Crypto Markets Today: Bitcoin Languishes at $111K as Altcoins Continue to Outperform

Bitcoin BTC$68,809.98 is trading in a tight range around $111,000 having lost 2.9% of its value over the past 30 days.

Bitcoin dominance has slipped from 61% to 57% in same period, indicating a bullish outlook for altcoins, coinciding with a slew of crypto treasury companies adoption altcoin accumulation strategies. Ether ETH$1,983.27, up 1.1% since midnight UTC, and solana SOL$85.04, 0.43% higher, have notched gains of 21% and 27.5%, respectively, over the 30-day period.

The CoinDesk 20 Index, a measure of the broad market, has gained 0.46% since midnight and is 1.7% higher than 24 hours ago, with all members rising over the latter period.

Nick Forster, founder of on-chain options platform Derive.xyz, said in an email that ETH has a 44% chance of hitting $6,000 before the end of 2025.

“Institutional adoption of ETH is building serious momentum. Last week alone, the number of ETH held by ETFs rose by 250K — from 6.5 million to 6.74 million," Forster wrote.

Derivatives Positioning

• The total open interest across all perpetual instruments increased overnight to $114 billion, data from Laevitas show.
• A liquidations heatmap for the BTC-USDT pair on Binance shows that bitcoin is trading between two significant liquidation clusters. Above the current price, a $90 million cluster of liquidations sits around the $112,200 mark. To the downside, the largest cluster is valued at $76.6 million, located around $110,000.
• According to Deribit options data, the 24-hour BTC put-call volume is 26.4K contracts, with calls accounting for 51.6% of the total. The contract with the highest volume is the $108K strike price put expiring Sept. 26.
• That's followed by the call at a strike price of $114K expiring on the same day.
• The funding rate heatmap on Coinglass remains positive for most assets, indicating a general bullish sentiment. The one exception is TRX, which has a negative funding rate, reflecting a -10.2% APR.

Token Talk

By Oliver Knight

• Bitcoin BTC$68,809.98 dominance, a key metric when assessing whether the crypto market is in "altcoin season" has ticked down another notch to around 58%, having been above 61% just 30 days ago.
• The drop-off demonstrates a change in trader behavior: Typically altcoins perform poorly when BTC enters a downtrend, this time, however, many have held their value while some have outperformed the market's largest asset.
• Bitcoin is down by 2.91% in the past 30 days while the likes of ether ETH$1,983.27 and solana SOL$85.04 are up by 21% and 27.5%, respectively.
• While the gains have been driven by the adoption of several altcoins in corporate treasuries, they can also be attributed to a recalibration of the entire market.
• During BTC's rise to a $124,000 record high last month, the narrative was solely focused on bitcoin and it's perceived correlation with the well-performing tech sector in equities.
• It's worth noting that in previous cycles bitcoin dominance slumped all the way down to 39%, indicating that the altcoin resurgence still has some way to go.
• However, as liquidity flowed into BTC, several altcoins fell to record lows against bitcoin, leading to a number being "oversold" on technical indicators like relative strength index (RSI).