The crypto market is showing resilience on Thursday, with bitcoin trading little changed at $63,915 and ether dropping just 0.25% since midnight UTC after what might be seen as a difficult session for global risk assets on Wednesday.
The calm, however, masks erratic back-and-forth price swings around the Federal Reserve’s interest rate meeting that flushed out leveraged futures bets, triggering heavy liquidations.
While the rate remained unchanged, three committee members voted for an increase. Higher rates reduce the attractiveness of risky assets.
About $286 million in positions were liquidated in 24 hours, according to CoinGlass. Longs accounted for $186 million and shorts $100 million, a balance that signals a market that moved hard in both directions and settled back where it started.
Hours after the FOMC decision, Iran launched multiple ballistic missiles at U.S. troops, prompting President Donald Trump to vow to hit Iran “hard” in response.
Oil surged, erasing Monday’s declines, and U.S. equities fell. Still, S&P 500 and Nasdaq index futures are now slightly positive.
Derivatives positioning
- Crypto futures long/short ratio flips slightly bearish: The crypto futures long/short taker volume ratio has flipped slightly bearish, with shorts at 51%, according to Coinglass data. The market appears to be in stasis with both open interest (OI) and trading volume mostly unchanged from yesterday.
- Uniswap’s UNI among top performers: Uniswap’s UNI token is one of the best performers among the top 100 coins. Open interest in its futures, however, has pulled back to 65.80 million tokens, suggesting an unwind of positions. The 24-hour cumulative volume delta (CVD) isn’t encouraging either. The negative print points to leadership among those shorting futures at market orders rather than passive limit orders.
- Bitcoin open interest holds steady: Bitcoin’s OI remains around 750K BTC, as it has since early June. In other words, participation in the coin’s price bounce remains limited. Ether’s OI, too, has pulled back to under 14 million tokens from a six-week high of 14.53 million ETH. This again shows limited demand for leverage despite ether outperforming bitcoin this month.
- Bear dominance in the altcoin market: Most of the 25 largest coins, except BTC, ADA, TRX, CRO, ZEC, have negative 24-hour OI adjusted CVDs. It seems the altcoin market price action is still dominated by bears.
- Bitcoin’s BVIV drops below 38%: Bitcoin’s BVIV, the 30-day implied volatility index, has fallen back below 38%, nearing levels that have historically served as floors. This calls for caution, as volatility is mean-reverting and can snap back higher from the floor.
- BTC and ETH calls in demand: Options listed on Deribit show BTC calls at strikes $70,000 and $75,000 leading the 24-hour volume rankings. Calls offer an asymmetric upside exposure in the underlying asset (like a lottery ticket). The same is true for ether: The top five most traded bets are all call options.
Token talk
- Injective was the 24-hour standout on Thursday, rising 6.95% as DeFi tokens outperformed. Uniswap (UNI) added 4.46% and FET recovered 3.28% after a bruising week.
- Zcash (ZEC) extended its recent run, adding 1.54% since midnight UTC to $474, continuing to outpace privacy coin peers. Monero (XMR) gained 0.4%.
- Hyperliquid (HYPE) slipped 0.47% to $53.64, extending a retreat from last month’s highs that has now unwound roughly 30% from its peak.
- Lighter (LIT) gave back 4.22% over 24 hours, though it is up 0.50% since midnight, suggesting sellers may be running out of steam after a correction that has erased nearly 25% from its July peak.
- Jupiter (JUP) fell 1.48% since midnight after a brief recovery on Wednesday, with daily trading volume continuing to dwindle to $23 million despite regularly topping $50 million earlier this year.
CORRECT (July 30, 11:30 UTC): Removes reference to Microsoft and Meta due to report from last paragraph of introduction.
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