Bitcoin risks another lower high as stocks rally, AI tokens outperform

Bitcoin traded at $76,600 on Tuesday, down 0.8% since midnight UTC, as Monday's brief bounce to $77,800 fades. The move leaves the largest cryptocurrency potentially forming another lower high in a bearish structure that has been in place since October, and down 7% over the past two weeks.

The weakness is not reflected in broader financial markets. S&P 500 index futures and Nasdaq 100 futures have gained more than 0.5%, pointing to crypto-specific headwinds rather than macroeconomic and geopolitical pressures.

Ether (ETH) is faring worse. Trading at $2,098, ETH has shed more than 10% over the past two weeks and sits firmly in the middle of the range it carved out between February and April, with no signs of reclaiming lost ground.

The altcoin market is mixed, with notable gains across AI tokens and steep losses for tokens that performed well earlier in the year like zcash (ZEC), which has lost around 7% since midnight.

Derivatives positioning

Crypto futures market volume has dropped 10% to $130 billion in 24 hours. Notional open interest (OI) is little changed around $126 billion, and 24-hour liquidations have declined 21% to $126 million. This points to a steady, rather boring market environment following the extended U.S. weekend holiday (though crypto is never closed).

SHIB, LINK, HBAR, NEAR and TRX are major OI gainers of the past 24 hours, while ZEC, XLM and HYPE are losers. The action indicates selective market positioning rather than broad-based capital deployment across the altcoin universe.

NEAR rose 58% in the week ended May 24 and has since gained an additional 14% to $2.82, a level last seen in November. The rally, likely fueled by a series of upgrades involving dynamic scaling, privacy and quantum defenses, is accompanied by an influx of new money into derivatives. Open interest jumped to a record 309 million tokens from 182 million a week ago.

NEAR also has the most positive 24-hour cumulative volume delta (CVD) among major tokens, a sign that buyers are setting the price action by trading at market orders rather than passive limit orders. Funding rates are only marginally positive, a sign the market is far from overheated. Together, these signal potential for continued price gains.

OI for futures in Chainlink's LINK increased to 42.96 million tokens, the most since Feb. 7. Annualized funding rates of around 8% point to futures trading above the spot price in a bullish sign for the provider of oracle data.

Bitcoin futures have cooled. OI in BTC has pulled back to 711K BTC from 793k BTC early this month. ETH OI hovers just below record highs near 15 million ETH. BTC and ETH's 30-day implied volatility indexes continue to slide in a sign of persistent volatility selling and no signs of panic demand for options.

Still, on Deribit, BTC puts at strikes from $70K to $76K are among the most traded of the past 24 hours. Puts represent a bearish bet, offering protection against price weakness in the underlying asset.