Cryptocurrency markets saw an uptick on Friday. Bitcoin is currently priced at $77,250, reflecting a 1.25% increase since midnight UTC. Meanwhile, the CoinDesk 20 index added 0.7% with 14 of its assets showing positive movement.
This upward trend followed Bitcoin’s stabilization around $75,000 earlier in the week—a threshold that had seemed particularly challenging to break. Since April 19th, Bitcoin has been fluctuating between $75,000 and $80,000. Interestingly, the negative funding rates on futures exchanges suggest that many traders are leaning towards bearish sentiment.
In the realm of US stock index futures, not much has changed. While Nasdaq 100 futures dipped following some disappointing earnings from major tech firms, S&P 500 futures edged up by 5 points, remaining slightly positive.
On the commodities front, precious metals like gold and silver experienced declines of 1% and 0.7%, respectively. The altcoin market presented a mixed picture; AXS and HYPE both saw gains of around 3%, while DeFi tokens MORPHO and AAVE struggled.
Positioning of derivatives
- The open interest for Bitcoin futures remains steady at $19 billion, showing a lack of definitive speculative activity.
- Funding rates are mostly in the negative, hovering around -2% annually, except for Deribit, where rates surged to 37%. Over three months, the annualized rate is flat at 1.5%, indicating a cautious stance among market participants.
- Sentiment surrounding options trades is somewhat optimistic. In the last day, the put/call volume favored calls by 58%, and the one-week delta skew eased from 9.5% to 8.6%, pointing to a moderate need for downside protection.
- The implied volatility structure is in contango; rates for the near term rose from about 29% to 45% as of March 2027, signaling that participants are anticipating longer-term uncertainty rather than immediate risks.
- As per CoinGlass, the liquidation volume for the last 24 hours was $149 million, split 30-70 between long and short positions, with Bitcoin ($50 million) and Ethereum ($29 million) dominating nominal liquidations.
- According to Binance’s liquidation heatmap, $75,400 is a key liquidation level to watch when prices drop.
Token talk
- The CoinDesk Memecoin Index was the highest performer, increasing by 1.8%, followed closely by the CoinDesk Computing Select Index, which went up by 1.4%.
- Conversely, CoinDesk’s DeFi Select Index has not followed suit, showing no change despite the overall market optimism.
- Monad (MON) emerged as a standout in the altcoin sector on Friday, gaining 6.7% in just one day, with other tokens like PENDLE, RAY, and TAO also making gains between 4.2% and 5.35%.
- However, the same cannot be said for WLFI, a DeFi token linked to President Trump’s family, which dropped over 2.6% since midnight after a governance vote regarding its lockup, marking a stark decline of more than 77% since its debut in September.
- The CoinDesk Overnight Rates (CDOR), which monitor borrowing costs on Aave, have returned to typical market conditions following the KelpDAO hack, indicating resilience within the DeFi space.
