Bitcoin Traders Tilt Bullish as Short Squeeze Looms While Chinese Memecoins Crash

Bitcoin has bounced to over $121,000 from overnight lows under $120,000 alongside sharp gains in privacy coins such as ZEC and DASH.

Traders on decentralized exchanges continued to lean bullish, preferring out-of-the-money higher strike BTC and ETH calls. Most analysts retained constructive bias.

“The market is coiling at elevated levels, calm, liquid, and quietly bullish. Institutional flows remain the backbone of this phase, with ETFs acting as the liquidity bridge between traditional and digital finance. Despite short-term chop, the macro liquidity wave, corporate adoption, and structural inflows all argue for continuation,” Timothy Misir, head of research at BRN, said.

Derivatives Positioning

By Omkar Godbole

• Data from Coinglass shows that many BTC perpetual short positions face the risk of liquidation above $121,600. So, a sustained move above the said level could trigger a short squeeze, leading to a quick rally toward record highs.
• The market is undergoing a leverage reset, with volatility flushing out excess positioning on both sides, Glassnode said. Still, the overall positioning in the global BTC futures market remains elevated, with open interest just shy of the record 755K BTC.
• BNB, XRP, ADA, and TRX have seen a drop in futures open interest (OI) in the past 24 hours, indicating capital outflows. BTC’s OI has risen by 1%, with ETH up just 0.4%.
• The XMR market is looking a bit overheated, with annualized funding rates nearing 60%, a sign of frenzied demand for bullish bets. Funding rates for other major tokens, including BTC and ETH, paint a bullish picture, but nothing out of the ordinary.
• On decentralized exchange Derive, open interest in the Oct. 31 expiry options is concentrated in calls at strikes $128K and $145K, reflecting a bullish bias. ETH options activity is equally bullish, with OI concentrated in $5K and $6K calls.
• On Deribit, however, the call-put skew for BTC and ETH remains mildly negative across timeframes, reflecting a bias for protective puts. Block flows on Paradigm featured ETH puts and straddles.

Token Talk

By Oliver Knight

• The recent Chinese memecoin frenzy which sent tokens like GIGGLE, 四, and 哈基米 on PancakeSwap V2 soaring, has abruptly fizzled out.
• Within 24 hours, many of these assets lost more than 95% of their value, wiping out speculative gains built on hype and social momentum.
• The crash coincided with a broader memecoin market downturn that Binance founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao described as a “blood bath,” fueled by FUD and false rumors about token listings.
• The plunge comes after Binance rolled out its “Meme Rush” platform that was supposed to provide a structured path for tokens before being tradable on various decentralized and centralized exchanges.
• However, much like how Solana memecoins faded in February following the launch of TRUMP and MELANIA, BNB Chain memes appear to be following the same route to demise.
• Pancake Swap trading volume has remained inflated at $18 bilion over the past 24 hours, with a handful of newly-launched tokens catching a bid, although it’s worth noting that liquidity remains relatively low; with wrapped bnb (WBNB) having just $35 million worth of liquidity compared to a fully diluted value of $1.6 billion.