Altcoins gained ground against Bitcoin as Celestia (TIA) surged 16%, Injective (INJ) advanced 7.7% and LayerZero (ZRO) climbed 7.3%. Bitcoin held near $82,100, while Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh offered no clear indication of the central bank’s next interest-rate move.
Bitcoin traded around $82,100 on Friday, showing little change since midnight UTC after recovering from a brief slide to approximately $81,600 at around 03:30 UTC. BTC remained comfortably above $80,000 after briefly breaking below that level on Thursday for the first time in a month.
Altcoins generally performed better during the session. Ether gained 0.5% to approximately $2,450, while the CoinDesk 80 Index (CD80) rose 0.46%. The Bitcoin-heavy CoinDesk 5 Index (CD5) remained largely unchanged.
Celestia recorded the strongest advance among major tokens, followed by Injective and LayerZero. Around 80% of the assets in the CoinDesk 100 Index (CD100) traded in positive territory, pushing CoinMarketCap’s Altcoin Season Index to 60 from 50 the previous day.
Asian stock markets also recovered following Thursday’s sharp losses. South Korea’s Kospi closed 2.05% higher, and Japan’s Nikkei advanced 1.39%. S&P 500 futures changed little after the benchmark index ended a three-session losing streak.
Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh refrained from signaling the central bank’s intentions for its upcoming meeting while speaking at the IMF and World Bank meetings in Bangkok. According to the CME FedWatch tool, the probability of an October rate increase declined to around 15% from approximately 30%. U.S. Treasury yields remained relatively stable.
Derivatives Market Trends
Crypto futures activity cools as liquidations decline. Trading volume across cryptocurrency futures fell 20% over 24 hours to roughly $200 billion, while open interest climbed 2% to $142.21 billion. Liquidations dropped to $311 million, down from nearly $1 billion the previous day. The decline in forced closures, alongside rising open interest, suggests selling pressure has eased while traders continue adding positions.
Selling pressure becomes more balanced. The 24-hour taker long-to-short volume ratio moved back toward neutral after short-side transactions represented 52% of activity a day earlier. This shift indicates that aggressive selling has moderated.
Bitcoin, Ether and Solana rebounds show limited new bullish exposure. Bitcoin’s dollar-denominated futures open interest rose just 0.3% as its spot price increased 1%, implying a slight decline in the number of outstanding contracts. Ether and Solana showed similar patterns, with open interest lagging behind spot-price gains. This suggests that the recovery may be driven mainly by short positions being closed rather than a strong wave of new leveraged long positions.
XRP positions decline despite the price recovery. XRP’s futures open interest fell 1% while its spot price advanced 1.4%, indicating that traders were closing contracts as the token rose. Its 24-hour open-interest-adjusted cumulative volume delta (CVD), which measures aggressive buying and selling at market prices, also remained negative. This points to limited support for the rebound from derivatives traders.
Zcash attracts fresh buying interest. ZEC futures open interest increased 14%, exceeding its 11.5% price gain and suggesting traders opened additional contracts during the rally. Zcash also registered the strongest positive open-interest-adjusted CVD among major cryptocurrencies, indicating that aggressive buyers were driving activity. Tron (TRX), Tether Gold (XAUT) and Ether also recorded positive readings, while Bitcoin was neutral and Uniswap (UNI), Hedera (HBAR) and XRP remained negative.
Funding rates point to moderate bullish sentiment. Annualized funding rates for major perpetual futures contracts ranged from 5% to 10%. The figures indicate a preference for long positions, but they remain within relatively normal levels, suggesting that bullish leverage has not become excessively crowded.
Implied volatility continues to fall. Bitcoin’s 30-day implied volatility index, BVIV, declined to 38% after reaching 42% the previous day. Ether’s implied volatility also decreased. The move indicates that options traders are anticipating less turbulent price action, consistent with the moderate funding rates across the market.
Bitcoin options reflect continued caution, while Ether traders target upside. Decentralized derivatives platform Derive highlighted a large Bitcoin put spread executed earlier in the week that positioned for a potential decline toward $78,000. On Deribit, the $80,000 put was the most actively traded option, indicating that some traders continued to seek protection against further losses. In the Ether market, the $2,600 call led trading activity over the previous 24 hours, reflecting interest in higher prices.
Token Performance
Celestia reaches a new 2026 peak. TIA, the native token of the modular data-availability network Celestia, jumped 16% to approximately $0.68, making it the strongest performer in the CoinDesk 100. It has gained around 59% over the past four weeks, reaching its highest price of the year.
The rally coincided with Celestia Fibre achieving a throughput benchmark of 3.07 terabits per second and the introduction of a proposed economic upgrade called the Sustainable Blob Economy.
Injective rallies as trading volume expands. INJ, the token associated with the finance-focused layer-1 blockchain, gained 7.7% to around $9.19. No single catalyst clearly explained the rise, although three U.S. exchange-traded fund applications linked to the token remain pending. CoinMarketCap reported $289.7 million in INJ trading volume over 24 hours, a 128% increase from the previous day.
LayerZero builds on its recent gains. ZRO, the token associated with the cross-chain messaging protocol, rose 7.3% to approximately $2.24. The advance extended a rally linked to its ATLAS trading infrastructure, which directs most of its fees toward buying and burning ZRO tokens. Ether.fi’s ETHFI token, associated with liquid restaking, added 4.2%.
Starknet suffers the largest decline. STRK fell 9.6% to approximately $0.08, becoming the weakest performer in the CoinDesk 100 after rising 11% on Thursday. Stacks (STX), a Bitcoin-related layer token associated with staking, declined 4.2%.
Other major cryptocurrencies post mixed gains. Solana advanced 1.2% to around $107, XRP gained 0.5%, and Monero (XMR) climbed 2.9% to approximately $565. BNB traded with little change.
