Crypto starts week on firmer ground, altcoin gains mask a divided market: Crypto Markets Today

Bitcoin BTC$62,809.80 is trading at $62,800 on Monday, a notable turnaround from July 1 when it dipped below $58,000 to its lowest level since September 2024 and raised concerns of a slide toward $50,000.

Ether (ETH) staged a similar recovery, trading at $1,760 after bottoming out around $1,550 last week. The two largest cryptocurrencies spiked higher at Sunday’s futures open, but have given back around 1% of those gains since midnight UTC.

The pullback represents a divergence from traditional markets, where Nasdaq 100 and S&P 500 index futures are trading up 1% and 0.5%, respectively, following the long weekend.

The altcoin market is split. Lighter (LIT) continues to impress, now up more than 50% over the past week, while MORPHO$1.9006 and ADA$0.1825 are both nursing losses of around 4% in the past 24 hours.

Derivatives positioning

• The futures market is steady, with open interest in bitcoin BTC$62,809.80, ether (ETH), solana (SOL) and XRP (XRP) largely unchanged over the past 24 hours, likely due to the extended U.S. weekend.
• Open interest in LTC$44.69 has jumped to 7.14 million tokens, the most since May 12. It is unclear whether the capital inflow is bullish or bearish. Key indicators are sending mixed signals: Positive funding rates point to bullish sentiment, yet the 24-hour cumulative volume delta (CVD) has turned negative, indicating sellers have been more aggressive by hitting market orders rather than posting passive limit orders.
• Open interest in Lighter DEX’s LIT token is also rising, reaching one-month highs as the bullish tokenomics overhaul supports its price.
• Bitcoin’s and ether’s 30-day implied volatility indices, BVIV and EVIV, remain under pressure after double-digit weekly declines, reflecting continued supply of options. This points to expectations of calmer market conditions, which often accompany price upswings.
• Still, on Deribit, BTC and ETH puts continue to trade at a premium to calls, signaling persistent downside concerns — although the gap has narrowed since early last month.
• Volumes show no clear bias, as BTC’s $60K put and $70K call rank among the most traded strikes over the past 24 hours.

Token talk

• Lighter’s (LIT) barnstorming rally of late continued on Monday, adding 5% since midnight UTC and taking its 24-hour gain to 13.5%, building on momentum as traders look for the next hyperliquid (HYPE).
• LIT is the native token of its namesake decentralized derivatives exchange, which has racked up $40 billion in trading volume over the past 30 days, according to DefiLlama.
• It was also a strong start to the week for PYTH, up by 6% since midnight UTC as traders rotate bitcoin gains into more speculative altcoin bets.
• CoinMarketCap’s Altcoin Season indicator ticked up to 52/100 on Monday, the highest level in the past three months, suggesting optimism is returning to the altcoin sector.
• However, that indicator is lagging as a result of poor performance from a portion of the market including JITO, BEAT and STABLE, each having lost between 5% and 13% over the past week with further losses on Monday.