Bitcoin Surges Past $115K as Markets Eye Fed Rate Cut

The crypto markets experienced a much-needed bounce on Monday, with bitcoin BTC$115,322.52 rising to $115,200 while ether ETH$4,156.38 traded at $4,160.

The rise can be attributed to anticipation around Wednesday’s Federal Reserve meeting, where an interest rate cut is expected.

Bitcoin dominance continues to rise to demonstrate relative weakness across the altcoin market, although there were some outliers on Monday in the form of ENA$0.5049 and ZEC$361.98.

Derivatives Positioning

By Jacob Joseph

• The BVIV, which measures BTC’s 30-day implied volatility, has dropped to an annualized 44%, nearly reversing the Oct. 10 spike in a sign of ebbing market stress.
• The bias for Deribit-listed BTC put options has weakened across all tenors. However, longer duration risk reversals still remain slightly neutral to bearish. The same can be said for ETH, although at the short-end, the bias for ETH puts is still slightly greater than BTC.
• Last week, traders continued to sell topside (calls) on the CME to collect premium and generate yield on their BTC longs.
• Open interest in futures tied to most cryptocurrencies, excluding XRP, HYPE and HBAR, has increased in the past 24 hours, indicating capital inflows amid the price rally.
• Although bitcoin prices have climbed past their Oct. 21 high, the total open interest in USDT- and USD-denominated perpetual futures on major exchanges remains below the levels seen on Oct. 21. This divergence suggests that leveraged trader participation in the recent BTC rally has been limited.

Token Talk

By Oliver Knight

• The crypto market bounce ahead of Wednesday’s federal reserve rate decision reflected across the entire altcoin sector, with the likes of ZEC$361.98 and ENA$0.5049 posting double-digit gains.
• There was also a notable rise in tokens issued in or before 2018 as BCH$564.64 and DASH$51.48 both rose by 8% and 9.5% respectively, while ether ETH$4,156.38 edged back into bullish territory with a surge to $4,150.
• The reversal in price action was not felt in two newly-released tokens; plasma XPL$0.3719 and aster ASTER$1.1050 both collapsed further to the downside as waning demand could not stifle wave upon wave of sell pressure.
• Plasma initially rose to as high as $1.67 in the days following its launch, notching $3.3 billion in daily volume in the process. However, it now trades at $0.36 with daily volume tumbling to $297 million.
• Aster, meanwhile, is trading at $1.07 having lost 43% of its value over the past month. It was initially positioned to be a rival to decentralized derivatives exchange HyperLiquid, but hype has since withered away after concerns surrounding the legitimacy of trading volume on the platform.
• Bitcoin dominance ticked up slightly to 59.1% on Monday, up from a low of 57.1% six weeks ago, suggesting that investors still prefer the more measured gains of BTC compared to more speculative altcoin bets.