s around $76,800, a level that could act as resistance as investors cash out at breakeven.
Positioning of derivative products
- Crypto futures open interest (OI) rose 2.5% in the past 24 hours, even as trading volume fell 16% and liquidations fell 48% to $220 million.
- The divergence suggests traders are adding or holding positions despite a slowdown in activity, indicating accumulation of exposure without high conviction. The sharp decline in liquidations indicates reduced volatility and fewer forced exits.
- Among the largest tokens, XRP and DOGE stand out with OI increases of at least 3%, exhibiting a bullish combination of positive perpetual funding rate and OI-adjusted cumulative volume delta (CVD).
- DOGE has the most positive 24-hour CVD, indicating that buyers have been more aggressive in lifting bids and conducting trades.
- On the decentralized exchange Hyperliquide, commodity-linked perpetuals continue to do strong business and now represent 30% of the platform’s total notional open interest.
- Bitcoin and Ether’s 30-day implied volatility indices, BVIV and EVIV, continue to hover below their 200-day averages, indicating market calm.
- In the BTC options market, one-week implied volatility is now trading at a discount compared to realized or actual volatility. In other words, short-term options are now cheap. This type of setup often leads traders to take bullish bets on volatility via straddle/strang strategies that involve the purchase of calls and puts.
- Bitcoin and Ether options listed on Deribit continue to show a bias towards put options. The continued demand for downside hedges indicates that the sustainability of the recent rally is still in question.
Symbolic discussion
- CoW Swap, a decentralized exchange aggregator linked to the CoW protocol, suffered a Domain Name System (DNS) hijacking attack on Tuesday that redirected users to a malicious site and drained funds from connected wallets.
- The breach did not affect smart contracts or the protocol’s back-end systems. Instead, the attackers used social engineering to take control of the project’s domain registrar, allowing them to redirect cow.fi traffic to a cloned interface designed to capture wallet approvals.
- Losses appear limited to affected users rather than the protocol itself. Onchain data indicates that at least $1 million was lost, including a single wallet that lost 219 ETH.
- The COW token fell around 2.6% that day, with trading volume increasing as the news spread. Prices continued to fall in subsequent sessions and are now 11% lower.
- CoW DAO regained control of the cow.fi domain a little over half a day ago, but sentiment towards the protocol does not appear to have improved. The token is down another 6% since then.
