Bitcoin is trading around $77,700, up 1.8% since midnight UTC, after rebounding from $75,650, a price that had served as an upper barrier during last week’s rally.
The rebound suggests a bullish shift, with $75,650 now acting as support — a level that could prove crucial if bitcoin is to make another attempt at breaking through $80,000.
Ether (ETH) is at $2,344, and its chart is showing more bearish signals than bitcoin’s, having made a series of lower highs since April 17.
The broader market is higher, as U.S. investors anticipate a slew of tech company earnings. Alphabet (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), Amazon (AMZN) and Meta (META) are all due to report after the closing bell on Wednesday.
Nasdaq 100 futures are up by 0.25% in pre-market trading.
Derivatives positioning
- Bitcoin futures open interest (OI) fell to 715.60K BTC, the lowest since April 9 and notably below the monthly high of 800K BTC. The decline shows steady de-risking as the spot price rally slows near $80,000, and some analysts point to potential for a continued bear market.
- OI has largely held steady across ETH, SOL, and XRP over the past 24 hours.
- Traders, meanwhile, continue to deploy capital in DOGE futures, lifting the OI by 18% in a single day to 16.06 billion tokens, the highest since Oct. 10.
- With perpetual funding rates steady at around an annualized 4% and the highest OI-adjusted cumulative volume delta among majors, the DOGE activity appears to be driven more by fresh directional positioning than overheated leverage, pointing to sustained bullish interest rather than a crowded, fragile trade.
- The Binance-listed SHIB futures are flashing a similar bullish setup. Rising activity in these non-serious tokens suggests a build-up of speculative froth, a pattern often seen ahead of broader market pullbacks.
- The market for crude oil futures listed on Binance is also heating up, with open interest up 27% as prices top $100, presenting a headwind for risk assets, including cryptocurrencies.
- The slide in bitcoin’s 30-day implied volatility index, BVIV, continues, and it’s now probing three-month lows below 42%. It shows the market has become desensitized to macro risks such as an Iran war and elevated oil prices. The ether volatility index, EVIV, is displaying similar trends.
- The story in the Deribit-listed options market remains the same: Puts for both BTC and ETH remain pricier than calls, indicating downside concerns. These reservations are more pronounced in bitcoin than ether.
Token talk
- The altcoin market showed signs of strength on Wednesday, buoyed by previously oversold conditions.
- The CoinDesk Memecoin Select Index (CDMEME) is the best-performing benchmark, adding 2.3% since midnight UTC, while the DeFi Select Index (DFX) gained by 2.2%.
- The bitcoin dominant CoinDesk 20 (CD20) and CoinDesk 5 (CD5) both rose 1.7%.
- Popular memecoins DOGE, PEPE and FLOKI were among the top-gaining altcoins in the CoinDesk 100 (CD100), advancing 10%, 6.3% and 6.2%, respectively.
- CoinMarketCap’s “Altcoin Season” indicator ticked up to 41/100 from 39/100 overnight, demonstrating relative strength in the sector.