The crypto market rose on Friday. Bitcoin rose 1.25% since midnight UTC to trade at $77,250, and the CoinDesk 20 Index (CD20) added 0.7% with 14 members in the green.
The increase comes after Bitcoin found support at $75,000, a price it previously struggled to surpass, on Wednesday. It has now been stuck between $75,000 and $80,000 since April 19. Negative funding rates on futures exchanges indicate that traders are generally positioned for a decline.
U.S. stock index futures were little changed. Nasdaq 100 futures cooled after Big Tech’s weekly results, while S&P 500 futures are slightly in the black, up 5 points.
Precious metals fell, with gold and silver losing 1% and 0.7%, respectively, and the altcoin market was mixed; AXS and HYPE are up around 3%, but DeFi tokens MORPHO and AAVE are both in the red.
Positioning of derivative products
- Open interest in Bitcoin futures stands at $19 billion, roughly unchanged week-over-week, with speculative activity showing little conviction.
- Funding rates are generally negative on several sites, at around -2% annualized, with the exception of Deribit, which saw an increase to 37%. The three-month annualized base stands at 1.5%, also stable over the week, reflecting continued institutional caution.
- Options sentiment is bullish: put/call volume over the past 24 hours is 58% in favor of calls, and one-week delta skew has eased to 8.6% from 9.5%, indicating a moderation in demand for downside protection.
- The term structure of implied volatility is in contango, with an initial value of ~29% rising to ~45% by March 2027, suggesting that the market is pricing in longer-term uncertainty rather than immediate tail risk.
- CoinGlass data shows $149 million in liquidations over 24 hours, with a 30-70 split between long and short positions. BTC ($50 million) and ETH ($29 million) are leading in terms of notional liquidations.
- Binance’s liquidation heat map shows $75,400 as the base liquidation level to watch for in the event of a price decline.
Symbolic discussion
- The CoinDesk Memecoin Index (CDMEME) was the best-performing benchmark, rising 1.8%, followed by the CoinDesk Computing Select Index (CPUS), which added 1.4%.
- CoinDesk’s DeFi Select Index (DFX) has been lagging its peers and has remained unchanged recently despite general market optimism.
- Monad (MON) led the altcoin market on Friday, rising 6.7% over 24 hours. Notable gains were also seen for PENDLE, RAY and TAO, all up between 4.2% and 5.35%.
- The same cannot be said of the DeFi token linked to President Donald Trump’s family. This figure has fallen by more than 2.6% since midnight following a governance vote on symbolic blocks. It has now lost more than 77% since its introduction in September.
- CoinDesk’s Overnight Rate (CDOR), which tracks lending and borrowing rates on Aave, has returned to normal market conditions following the KelpDAO hack, a sign of strength in the DeFi sector.
