BTC price climbs to highest level in four weeks as altcoins lag

The crypto market is in a buoyant mood on Monday after bitcoin BTC$92,965.81 rose to $93,350, its highest level since Dec. 11, before giving back some of those gains.

The bulk of the move occurred at midnight UTC, around the time bitcoin futures trading opened on the CME exchange, which created a “gap” between $90,500 and $91,550.

These gaps typically get filled over the course a few days, meaning the price will likely return to the $90,500 level at some point since week.

Traders are mainly focusing on bitcoin as opposed to altcoins, with the industry’s largest asset rising by 1.33% since midnight, while the CoinDesk Meme (CDMEME) and Metaverse (MTVS) indexes lost 6.4% and 2.3%, respectively over the same period.

Equities and precious metals also rose overnight to suggest a risk-on approach following the recent U.S. action in Venezuela.

Derivatives positioning

• Exchanges have liquidated leveraged crypto futures bets worth $260 million in the past 24 hours, with shorts accounting for most of the action. In other words, leverage was skewed bearish and caught off guard by the uptick in prices.
• Open interest (OI) in BTC, its offshoot BCH$651.25 as well as XRP and BNB has increased between 2% to 5% in 24 hours, while ETH, SOL, DOGE and ZEC have seen flat to negative OI. These diverging trends indicate that investors’ risk appetite has improved only for a select few coins.
• Apart from BCH, BTC, BNB, XLM, the OI-adjusted cumulative volume delta for other top 20 coins has been negative for the past 24 hours, pointing to net selling pressure in the market.
• BTC’s annualized perpetual funding rates have topped 10% in a sign of increasing demand for bullish exposure. Rates for several altcoins continue to remain below zero.
• On Deribit, bias for BTC puts weakened across the board, with traders chasing calls at the $100,000 strike.
• Block flows featured put spreads in BTC and call spreads in ETH.

Token talk

• Despite traders focusing on bitcoin, a number of tokens outperformed the broader market on Monday.
• This included newly-issued LIT, the native token of perpetual exchange Lighter, which has risen 3.9% since midnight, while AI-focused FET continued a weekend rally with a 7.4% rise since midnight.
• Warning signs linger, though, with the average crypto relative strength index (RSI) flashing 58/100 as it enters “overbought” territory. This suggests a short-term drop is on the cards as those in profit likely lock in their gains.
• Some tokens failed to capitalize on the overnight surge: Zcash ZEC$494.34 is down by 2.5% since midnight while memecoins doge (DOGE) and pepe (PEPE) lost 1.4% and 4.5% respectively.
• The fractured performance across the altcoin market shows two things; indecision from traders and a lingering lack of liquidity that has blighted the crypto market since October’s liquidation event.