Market Wrap: Traders Ratchet Up Derivatives Bets as Bitcoin Mounts Rally

• Bitcoin BTC$88,495.43 trading around $58,800 as of 20:17 UTC (4:17 p.m. ET). Climbing 2.1% over the previous 24 hours.
• Bitcoin’s 24-hour range: $57,069-$59,380 (CoinDesk 20)

Bitcoin has climbed on four of the past five days, and the price is now pushing back toward $60,000 for the first time in a couple weeks.

"It wasn't with the fanfare and fireworks, but instead just a standard grind higher, helped in part by the continued positive adoption news flow," Matt Blom, head of sales and trading with the digital-asset firm Equos, wrote Tuesday in an email.

Several stories reinforced the theme of growing mainstream adoption of cryptocurrencies, echoing the takeaway from Visa's announcement on Monday.

• PayPal on Tuesday announced a Checkout service that will allow bitcoin BTC$88,495.43, ether ETH$3,010.43, bitcoin cash (BCH) and litecoin (LTC) to be seamlessly converted into U.S. dollars or other fiat currencies when making purchases, the same as a credit card or a debit card would work inside a PayPal wallet.
• Blockstream, the bitcoin development company, is launching a token tied to the company's bitcoin-mining production, redeemable in bitcoin.
• Derivatives exchange Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) will launch smaller-sized bitcoin "micro" futures contracts in May, potentially expanding the number of people who bet on the future price of the leading cryptocurrency.
• Tether, the company behind the biggest dollar-linked stablecoin, USDT, published an attestation verifying that it had $35 billion in assets backing a similar amount of its USDT token last month. Some analysts had warned that an unraveling of trust in tether could rattle the bitcoin market.

"Bitcoin has tentative resistance at the $60,000 level, but momentum from yesterday’s Visa news should be enough to keep the bullish trend going strong," Edward Moya, senior market analyst for the foreign-exchange broker Oanda, wrote Tuesday in an email.

Bitcoin Funding Rates Climb, Suggesting Optimism Over Fresh Rally

Bitcoin traders appear to be ratcheting up bets on a fresh rally, and they’re taking on more leverage – and risk – in cryptocurrency derivatives markets.

In the past few days, the cost to fund a long position in the market for bitcoin BTC$88,495.43 perpetual swaps, a type of derivatives in cryptocurrency markets similar to futures contracts in traditional markets, has broken above neutral levels for the first time since mid-March, according to Arcane Research, a Norwegian analysis firm.

The average cost is now pushing toward 0.08%. That’s still well below a level close to 0.12% witnessed earlier this month, when bitcoin surged to an all-time high price above $61,000, or earlier in the year, when the funding cost was roughly twice as high.

But the recent rise appears to show traders finding a renewed appetite for risk-taking following a market shakeout over the past couple weeks. Bitcoin’s price fell to just above $50,000 as recently as March 25.

“The funding rate spikes coincide with strong optimism and high leverage from short-term traders,” according to the Arcane report.

Read More: Crypto Traders Lever Up as Bitcoin Creeps Back Toward All-Time High

Ether rises with bitcoin

• Ether ETH$3,010.43 trading around $1,847. Climbing 2.1% over the previous 24 hours.
• Ether’s 24-hour range: $1,787-$1,860 (CoinDesk 20)

Ether ETH$3,010.43, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market value, climbed alongside bitcoin, gaining 1.3% to $1,841 as of press time

The native cryptocurrency of the Ethereum blockchain, ether has more than doubled this year, but its price is still off the all-time high around $2,000 reached in February.