Smaller tokens lead as bitcoin, sol rally in 'first real bounce of the selloff'
Get the Finance newsletter
Daily finance — markets, central banks, M&A, the prints that move money. Free.
- Bitcoin added more than 4% to $61,200 and ether rose 5% after Fed Chair Kevin Warsh told Sintra that inflation risks have come down, with Marex analysts noting the 'first real bounce of the whole selloff' walked back the July rate-hike bet.
- Smaller speculative tokens led the top-100 by market cap: Memecore's M gained 81%, Audiera's BEAT jumped 12%, and Venice Token (VVV) rose 9%, while Solana's SOL led majors with a 9% daily gain as the network unveiled an onchain governance system requiring 100,000 SOL to submit proposals.
- Bitcoin derivatives confirmed an uptrend, with BTC open interest climbing to 777,870 BTC (highest since June 4), 24-hour trading volume jumping 18% to nearly $200 million, and annualized funding rates around 10% — but a $444.6 million liquidation event showed shorts, not longs, got crushed in a reversal of recent weeks.
- Durability signals remain mixed, as the Deribit options market still shows BTC and ETH puts trading at a premium to calls, ETH and XRP futures open interest is flat near 13.8 million and pinned respectively, and SOL futures open interest fell from a June 24 record of 76.6 million SOL to 72 million.
- Three-month futures basis for both BTC and ETH on Binance remains below the 4.49% U.S. 10-year Treasury yield, a discount the source flags as signaling low institutional carry-trade demand and limited deployment despite the 'constructive' broader outlook.
- Taiko reopened its cross-chain bridge after a $1.70 million hack on July 22, briefly doubling its TAIKO token by more than 100% to 38 cents before it fell back to 16 cents — a $32.5 million market-cap token not even in the top 500, underscoring volatility in smaller names.
- Upcoming catalysts flagged by analysts include the nonfarm payrolls report due later that Thursday and President Donald Trump's planned introduction of voluntary AI model standards next week.
Why it matters: The rally's claim to durability rests on rising bitcoin open interest and aggressive market-order buying, yet the data tells a more fragile story: ETH and XRP futures show no return of leveraged demand, BTC and ETH puts keep trading at a premium to calls, and the three-month basis still sits below the 4.49% 10-year Treasury yield, meaning institutional carry-trade appetite hasn't returned.
