Bear Exhaustion

Leading crypto BTC touched the low of $80k towards the end of last week on record volumes and outflows in ETF’s. On Friday, this tune changed a bit, however. November 21st saw inflows of $238m, as investors and market participants saw an opportunity to build positions at potential local low forming. Selling was clearly becoming exhausted, and since then, bitcoin has climbed back over $87k. Options markets are seeing flows around the money, but significant open interest on calls for 28NOV25 above $88k. For the end of the year expiry, 26DEC25, we see lots of positioning above $100k strikes still, but these are being hedged with plenty of puts all the way down to $60k strike levels. Traders remain cautious and want to lock in their profit before the end of the year. Perpetual funding rates are flat across exchanges, as neither long nor shorts dominate the books. With this week being a holiday week, markets will be quieter. 

Ethereum is following bitcoin’s path upwards despite the negative news among various Digital Asset Treasuries needing to sell ETH to buy back shares. ETH is trading below the vital $3k level, but is above $2.8k at this time of writing. Ethereum’s perpetual funding rates are a bit mixed across exchanges, with a few majors like OKX and KuCoin having negative annualized rates, whereas Bybit has Ethereum at nearly 11% annualized. These types of situations don’t last long, as arbitrage traders will take advantage of cross exchange opportunities to capitalize on the rate difference and bring things back in line. Momentum is starting to build, and we will see if this ignites a rally.