Bitcoin holds near $75,000 as short-term holders look for profit opportunities

Bitcoin is hovering near $75,000 as steady institutional demand meets a wall of supply, while the options market is biased toward downside hedges.

What to know:

• Bitcoin is hovering near $75,000 as steady institutional demand meets a wall of supply.
• Derivatives data show rising open interest and subdued liquidations alongside low implied volatility, suggesting traders are quietly adding exposure while remaining cautious, with options markets still biased toward downside hedges.
• Decentralized exchange aggregator CoW Swap suffered a DNS hijacking on April 14 that redirected users to a malicious clone site and drained at least $1 million from wallets.

Bitcoin BTC$74,357.73 is still hovering near $75,000 as it hits a wall of supply while institutional demand remains steady, with traders weighing progress in U.S.-Iran peace talks during a two-week ceasefire.

The CoinDesk 20 (CD20) index rose around 1.9% in the past 24 hours, compared with bitcoin’s 1%, amid reports of a ceasefire extension, improving risk sentiment.

The increases come alongside a softer U.S. dollar, which slipped to a near six-week low, and easing Treasury yields, conditions that often support crypto prices by lowering the relative appeal of holding cash. Gold also gained, pointing to a market balancing risk appetite with hedging demand.

Still, the backdrop remains tense. The U.S. blockade of Iranian ports and Iran’s threats to disrupt shipping routes in the Persian Gulf and nearby waterways continue to cloud the outlook for the global economy.

Energy supply shocks have already begun feeding into inflation expectations, a factor that could shift central bank policy and ripple into crypto markets.

Onchain data also show bitcoin supply tends to appear when prices reach key cost-basis levels for short-term holders. That’s around $76,800, a level that could act as resistance as investors cash out when breaking even.

Derivatives positioning

• Crypto futures open interest (OI) has risen 2.5% in the past 24 hours even as trading volume dropped 16% and liquidations fell 48% to $220 million.
• The divergence suggests traders are adding or holding positions despite a slowdown in activity, pointing to a buildup of exposure without strong conviction. The sharp decline in liquidations indicates reduced volatility and fewer forced exits.
• Among the biggest tokens, XRP and DOGE stand out with OI increases of at least 3%, showcasing a bullish combination of positive perpetual funding rates and OI-adjusted cumulative volume delta (CVD).
• DOGE has the most positive 24-hour CVD, indicating that buyers have been more aggressive in lifting offers and driving trades.
• On decentralized exchange Hyperliquid, perpetuals tied to commodities continue to do solid business and now account for 30% of the platform's total notional open interest.
• Bitcoin and ether's 30-day implied volatility indexes, BVIV and EVIV, continue to hover below their 200-day averages, indicating market calm.
• In the BTC options market, the one-week implied volatility is now trading cheaper relative to realized or actual volatility. In other words, short-dated options are now cheap. This kind of setup often has traders taking bullish volatility bets via straddle/strangle strategies that involve buying both call and put options.
• The Deribit-listed bitcoin and ether options continue to show a bias for puts. The persistent demand for downside hedges indicates that the sustainability of recent rally is still being questioned.

Token talk

• CoW Swap, a decentralized exchange aggregator tied to CoW Protocol, on Tuesday suffered a domain name system (DNS) hijacking attack that redirected users to a malicious site and drained funds from connected wallets.
• The breach did not touch the protocol’s smart contracts or back-end systems. Instead, attackers used social engineering to gain control of the project’s domain registrar, allowing them to reroute traffic from cow.fi to a cloned interface designed to capture wallet approvals.
• Losses appear limited to affected users rather than the protocol itself. Onchain data points to at least $1 million drained, including a single wallet that lost 219 ETH.
• The COW token fell about 2.6% that day, with trading volume spiking as news spread. Prices continued to drift lower in the following sessions, and are now 11% lower.
• CoW DAO reclaimed control of the cow.fi domain little over half a day ago, but sentiment for the protocol doesn't appear to have improved. The token is down another 6% since then.

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