Bitcoin nears 2024 lows as options traders pay up for downside protection
Get the Finance newsletter
Daily finance — markets, central banks, M&A, the prints that move money. Free.
- Bitcoin dropped 1.5% to $59,250 on Tuesday after failing to hold above $60,000, now looking to challenge weekend lows of $58,800 — a level near its lowest since late 2024.
- Ether fell 1.73% since midnight UTC to $1,580 after failing to break $1,640, testing a multiyear support level it has bounced from twice before (April 2025 and October 2023).
- BTC puts continued trading at a 10%-plus premium to calls across all time frames on Deribit, signaling persistent downside concerns even as the BVIV 30-day implied volatility gauge dropped 11% to 44%.
- Dogecoin open interest jumped to 16 billion tokens — the highest since the Oct. 10 crash, up from 13 billion a day earlier — but on negative funding rates and aggressive selling, signaling bearish rather than bullish inflows.
- DeFi tokens ENA, JUP, and ETHFI fell 3.3%–7.5% on Tuesday, while AI tokens (FET, TAO, RENDER) and privacy coins (ZEC, XMR) also declined as risk appetite continued to wane.
- Hyperliquid's HYPE gained over 4.3% in 24 hours as the only major token in the green, with annualized funding rates near 10% and OI holding around 40 million tokens since at least June 22.
- Stellar (XLM) held gains from DTCC's announcement that it will connect its tokenized securities platform to the Stellar network in H1 2027, while LIT rose 23% over the past week on similarities to HYPE.
- The crypto weakness stood in contrast to traditional markets: S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 futures posted 0.03% gains, while the Dollar Index added 0.25%.
Why it matters: Bitcoin and ether are sitting at multiyear support levels without an obvious floor below — a break would leave both tokens technically unmoored. The divergence between double-digit put premiums (signaling fear) and subdued BVIV volatility (signaling calm) often precedes sharp directional moves, leaving leveraged longs vulnerable to the next flush. Crypto's weakness even as U.S. equity futures held flat shows this is an idiosyncratic crypto selloff, not a broader risk-off event.
