The crypto market is a sea of red as prolonged trade tensions and tight liquidity in the U.S. financial system increase demand for safe-haven Treasury securities.
Bitcoin is below its 200-day SMA and trading near $104,500, representing a 6% decline in 24 hours. Other major tokens such as Ether , Solana , ,BNB It has decreased from 8% to 12%.
The CoinDesk 20 index fell nearly 9% to 3,389 points. Meanwhile, the Crypto Fear & Greed index is hovering at 22, indicating extreme fear among investors for the first time since at least the April market turmoil.
The decline represents a tactical liquidity event layered on top of macro uncertainty, said BRN head of research Timothy Misiel.
“Positioning should be defensive, reducing leverage, keeping capital depleted, and using spot buys incrementally from $104,000 to $108,000 as liquidity allows,” Misir said in a note to CoinDesk.
“While the structural narrative (ETF adoption, government bonds, network fundamentals) remains intact, today’s environment rewards discipline: protect core BTC, be cautious with ETH and alternatives, and wait for confirmation of sustained buy-side flows before re-establishing directional risk,” he added.
Positioning of derivatives
- The BTC futures market has shown stability, with open interest holding steady at around $25.7 billion and a solid three-month annualized return in the 5-6% range. Much different than before, funding rates are now flat across all major venues.
- The BTC options market is showing extreme and contradictory sentiment. The 24-hour put/call volume favors the puts with a 45-55 split, indicating a slightly bearish trend. However, this is overshadowed by the sharp increase in the 1-week 25 delta skew of approximately 21%. This unusually high positive skew indicates aggressive positioning and huge premiums being paid for short-term call options, indicating strong confidence in short-term upside despite aggressive demand for downside protection.
- According to Coinglass data, 24-hour liquidations totaled $1.2 billion, with a 78-22 split between longs and shorts. ETH ($414 million), BTC ($268 million) and Others ($109 million) were the leaders in nominal liquidations. Binance’s liquidation heatmap shows $103,800 as the core liquidation level to monitor in case of a price drop.
token talk
Written by Oliver Knight
- Cryptocurrency markets across the board were reeling on Friday after continued declines, with several assets hitting multi-month lows.
- Ether has fallen more than 7% in the past 24 hours, trading at $3,730, while BNB, LINK, SUI, and others are all down more than 10%.
- The move was spurred by the liquidation of another $1.2 billion worth of derivatives positions ($840 million on the long side), adding to the woes from last weekend, when $19 billion was liquidated.
- The S&P 500 index has lost 3.3% of its value over the past week, and the stock market has also slumped, and this decline has also been reflected in the less liquid and more speculative cryptocurrency market.
- Much of the altcoin market depends on the direction of Bitcoin. If it can break above the psychological support level of $100,000 and, perhaps more importantly, the $98,000 level, it could give momentum to the altcoin’s recovery.
- If these levels are breached, onlookers will be left wondering if the crypto market is heading back into a deadly bear market, but the cycle that many analysts have suggested will not occur this time due to institutional inflows into crypto ETFs and purchasing power from digital asset treasury companies (DATs).