Bitcoin $BTC$77,659.14 added as much as 1.9% since midnight UTC to $78,280, with crypto being one of the two major asset classes in the green on Monday; oil also climbed.
Ether ETH$2,513.76 rose 2.1% and XRP gained 3.3%. All but six of the CoinDesk 100 constituents are higher on the day, the broadest advance for two weeks.
Nasdaq 100 index futures dropped 1.65% and S&P 500 futures fell 0.7%, while gold slipped 0.8% and silver 1.7%. The Dollar Index has firmed 0.5%.
Global AI stocks sold off after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei used a weekend essay to argue that AI companies should slow the pace of development of their most capable models on safety grounds, a position other technology figures publicly backed. Nvidia NVDA$212.29·Market Closed fell 2.4% in premarket trading, Intel (INTC) 5.6% and Marvell Technology (MRVL) 6.3%, while South Korea's Kospi benchmark slid 3.26%.
Oil is the second pressure point, with crude rising almost 4% after Saudi Arabia shut a pipeline that bypasses the Strait of Hormuz, extending a rally that took U.S. crude above $100 last week for the first time since May.
Crypto appears to be immune to both tech woes and a rise in AI fears, with no crypto-specific catalyst behind Monday’s move to the upside. Still, bitcoin remains below the month’s high of $82,284 as it consolidates following a short squeeze that lifted prices from $64,000 in August.
Derivatives positioning
- Aggregate open interest stands at $59.7 billion on $62.7 billion of 24-hour volume, with $127.8 million liquidated over the past day, according to Coinalyze. That is half of Friday’s liquidation total, consistent with a grind higher as opposed to a leveraged squeeze.
- Bitcoin open interest has risen by 2.07% to $24.8 billion while ether’s total increased 2.97% to $14.8 billion. Funding is also positive and continuing to rise with an aggregate rate of 0.0066%, predicted to be 0.0081%. That’s notably higher than 0.0038% on Friday morning. The long/short accounts ratio is at 1.15, suggesting more accounts are taking long positions on bitcoin as opposed to short.
- Futures basis offers a cleaner read on positioning. Deribit’s September and November contracts are pricing annualized premiums of 5.5% and 5.8%, with Binance’s September contracts at 6.2% and 8.5% against a fed funds target of 3.5%-3.75%. That is a meaningful carry spread that demonstrates how traders are bullish on $BTC.
- Filecoin FIL$1.0101 witnessed the most aggressive shift in open interest, rising by 70% to $126 million as the price advanced 25% over the past 24 hours.
- Lisk (LSK) is an outlier, with the token gaining 17.9% while funding is at -3.7954% with a predicted rate of -6.3724%. The deeply negative readings suggest a flood of short interest that could potentially set up a squeeze.