Bitcoin moved back above $81,400 as gains in Asian semiconductor shares improved sentiment across financial markets. Pepe (PEPE), an Ethereum-based frog memecoin, also rallied 9.4%, outperforming most major digital assets.
Bitcoin (BTC) rose approximately 0.8% from midnight UTC to trade near $81,400 on Monday, recovering after an earlier dip below $80,000. Ether (ETH) advanced 0.9%, while the CoinDesk Memecoin Index increased 1.3%, reflecting a broader recovery in the crypto market.
Asian Technology Shares Lead the Rebound
The recovery in artificial intelligence stocks was driven by semiconductor companies across Asia. South Korea’s Kospi jumped 6.6%, supported by an approximately 11% surge in SK Hynix shares after the company reported a sevenfold increase in profit.
Nasdaq-100 futures also advanced 0.5%, suggesting improving sentiment toward technology stocks ahead of the U.S. trading session.
Fed Decision and Corporate Earnings in Focus
Markets were awaiting the Federal Reserve’s interest-rate announcement, scheduled for 18:00 UTC. According to CME’s FedWatch tool, traders were pricing in roughly a 92% chance that policymakers would leave borrowing costs unchanged.
Attention was also turning to Fed Chair Kevin Wash’s press conference for indications of whether additional rate increases might be considered.
U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded $176 million in inflows on Tuesday, extending their positive streak to two consecutive sessions. Alphabet (GOOG) and Microsoft (MSFT) were also due to report earnings after the market closed.
Crypto Derivatives Show Mixed Signals
Crypto futures trading volume increased 7.5% over 24 hours to $163.2 billion, while open interest rose just 1.3%. This indicates that trading activity picked up without a comparable expansion in outstanding positions.
Liquidations climbed 38% to $183.6 million. Taker volume remained almost evenly balanced, with long-side orders accounting for 50.7% and short-side orders representing 49.3%.
Bitcoin gained 2.3% while its open interest slipped 0.1%, suggesting the advance was not accompanied by additional leveraged exposure. Ether rose 2.7%, while its open interest increased 1.7%.
Funding rates remained modestly positive at 0.0090% for BTC and 0.0079% for ETH, close to the 0.01% benchmark. This suggests neither market was showing particularly crowded bullish positioning.
Bitcoin liquidations totaled $56.4 million, while Ether liquidations reached $46 million. Together, they accounted for more than half of all liquidations recorded across the market.
Zcash attracts fresh positioning
Zcash (ZEC) saw open interest climb 14%, outpacing its 6.3% price increase. The divergence points to stronger capital inflows and growing trader participation.
Its funding rate remained at 0.0076%, suggesting the increase in positioning had not become excessively overheated. ZEC liquidations reached $8.6 million, the highest among altcoins.
Gold and crude oil futures diverge
Gold futures showed contrasting trends. Open interest in XAU contracts declined 10% despite a 1.4% price gain, suggesting traders were reducing their exposure. Meanwhile, open interest in XAUT, Tether’s tokenized gold asset, rose 11.6% as its price increased 1.3%.
Crude oil derivatives indicated a more bearish outlook. Open interest in the front-month CL contract increased 3.3% while prices fell 0.7%. Trading volume surged 26%, and the funding rate dropped to -0.0135%, the most negative reading among the largest contracts. The figures suggest perpetual futures traders were leaning toward short positions.
Semiconductor rally outpaces position growth
SOXL, an exchange-traded fund offering three times the daily exposure to semiconductor stocks, jumped 12%, although its open interest increased only 2%.
SK Hynix advanced 8.7% alongside a 3.9% increase in open interest. SanDisk gained 7.1%, even as its open interest declined 1.8%.
The price gains were therefore substantially larger than the changes in open positions. Funding rates were slightly negative for SOXL and SK Hynix and close to neutral for SanDisk, suggesting the rally was not being driven by heavily concentrated long positions.
Market buying remains widespread
Open-interest-adjusted cumulative volume delta (CVD) was positive for most cryptocurrencies over the previous 24 hours. This indicates that market buy orders generally exceeded market sell orders relative to open interest.
Stellar (XLM) recorded the strongest positive CVD reading, while XAUT had the weakest result on the negative side.
Bitcoin options show easing downside concerns
Bitcoin’s one-week put-call skew on Deribit dropped below 1%, compared with nearly 10% a week earlier. The decline suggests traders have reduced their demand for put options used to hedge against falling prices.
However, options with one-, three- and six-month expirations continued to favor puts, showing that longer-term caution remains.
The most actively traded Bitcoin options contract over the previous 24 hours was a $65,000 put expiring October 30. For Ether, the leading contract was a $3,400 call expiring October 29.
Pepe Outperforms as AI Tokens Struggle
Pepe climbed 9.4% on Wednesday, becoming the strongest performer in the CoinDesk 100 Index. The rally followed a report from Arkham Intelligence claiming that wallets it associates with Tron founder Justin Sun hold approximately $51 million worth of PEPE, potentially making him the token’s largest holder outside exchanges.
Other memecoins also advanced, with Floki (FLOKI) gaining 3.4% and Dogecoin (DOGE) rising 1.9%.
AI-related tokens failed to benefit from the recovery in technology stocks for a second consecutive day. Venice (VVV), linked to a privacy-focused AI platform, dropped 8.2%, while Grass (GRASS) declined 3.3% and Kite (KITE) lost 2.4%.
Decentralized finance assets also underperformed. CoinDesk’s DeFi Index (DFX) rose only 0.6%, trailing the CoinDesk 80’s 0.9% gain and recording the weakest performance among CoinDesk’s indexes.
Meanwhile, CoinMarketCap’s Altcoin Season Index increased to 60 out of 100 from 57 on Tuesday, indicating a modest improvement in altcoin performance relative to Bitcoin.
