Markets Today: Bitcoin, Ether Recover From Lows Before FOMC Minutes

Bitcoin BTC$90,738.61 and ether ETH$3,125.08 recovered from overnight lows, even as U.S. stock index futures slipped and Japanese bond yields rose to multidecade highs in move than might make riskier assets less attractive.

The CoinDesk 20 Index (CD20) traded 1.5% lower on a 24-hour basis, pointing to broad market weakness. The CoinDesk 80 Index (CD80) of next-largest tokens fell 1.4%.

Traders are looking to the release of the minutes from the last Federal Reserve policy meeting, scheduled for later Wednesday, while emphasizing the importance of tracking the Treasury General Account, the U.S. government's account with the Fed. The Treasury is in the process of rebuilding the TGA balance, which may pose a risk to asset prices.

In key news, Point72 Asset Management and ExodusPoint Capital Management disclosed equity stakes in crypto payments firm Alt5 Sigma on Monday, according to Bloomberg.

Derivatives Positioning

• Leveraged crypto futures bets worth $448 million have been liquidated in the past 24 hours. Most were longs, which means significant bullish leverage has been cleared from the market.
• Open interest in BTC, DOGE and XRP has declined, indicating that the price drop has yet to trigger a surge in new bearish bets.
• Meanwhile, LINK, HYPE and SUI have seen increases in open interest, while OI has held flat in ETH, according to data source Coinglass.
• Perpetual funding rates for most major cryptocurrencies continue to remain mildly positive, indicating a bias towards long positions. The opposite is the case for ADA and XMR.
• Solana futures open interest on CME remains elevated near record highs above 4.6 million SOL, with the annualized three-month premium rising to 16% from 12% last week. The uptick indicates bullish capital inflows.
• BTC open interest is beginning to recover, now at 145.76K BTC, the highest since late July. Premium remains below 10%. In ETH's case, the premium again faded the spike above 10%, with open interest approaching the 2 million ETH mark.
• On Deribit, short-dated (one-week) and near-dated (coming months) BTC and ETH puts continue to trade at a premium to calls, reflecting concerns about downside risks.
• Flows over the OTC network Paradigm featured increased activity in put options tied to bitcoin and ether, with activity across outrights, spreads, and calendar spread strategies.

Token Talk

• Solana token issuance platform Pump.fun has crossed $800.6 million in lifetime revenue, Dune data shows, mostly from its 1% swap fee, with daily intake averaging over $1 million. This puts it among a small list of platforms earning high revenues in the crypto space.
• Pump originally collected fees when tokens “graduated” to Raydium, but now earns from its in-house DEX, PumpSwap. The model has proven sticky despite competition.
• LetsBonk briefly overtook Pump in graduated tokens last month, driven by its Raydium LaunchLab integration and Bonk community push, but lost ground as top memecoin deployers migrated back to Pump.
• Pump’s token ICO last month raised $600 million in 12 minutes, with the platform now running buybacks above market price to stabilize trading. This is indicative of how the launchpad has become an asset in itself.
• In contrast, LetsBonk revenue has collapsed to under $30,000 a day from around $1 million earlier this month, showing the volatility of memecoin platforms competing for flow.
• New entrant Token Mill is trying to stand out with a “King of the Mill” mechanism in which fees are used to buy and burn the highest-volume token every 30 minutes. The aim is to gamify volatility as a growth loop.
• Solana, meanwhile, lost its crown as the dominant memecoin chain to Coinbase's Base, which has tied token issuance into decentralized social media via Zora. On Monday, Base hosted nearly 58,000 new memecoins versus 33,000 on Solana.