Bitcoin $BTC$79,394.02 is trading around $79,300, on Monday having lost 1.3% of its value since midnight UTC. It spent the weekend trapped in a tight trading range after failing to break out above $81,400.
Monday’s pullback coincides with a jump in U.S. equity futures, with Nasdaq 100 futures up 0.3% since midnight, extending last week’s divergence. The market is closed today for the national Labor Day holiday.
Altcoins did most of the heavy lifting over the weekend and are now handing back a portion of their gains. Bittensor ($TAO), kaspa $KAS$0.03524, internet computer (ICP) and celestia (TIA) all rose by more than 12% over the past 24 hours, but the bulk of those moves landed before midnight UTC. Since then $TAO is up 0.4%, chainlink $LINK$13.26 is up 1%, and $NEAR Protocol $NEAR$2.3548 has slipped 1.5%.
Derivatives positioning
- Sentiment turns bearish: The taker buy-sell volume ratio in crypto futures is leaning short, with bearish bets accounting for 51.6% of the flow. That marks a shift from Friday’s bullish reading. The likely catalyst is the weekend escalation of hostilities between the U.S. and Iran, along with Fed rate-increase fears, though those concerns appear overdone.
- $BTC futures see capital exodus: Capital continues to exit bitcoin futures. Open interest (OI) has dropped to 670K $BTC from 709K on Friday, the least since March 23, according to data source Coinglass. Annualized perpetual funding rates are fast approaching zero, losing their bullish bias, as is evident from recent readings of 8% to 10%.
- Ether, solana mirror the move: The ether and solana markets are displaying a similar dynamic.
- $XRP open interest cools: Open interest in $XRP futures has also cooled, to 2.29 billion tokens, the lowest since Aug. 7 and down notably from a mid-month peak of 2.78 billion. The message is clear, capital is exiting, leaving the $XRP price choppy between $1.35 and $1.45.
- Smaller tokens buck the trend: Smaller coins are having a moment. Open interest in $WLD increased 11% alongside a 13% rise in the spot price, a combination typically read as confirming an uptrend. $WLD also has the highest 24-hour OI-adjusted cumulative volume delta (CVD) among smaller tokens, a positive reading that means buyers have been more aggressive, trading at market orders rather than passive limit orders.
- CVD splits across majors: On CVD among majors, $LINK, TRX, CC, SUI and $ZEC sit on the positive side, while $BTC, ETH, $XRP, SOL, $NEAR, $XMR, ADA and others sit on the negative side.
- Volatility signals calm: Bitcoin’s and ether’s 30-day implied volatility indexes continue to project market calm, hovering near recent lows.
- Options flow diverges by asset: In Deribit-listed options, 24-hour volume rankings show the $78,000 and $80,000 puts, both expiring Sept. 25, as the most popular bets, while the rest of the top five are calls. A put option is used to hedge against downside risk in the underlying asset, in this case, $BTC. In ether’s case, the picture is the exact opposite, with calls dominating the rankings.
Token talk
- Bittensor ($TAO) led the large-cap tokens over the past 24 hours with a 13% advance to $266 on $568 million of volume, though the move has slowed since midnight UTC, adding just 0.4%. $TAO is up 16.4% over seven days.
- The sharpest decliner on the day is Jupiter (JUP), down 9% at $0.2514 with no visible catalyst. The Solana DEX aggregator’s token has been under persistent pressure since breaking below the $0.33 level of support last November.
- Kaspa $KAS$0.03524 climbed 12.75% over 24 hours and 24.8% on the week to 3.418 cents, but on only $17.6 million of volume against a $947 million market cap, which makes the move look thin.
- The privacy trade is unwinding unevenly. Dash DASH$67.90 fell 5.3% to $67.56 since midnight, trimming a weekly gain that still stands at 63%, while zcash ($ZEC) eased 1.74% to $1,206 and monero ($XMR) held roughly flat.
- Arbitrum ARB$0.1656 shed double digits over 24 hours to 17.17 cents after nearly doubling on the week, the largest one-day loser among liquid mid-caps.
- Chainlink $LINK$13.26 was one of the few names retaining a bid, up 1% since midnight UTC at $13.37 and up 18.6% on the week.
Crypto Markets Today Related Assets Bitcoin$79,394.020.62% Chainlink$13.268.03% Kaspa$0.03516.03%
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