Bitcoin was holding near $78,000 on Tuesday as traders consolidated after last week’s powerful rally, while Arbitrum’s ARB emerged as the standout performer, jumping nearly 30% on a surge in Robinhood Chain activity.
BTC traded around $78,000, down about 0.4% from midnight UTC and roughly 0.7% over the past seven days. The cryptocurrency has entered a period of consolidation after a short squeeze sent it from below $63,000 to a high of about $81,400 last week.
Bitcoin’s relative performance remained stronger than that of traditional risk assets. Nasdaq 100 futures fell around 0.5% during the same period, highlighting BTC’s resilience despite the broader pullback.
Spot Bitcoin ETF demand has also remained supportive. The funds attracted approximately $3.04 billion across nine straight sessions before recording a $202 million outflow Friday. Buying returned Monday, with ETFs receiving another $217 million, according to SoSoValue.
Altcoins, however, have lacked a clear direction. The Altcoin Season Index dropped to 26 from 34 on Friday, reaching its lowest point in more than 90 days.
Futures Market Shows Little Conviction
Crypto derivatives positioning remained broadly balanced for a second day. The 24-hour taker buy-sell ratio showed no strong preference for either side, while total futures open interest stayed near $136 billion.
Trading volume fell about 7%, indicating that traders are largely holding back rather than building significant new long or short positions as they wait for a clearer market signal.
ARB was the strongest performer among the top 100 cryptocurrencies, rising close to 30%. Its futures open interest increased by more than 10%, suggesting that traders were adding long exposure as the token attempted to break above resistance around 11 cents.
Funding rates of roughly 8% annualized indicate that the move has not yet produced excessive leverage.
Monero also saw increased derivatives activity. XMR futures open interest climbed to around 640,000 tokens, the highest level since February 2024. Funding rates have dropped to about 15% from above 50%, suggesting bullish positioning has become less crowded.
However, negative open-interest-adjusted cumulative volume delta points to continued selling pressure. XMR traded near $525 after reaching roughly $548 on Monday.
TRX showed a more bearish setup, with funding rates around minus 80%. Such deeply negative funding suggests traders are heavily positioned for further declines and are paying a significant cost to maintain short positions. Tron was trading near 33 cents after falling for three consecutive sessions.
Open interest in Bitcoin and Ether futures remained subdued, sitting around multi-week lows.
Implied volatility has also eased from its August highs. Both Bitcoin’s BVIV and Ether’s EVIV 30-day implied volatility measures have declined from their mid-August peaks, indicating that traders expect calmer conditions.
Options markets retained a bullish tilt. The $80,000 Bitcoin call expiring Sept. 25 was the most actively traded Deribit contract over the previous 20 hours, while Ether’s $2,500 call led activity in ETH options.
Robinhood Chain Drives ARB Momentum
Arbitrum’s sharp advance is closely connected to growing activity on Robinhood Chain, a dedicated network built using Arbitrum technology.
The chain sends 10% of its net protocol revenue to the Arbitrum ecosystem. Offchain Labs co-founder Steven Goldfeder said Monday that Robinhood Chain generated more than $2 million in transaction revenue over a 24-hour period, compared with about $1.22 million the day before.
At that daily rate, Arbitrum’s portion could amount to roughly $73 million annually.
ARK Invest analyst Lorenzo Valente pointed to an even more dramatic increase in revenue. His calculations showed gross daily revenue rising from $54,676 on Aug. 22 to $1.088 million on Aug. 30, nearly a 20-fold increase. Arbitrum’s share increased from about $5,400 to $108,000 over the same period.
The strength was not limited to ARB.
Curve DAO’s CRV climbed approximately 14% over 24 hours to around 35 cents, supported by $119 million in trading volume. The move adds to a broader recovery among decentralized-finance tokens.
Uniswap’s UNI gained another 8% since midnight to roughly $5.80 after rising 12% during the previous session. The token has gained about 34% over seven days, with trading volume reaching around $519 million.
Aave advanced approximately 1.9% to $126.54, while Morpho rose about 2% to $2.55.
Bitcoin’s pause suggests traders are taking a breather following its sharp August advance, but the strength of DeFi tokens and rapidly rising Robinhood Chain revenue show that interest remains concentrated in selected areas of the crypto market.
