Crypto Markets Today: Bitcoin Slips to $121.5K as Dollar Strengthens; Binance Unveils ‘Meme Rush’

BTC reversed the Wednesday bounce with a drop to $121,500 early Thursday alongside flat-to-negative action in the European equity markets and persistemt strength in the U.S. dollar.

Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JP Morgan, warned of a major stock market correction in the coming months.

Meanwhile, Arhur Hayes, chief investment officer at Maelstrom Fund said that bitcoin's four-year halving cycles are dead and the impending fiat liquidity deluge across the advanced world will continue to grease the crypto bull market.

"The global liquidity cycle is clearly turning. Central banks are quietly transitioning from tightening to easing, with rate markets now pricing 90% odds of a Fed cut in October and another in December. In Europe, the ECB’s balance sheet has expanded for the first time in eight months, and China’s PBoC injected a record 1.2 trillion yuan in liquidity last week to support credit markets," Timothy Misir, head of research at BRN said in an email.

This type of macro environment has historically fueled risk-asset outperformance and bitcoin bull cycles, Misir added.

Derivatives Positioning

By Omkar Godbole

• AVAX, ASTER, PUMP and XPL lead the decline in futures open interest in the past 24 hours. OI in BTC and ETH has dropped by 1% and 3%, respectively. These capital outflows likely stem from profit taking on longs.
• OI in USDT and USD-denominated BNB perpetuals listed on major exchanges continues to hover below its September peak, diverging bearishly from the rising spot price.
• Annualized perpetual funding rates continue to hover at or below 10% for most major tokens, a sign that the market remains healthy without any signs of froth.
• On the CME, positioning remains elevated in ether futures relative to bitcoin. OI in SOL futures hovers at a record high above 9 million SOL, with premiums falling to 13%, the lowest since early September.
• On Deribit, the story remains the same: BTC, ETH puts continue to trade at a premium to calls out to the December end expiry. Block flows over Paradigm featured risk reversals.

Token Talk

By Oliver Knight

• Crypto exchange Binance has introduced Meme Rush, a platform designed for users to capitalize on a wave of Chinese-language memecoins.
• The platform taps directly into the memecoin craze by embedding early-stage meme token curation and trading inside its Wallet.
• It sources listings via community launch hubs (for example Four.Meme on BNB Chain), ranking by both on-chain volume and social traction, letting Binance capture speculative interest pre-DEX listing.
• Its built-in reward mechanics (4× Binance Alpha points) align user activity with monetization. The boom in Chinese-language memecoin projects on BNB Chain is amplifying hype and driving attention across the ecosystem.
• On PancakeSwap v2, daily trading volume recently hit $15.55 billion, according to CoinMarketCap, underscoring how active DEX memecoin markets remain.
• The majority of volume has taken place on lesser known memecoins like 币安Holder, which racked up around $1 billion in volume across 163,000 transactions.