Bitcoin traded close to $80,400 with little movement since midnight UTC after briefly falling to around $79,300 during Asian trading. Altcoin performance was mixed, while CoinDesk’s DeFi index (DFX) was the only index to record a gain. Markets were looking ahead to Wednesday’s Federal Reserve interest-rate announcement.
Ether (ETH) slipped 0.2% as Bitcoin (BTC) held steady. Caution had already spread through crypto markets over the weekend after Arthur Hayes said his Maelstrom fund had liquidated its entire directional portfolio because of macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainty. The sales included 6,400 ETH.
U.S. stock futures recovered slightly, with S&P 500 futures rising around 0.3% following Friday’s decline in equities. Oil prices moved lower as well. U.S. crude dropped about 2% to nearly $101 a barrel, while Brent crude eased to around $110. The pullback followed the arrival of Qatari mediators in Tehran on Sunday and President Donald Trump’s statement that no strike would take place that day, although he left open the possibility of future action.
The Federal Reserve is due to announce its next policy decision on Wednesday after raising interest rates in September. According to CME’s FedWatch tool, traders assigned a 90% probability to rates remaining unchanged and an approximately 80% chance of another rate increase in December.
Bitcoin ETF activity remains another source of concern. Spot Bitcoin ETFs registered $138 million in outflows on Friday, bringing withdrawals across the previous two trading sessions to $772 million, according to Farside Investors.
Derivatives positioning
Crypto futures activity eased. Total open interest climbed 0.85% over 24 hours to $139.9 billion, while trading volume declined 1.78%. Liquidations fell sharply by 71% to $153 million. The taker long-to-short volume ratio stood at 50.34% to 49.66%, pointing to a market with no clear directional bias.
Bitcoin positioning showed little change. BTC gained 0.20%, while open interest increased 0.84%, suggesting only a limited amount of new capital entered the market. Trading volume fell 7.21%. Ether followed a similar pattern, with its price rising 0.23% and open interest advancing 0.45%.
Funding rates remained modestly positive. Major cryptocurrencies showed broadly positive readings across the 24-hour funding-rate heatmap, while USDE and TRX were near the lower end. The figures suggest leveraged long positions were not attracting unusually high premiums, with no obvious signs of excessive positioning in one part of the market.
ZEC drew additional capital as prices rose. Open interest expanded 8.17%, alongside a 3.84% price gain. Trading volume increased 19.11%. Its funding rate remained relatively low at 0.0063%, indicating that maintaining these positions was not especially expensive.
ENA attracted substantial trading activity during its rally. Open interest rose 16.85% in 24 hours as the token advanced 8.36%, while volume surged 81.51%. However, open interest dropped 2.04% over the latest hour, suggesting some traders had started exiting positions built during the move higher.
Crude oil was the only top-20 market with negative funding. Oil perpetual futures recorded a funding rate of -0.0077%. Prices declined 1.55%, and open interest fell 7.37%, indicating that traders were reducing exposure as the market weakened. Trading volume surged 190.88%, while the remaining positions leaned toward the short side.
Market-order flows varied by token. Open-interest-adjusted cumulative volume delta (CVD) readings were positive for XMR, ZEC, GRAM, CC and SOL, suggesting market buying exceeded market selling. DOGE, LINK, HYPE and XLM recorded negative readings, indicating stronger selling pressure from market orders.
Bitcoin options continued to reflect demand for downside protection. The Oct. 28 $77,000 put was the most actively traded contract, followed by the Oct. 28 $84,000 call. The one-month options skew narrowed to approximately 12.5% from 14.5%. Puts remained more expensive than calls, although the premium had decreased.
Ether options also favored puts. Four of the six most actively traded contracts were puts, with the Oct. 29 $2,000 strike leading activity. Ether’s one-week skew fell to around 8.7% from 13.3%, showing that downside protection continued to command a higher price than calls.
Token talk
Uniswap (UNI) rose 1.9%, while Ethena (ENA) gained approximately 1%, despite Maelstrom’s sale over the weekend of 323,000 UNI and 14 million ENA. The fund is run by Arthur Hayes.
AI-focused tokens faced broader weakness. Grass (GRASS), a decentralized data network supporting AI training, fell 2.7%, while Near Protocol (NEAR) declined 1.4%. The moves followed Elon Musk’s warning on Sunday that lenders had stopped providing credit to around 200 cloud providers focused solely on AI infrastructure.
Hyperliquid (HYPE) gained roughly 1% as market participants continued to digest a buyback announcement from Hyperliquid Strategies (PURR). The Nasdaq-listed company said Friday it had increased its share-repurchase program to $100 million, more than tripling its previous commitment. The buyback applies only to PURR shares, not to HYPE tokens.
CoinMarketCap’s Altcoin Season Index also weakened, falling to 53 out of 100 from 58 on Friday.
