Bitcoin, ether start June in the red while futures show taste for risk. XLM, HYPE gain

Bitcoin and ether fell Monday after dropping in May, a month that usually sees them post positive returns. U.S. equity index futures rose.

What to know:

• Crypto markets opened June lower as tensions between the U.S. and Iran weighed on sentiment.
• Following spot bitcoin ETFs' record 10 straight days of net outflows totaling $2.97 billion, derivatives data show mildly bullish positioning and steady open interest, suggesting institutional risk appetite is stabilizing.
• Stellar’s XLM surged more than 40% after DTCC chose its network for a tokenized securities platform rollout, signaling a pivotal role for the public blockchain in Wall Street’s multichain tokenization strategy.

June kicked off in the red for crypto markets as the U.S. and Iran exchanged fire and peace talks failed to translate into reduced tensions in the region. The CoinDesk 20 Index (CD20) fell 2% since midnight UTC, with bitcoin BTC$72,651.09 and ether (ETH) both losing about 1%.

At $72,700, bitcoin is currently negative for a sixth time in seven days, following a 3.5% slide last month, usually a period with positive returns. It averages a 7.4% rise in May, according to Coinglass data. A record 10 days of net withdrawals from spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) saw $2.97 billion leave the investment vehicles.

The CoinDesk DeFi Select Index led the day’s decliners, dropping 2.6% since midnight, with all six members lower. Ondo Finance’s ONDO token fell 2.8%, and has now lost 17% since founder Nathan Allman died unexpectedly last week.

Hyperliquid's HYPE stood out, adding 1.26% since midnight. A five-day streak of gains took it to a record high $73.94, its fourth in four days, as capital enters newly introduced ETFs based on the token, which started trading only last month.

U.S. stock indexes replayed Friday's divergence, with S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 micro-futures both adding about 0.2%.

Derivatives positioning

• BTC open interest sits at $19.5 billion, essentially level from a week ago, with speculative positioning also broadly unchanged.
• Funding rates are positive across multiple venues at 0%–10% annualized, with the prior Deribit spike now back to normal. The three-month annualized basis is 2.8%, up from 2.2% last week, pointing to a mild improvement in institutional risk appetite.
• Options positioning leans modestly bullish. Put/call volume over the past 24 hours splits 61/39 in favor of calls, while one-week 25-delta skew sits at 12.3% compared with 12.4% last week. Front-end implied volatility (DVOL) has ticked up to 37 from multi-month lows, suggesting the recent compression may be easing. The 1 month–6 month term structure remains in contango, with markets continuing to price near-term calm alongside longer-dated uncertainty.
• Coinglass data shows $282 million in 24 hour liquidations, with a 60-40 split between longs and shorts. ETH (59 million) and BTC ($48 million) were the leaders in terms of notional liquidations.
• The Binance liquidation heatmap indicates $72,280 as a core liquidation level to monitor in case of a price drop.

Token talk

• Stellar's XLM jumped 40.4% in 24 hours to $0.2862, lifting market cap above $9.6 billion, on the back of a May 27 announcement that DTCC, Wall Street's central clearinghouse, will connect its tokenized securities platform to the Stellar network in the first half of 2027.
• The deal makes Stellar the first public blockchain in DTCC's multichain tokenization strategy.
• Open interest (OI) in XLM perps rose 10.9% to about $361 million as the rally unfolded, CoinGlass data show, with roughly $12 million in derivatives liquidations across the move. The combination of expanding OI alongside rising spot volume points to fresh long positioning rather than short covering doing the heavy lifting, even with the short squeeze underneath.
• Spot turnover hit about $2.3 billion on the day, up about 34%, showing the move was backed by real demand rather than a thin-liquidity spike. XLM outperformed every other top-20 token over the period.
• The breakout cleared a monthslong descending channel that had constrained the token since late last year, with the rally running from long-term support near $0.14 through prior resistance at $0.20 and $0.26.
• DTCC oversees more than $114 trillion in assets and processes about $2.5 quadrillion in securities transactions annually, putting Stellar's selection at the center of how Wall Street brings tokenized stocks, ETFs and U.S. Treasuries onto a public blockchain.
• The partnership sits on the SEC's December 2025 No-Action Letter authorizing the firm to tokenize real-world assets it custodies, with production testing targeted for July, wider rollout in October, and broader availability in the first half of next year.

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