Bitcoin (BTC) price rangebound in thin volume as traders rotate into metals: Crypto Markets Today
The crypto market extended its narrow trading range into Tuesday, restricted by a low volume and a low-liquidity environment.
Daily trading volume for bitcoin fell by 25% to $35 billion over the past 24 hours and ether volume shrank 21% to $24.6 billion.
A decline in volatility can be attributed to general crypto market apathy, which has occurred alongside a euphoria-inducing rally in precious metals.
Gold currently trades at $5,085 after making a series of record highs over the past week, while silver is up by more than 57% since the turn of the year as traders flock to haven assets.
The rotation into metals can be seen clearly on derivatives exchange HyperLiquid, with silver futures now nearing $1 billion in daily volume. That’s more than all other assets except bitcoin and ether, although it’s worth noting that funding rates are displaying a negative skew to suggest traders are shorting into strength as opposed to buying a potential top.
With U.S. President Donald Trump issuing fresh 25% tariffs on South Korea on Monday following a political jousting match with the European Union over Greenland last week, risk-off sentiment may well persist further
Derivatives
- Over $270 million in leveraged crypto futures bets have been liquidated by exchanges in 24 hours, with bearish plays (shorts) accounting for most of the tally. The figures show traders were positioned for a deeper, market-wide drop following last week’s 7% decline in bitcoin and have been caught off guard by the bounce from $86,000 to nearly $88,000.
- Volmex’s 30-day bitcoin and ether implied volatility indices remain near multimonth lows, indicating no signs of panic or fear even as flows and technical charts paint a bearish picture.
- Open interest (OI) in futures tied to Hyperliquid’s HYPE token surged by 30% to over 57 million HYPE, nearing December’s record high of 57.44 million HYPE. The decentralized exchange is said to have regained market share from rivals Aster and Lighter.
- OI in ETH, SOL, XRP and DOGE has risen 2% to 3% while BTC’s OI has held flat.
- Annualized perpetual funding rates for most majors remain moderately positive, a sign of bullish bias, but nothing out of ordinary. Rates for TRX and DOGE have flipped negative, indicating a dominance of shorts.
- On Deribit, BTC and ETH puts continue to trade pricier than calls, a sign of lingering concerns for a decline. According to some observers, downside protection is now a crowded trade and calls look relatively cheap for those with a bullish market thesis.
- Bearish directional positioning such as put spreads and volatility bets, straddles and strangles, cumulatively account for nearly 50% of all BTC block trades over 24 hours. In ETH’s case, traders preferred the iron condor, a strategy to profit from a potential range-bound market.
Token talk
- Impressive volume on the silver futures market has buoyed HYPE, HyperLiquid’s native token, by more than 22% in the past 24 hours as trading volume more than doubled to $510 million.
- Privacy coins zcash and monero increased by 4% and 3%, respectively, since midnight UTC, outperforming bitcoin and crypto majors ETH, XPR and SOL, all of which fell 0.4%-1%.
- Pump.fun’s native PUMP token experienced significant, surging by 14.5% since midnight as traders and token traders attempted to extract value from the memecoin market despite broader market stability.
- January trading volume on Pump.fun has already surpassed $10 billion, reaching its highest level since June with four days of the month still to go, according to DefiLlama.
- The bitcoin dominant CoinDesk 20 Index (CD20) is little changed since the start of the year while the CoinDesk 80 (CD80), heavily weighted to altcoins, has risen by 3.6%.
