Bitcoin $BTC$77,602.07 fell to its lowest price since Sept. 18 after Binance, the largest crypto exchange, fell victim to a $6.3 billion exploit attributed to North Korean hackers.
The largest cryptocurrency slumped to an overnight low of $76,400 before recovering some of the decline. Ether $ETH$2,242.82 momentarily hit $2,170 before rebounding to around $2,220.
Around $3 billion of the proceeds have been frozen, with withdrawals currently paused on the exchange. Analytics firms TRM Labs and Elliptic attributed the hack to North Korea-linked hackers.
Tech stocks added to the downward pressure, with Nasdaq-100 index futures falling 2.3% after Amazon AMZN raised its capital spending forecast. Intel (INTC) slid around 25% on weak guidance.
U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs took in $17 million on Thursday, a fourth straight day of inflows, according to Farside investors, before the theft began.
Derivatives Positioning
- Liquidation spike: Liquidations in crypto futures jumped fourfold to $1.57 billion after the Binance hack hit prices. Trading volume rose 74% to $346.1 billion, while open interest (OI) fell 3% to $136.3 billion, a sign that traders closed positions and money exited futures. The taker buy-sell volume ratio showed a mild tilt to selling after an even split yesterday.
- $BTC steady, $ETH exits: $BTC fell 3.1% over 24 hours while open interest fell only 1.4%, so a small amount of money came in during the drop. $ETH fell 4% while its open interest fell 5.8%, so a small amount of money left. $BTC funding is positive and has increased, which means longs are paying shorts and perp traders are still tilted long. $ETH funding is positive but has decreased, so that tilt is fading. $BTC and $ETH made up more than half of all liquidations, at $522 million and $361 million.
- Money leaves $SOL and $NEAR: $SOL’s open interest fell 13.3% against a 3.3% price drop, so money left $SOL futures. $NEAR was little changed, but its open interest fell 11.8%, its second straight day of exits. Funding has flipped from positive to negative in both, so shorts are now paying longs, and cumulative volume delta (CVD) is negative in both, which means market sell orders dominated.
- $BNB OI steady: $BNB fell 6.2%, the biggest drop among the major coins even as open interest held flat in dollar terms. Volume more than tripled. Funding is negative, meaning shorts are paying longs, and CVD is negative, meaning market sell orders dominated.
- $HYPE defies the selloff: $HYPE rose 15% and open interest jumped 28%, so money came in as the rest of the market fell. Volume surged almost eightfold. Funding is positive and has increased, so longs are paying more to hold positions. CVD is positive, which means market buy orders dominated.
- Mixed trends in funding rates: Most coins still have positive funding, which means longs are paying shorts. Still, the group with negative funding has grown and now includes $BNB, $SOL, $NEAR and $TRX, so shorts pay longs in those contracts. $TRX was the most negative overnight. Monero ($XMR) has the most positive funding, followed by $HYPE.
- CVD sinks: Except for $TRX, $HYPE, ZEC, $XMR and BCH, all major coins have negative 24-hour OI-adjusted cumulative volume delta. That means market sell orders outweighed market buy orders relative to open interest across most of the market.
- Defensive options flow: Five of the six highest-volume $BTC options are puts, all below the current price. The $74,000 put expiring Nov. 13 leads. In $ETH the skew toward puts is even stronger. The $2,000 put expiring Nov. 13 has more than twice the volume of any other $ETH option, and only one of the top six is a call.
- Put bias strengthens: The 25-delta skew, which measures how much more puts cost than calls, has risen across all time frames in both $BTC and $ETH, so protection is in demand. The 30-day implied volatility indices spiked in Asia as the Binance hack spurred demand for puts, but the gains have been partly erased.
Token talk
- Tokens the Binance hacker was holding and selling led the rebound, with ethena (ENA) gaining 8.4%, pepe PEPE$0.0₅5139 rising 7.3%, uniswap (UNI) adding 4.6% and chainlink LINK$11.10 climbing 3.7%. Uniswap and aave had tumbled around 11% on Thursday as the attacker swapped holdings for ether, according to Lookonchain.
- Aave AAVE$125.83 and arbitrum ARB$0.1631 rose around 4.5%, with Aave freezing its lending markets across 16 networks after the exploiter borrowed around $44.6 million of ether against stolen USDT.
- Thorchain (RUNE) gained 6.2%, with Elliptic and onchain analyst ZachXBT tracing part of the stolen funds into Ethereum through the cross-chain protocol.
- LayerZero ZRO$1.7251 jumped 12%, the biggest gain among the CoinDesk 100, while curve CRV$0.2870 fell 7.2% and tron $TRX$0.3403 dropped 4.9%.
- CoinMarketCap’s Altcoin Season index fell to 45/100 from 54 on Thursday, and its Fear and Greed index slipped to 36/100, in “fear,” from 43.
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