Bitcoin dominance has rebounded from last week’s lows, indicating renewed capital rotation into BTC as altcoins continue to lag.
Bitcoin advanced on Thursday, with its share of the total crypto market rising alongside gains in select lower-cap tokens. The CoinDesk 20 Index gained 2.3% to 1,690, while the CoinDesk Memecoin Index led with a 2.7% increase.
BTC rose 2.4% over 24 hours to trade near $62,800. Its dominance rate climbed to 59% from 57.9% a week earlier, reflecting a clear preference for Bitcoin amid ongoing weakness in major altcoins. BTC has also held its 200-week moving average, while XRP, ether (ETH), and solana (SOL) remain below that level, underscoring continued underperformance in the broader altcoin market.
Speculative activity stayed elevated in select corners of the market. Audiera’s BEAT token jumped another 57%, extending its weekly gain to more than 500%. The BNB Chain-based Web3 gaming project has benefited from rising onchain activity, token burns, and growing wallet participation, though concerns remain around concentration risk and speculative excess.
Velvet’s VELVET token also saw strong momentum, rising roughly 800% over the past month amid heightened trading activity.
Derivatives positioning
Derivatives data continues to reflect pressure on leveraged long positions. Over the past 24 hours, liquidations totaled about $378 million, with more than $207 million coming from longs.
Open interest in BTC and ETH futures remained broadly stable, suggesting limited appetite for fresh leverage. By contrast, Zcash (ZEC) saw open interest decline to 2.28 million tokens from recent highs above 2.5 million, signaling reduced positioning as its recovery from sub-$300 levels loses traction. The token has also fallen from around $480 to near $430 in a short span.
The 24-hour OI-adjusted cumulative volume delta (CVD) showed mixed flows: BTC, ETH, XMR, HBAR, and SHIB recorded net buying, while TON, XLM, HYPE, TRX, XRP, and others showed net selling pressure.
Implied volatility remains muted, with Bitcoin’s BVIV holding below 50%, suggesting traders are not pricing in major volatility around upcoming macro events such as the SpaceX IPO. Ether volatility (EVIV) has also eased from recent highs.
On Deribit, BTC and ETH puts continue to trade at a premium over calls across key expiries, with the $58,000 BTC put expiring June 13 among the most actively traded contracts.
Token activity
Velvet’s VELVET token has attracted strong speculative flows, surging roughly 800% over 30 days and more than doubling in a single session at peak momentum.
The rally has been driven by rising interest in pre-IPO perpetual futures—synthetic contracts that allow traders to speculate on private company valuations such as SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic ahead of listings. This trend has accelerated ahead of SpaceX’s expected debut at a reported $1.75 trillion valuation.
DefiLlama tracks 14 such pre-IPO markets across platforms including Injective, Hyperliquid, and Crypto.com, with Velvet accessing liquidity via external routing rather than developing native infrastructure.
However, these instruments carry structural risks. They are synthetic derivatives with no equity rights, dividends, or governance exposure, and pricing can diverge significantly from underlying fundamentals due to thin liquidity and unreliable data feeds. One SpaceX-linked synthetic contract reportedly dropped around 45% in a flash crash.
VELVET itself has also faced scrutiny after extreme volatility, with concerns raised over potential imbalances between spot and derivatives activity. The token has traded in a wide range between $0.29 and $1.07 within a single day.
On-chain data further highlights a gap between valuation and actual usage, with roughly $653,000 in deposits supporting a $339 million market cap, raising questions about sustainability and real economic demand.
