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Bitcoin advances to $71,000 while derivatives signal cautious bullishness: Crypto Markets Today

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Bitcoin advances to $71,000 while derivatives signal cautious bullishness: Crypto Markets Today

Bitcoin is currently trading at around $71,000 having risen by 0.25% since midnight UTC, adding to a broader 24 hour rally of 4%.

Asian hours were favorable to AI tokens, with bittensor (TAO) and adding 5.8% and 4.1% apiece. The rise followed comments from Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who claimed that artificial general intelligence (AGI) — a term for AI that matches the cognitive abilities of human beings — has already been achieved.

Still, the main market driver continues to be the war in the Middle East following fresh strikes in Tel Aviv and Lebanon on Tuesday. On Monday, U.S. President Donald Trump said a 48-hour ultimatum over the Strait of Hormuz had been put on hold following “good and productive” peace talks with Iran, although Iranian officials called it “fake news.”

Oil remains at around $100 per barrel while U.S. equities are in the red, with Nasdaq 100 futures and S&P 500 futures both down by around 0.1% since midnight.

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The crypto market has remained relatively resilient during the conflict, with bitcoin outperforming gold, a traditional haven asset, since the start of the war.

Derivatives positioning

  • Over $550 million in leveraged crypto futures bets have been liquidated in 24 hours, with shorts or bearish bets taking most of the hit.
  • Bitcon’s 4%, 24-hour price gain isn’t backed by increased participation in futures, as open interest (OI) in major USD- and USDT-denominated futures has declined to 228,000 BTC from 229,000 BTC.
  • A similar pattern is seen in ETH, XRP and SOL markets.
  • DOGE, ADA, SUI, AVAX, LINK, and PAXG futures have seen open interest decline by as much as 10%.
  • Most tokens have seen aggressive bidding, as evidenced by their positive 24-hour cumulative volume deltas. CRO, XMR and TON stand out with negative CVDs.
  • Perpetual funding rates for majors also paint a bullish picture, with values between 5% to 10%.
  • On Deribit, BTC and ETH puts continue to show a net bias for protective put options across all time frames. However, they now trade at 5 to 6 volatility point premium to calls versus 8 to 10 early Monday.
  • Block flows featured demand for the BTC put condor, a directionally neutral strategy designed to profit from low volatility. In ETH’s case, risk reversals dominated flows.

Token talk

  • Several altcoins have outperformed bitcoin since midnight, with HYPE, OP and CRV all gaining around 3% as traders rotated into more speculative assets in anticipation of a wider market breakout.
  • The bitcoin-dominant CoinDesk 20 (CD20) Index is up by 0.3% on Tuesday, while the altcoin-heavy CoinDesk 80 (CD80) has risen by more than 1%, indicating improving sentiment among the altcoin sector.
  • The caveat to the improving sentiment is the state of the DeFi industry. One market watcher described the current landscape as a “really dark” period after Balancer Labs shut down operations and the Resolv stablecoin project was hacked Another criticized the lack of yield opportunities coupled the inherent risk that comes with using DeFi protocols.
  • The memecoin sector is another feeling the strain. The CoinDesk Memecoin Index (CDMEME) is the worst performing benchmark on Tuesday, rising just 0.1% with several of the index components losing 3%-5%.

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Crypto World

BitGo, Susquehanna Launch Institutional Access to Prediction Markets

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BitGo, Susquehanna Launch Institutional Access to Prediction Markets

BitGo, a digital asset custody and trading platform, and Susquehanna Crypto will collaborate to give institutional clients over-the-counter access to prediction markets, allowing them to trade event-based contracts using cryptocurrency or stablecoins held in custody.

According to Tuesday’s announcement, trades will be routed through BitGo’s platform, with liquidity provided by Susquehanna, which will enable hedge funds, family offices and other large investors to execute bilateral trades without moving assets off platform or converting holdings, including Bitcoin or stablecoin, into cash.

Positions are backed by crypto collateral and documented using derivatives-style agreements, with minimum trade sizes starting at $100,000.

Examples of event contract listings on Polymarket. Source: Polymarket

Prediction markets allow users to trade contracts tied to the outcome of real-world events, with prices reflecting the market’s implied probability of an outcome. Contracts can cover everything from sports and geopolitical events to niche outcomes like short-term Bitcoin (BTC) price movements or weather conditions.

While these markets have grown as tools for pricing event-driven risk, institutional participation has remained limited due to gaps in custody, collateral management and execution infrastructure, according to BitGo.

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Related: Major League Baseball inks deals with US regulator, Polymarket

Prediction markets face growing regulatory pressure in US

The launch comes as prediction markets face growing legal challenges in the United States, where at least 11 states have taken action against platforms like Kalshi, arguing they operate as unlicensed gambling venues.

In Nevada, a state court issued a temporary ban on Kalshi on March 20, siding with gaming regulators who said the platform offers unlicensed betting on event outcomes.  The ruling followed a federal appeals court decision on Thursday to deny Kalshi’s emergency request to pause the case.

In Arizona, authorities filed criminal charges against entities linked to Kalshi, alleging it accepted wagers on elections and sports in violation of state law. However, Kalshi co-founder and CEO Tarek Mansour called the charges a “total overstep,” arguing that his platform’s activity is unrelated to gambling and accusing the state of attempting to bypass the judicial process.

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Elsewhere, lawmakers are moving to bring prediction markets under existing gaming frameworks. In Utah, proposed legislation would classify certain event-based contracts as gambling, while in Pennsylvania, lawmakers are preparing a bill that would place the sector under the state’s gaming regulator, including a 34% tax on revenue.