Bitcoin (BTC) price stuck below $65,000 as Iran stalemate, Strategy sale squeeze market

The crypto market was little changed on Tuesday after falling overnight as the short-lived optimism around a Strait of Hormuz deal evaporated.

President Donald Trump’s demand for 50 years of compensation from Iran as a condition of any negotiation dashed hopes of a near-term resolution and pushed Brent crude up to $89.08, more than 12% above last week’s low.

Bitcoin BTC$63,571.24 has gained 0.26% since midnight UTC, but remains down 1.68% over the past 24 hours. Ether ETH$1,879.00, outpacing bitcoin since midnight, is 2.4% lower on the day. Traditional markets are equally subdued, with U.S. equity index futures remaining flat as traders focus on Wednesday’s CPI report as the week’s key catalyst.

Strategy’s sale of a further 1,690 BTC on Monday, the fourth consecutive weekly reduction, added an extra layer of pressure. The company has not bought bitcoin since June.

Derivatives positioning

• Futures volume surges, open interest flat: Trading volume in crypto futures surged 51% to $143.15 billion in 24 hours. Total open interest (OI) remained steady around $115.6 billion, signaling churn rather than fresh positional trading.
• Taker ratio turns neutral: The long-short taker volume ratio has reverted to neutral, with longs and shorts each accounting for nearly half of volume, versus a bullish tilt a day earlier. A taker is an entity that sucks liquidity from an order book by trading at available prices.
• XRP leads OI gains: Payments-focused token XRP added the most OI of the day, with active futures contracts growing 14% to 2.72 billion tokens, the highest since October. XRP remains under pressure, threatening to dip below $1 for the first time since 2024. The downside pressure is evident in XRP’s negative 24-hour cumulative volume delta (CVD), showing shorts trading more aggressively via market orders than passive limit orders. The lone bright spot: Funding rates remain slightly positive.
• Other OI movers: LINK, ETH and HBAR are among the other OI gainers, while CC, ZEC and AVAX are the leading OI losers.
• Bears lead the price action: Bears appear to be leading price action in most tokens, as evidenced by negative 24-hour CVD for most coins, including bitcoin. LINK and TRX are the exceptions.
• Funding rates diverge: XMR’s funding rate hovers at an annualized 39%, the most bullish among majors, while CC’s sits at -14%, the most negative, indicating an investor bias toward bearish bets.
• Bitcoin volatility index bounces: Bitcoin’s 30-day implied volatility index, BVIV, abandoned its long-held floor of around 36% to jump nearly 5% to 38.64% as BTC’s spot price fell back below $64,000. Traders might want to keep an eye out for a continued spike in the index, given its inverse correlation with spot price.
• Call skew weakens: In the Deribit-listed options market, the one-week call skew in BTC and ETH weakened and may flip negative, suggesting a fresh downside bias if Wednesday’s U.S. CPI print comes in hotter than expected, validating higher-for-longer Fed interest-rate expectations.
• Implied Volatility Stays Compressed: For now, one-week implied volatility for BTC and ETH, calculated from options prices, remains compressed, pointing to little stress ahead of the inflation report.
• Volume leans toward upside bets: The 24-hour volume rankings show a bias toward the BTC $70,000 call expiring Sept. 25 and the $2,000 ETH call expiring the same day.

Token talk

• Curve DAO token CRV$0.2762 was the 24-hour standout, surging 9.49% and extending a weekly gain of 27.29%, making it one of the stronger DeFi performers in a difficult market.
• Lighter (LIT) added to its recovery, advancing 6.40% over 24 hours and 2.26% since midnight to $2.43. It is now up nearly 20% on the week as the decentralized derivatives token rebuilds from its July pullback.
• Chainlink LINK$8.7463 gained 2.59% since midnight, extending a run that has it up 4.40% on the week as institutional demand for oracle infrastructure picks up in tandem with the tokenized real-world asset narrative.
• Zcash (ZEC) led the losses, falling 1.97% since midnight to $486, giving back ground after several weeks of outperformance. The broader privacy coin sector is also under pressure, and XMR shed 0.72%.
• CoinMarketCap’s “Altcoin Season” indicator recovered from Monday’s low of 37/100, rising to 41/100 as investors stepped in to capitalize on oversold tokens.