Crypto Markets Today: Bitcoin Breaks $119K as Altcoins Surge, Traders Eye Record Highs

Crypto traders were successful a jubilant temper connected Thursday greeting arsenic bitcoin zoomed supra $119,000, mounting its sights connected a caller grounds high.

The altcoin marketplace besides heated up; tokens similar monero (XMR) and aptos (APT) posted double-digit gains portion zcash (ZEC) continued Wednesday's surge with a 58% determination successful the past 24 hours to $143.

The catalyst for crypto's emergence was a substance of ETF inflows, gold's emergence and wide affirmative sentiment towards hazard assets.

Derivatives Positioning

• The BTC futures marketplace is showing a beardown and sustained bullish trend, with cardinal metrics reaching caller highs. Open involvement has climbed to an all-time precocious of $32.6 billion, reflecting a important summation successful trader exposure, with Binance starring the mode astatine $13.6 billion.
• This record-high involvement is supported by a unchangeable 3-month annualized basis, which has settled astir 7%, indicating that the ground commercialized remains profitable and reinforcing the affirmative marketplace sentiment. The operation of these 2 metrics suggests that caller terms enactment is being driven by strong, conviction-based bullish positioning alternatively than short-term speculation.
• The BTC options marketplace is presenting a analyzable and contradictory representation of sentiment. While the 25 Delta Skew for short-term options continues its downward trend, present astatine conscionable 3.25%, suggesting that traders are consenting to wage a premium for puts to hedge against downside risk, the 24-hour Put/Call Volume tells a antithetic story.
• Calls are inactive dominating the measurement astatine implicit 56%, indicating that a bulk of traders are actively positioning for a rally alternatively than a decline.
• Meanwhile, BTC's backing complaint connected large exchanges is hovering betwixt an annualized 9% to 10%, indicating steadfast request for leveraged agelong positions.
• However, a important outlier is Deribit, wherever the backing complaint has spiked dramatically to implicit 60%. This isolated but utmost spike suggests intense, concentrated request for agelong positions connected that platform, but the wide market, including altcoins, does not yet look to beryllium overheated with mean backing for apical 30 coins by marketplace capitalization astatine astir 10% annualized, arsenic per Coinglass.

Token Talk

By Oliver Knight

• Plasma laminitis Paulie Punt has refuted claims that the recently-issued XPL token had been sold by squad members, contempt on-chain information suggesting the contrary.
• Paul stated that nary members of the Plasma squad person sold their XPL holdings since launch. According to him, each capitalist and squad allocations are taxable to a three-year lock-up with a one-year cliff, meaning they cannot beryllium accessed oregon sold wrong that timeframe. He emphasized that the circulating claims of insider unloading were unfounded.
• The Plasma laminitis besides pushed backmost against characterizations that the squad was chiefly made up of “ex-Blast” employees. Of the astir 50 squad members, lone 3 had anterior stints astatine Blur oregon Blast, helium said. He noted that the radical besides includes professionals with backgrounds astatine Google, Facebook, Square, Temasek, Goldman Sachs, and Nuvei, underscoring the project’s broader pedigree.
• Another constituent of contention has been Wintermute, a well-known crypto trading steadfast often engaged arsenic a marketplace shaper for caller projects. Paul denied that Plasma had contracted with Wintermute for market-making oregon different services, saying the institution has nary much accusation astir Wintermute’s XPL holdings than the public.
• Pseudonymous researcher ManaMoon had initially claimed that implicit 600 cardinal XPL tokens person been transferred from the project’s vault to exchanges since launch.
• XPL has performed comparatively poorly since launch; sliding from a precocious of $1.68 to $0.97 portion regular trading measurement has remained dependable astatine $2.6 billion.