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Wall Street remains bullish on bitcoin (BTC) price while offshore traders retreat

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Coinbase (COIN), Circle (CRCL) and Bullish (BLSH) among crypto names sharply lower as BTC tumbles

A divergence in global bitcoin market sentiment is widening as U.S. institutional investors hold steady while offshore traders retreat from their positions.

The gap is clearest in futures markets. CME, the go-to platform for hedge funds and institutional desks in the U.S., shows traders are still paying a premium to stay long on bitcoin, according to NYDIG’s head of research, Greg Cipolaro.

This is evident on a one-month annualized basis, essentially the markup for futures over spot prices, which remains higher than on its offshore counterpart, Deribit.

“The more pronounced drop in offshore basis suggests reduced appetite for leveraged long exposure,” Cipolaro wrote. “The widening spread between CME and Deribit basis functions as a real-time gauge of geographical risk appetite.”

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Bitcoin earlier this month fell to $60,000 before rebounding. Some pinned the selloff on rising concerns that quantum computing will undermine the system’s cryptographic security. NYDIG found that the numbers don’t back up that explanation.

For one, bitcoin’s performance has closely tracked that of publicly traded quantum-computing companies like IONQ Inc. (IONQ) and D-Wave Quantum Inc. (QBTS). If quantum risk were truly weighing on crypto, those stocks would be rising while bitcoin falls.

Instead, they dropped together, pointing to a broader decline in appetite for long-term, future-driven assets. On top of that, search data on Google Trends shows interest for “quantum computing bitcoin” rises when the price of BTC rises.

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Crypto World

XRP investors likely bought the dip after the recent crash

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XRP: exchange reserve on Binance. (CryptoQuant)

Payments-focused cryptocurrency XRP is rising faster than bitcoin and ether after investors hunted for bargains post early-month crash.

XRP’s price has rallied 38% to $1.55 since hitting a low of $1.12 on Feb. 6, according to CoinDesk data. Prices have jumped by more than 5% in the past 24 hours alone.

This performance puts it well ahead of both bitcoin and ether, which have recovered roughly 15% since Feb. 6. As of writing, bitcoin and ether changed hands at $69,420 and $2,020, respectively.

XRP’s bitcoin-beating rally tracks signs of dip-buying on Binance following the Feb. 6 crash. CryptoQuant data indicates Binance’s XRP reserves dropped sharply by 192.37 million XRP to 2.553 billion between February 7 and 9. The 7% slide marked the lowest level since January 2024, and holdings have remained stable since then.

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XRP: exchange reserve on Binance. (CryptoQuant)

XRP: exchange reserve on Binance. (CryptoQuant)

Analysts typically associate a drop in exchange balances with investor accumulation. The logic is that investors prefer to take direct custody of coins rather than keep them on exchanges when intending to hold them long-term.

Sudden, sharp withdrawals can reduce available supply, opening the door to a price rally. Historical trends reinforce this view. XRP rallied sharply from $0.60 to over $2.40 in the final two months of 2024 as the balance held on exchanges slid faster.

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WLFI May Have Signaled Crypto Crash Hours Before Bitcoin: Study

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WLFI May Have Signaled Crypto Crash Hours Before Bitcoin: Study

World Liberty Financial Token (WLFI), a DeFi governance token affiliated with the Trump family, may have signaled a major market breakdown hours before Bitcoin moved, according to a new analysis by data provider Amberdata.

The report examines trading activity on Oct. 10, 2025, when roughly $6.93 billion in leveraged crypto positions were liquidated in under an hour. Bitcoin (BTC) fell about 15% and Ether (ETH) dropped roughly 20%, while smaller tokens lost as much as 70%.

Amberdata found that WLFI began a sharp decline more than five hours before the broader market downturn. At the time, Bitcoin was still trading near $121,000 and showed little immediate stress.

“A five-hour lead time is hard to dismiss as coincidence,” Mike Marshall, who authored the report, told Cointelegraph. “That duration is what separates a genuinely actionable warning from a statistical artefact,” he added.

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Related: Senators ask Bessent to probe $500M UAE stake in Trump-linked WLFI

WLFI anomalies before the selloff

Researchers analyzed three unusual patterns, including a surge in trading activity, a sharp divergence from Bitcoin and extreme leverage, to determine whether WLFI signaled stress before the broader market selloff.

WLFI’s hourly volume jumped to roughly $474 million, about 21.7 times its normal level, within minutes of tariff-related political news. Meanwhile, funding rates on WLFI perpetual futures reached about 2.87% every eight hours, equivalent to an annualized borrowing cost near 131%.

WLFI funding rating. Source: Amberdata

The study does not claim insider trading occurred. Instead, it argues the way crypto markets are structured can make certain assets matter more than their size suggests.

WLFI’s holder base is concentrated among politically connected participants, the report says, unlike Bitcoin’s widely distributed ownership. Marshall said the trading pattern appeared “instrument-specific,” meaning activity was focused on WLFI rather than across the broader crypto complex.

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“If this were superior analysis (sophisticated participants reading the tariff headlines faster and drawing better conclusions) you’d expect to see that reflected more broadly,” he said. “What we actually saw was concentrated activity in WLFI first.”

The timing is notable. Trading volume accelerated roughly three minutes after public tariff news. Marshall said such speed suggests prepared execution rather than retail traders interpreting headlines in real time.

The link between WLFI and the broader market drop comes down to leverage. Many crypto trading platforms let traders use several assets as collateral for borrowed positions. When WLFI fell sharply, the value of that collateral dropped, forcing traders to sell liquid assets like Bitcoin and Ether to cover their positions. Those sales pushed prices lower and triggered further liquidations across the market.

WLFI crashed ahead of Bitcoin. Source: Amberdata

Related: Trump family’s WLFI plans FX and remittance platform: Report

WLFI reacted faster than Bitcoin to stress

Amberdata’s data shows WLFI’s realized volatility reached nearly eight times that of Bitcoin during the episode, making it particularly sensitive to stress. Researchers argue that structurally fragile, highly leveraged assets may move first during market shocks.

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Marshall said the findings should not be interpreted as proof that WLFI can reliably predict downturns. The analysis covers a single event, and more data would be needed to establish statistical consistency. Still, he believes the behavior is significant.