Bitcoin pauses at $64,000 as rising yields, oil drag equities lower

Bitcoin BTC$64,129.30 recently traded around $64,000, pausing after a rally that saw it rise from $62,600 on Monday. The largest cryptocurrency has dropped 0.6% since midnight UTC, trailing after Nasdaq 100 index futures, which lost 1.1% as U.S. Treasury bond yields and oil prices rose.

Ether ETH$1,895.97 lost around 1% since midnight and coins including SUI, XLM and TAO also dropped.

The increase in yields reflects unease ahead of the Federal Reserve minutes release due Wednesday after two consecutive softer inflation prints. Brent crude oil rose back to $94 per barrel after a 60-day US-Iran ceasefire expired Monday without a deal.

Also on Wednesday, U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to attend a meeting with crypto CEOs at the White House, with U.S. policy being a key driver of price action of late, contributing to the stop-start nature of bitcoin’s range-bound performance.

Derivatives positioning

• Taker ratio flips bullish: With BTC outperforming U.S. stocks on Monday, the long-short taker volume ratio in crypto futures flipped decisively from neutral to bullish, with longs accounting for over 51% of flow. Takers are traders who buy or sell at available prices, pulling liquidity from the order book.
• Funding rates confirm the chase for longs: BTC traders are chasing bullish bets, as evidenced by annualized perpetual funding rates surging to a 20-month high, according to data source CryptoQuant. Positive funding rates mean futures are trading at a premium to spot price, reflecting a bullish bias.
• BTC OI holds steady despite the move: Overall open interest (OI) in bitcoin futures remains near 750,000 BTC, a level it's largely held for weeks.
• SOL sees a pickup in activity: OI in SOL futures rose to 66.88 million tokens, the most since July 10. Funding rates remain near zero.
• XLM shows a clear bearish tilt: The token has dropped nearly 3% to 15 cents since midnight, its lowest since May 27, reversing a pop to 27 cents at the end of May. Traders appear to be shorting the dip: OI in XLM futures rose 3.5% over the past 24 hours, the highest level since June 4. With annualized funding rates at -28%, that indicates a strong bearish bias. A negative 24-hour OI-adjusted cumulative volume delta (CVD) reinforces this picture, suggesting sellers are trading more aggressively via market orders rather than passive limit orders.
• Other notable OI movers: CC, DOGE and SUI are also among the notable OI gainers, though prices of all three are trading little-changed to negative. HBAR and CRO are notable OI losers.
• Bullishness looks selective, not broad-based: BTC is buoyant and showing buyer leadership, with a positive 24-hour CVD. Most of the other major cryptocurrencies, including ETH, SOL, LTC, LINK and DOGE, show negative CVD, suggesting the bullish sentiment is concentrated in BTC.
• Low volatility is inviting fresh positioning: Bitcoin and ether's 30-day implied volatility indexes remain at the year’s lows. Trading firm TDX Strategies suggested using this low-vol environment to build tactical positioning favoring December optionality across BTC and select altcoins such as SOL and HYPE.
• Options flow leans toward upside bets: On Deribit, calls struck above BTC's spot price continue to dominate 24-hour volume rankings. The $70,000-strike call expiring Sept. 25 is the most-traded bitcoin option of the past 24 hours. For ether, the $2,080 call expiring Aug. 28 leads.