Chainlink (LINK) has had a pretty rough month, dropping as much as 45% after marking a $37 all-time high on Feb. 20. While the recent losses may look surprising when compared against other altcoins' gains, LINK still managed to rally 640% over the past nine months. Therefore, there should be no reason to interpret the failure to sustain above $32 as a trend reversal. On-chain indicators like daily active addresses and transactions, along with the open interest on futures contracts, continue to display strength. Chainlink was also very well positioned to benefit from the decentralized finance (DeFi) boom. Many of …

The most basic Bitcoin (BTC) options contracts involve buying a call which gives the holder the opportunity to acquire the asset at a fixed price on a set date. For this privilege, the buyer simply pays an upfront fee, known as a premium, to the contract seller. Although this is a great way to use leverage while avoiding the liquidation risk that comes from trading futures contracts, it comes at a cost. The options premium will rise during volatile markets, causing the trade to require even further price appreciation to generate a reasonable profit, so the premium is a metric …

After hitting a $43,000 local low on Feb. 28, Bitcoin (BTC) price rallied 28% to retake the $57,000 level on Mar. 10. As the Feb. 21 to Feb. 23 massive $5.9 billion liquidations caused by excessive long leverage seem long gone, futures contracts reached a $20.3 billion all-time high. This time, as Bitcoin rallied to $57,000, there seems to be no signs of retail FOMO (fear of missing out) buying, at least from the perspective of futures and volume indicators. While the funding rate stabilized at a neutral level, spot volumes stagnated, signaling that the recent growth in the open …

On March 5, Polkadot‘s DOT experienced a flash crash at Binance perpetual futures that resulted in the contract trading as low at $0.20. While this could have been an honest fat-finger trading mistake, a number of indicators point to a planned attack. While no hard evidence will likely ever emerge, the open interest increase just 24 hours ahead of the event indicates that an attacker could have generated an $8.3-million profit by manipulating Binance’s matching engine. As shown above, during the three-minute candle, $20.4 million worth of DOT contracts traded. Although the swift downside move was a 99.5% flash crash, …

Polkadot (DOT) has been raising eyebrows for the past couple of months as the interoperability-focused altcoins has gained 625% in the past three months. The promise that interoperability between blockchains will be a viable solution to the high Ethereum gas fees plaguing the crypto market has made Polkadot’s development of parachains attractive and the number of projects choosing to build on DOT continues to grow alongside it’s popularity as a staking platform. Polkadot parachains operate similarly to the Ethereum 2.0 sharding proposal, which creates independent blockchains built for a particular purpose. Many projects building on Polkadot, like Moonbeam, Equilibrium, and …

On Feb. 20, Ether (ETH) price rallied to a new high at $2,015, and this caused multiple indicators to display signs of excessive optimism. While the excitement could be easily justified by Ether's year-to-date 176% gain, these warning signs should not be ignored. One of the primary driving factors of the current bullish sentiment is the launch of CME ETH futures and Grayscale Investments' ETH trust reaching $6.3 billion assets under management. The decentralized finance phenomenon also continues, as there is currently more than $21 billion worth of Ether locked in DeFi. Currently, the Crypto Fear & Greed Index is …

According to on-chain analytics provider Glassnode, the late-February crypto market correction may have purged excessive leverage from the markets. On March 1, Glassnode published a report analyzing the recent crypto crash, which was only the second significant crypto correction since the markets pushed into new record highs in late 2020. Glassnode noted that the crash peaked with a 25% fall in the price of Bitcoin (BTC) from the local top of $58,300 to $43,343. As such, the move was weaker than January’s dip, which saw a roughly 30% retracement from $42,000 to less than $30,000. The analytics provider suggested that …

On Feb. 3, Cardano conducted a hard fork and successfully integrated the Mary upgrade to the testnet, transforming the blockchain into a multiasset network similar to Ethereum. This event seems to be one of the reasons for the impressive 475% year-to-date rally of ADA, and the altcoin is now causing unexpected ripples in the derivatives markets. Since the end of December 2020, ADA's $81-million aggregate futures open interest hiked to the current $580 million, becoming the third-largest derivatives market, behind Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH). Data indicates this was not purely a technical adjustment, as Cardano's on-chain and trading metrics …

The price of Ether (ETH) is surging past $2,000 with strong momentum while gaining a bit of ground on Bitcoin (BTC) in the last 24 hours. There are three key reasons behind the explosive rally of Ether, namely the rapid growth of DeFi, the hype around ETH after the CME futures listing, and the decreasing amount of BTC and ETH on exchanges. CME futures listing institutional hype Ether hitting $2,000 for the first time ever follows the launch of CME ETH futures earlier this month, which primarily target institutional investors. Prior to the listing, there was a popular narrative that …

In the last 24-hours, Ether (ETH) rallied above $1,900 to a new all-time high and this breakout reflects a strong 45% gain for just February alone. Aside from Ether following Bitcoin's (BTC) bullish momentum, the move has been partially fueled by the news that BlackRock is considering future cryptocurrency investments and Microstrategy's $900 million convertible notes offer to buy more Bitcoin. The growing popularity of decentralized exchanges (DEX) has also been a huge booster of Ether price and earlier this week Uniswap reached $100 billion in cumulative volume. This signals just how relevant the Ethereum-based DeFi ecosystem has become. The …

When BitMEX launched its Bitcoin (BTC) perpetual futures market in 2016, it created a new paradigm for cryptocurrency traders. Although this was not the first platform to offer BTC-settled inverse swaps, BitMEX brought usability and liquidity to a broader audience of investors. BitMEX contracts did not involve fiat or stablecoins and even though the reference price was calculated in the U.S. dollar, all profits and losses were paid in BTC. Fast forward to 2021, and Tether (USDT)-settled contracts have gained relevance. Using USDT-based contracts certainly makes it easier for retail investors to calculate their profit, loss and the required margin …

The launch of Chicago Mercantile Group’s highly anticipated Ether futures saw more than $30 million worth of contracts traded during the first day of trade. Launched on Feb. 8, CME’s new Ether product saw 388 contracts traded in its first day, with 303 of the contracts being mobilized to speculate on February’s price. While 84 contracts expiring in March were also traded, only a single April contract changed hands. Each of CME’s contracts represents 50 Ether, with the exchange setting the minimum trade value at five contracts — worth more than $450,000 at current prices. CME’s ETH futures last traded …