Asia-session sell-off drags bitcoin, altcoins lower

Bitcoin BTC$91,688.01 and the wider crypto market succumbed to a wave of selling pressure during the Asia session, prompting a drop to about $91,530 at 10:00 a.m. UTC from around a local high of $93,750 at midnight.

The sell-off follows a failed attempt at breaking above $94,500 on Tuesday, the third in the past five weeks.

The altcoin market fared worse than bitcoin, with PENGU and XRP taking the brunt of the hit with declines of 6.5% and 3.5% since midnight.

Bitcoin is now trading firmly back in December’s range, which saw various spikes between $85,000 and $94,500, even as it extended the decline that started in October.

Wednesday’s drop reflects a rise in risk-off sentiment from traders. U.S. equities also fell in pre-market trading, with the Nadsaq 100 futures trading 0.32% lower since midnight.

Derivatives positioning

• Exchanges have liquidated crypto futures bets worth $465 million over the past 24 hours, with longs accounting for over 50% of the tally. This is in stark contrast to the pasta two days, when shorts faced the brunt of liquidations.
• Still, cumulative open interest (OI) in crypto futures listed worldwide remains steady above $143 billion, the highest in nearly two months, with moderately positive funding rates indicating a bullish positioning.
• OI in XRP, DOGE, SUI and ZEC fell 5%-6%. This is likely linked to profit-taking following recent price surges in these tokens.
• CME’s BTC futures show signs of green shoots, with OI rising from 100K BTC to 111K BTC since Dec. 30. Still, overall positioning remains light compared with a year ago, when OI stood at above 191K BTC.
• On Deribit, put skews for BTC and ETH continue to weaken, although bullishness is yet to emerge.
• BTC block flows show a mixed profile, with strangles suggesting a bullish volatility bias and call spreads indicating upside price expectations. In ETH’s case, straddle, also a volatility strategy, was the most preferred play.

Token talk

• Memecoins and privacy coins were Wednesday’s two worst performing sectors, with zcash ZEC$480.91 leading the privacy plight, dropping by 4.5% since midnight UTC.
• CoinDesk’s Memecoin Index (CDMEME) fell 1.5%, about twice as much as the CoinDesk 5 index, which measures the price of BTC, ETH, XRP, SOL and ADA.
• One glimmer of hope for the altcoin market is the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector, with total value locked (TVL) across the entire ecosystem rising by 0.17% over the past 24 hours despite assets moving to the downside, suggesting positive inflows, according to DefiLlama.
• CoinMarketCap’s “altcoin season” indicator is at 25/100, down slightly from last week’s high of 27 but considerably above December’s low of 14, suggesting signs of optimism in the altcoin market.
• One outlier from the move to the downside was TRX$0.2962, which remains in the black since midnight to add to a 1.2% gain over the past 24 hours.