Altcoins rally on thin trading as bitcoin holds below $83,500

By CoinDesk

Small tokens are outpacing the major cryptocurrencies on Monday, with the CoinDesk 80 up around 3% over the past 24 hours, more than double the 1.2% gain in the CoinDesk 5.

Bitcoin (BTC) is trading below $83,500, after hitting a high above $84,000 on Sunday, while ether (ETH) has added around 2.5% to trade at $2,560.

The gains are coming from the thinnest part of the market. A year on from the Oct. 10, 2025 flash crash, order-book depth for bitcoin and ether has recovered to pre-crash levels in dollar terms, while altcoin liquidity has continued to erode, according to CoinDesk research.

“Market makers have returned to majors,” Joshua de Vos, research lead at CoinDesk said in Saturday’s report.

Institutional money is heading the other way, with U.S.-listed spot bitcoin ETFs recording $681 million of net outflows last week, the most since June, according to SoSoValue. Most of the selling came on Wednesday and Thursday. Spot ether ETFs have not had a day of inflows since Sept. 28. The nine-day run of outflows is the longest since June.

Oil has eased, with WTI futures down around 2% to $90 per barrel after President Donald Trump said Russia would supply 300,000 metric tons of diesel to global markets, a partial easing of sanctions. Attention now turns to Wednesday’s U.S. consumer price index.

Derivatives positioning

  • Futures trading is surging, but leverage isn’t building: Trading volume over 24 hours is $126 billion, up 81%. Open interest (OI), the dollar value of all open contracts, is $145.8 billion, up just 2.44%. Traders are churning through positions faster, but few are opening new ones.
  • Sellers are no longer dominating taker flow: Longs make up 52% of 24-hour taker volume. Taker volume comes from trades where traders pay to have their orders filled immediately, so it shows which side of the transaction is more eager. Last week the long share was lower at 48%.
  • ZEC is drawing real futures interest, but little of it is new money: The coin is the fourth-largest cryptocurrency by futures volume at $5.46 billion over 24 hours, behind bitcoin, ether and SOL. Its price is up 6% and OI is up 7%. OI is counted in dollars, so a higher price alone lifts it. Strip that out and only about 1% more contracts are open, a small amount of fresh positioning. Annualized funding is 10%, so longs pay shorts a premium to hold their positions. Cumulative volume delta (CVD), which tracks whether aggressive buyers or sellers dominate, is barely positive.
  • NEAR’s rally has more fresh positioning behind it: The price is up 10% and OI is up 17%, which works out to about 6% more open contracts. Funding is positive, as with ZEC. NEAR also has the second-highest 24-hour OI-adjusted CVD among major tokens, which suggests buyers are driving the move. The price is at its highest since December.
  • Bitcoin and ether leverage demand stays low: OI for both has barely changed in 24 hours and sits well below its peaks from early this year. Volumes are normal.
  • Traders expect calm in bitcoin and ether: Bitcoin’s implied volatility index, BVIV, is struggling to move above 40% after bouncing from year-to-date lows near 34% last week. Ether’s index shows the same. Implied volatility is the market’s forecast of future price swings, and a flat reading means options traders aren’t pricing in a big move.
  • Oil shorts on Hyperliquid look crowded: In its oil markets, shorts are paying longs funding of 100% or more on an annualized basis. Funding is the fee one side of a perpetual futures transaction pays the other to keep the contract near spot, and shorts pay when they outnumber longs. Such a high fee means short bets are crowded, which can reverse fast if oil rises.
  • Options traders on Deribit are buying downside protection: Bitcoin puts with strikes from $55,000 to $80,000 dominate 24-hour volume. A put gains value when the price falls, so traders use it as insurance. Ether volume is mixed, with both calls and puts in the top five.

Token talk

  • Starknet (STRK) has risen by 76% over the past week, adding another 54% on Saturday after Friday’s 33% jump, as the network weighs leaving Ethereum to become a standalone, quantum-resistant layer-1. The run has been built partly on leverage, although it did experience profit-taking on Monday as it dropped by 7.7%.
  • LayerZero (ZRO) also had a bullish start to the week, notching a 21% gain over 24 hours to $2.41, the highest level since May 2025 as its market cap neared $1 billion. The move appears to be a bounce from an oversold territory as opposed to news-driven.
  • Zcash (ZEC) has climbed while it features in the laundering trail from the Ledger reseller supply-chain attack. The attacker routed stolen ether through Tornado Cash and then into ZEC via NEAR Intents. Losses from devices sold by Malaysian reseller CryptoBilis are estimated at $86 million to $93 million, and Ledger has confirmed at least one device contained an unauthorized hardware implant.
  • CoinMarketCap’s “Altcoin Season” indicator is at 66/100, its highest in more than a year as traders take speculative bets while bitcoin consolidates between $80,000 and $88,000.

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