Bitcoin and ether (ETH) both rose about 0.9% overnight, while the broader altcoin market lagged Thursday.
BTC was recently trading at $67,000 after a brief touch of $66,000 on Wednesday. Ether, at $1,970 after bouncing off $1,924, is struggling to breach the psychological $2,000 price level.
Volatility has decreased since the February 5 sell-off. Two weeks of consolidation had investors wondering if this was a calm before another stormy move lower, or if the market was setting a macroeconomic low before climbing back toward 2025 levels.
World Liberty Financial’s Mar-a-Lago forum on Wednesday failed to provide a bullish catalyst, despite the participation of CFTC Chairman Michael Selig and executives from companies including Goldman Sachs.
From a macro perspective, Bitcoin remains in a downtrend since hitting an all-time high of $126,600 in early October. It recorded a series of higher highs and lower lows, with periods of unstable consolidation between each major move.
Positioning of derivative products
- Market momentum has stabilized, with open interest remaining at $15.38 billion.
- This marks a transition from leverage cleaning to a stable floor.
- Retail confidence shows a subtle rebound, with funding rates moving from stable to positive (Binance back at 4%), while institutional conviction remains anchored with a three-month annualized basis persisting at 3%.
- The BTC options market has reached a 50/50 volume balance between calls and puts. While the 1-week delta skew of 25 has increased slightly to 12%, the term structure of implied volatility (IV) remains in short-term backwardation.
- The initial peak of the IV curve confirms that traders are still paying a “panic premium” for immediate protection, even as longer maturities stabilize near 49%.
- Data from Coinglass shows $218 million in liquidations over 24 hours, with a 77-23 split between long and short positions. BTC ($75 million), ETH ($53 million) and others ($22 million) were the leaders in terms of notional liquidations.
- Binance’s liquidation heatmap shows $67,400 as the base liquidation level to watch for in the event of a price rally.
Symbolic discussion
- The altcoin market is starting to suffer in a low liquidity trading environment.
- Actions of lost more than 10% of their value after being liquidated during Wednesday’s event in a classic “sell the news” move.
- Axie Infinity (AXS) is retesting its February 6 lows after falling 5.9% since midnight UTC.
- Lending platform Morpho’s native MORPHO token has now given back all of Wednesday’s gains, trading at $1.39 after losing 4.2% of its value overnight.
- As many as 97 of the top 100 cryptocurrencies, not including stablecoins or tokenized gold tokens, are in the red over the past 24 hours as the market remains in “extreme fear” territory.
- The Fear and Greed Index currently sits at 11/100, up from February’s low of 6/100.
