Crypto Markets Today: XMR Rallies Despite 18-Block Reorg

Leading privacy-focused cryptocurrency monero (XMR) rose to a near two-month high of $333 early Monday even as the blockchain suffered an18-block reorg that reversed over 100 transactions.

This episode once again underscores centralization issues with proof-of-work blockchains that allow for tampering of records.

Meanwhile, bitcoin traded in the red, having failed to establish a foothold above $116,000 over the weekend as whales rotated more funds into ether. The broader market also surrendered gains, with the CoinDesk 20 Index falling to 3,239 points, a drop for more than 3% over 24 hours.

Derivatives Positioning

by Omkar Godbole

• The top 25 coins have experienced a decline in futures open interest (OI) over the past 24 hours, with memecoins, such as DOGE, PEPE and FARTCOIN, registering double-digit capital outflows. This contrasts with the pre-Fed bounce being seen in most tokens.
• BTC's global futures OI tally has pulled back to 720K BTC from the near-record high of 744K BTC last week. Total market-wide OI has pulled back to $90 billion from $95 billion over the weekend.
• ETH's tally grew to over 14 million ether from roughly 13.2 million ether early this month, indicating renewed capital inflows. However, this does not necessarily indicate bullish positioning, as the OI-normalized cumulative volume delta (CVD) for ETH has been negative for the past 24 hours. That's a sign of net selling pressure.
• Most major tokens have seen a negative CVD for the past 24 hours.
• Activity in the CME-listed futures looks to be picking up the pace, with OI bouncing to 141.69K BTC from the multimonth low of 133.25K BTC early this week. The annualized rate on a three-month basis remains below 10%, extending the consolidation. ETH's CME OI remains below 2 million ether.
• On Deribit, put bias in BTC and ETH has eased significantly across all tenors as markets anticipate Fed rate cuts in the coming months. The implied volatility term structure remains in contango, with December expiry expected to be more volatile.

Token Talk

By Oliver Knight

• Monero’s blockchain suffered its deepest-ever reorg on Monday, rolling back 18 blocks.
• A blockchain reorganization, or reorg, happens when nodes abandon part of the existing chain to follow a longer one with more proof-of-work. The shift occurs during a temporary fork, when two versions of the chain compete.
• Monero's XMR token remained unperturbed during the porcess; rallying by 5% despite the attack by Qubic, a layer-1 AI-focused blockchain and mining pool that attempted to take over the Monero blockchain by amassing 51% of the mining power last month.
• The event rewrote roughly 36 minutes of transaction history and invalidated about 118 confirmed transactions, prompting concerns about the security of the network.
• Crypto podcaster xenu claimed that Qubic's reorg was an attempt to "stop the bleeding" of XMR's price after it tumbled from $344 to $235 during the initial 51% attack in August.
• XMR currently trades at $304 having brushed aside negative sentiment with daily trading volume rising by 78% to $136 million.