Layer-2 and DeFi tokens lead broad crypto advance as post-Fed hike nerves fade

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Futures market signals positional trading revival: The crypto futures market is signaling a revival in positional trading. This shift is underscored by a nearly 5% expansion in cumulative open interest (OI) to $141.2 billion, which contrasts with a 3% dip in daily trading volume to $95 billion. The taker buy-sell volume remains balanced, suggesting capital is entering the market structurally rather than through aggressive momentum chasing.

Bitcoin open interest builds as the price gains: OI in bitcoin futures ticked up to 680K BTC from 670K BTC since midnight UTC, a slight increase alongside BTC's advance. This combination is typically taken to represent a build-up of long, or bullish, positions. However, the increase is quite small, and the OI tally remains well below the peak of 800K BTC hit early this year. In other words, overall positioning remains light.

Binance trader ratios show institutional conviction: Binance's top trader long-short accounts ratio has pulled back to 1.52, still bullish, but lower than Wednesday's high of nearly 2. Meanwhile, the long-short positions ratio remains elevated at 2.36. That means fewer individual “whales,” or large holders, are leaning long, but the ones who are have greatly increased their bet sizes, indicating strong institutional conviction.

UNI futures open interest surges to near record: Among altcoins, open interest (OI) in futures tied to Uniswap's UNI surged to 86.61 million tokens — flirting with an all-time high, up from 76.89 million tokens yesterday. This expansion highlights substantial capital inflows, which are moving in tandem with a 30% explosion in the token’s spot price. This renewed appetite for major DeFi altcoins stems from mounting market optimism surrounding friendly, coordinated crypto regulations from the SEC and CFTC.

Bullish momentum dominates major tokens’ volume delta: The bullish mood is also reflected in the 24-hour OI-adjusted cumulative volume delta, which is positive for most major tokens, excluding GRAM, SHIB, HBAR and BNB. A positive reading means bulls are being more aggressive by trading longs at market orders rather than passive limit orders.

Implied volatility drops to May’s lows: With major events such as the Clarity Act vote, and the Fed and Bank of Japan interest-rate meetings out of the way, bitcoin’s annualized 30-day implied volatility index, BVIV, dropped to 36%. That level has been a floor since May. The decline points to expectations for near-term market calm.

Options skew turns short-term bullish for BTC and ETH: In options listed on Deribit, BTC’s one-week put-call skew has turned positive, pointing to relative richness of calls, or bullish bets, over puts. However, one- and two-month skews still show a slight put bias. ETH’s one-week skew also shows bullishness. The 24-hour volume rankings, however, show a mixed sentiment, with both BTC call and puts featuring in the most active list.

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