Cryptocurrency volatility cooled on Friday, with bitcoin stuck between $77,500 and $78,500 since midnight UTC.
The moderate price action follows a failed attempt to break out near $80,000 on Wednesday, although the broader trend remains constructive, with BTC price rising through April and printing a series of higher highs and higher lows.
Ether (ETH) matched Bitcoin’s performance on Friday, losing around 0.9% since midnight while remaining in a tight trading range.
U.S. stock futures were mixed, with Nasdaq 100 futures rising 0.5% on strong earnings in the technology sector and S&P 500 futures losing 3 basis points.
The Dollar Index (DXY) was little changed despite comments from US President Donald Trump confirming that the ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon has been extended by three weeks. The dollar fell about 0.5% when the ceasefire was first announced on April 16.
Positioning of derivative products
- Bitcoin futures open interest declined by over 6% to 744.3K BTC in 24 hours, as the spot price rally returns to $77,500 after failing to reach $80,000 earlier this week. These moves suggest that traders are unwinding their leveraged positions and that bullish momentum is cooling in the near term.
- BTC’s 24-hour open interest-adjusted cumulative volume delta has turned negative, meaning sellers are reaching the supply more than buyers are lifting the supply during the period. Annualized perpetual funding rates remain slightly negative, indicating the dominance of bearish short positions.
- Futures contracts tied to other major cryptocurrencies, such as Ether (ETH), Solana (SOL), and XRP (XRP), have seen lackluster trading over the past 24 hours.
- Privacy-focused Zcash (ZEC), however, stands out. Open interest in its futures contracts climbed nearly 7.5% to a 10-day high of 1.88 million tokens, while 24-hour trading volume jumped 80%.
- The token also has one of the strongest positive CVD results alongside positive funding rates, indicating sustained aggressive buying interest and overall bullish positioning.
- Although BTC and ETH prices are under pressure, investors likely see this as a brief pause in the rally. This is evident from the continued decline in Bitcoin’s 30-day implied volatility index, BVIV. It fell to 42%, the lowest since January 31. The ETH index fell below 65%, also the lowest since February 1.
- On Deribit, Bitcoin and Ether risk reversals continue to show a bias for put options across all time frames. It shows persistent covering to the downside by market participants and selling of volatility to the upside via covered calls.
Symbolic discussion
- The CoinDesk Memecoin Index (CDMEME) was the only benchmark in the black on Friday, posting a gain of less than 0.2% while the DeFi Select Index (DFX) and Computing Select Index (CPUS) lost around 1% each.
- lido DeFi tokens (LDO) and led the sector’s losses, falling between 3% and 3.8% since midnight UTC as sentiment continues to suffer following last weekend’s $290 million KelpDAO exploit.
- Privacy coin zcash (ZEC) gave up 0.5% of its gains on Friday, but remains up more than 7% in the past 24 hours, supported by Thursday’s trading on popular retail trading app Robinhood.
- CoinMarketCap’s “Altcoin Season” index rose to 39/100 on Friday as investors began making speculative bets while Bitcoin remained range-bound.
