Bitcoin and ether were largely unchanged on Tuesday as thin liquidity kept crypto markets subdued, while a sharp rally in gold and silver highlighted a broader shift toward defensive assets.
Digital-asset prices remained locked in a narrow range amid weak participation. Bitcoin’s 24-hour trading volume fell 25% to $35 billion, while ether turnover declined 21% to $24.6 billion, underscoring the low-liquidity backdrop.
The lack of price momentum reflects falling volatility and growing investor indifference across crypto markets, even as precious metals continue to draw strong inflows. Gold traded near $5,085 after notching several record highs over the past week, while silver is up more than 57% since the start of the year as investors seek safe-haven exposure.
This rotation into metals is evident on derivatives venue HyperLiquid, where daily silver futures volume is nearing $1 billion — surpassed only by bitcoin and ether. Funding rates, however, remain skewed to the downside, suggesting traders are increasingly shorting into the rally rather than positioning for further gains.
Risk-off sentiment remains underpinned by macro uncertainty. U.S. President Donald Trump announced new 25% tariffs on South Korea on Monday, following a political dispute with the European Union over Greenland last week, reinforcing global trade concerns.
Derivatives
More than $270 million in leveraged crypto futures positions were liquidated in the past 24 hours, with short positions accounting for the majority. The data suggests traders were positioned for a deeper selloff after bitcoin’s 7% decline last week, only to be caught out by a rebound from around $86,000 to nearly $88,000.
Volmex’s 30-day implied volatility indices for bitcoin and ether remain near multi-month lows, indicating little sign of stress in options markets despite bearish signals from flows and technical indicators.
Open interest in futures linked to HyperLiquid’s HYPE token jumped 30% to above 57 million HYPE, approaching December’s record high of 57.44 million. The decentralized exchange is said to have regained market share from competitors Aster and Lighter.
Futures open interest in ether, solana, XRP and dogecoin rose between 2% and 3%, while bitcoin open interest was broadly flat. Annualized perpetual funding rates across major tokens remain modestly positive, signaling a mild bullish bias, though TRX and DOGE funding has turned negative, reflecting increased short interest.
On Deribit, BTC and ETH put options continue to trade at a premium to calls, pointing to lingering downside concerns. Some traders note that downside hedging has become crowded, leaving call options relatively inexpensive for those positioning for upside. Bearish structures — including put spreads, volatility trades, straddles and strangles — accounted for nearly half of all BTC block trades over the past 24 hours, while ETH traders favored iron condors, consistent with expectations for range-bound price action.
Token Talk
Heavy activity in silver futures has helped propel HyperLiquid’s HYPE token more than 22% higher over the past 24 hours, with trading volume more than doubling to $510 million.
Privacy-focused tokens zcash (ZEC) and monero (XMR) rose 4% and 3%, respectively, since midnight UTC, outperforming bitcoin and major altcoins such as ether, XRP and solana, which slipped between 0.4% and 1%.
Pump.fun’s native PUMP token advanced 14.5% over the same period as traders continued to hunt for opportunities in the memecoin sector despite subdued broader markets. January trading volume on Pump.fun has already surpassed $10 billion — its strongest showing since June — with four days remaining in the month, according to DefiLlama.
The bitcoin-heavy CoinDesk 20 Index (CD20) is little changed so far this year, while the altcoin-focused CoinDesk 80 Index (CD80) has gained 3.6%.
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