The crypto market showed signs of optimism during Monday’s Asian session, with bitcoin rising above $92,000 after spending the weekend stuck in a tight range below $90,000.
The largest cryptocurrency has now reversed Friday’s selloff and is near last week’s high of $94,200.
U.S. stock index futures also posted a gain from Sunday night’s open, up about 0.2% as the market anticipated an interest rate cut from the Federal Reserve on Wednesday, with the probability of a 25 basis point cut standing at about 87%, according to CME data.
While bitcoin and ether are up 3-4% in the last 24 hours, the altcoin market remains weak due to the lack of speculative catalysts fueling the action.
Positioning of derivative products
- BTC’s 30-day implied volatility index, BVIV, is holding at around 50%, showing no signs of panic ahead of the Fed’s impending decision.
- ASTER and ENA lead the growth of open interest in futures contracts linked to major tokens.
- Perpetual funding rates for major tokens including BTC and ETH continue to be positive, indicating a bias towards bullish leveraged bets.
- The positive bias could, however, be partly due to the unwinding of short positions in spot futures and carry arbitrage.
- On Deribit, bitcoin and ether puts continue to trade at higher prices than calls, a sign of lingering bearish fears.
- In the case of BTC, the $20,000 put is the second most popular options bet among the June 2026 expiration options.
- Block flows presented demand for BTC spreads and call strangles. In the case of ETH, call calendar spreads dominated the 24-hour flow.
Symbolic discussion
- The “altcoin season” indicator fell to an all-time high of 19/100 on Monday, highlighting how investors are refusing to speculate on tokens other than market leaders after a grueling sell-off over the past few months.
- This behavior is also demonstrated by comparing the CoinDesk 20 Index (CD20) with the CoinDesk 80 (CD80), the latter comprising a broader basket of altcoins.
- The CD20 has increased by 1.34% since December 1 while the CD80 has lost 1.37%.
- The memecoin and metaverse indices were the worst performing sectors of the year, down 53% and 62% respectively. It seems the market has moved on from viral memes and cartoon character non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
- One sector that continues to perform well is privacy coins, zcash. has made the most of the top 100 crypto tokens over the past 24 hours, rising 17% to compound a 600% year-to-date rally.
- The same cannot be said of the native token of its namesake’s data availability blockchain, which has lost more than 87% of its value this year following a lack of activity and a recent round of layoffs.
