Bitcoin slipped below $80,000 on Tuesday as the cryptocurrency market failed to benefit from a rally in Asian technology stocks. BTC fell 0.4% from midnight UTC to around $79,700, while Ether declined 0.5% to approximately $2,323. The CoinDesk DeFi Index dropped 1.8%, posting the largest loss among the platform’s indexes after leading gains on Monday.
U.S. equity futures edged lower as investors prepared for earnings reports from major technology companies later in the week. Asian markets moved in the opposite direction, with South Korea’s Kospi advancing 3.1%. The strength in regional technology stocks did little to support digital assets. Meanwhile, U.S. crude prices approached $102 per barrel.
Market attention is also turning to the Federal Reserve, which began its two-day policy meeting on Tuesday. The central bank is scheduled to announce its interest-rate decision on Wednesday. CME FedWatch data showed traders assigning approximately a 90% probability to rates remaining unchanged, while investors look for guidance on the likelihood of another increase before year-end.
Spot Bitcoin ETFs provided a brighter signal, attracting $110 million in net inflows on Monday, according to Farside Investors. The inflows ended a two-day period of withdrawals.
Futures Trading Rebounds as Traders Reposition
Crypto futures activity increased over the past 24 hours, with trading volume rising 18% to $152 billion after declining in the previous session. Open interest grew by just 0.95%, while liquidations fell 13% to $133 million.
The taker long-short ratio stood at 49.54% to 50.46%, showing that market orders were almost evenly divided between buying and selling.
Bitcoin and Ether each lost approximately 1.1% over 24 hours, while Solana declined 1.91%. Despite the price weakness, futures open interest increased by around 1% for BTC, 0.8% for ETH, and 3.6% for SOL. Solana recorded the largest rise, indicating that traders continued opening positions during the pullback.
Funding rates remained positive across all three cryptocurrencies, suggesting long-position holders continued paying short sellers. However, Solana’s cumulative volume delta turned negative, pointing to net selling through market orders.
Semiconductor Contracts See Short-Covering Activity
SOXL, a contract tied to a triple-leveraged semiconductor ETF, gained 8% even as futures open interest declined 7.4%. The combination suggests the rally was largely driven by traders closing short positions rather than new bullish exposure.
SKHYNIX, a contract linked to South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix, displayed a similar pattern on a smaller scale. Its funding rate fell to 0.0221% from 0.0516%.
Oil derivatives continued to show a bearish positioning bias. Oil remained the only asset on the tracked list with negative funding, which deepened to -0.0115% from -0.0077%. Open interest increased 2.18% alongside a 0.86% price gain, suggesting capital returned to the market following the previous day’s outflows.
Bitcoin Options Traders Maintain Downside Protection
The most actively traded Bitcoin options contract over the past 24 hours was a $72,000 put expiring on Dec. 25. The other four contracts among the five largest by trading volume were call options.
Despite the activity in calls, Bitcoin’s 25-delta put-call skew remained positive across maturities, indicating that traders continued to favor downside protection. Ether options showed a comparable pattern, reflecting caution about the broader crypto market.
Privacy Tokens Outperform as DeFi and AI Assets Retreat
Privacy-focused cryptocurrencies performed relatively well. Dash (DASH) advanced 1.8%, while Zcash (ZEC) gained 0.5%.
Zcash co-founder Sean Bowe proposed ending the automatic allocation of 8% of newly issued ZEC to the network’s community grants program. He argued that the program’s treasury, estimated at approximately $125 million, could finance several years of operations without continued automatic funding.
DeFi tokens moved lower after Monday’s gains. Aave (AAVE) fell 3.6%, while Sky (SKY), the token associated with the project formerly known as MakerDAO, declined 3.9%. Aave’s decentralized autonomous organization has not conducted token buybacks since April.
AI-related cryptocurrencies also weakened despite gains in Asian technology stocks. Render (RENDER), which supports a decentralized GPU computing network, and The Graph (GRT), a blockchain data protocol, each lost more than 2%.
Celestia (TIA), Starknet (STRK), and Pump.fun (PUMP) dropped approximately 3%. Celestia faces an unlock of 5.58 million TIA tokens on Saturday, according to Tokenomist, creating a potential additional source of selling pressure.
CoinMarketCap’s Altcoin Season Index rose to 57 out of 100 from 53 on Monday, indicating a modest improvement in altcoin performance relative to Bitcoin.
