Bitcoin stalls below $76,000 as sell wall caps rally despite rising derivatives activity

• Bitcoin is testing a dense sell wall around $76,000, with traders split between shorting resistance and defending against a breakout above liquidation levels.
• Futures activity is heating up, with volume and open interest rising alongside a 140% jump in liquidations, hinting at mild short-squeeze dynamics.
• Altcoins are lagging as traders look to BTC for direction, though select tokens like SOL and ADA show strong bullish positioning in derivatives markets.

Bitcoin BTC$64,139.81 is testing $76,000 for a third day, trading at $75,440 as bullish traders continue to chip away at $450 million of sell orders between $75,900 and $76,300, CoinGlass data shows.

The orders will be placed by traders who are either attempting to short the range-high in expectation of a reversion to around $68,000, and those defending against a breakout with liquidation risk above.

U.S. equities surged to record highs on Thursday as the war in Iran appears to be winding down following a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon.

The crypto market outperformed equities since the start of the war, and is now taking a back seat.

Derivatives positioning

• Activity in the crypto futures market has picked up, with bitcoin briefly topping $76,000 during European trading hours. Total market volume has risen 28% to $225.8 billion, while open interest (OI) has edged up over 1.5% to $126.68 billion.
• More notably, total liquidations have surged 140% to $529 million, with short positions slightly exceeding longs, suggesting a mild short squeeze and building of upward pressure in the market.
• Solana’s SOL is leading the growth in OI among the biggest cryptocurrencies. In 24 hours, the number of active contracts in Solana futures has increased by 11% to 5.53 billion SOL, the most since March 18. Dogecoin is another standout, with OI hovering at the six-month high of 14.17 billion DOGE.
• SOL’s capital inflows appear to be driven by rising appetite for bullish positioning, with the positive funding rates and 24-hour OI-adjusted cumulative volume delta (CVD) signaling increasingly aggressive buying pressure.
• Signals for dogecoin remain mixed, as a positive CVD points to buying pressure, while slightly negative funding rates suggest lingering bearish sentiment among derivatives traders.
• Cardano’s ADA leads on an OI-adjusted CVD basis, pointing to strong buyer dominance and bullish positioning.
• The volatility meltdown continues, pointing to market calm and supporting further bullish price action. BTC’s 30-day implied volatility index (BVIV) has slipped to a fresh 2.5-month low of 43.35%. Ether’s index, EVIV, hovers near the recent low of around 65%.
• On Deribit, BTC and ETH options continue to show a bias for puts as a sign of lingering downside fears. Overall, the market looks positioned for gains, but it is not yet willing to go full-bull.

Token talk

• Altcoins lagged behind bitcoin on Friday as traders awaited a potential breakout or rejection before making speculative bets.
• The heavily bitcoin-weighted CoinDesk 5 (CD5) Index is up by 0.8% since midnight UTC, while the altcoin-dominant CoinDesk 100 (CD100) is marginally in the red.
• The CoinDesk Memecoin Index (CDMEME) was the worst-performing benchmark, losing around 2.8% as several tokens gave back most of Thursday’s gains.
• CoinMarketCap’s “Altcoin Season” indicator is at 37/100, a neutral area after it hit 53/100 last month and 19/100 in February.
• While the broader altcoin market is subdued, a small corner of the market is outperforming; KAS added 3.9% while PENDLE and AERO gained 3.5% and 2.5%, respectively.