From CoinDesk · By Oliver Knight, Omkar Godbole
Bitcoin rose 0.5% to around $81,700 since midnight UTC, recovering from a low of around $81,000, while Asian stocks steadied after Thursday’s tech sell-off.
Altcoins moved faster, with the CoinDesk 80 gaining 1.4%, memecoins climbing 2.9% and frog-themed memecoin pepe jumping 13%.
Traders are now looking to the Fed’s Oct. 27-28 meeting.
Bitcoin BTC$84,459.46 rose 0.5% to around $81,700 since midnight UTC, outpaced by altcoins. Ether ETH$2,490.55 rose 0.9% and the CoinDesk 80 (CD80) altcoin index added 0.7% while the memecoin gauge climbed 2.9%.
The rebound follows Thursday’s tech-led selloff, during which the Nasdaq Composite index fell 2.6% in its steepest decline since June. Asian markets steadied as South Korea’s Kospi added 0.3% and China’s CSI 300 rose 1.7% while Japan’s Nikkei 225 slipped 0.25%.
Traders now look to the Fed’s Oct. 27-28 meeting, with Brent crude near $113 keeping inflation worries alive, and to exchange-traded fund flows, after U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs lost $635 million on Thursday, according to SoSoValue data, following more than $1 billion of inflows over the first three days of the week.
Derivatives positioning
Crypto futures trading cools: Volume fell 19% over 24 hours and liquidations dropped 23%, a day after both jumped. Open interest (OI) rose 1% after declining yesterday, with bitcoin's price little changed, so traders are adding positions again, not just closing them. The long/short taker volume ratio tilts slightly to shorts, at 51.6% against 48.4%.
OI-adjusted CVD points to bullish reset: Cumulative volume delta (CVD) tracks whether market orders are mostly buys or sells. Yesterday most tokens ended the day below zero, with the weakest near -0.12%. Today, almost all are within 0.05% of zero. The exception is XAUT, sitting around -0.25%.
BTC and ETH, majors see quiet rebuilding: Futures open interest rose about 1% in both coins while their prices barely moved, indicating a modest build in new positions. Liquidations fell sharply, by about two-thirds in bitcoin and a third in ether. Bitcoin funding rose to 0.0067% from 0.0041%, so longs are paying a little more to hold. Ether funding is flat.
BNB and SUI, funding flips back to positive: Yesterday, shorts were paying longs in BNB and SUI, at -0.0048% and -0.0036%, and DOGE was steady. Today all three are positive, and funding rose in most of the top tokens. The prices of all three rose, so longs, not shorts, are now the ones paying to hold.
De-risking in mZEC, SOL, XRP and DOGE continues: Open interest fell in all four by more than price alone explains, so positions are really being closed. ZEC is the sharpest, with open interest sliding 8% on a 1.5% price drop. It is the second day of heavy exits, which points to capital flight.