South Korea’s worst market day in years and a stalled Clarity Act put crypto on the back foot

Bitcoin BTC$63,792.47 has lost 0.53% since midnight UTC, having shed around 2% during the U.S. session overnight.

Two catalysts are weighing on sentiment.

First, chipmaking stocks tumbled in South Korea, dragging the benchmark Kospi stock index down 11%. The drop, one of its worst single-day declines in years, sent shockwaves across global risk assets.

And on the regulatory front, the U.S. Senate shelved the Crypto Clarity Act for now, opting to prioritize a Russia sanctions bill and federal nominations with just two weeks remaining before the summer recess begins on Aug. 8. The bill’s fate this year is now genuinely uncertain.

Ether (ETH) fell 0.56% to $1,880 having failed to rise through the psychological level of $2,000 on Monday. Both the Fed’s interest-rate decision on Wednesday and the Senate’s remaining floor time loom large over the market this week.

Traditional markets are broadly lower, with Nasdaq 100 index futures down 0.70%, gold shedding 0.93% and silver off 1.50%.

Derivatives positioning

• Taker volume flips bearish: The taker long/short volume in futures has flipped gloomy, with shorts, or bearish plays, now at 51.5%. This marks a complete turnaround from the bullish bias seen in recent days. A taker is a market participant that trades at prevailing prices.
• XRP open interest rises: XRP’s futures open interest has risen to 2.35 billion tokens, up nearly 6% from a day ago. Meanwhile, open interest has held steady in BTC, ETH and SOL futures. That’s been the trend in majors mostly, with participation remaining modest through the price bounce from early June lows.
• Other tokens see outflows: Futures linked to other tokens, such as SHIB, AVAX, LINK and DOGE, have seen open interest decline in a sign of capital outflows.
• CVD turns negative: Other metrics, like the 24-hour open interest-adjusted cumulative volume delta, also paint a bearish picture. For the first time in at least three weeks, the top 25 coins have negative CVDs. That means bears are leading the price action by shorting via market orders rather than passive limit orders.
• Funding rates shift: Funding rates for BTC hover near 0%, a sign of balanced positioning. Meanwhile, those for ETH, SOL, XRP and TRX have flipped negative, a sign of growing bias for bearish plays.
• Volatility remains calm: While key events such as the Fed meeting and the core U.S. PCE inflation figure are due this week, BTC and ETH volatility surfaces do not show any sign of traders pricing genuine stress. BTC and ETH’s 30-day implied volatility indexes remain near recent lows, a sign of market calm.
• Options show put bias: In Deribit-listed options, BTC and ETH put-call skews have climbed slightly, consistent with the overnight losses in the spot price. The bias for puts in ETH options is considerably lower than in BTC. However, volume rankings show puts or downside protection taking the top spot in both BTC and ETH.

Token talk

• Lighter (LIT) is the crypto market’s standout gainer, rising 3.97% to $2.21 as it continues to rebuild after last week’s profit-taking, with the $2.10 support level being defended for the third time this month.
• MORPHO$2.0242 and ethena (ENA) are among the few other tokens in the green, gaining 1.54% and 1.46%, respectively, and maintaining a run of DeFi resilience even as broader sentiment sours.
• FET led the losses over 24 hours, falling 9.48%, with NEAR, HYPE and WLD all shedding 8%-9%. AI and layer-1 tokens took the brunt of the overnight selloff.
• PUMP$0.001946 gave back 3.07% after Monday’s strong session. It is still higher than where it was over the weekend as speculators begin to take profit.
• CoinMarketCap’s “Altcoin Season” indicator is hovering at 53/100, down slightly from Monday but higher than where it has been for the majority of July.