The crypto market is slowly trading in the range it has held for two months, with bitcoin changing hands at $69,000 and ether (ETH) at $2,130.
The price range dates back to February 6, with several highs between $72,000 and $75,000 and lows between $62,000 and $65,000.
A similar two-month trend occurred between November and January before a price breakout, leading analysts to suggest a similar scenario could occur this time around.
Much still hinges on the conflict in Iran, with US President Donald Trump’s threats of “erasure” having so far fallen on deaf ears. Brent crude oil remains at $107 per barrel, which will have a knock-on effect on inflation over the year unless it falls.
Positioning of derivative products
- The market continues to consolidate as bitcoin open interest (OI) stabilizes at $16.7 billion, which is little changed from last week and indicates that speculative activity remains stable.
- Funding rates have moved into a neutral range of 0% to 6%, following a period of negative funding that likely fueled the initial recovery in relief through short sale covering.
- With the three-month annualized basis also changing little over the week, institutional conviction remains cautious, suggesting that while immediate downside pressure has eased, the big players are not yet positioning themselves for a major breakout.
- Options sentiment stabilizes as call dominance reaches 47% and one-week skew falls to 16% from 19% last week. However, the initial backwardation in the implied volatility term structure confirms that traders are still prioritizing immediate downside protection over long-term growth expectations.
- Data from CoinGlass shows $163 million in liquidations over 24 hours, with a 60-40 split between long and short positions. BTC ($64 million), ETH ($35 million) and others ($16 million) were the leaders in terms of notional liquidations.
- Binance’s liquidation heatmap shows $69,500 as the base level to watch for in case of a price rally.
Symbolic discussion
- The altcoin market has been surprisingly buoyant of late, despite broader market apathy. Since midnight UTC, privacy tokens zcash (ZEC) and dash (DASH) are up 6.7% and 3.1%, respectively, with notable gains also seen for FET, PUMP, and RENDER.
- The bitcoin-dominated CoinDesk 20 Index (CD20) gained 0.3% on Tuesday, while being outpaced by the CoinDesk Memecoin Index (CDMEME) and the CoinDesk Computing Select Index (CPUS), a sign of the relative strength of altcoins compared to crypto majors.
- The recent rebound in altcoins has not been uniform, however. AI tokens, privacy tokens and others HYPE and ALGO performed well, while other market segments fell. Over the past 90 days, Ethena (ENA) has lost 66% of its value, while TIA, LDO, SUI and ARB have all fallen more than 50%.
- This is a divergence from previous cycles, when altcoins moved in unison. It now appears that the market has matured to a point where assets could evolve based on their real impact, as opposed to hype and overzealous roadmaps.
