Crypto Markets Today: Bitcoin Pulls Back, PENGU Open Interest Surges

Bitcoin BTC$88,273.37 pulled back from overnight highs above $116,000 to under $115,000 as the Dollar Index (DXY) remains steady despite expectations of an imminent Fed rate cut.

Analysts remained optimistic saying they expect new lifetime highs in BTC and outsized gains in select few tokens, such as HYPE, SOL and ENA.

Focus has already shifted to smaller names. Tokens such as MYX, HASH, PENGU, PUMP and MNT have carved out price gains in excess of 10% this week.

"The CPI + jobs combo created a classic “good news/bad data” trade: inflation prints higher, but weaker labor data preserves the easing narrative, a net positive for crypto in the near term," Timothy Misir, head of research, BRN said in an email.

Derivatives Positioning

• Open interest in futures tied to the top 10 cryptocurrencies increased 3%-5% in the past 24 hours as strengthening expectations of Fed rate cuts prompt traders to take more risk.
• Still, the market does not appear overheated, with annualized perpetual funding rates for major coins continuing to hover around 10%. Positive funding rates indicate a bullish bias among traders. Extremely high values typically signal market froth.
• OI in PENGU, one of the best-performing tokens of the past seven days, hit a record high 7.78 billion coins, validating the price rise. Funding rates for the coin are slightly elevated at around 15%.
• Smaller tokens, like SKY and PYTH, have deeply negative funding rates, a sign of bias towards bearish, short positions.
• CME's bitcoin futures are finally seeing an uptick in OI, ending a multiweek decline while ether OI has pulled back to a one-month low of 1.78 million ETH. These diverging trends could be a sign of renewed trader focus on BTC. Options OI in BTC and ETH remains elevated at multimonth highs.
• On Deribit, BTC and ETH options continue to show a bias toward puts up to the December expiry, despite traders pricing roughly five U.S. interest-rate cuts by July next year.

Token Talk

By Oliver Knight

• One of the founders of Thorchain, a decentralized network that allows users to send assets across blockchains, was hacked this week after being duped by a deepfake video call on Zoom.
• "Ok so this attack finally manifested itself. Had an old metamask cleaned out," JPThor wrote on X.
• Peckshield noted that $1.2 million was stolen from a Thorchain user, with ZachXBT adding that the perpetrator is linked to North Korean hackers.
• Thorchain emerged as one of North Korea's most popular laundering tools earlier this year; researchers estimated that 80% of the proceeds from a $1.4 billion hack on Bybit had been siphoned through Thorchain and protocols like Vultisig.
• The thorchain token (RUNE) is trading around $1.28, having lost 14% of its value in the past month and more than 90% since hitting its March 2024 high of $12.95.
• The hack involved a mixture of social engineering and phishing, two techniques that contributed to the $2.5 billion stolen by hackers in the first half of 2025.