Bitcoin stalls below $70,000 while DOT, UNI lead altcoin surge

AI Summary4 min read

TL;DR

Bitcoin struggles below $70,000, trading range-bound, while altcoins like DOT and UNI surge due to specific catalysts. Market shows mixed signals with increased futures interest and lingering downside risks.

Key Takeaways

•Bitcoin remains range-bound between $62,500 and $71,100, cooling off after testing $70,000, with historical patterns suggesting potential volatility.
•Altcoins DOT and UNI led gains, up 21% and 15% respectively, driven by upcoming reward cuts and governance votes, while ATOM dropped over 6% highlighting liquidity fragility.
•Crypto futures open interest increased by 6.6% to nearly $100 billion, with ADA and ETH futures seeing significant growth, indicating fresh capital inflow and leveraged positions.
•Market indicators show calm with low implied volatility and stabilized funding rates, but options market bias for puts suggests lingering downside concerns.
•Token-specific movements include DOT's pre-halving surge, UNI's governance-driven rise, and ATOM's unexplained selloff, reflecting altcoin market vulnerabilities.

Amber traffic light (Jametlene Reskp/Unsplash) — BTC stalls near $70,000 (Jametlene Reskp/Unsplash modified by CoinDesk)

What to know:

BTC remains range-bound between $62,500 and $71,100 after testing $70,000.
DOT jumped 21% ahead of March’s 50% reward cut. UNI rose 15% on a governance vote to boost revenue capture.
ATOM dropped over 6%, underscoring the liquidity fragility in altcoins.

BTC remains range-bound between $62,500 and $71,100 after testing $70,000.
DOT jumped 21% ahead of March’s 50% reward cut. UNI rose 15% on a governance vote to boost revenue capture.
ATOM dropped over 6%, underscoring the liquidity fragility in altcoins.

Bitcoin BTC$68,144.77 cooled off in Asia hours on Thursday, trading at $68,600 after testing $70,000 during a ferocious U.S. session on Wednesday.

As February draws toward a close, the largest cryptocurrency remains in a trading range that has persisted since early in the month, having tested $62,500 on Tuesday and $71,100 to the upside on Feb. 15.

It's worth noting that bitcoin broke a similar trading range to the upside in January, trapping breakout traders before the price tumbled from $98,000 to $60,000 over the subsequent three weeks, forming a lower high in this recent bearish cycle.

A few tokens outshone the broader altcoin market. HYPE is up 4.3% since midnight UTC as it moves back toward $30, while privacy token decred (DCR) rose to its highest since November after adding 4%.

U.S. stock index futures are little changed, with NVIDIA's earnings report failing to generate sustained upside amid lingering concerns that AI valuation is overdone.

Derivatives positioning

Total crypto futures market open interest (OI) has increased by over 6.6% to nearly $100 billion. This is bigger than the increase in the total crypto market cap, indicating there's been an influx of fresh capital into the market.
ADA and ETH futures stand out with OI increases of 21% and 15%, respectively. Several other altcoins have seen increases of 9%.
Bitcoin's OI growth of over 3% appears largely due to the spot price gain.
BTC and ETH's 30-day implied volatility indices, BVIV and EVIV, remain near weekly lows, indicating market calm and supporting continued price gains.
Annualized perpetual funding rates for most tokens, including bitcoin and ether, have stabilized to slightly above zero, indicating a renewed bias for bullish, long bets.
On Deribit, bitcoin's price bounce triggered demand for call options at strikes ranging from $85,000 to $90,000. However, the overall options market continues to show a bias for puts, a sign that downside reservations still linger.
The $60,000 put option remains the most popular bet, with a notional open interest of over $1.4 billion.

Token talk

Layer-1 token DOT$1.6093 posted a 21% gain over the past 24 hours. While the move petered out in European hours, investors are showing appetite ahead of the network's reward halving coming in March.
Uniswap's governance token (UNI) also jumped, adding 15%. The move can be attributed to a new governance vote that proposes increasing the protocol’s revenue capture across several layer-2 networks.
One token that particularly underperformed was ATOM$1.9209, which lost more than 6%, with the selloff continuing into European hours. There is no clear bearish catalyst for the move, which reflects persistent altcoin vulnerability due to a lack of liquidity.
Crypto majors ADA$0.2933 and ether (ETH) rose by around 8.5% since Wednesday morning. The moves were intriguing because open interest for both assets increased, suggesting they was backed by leverage as opposed to spot buying, according to Coinalyze.

Blockchain investigator ZachXBT said a senior Axiom Exchange employee allegedly misused internal tools to access sensitive user data, track private wallets and potentially trade memecoins using inside information.
Axiom said it was “shocked and disappointed” by the allegations and removed access to those systems. It pledged to continue investigating and hold the responsible parties to account.
The claims highlight growing scrutiny of trading practices and data misuse in the crypto industry.

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