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Bitcoin’s volatility spikes to its highest since FTX’s collapse as prices crater to nearly $60,000

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Bitcoin's volatility spikes to its highest since FTX's collapse as prices crater to nearly $60,000

Bitcoin’s Wall Street-like fear gauge has spiked to its highest level since the collapse of the FTX exchange in 2022, signaling intense market panic as prices plummeted to nearly $60,000.

Volmex’s bitcoin volatility index (BVIV), which represents the annualized expected price turbulence over four weeks, jumped to nearly 100% from 56% on Thursday.

The index serves as a crypto equivalent to Cboe’s VIX, the so-called fear/panic gauge, which indicates the 30-day implied volatility of the S&P 500 and rises during market panics as traders bid up options prices to hedge against declines in the index.

The BVIV does the same more often than not, rising during market panics as observed on Thursday.

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“A wave of panic swept through crypto markets this week, correlated to a sharp risk-off move across various asset classes. Bitcoin’s 30-day implied volatility, as measured by the BVIV Index, surged from just over 40 to 95 in a matter of days, levels not seen since the infamous collapse of FTX at the end of 2022,” Cole Kennelly, founder and CEO of Volmex Labs, told CoinDesk in a Telegram chat.

Implied volatility is influenced by demand for options, or derivative contracts that help traders make asymmetrical gains from uptrends in the underlying asset and hedge downside risks. Call options are used to bet on the upside, while put options are typically bought as insurance against price drops.

On Thursday, traders scrambled to buy Deribit-listed options, especially puts, as bitcoin’s price tanked from $70,000 to nearly $60,000. The top five most traded options of the past 24 hours are all puts at strikes ranging from $70,000 to $20,000, according to data source Deribit Metrics. The $20,000 put represents a bet that prices will fall below that level.

“Volatility markets reacted sharply to last night’s price drop. Front-end volatility surged as dealers adjusted for gamma [near-term risks]. Short-dated vols led the surge, showing higher demand for protection, while longer-dated vols lagged, keeping the volatility curve steeply inverted,” Jimmy Yang, co-founder of institutional liquidity provider Orbit Markets, told CoinDesk.

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Yang’s clients rushed to buy downside protection, fearing the price crash could devastate digital asset treasuries that bought bitcoin at higher levels. These firms could now liquidate at a loss, leading to a deeper slide in bitcoin’s price.

“With significant uncertainty still ahead — particularly around the DATs and the risk of further unwind cascades, we’ve seen a lot of client demand for downside protection,” he added.

Bitcoin’s price has bounced to over $64,000 at the time of writing, an over 5% recovery from overnight lows, according to CoinDesk data. Yang expects volatility to stabilize.

“Sentiment is deep in extreme fear, but bitcoin’s price seems to have found a base near $60K. If price action stabilizes, volatility looks stretched and could quickly pull back,” he said.

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Crypto World

Pump.fun Tightens Creator Fee Controls in New Update

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Pump.fun Tightens Creator Fee Controls in New Update

Memecoin launchpad Pump.fun introduced a new restriction on creator fee settings, limiting token deployers to a single post-launch change in how fees are distributed on the platform. 

In a post on X, Pump.fun co-founder Alon Cohen said the update aims to reduce “griefing” — where creators alter fee recipients after a token gains traction — and other forms of manipulation tied to fee redirection, where token creators can alter who receives fees after a coin gains traction. 

Under the change, each token will have one opportunity to redirect creator fees to a different wallet, after which the configuration becomes permanently locked. 

Pump.fun’s latest update follows a broader overhaul announced in January, when the platform acknowledged that its creator-fee model had skewed incentives by disproportionately rewarding token deployers over traders.

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Source: Alon Cohen

Pump.fun’s broader attempts to shift incentives to traders

On Jan. 10, the platform introduced changes like multi-wallet distribution and post-launch controls, aiming to improve transparency and better align rewards with trading activity. 

On Feb. 17, Pump.fun introduced “Cashback Coins,” requiring creators to choose at launch whether fees go to themselves or are redirected to traders, with that high-level model locked in once selected. 

The change aimed to rebalance the distribution of rewards between token deployers and traders. However, while the overall fee model was fixed at launch, creators or coin admins could still adjust the specific wallets receiving those fees and how they were distributed after a token went live.

Related: ‘Hawk Tuah’ girl Haliey Welch says memecoin implosion ‘traumatized’ her

This meant that even if the model didn’t change, the underlying recipients could, creating potential trust issues for traders. The latest update narrows that flexibility by allowing only a single post-launch change to fee recipients, after which the configuration is permanently locked.

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Early community reactions suggest the change may do little to address broader trading dynamics on the platform. X user gake said the change might not help much, while another user, tom, described it as a “drop in the bucket” that shows the team is at least acknowledging the issue.

Pump.fun activity drops as fees and volume fall year over year

Pump.fun’s shift in its incentive structure comes as its fees have declined from their peak. DefiLlama data shows that in January 2026, the platform recorded $31.8 million in fees, down about 75% from $148 million in January 2025, its best-performing month to date.

In February 2026, the platform recorded $25 million in revenue, down 66% from nearly $75 million in February 2025.

Pump.fun’s monthly revenue chart. Source: DefiLlama

The platform’s trading volume has followed a similar pattern. According to DefiLlama, Pump.fun recorded monthly volume of over $11.6 billion in January 2025, which fell to about $2.1 billion in January 2026, a decline of roughly 81%.

In February 2026, monthly volume totaled about $1.91 billion, down 68% from $6.1 billion in February 2025.

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