Bitcoin rose 0.3% to $58,700 on Wednesday, showing some strength after hitting $57,700, the lowest point since September 2024, shortly after midnight UTC.
Ether (ETH) is at $1,580, having also seen a slight relief bounce since 01:00 UTC.
U.S. stock index futures have been down since midnight UTC, with S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 futures in the red by 0.2% to 0.4%.
Risk assets such as crypto and technology stocks have struggled in recent weeks as fears of looming inflation have sent the U.S. dollar higher and traders cautious.
The altcoin market has been hit the hardest as it lacks liquidity and demand to cope with precipitous downward moves and liquidation cascades.
Positioning of derivative products
- A total of $395 million in crypto futures bets were liquidated in 24 hours, with bull plays accounting for the majority of the total. This is not surprising given BTC’s fall to a low of $58,000 earlier today.
- The real story is crude futures listed on crypto exchanges. They saw liquidations worth $15 million, the fifth largest total among all tokens. The figure shows how popular TradFi trading has become on crypto exchanges.
- BTC futures open interest (OI) increased from 740,000 BTC a day ago to 768,000 BTC. While the influx of money is encouraging, it is unclear whether the bias favors bullish or bearish bets. For example, annualized funding rates hover around 5%, suggesting a bullish bias, while the 24-hour cumulative volume delta is negative, suggesting that bears are more aggressive and trading with market orders rather than passive limit orders.
- OI gold perpetual futures reached an all-time high of 222,000 XAU tokens. This comes as the metal’s spot price shows a deadly bearish crossover, signaled by the 50-day simple moving average crossing below the 200-day SMA. Major gold ETFs are showing a similar downtrend.
- The 30-day implied volatility indices for Bitcoin and Ether are stable after June’s double-digit gains. The Bitcoin index, BVIV, is now stuck between the 200-day average as resistance and the 50-day average as support. A break above the 200-day MA could mean further turbulence and a deeper price decline.
- On Deribit, puts on Bitcoin and Ether remain more expensive than calls across all time frames as traders seek downside protection.
- Key flows at the Paradigm OTC desk showed demand for September expiry bitcoin set at the $50,000 strike price. It’s a safe bet that prices could drop below $50,000 by the end of the third quarter. Meanwhile, someone exercised a SOL call option at the $86 strike price. The token is currently trading around $75.
Symbolic discussion
- While the broader altcoin market is struggling, the Solana-based DeFi token Jupiter (JUP) has seen a trend reversal, up 11% since midnight UTC with a 55% increase in daily trading volume.
- The increase is accompanied by an increase in total value locked (TVL), with the protocol, a decentralized exchange (DEX) aggregator. TVL increased to over 20 million SOL from 13.9 million in May.
- Stellar Lumens (XLM) extended its gains, rising from $0.168 on Sunday to $0.196, an increase of 17%.
- Strong performance from a few select altcoins kept CoinMarketCap’s “Altcoin Season” index at around 48/100 after the end of June, with little change despite sector weakness.
- AI tokens have been on the receiving end of this weakness. Bittensor (TAO) lost 2.5% on Wednesday and is now down more than 30% since June 15.
