First Mover Americas: BTC Returns to Near $94K

Starting next Monday, First Mover Americas will become Crypto Daybook Americas, your new morning briefing on what happened in the crypto markets overnight and what’s expected during the coming day. Publishing at 7 a.m. ET, it will kickstart your morning with comprehensive insights. You won’t want to start your day without it.

CoinDesk 20 Index: 3,278.83 +4.32%

Bitcoin (BTC): $$93,338.67 +1.05%

Ether (ETH): $3,462.51 +3.99%

S&P 500: 6,021.63 +0.57%

Gold: $2,652.77 +1.2%

Nikkei 225: 38,134.97 -0.8%

Bitcoin ticked up following Tuesday’s drop below $91,000. BTC rose to over $93,800 and is currently trading around 1.8% higher in the last 24 hours. Bitcoin ETFs saw their second consecutive day of net outflows on Tuesday, losing almost $123 million. This was substantially less than Monday’s outflows of almost $440 million. BTC is underperforming the broader digital asset market, as measured by the CoinDesk 20 Index, which is up by over 4.8%. XRP, ADA and AVAX all made double-digit gains.

Ether continued its positive price movement, gaining 4.6% in 24 hours to tease a return to $3,500. The ETH-BTC ratio sits just above 0.037, having increased by over 10% in the last week. Spot ether ETFs in the U.S. registered net inflows both days this week while their BTC equivalents have seen outflows. Activity in the ether options market listed on Deribit is also picking up, with over 2 million contracts active, or open, the most since late June. In notional terms, the open interest stands at $7.33 billion, according to Deribit Metrics.

Traders are piling into derivatives tied to ether, betting on higher prices for the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency. Cumulative open interest in perpetual and standard futures contracts has surged to a record 6.32 million ETH, worth over $27 billion, a 17% month-to-date gain, according to data source CoinGlass. The gap between three-month ETH futures and spot prices has expanded to an annualized 16%. This is noteworthy because an elevated premium could generate greater interest in cash and carry trades used to capture the price differential between the two markets.

The broader market is participating in the bitcoin rally, with the percentage of the Binance-listed alternative cryptocurrencies trading above their respective 50-day simple moving averages (in blue) nearing 90%.The number of altcoins sitting above their 200-day SMA (in gray) has topped 70%.Source: Capriole Investments

– Omkar Godbole