Bitcoin Stays Near $80K as Oil Prices Ease Ahead of Fed Decision

Bitcoin traded in a narrow range around $80,400, while decentralized finance tokens were the only segment to post gains among CoinDesk’s market indexes. Investors remained cautious ahead of the Federal Reserve’s interest-rate decision scheduled for Wednesday.

Bitcoin (BTC) stabilized near $80,400 after slipping to roughly $79,300 during the Asian morning session, leaving its price little changed since midnight UTC. Altcoins delivered mixed performances, with Ether (ETH) falling 0.2% and the DeFi index (DFX) emerging as the only CoinDesk index in positive territory.

Market sentiment had already turned cautious over the weekend after Arthur Hayes revealed that his Maelstrom fund had closed its entire directional trading portfolio because of macroeconomic and geopolitical risks. The positions included 6,400 ETH.

U.S. equity futures recovered modestly, with S&P 500 futures gaining about 0.3% following Friday’s stock-market selloff. Oil prices also retreated. U.S. crude fell approximately 2% to near $101 per barrel, while Brent declined to around $110. The moves came as Qatari mediators arrived in Tehran on Sunday and President Donald Trump said the U.S. would not launch a strike that day, although he did not rule out future military action.

The Federal Reserve, which cut neither its caution nor market uncertainty after raising rates in September, is scheduled to announce its next decision on Wednesday. CME FedWatch data indicated a 90% probability that rates would remain unchanged, alongside roughly an 80% chance of another increase in December.

Bitcoin spot ETF flows are another area of concern. Funds recorded $138 million in net outflows on Friday, bringing withdrawals over two sessions to $772 million, according to Farside Investors.

Derivatives positioning

Crypto futures activity cooled. Aggregate open interest (OI) increased 0.85% over 24 hours to $139.9 billion, even as trading volume declined 1.78%. Liquidations fell 71% to $153 million. The taker long-to-short volume split stood at 50.34% versus 49.66%, indicating a largely balanced market.

Bitcoin’s price and positioning remained stable. BTC advanced 0.20%, while open interest climbed 0.84%, suggesting only a modest inflow of fresh capital. Trading volume dropped 7.21%. Ether showed a similar pattern, with OI rising 0.45% and its price gaining 0.23%.

Funding rates showed limited leverage demand. Funding across major cryptocurrencies was mildly positive, with the 24-hour heatmap displaying broadly green readings. USDE and TRX recorded some of the lowest rates. The data suggested traders were not paying unusually high premiums to maintain leveraged long positions.

ZEC attracted new positions as its price climbed. Open interest rose 8.17%, while the token gained 3.84%. Trading volume increased 19.11%. Its funding rate of 0.0063% remained relatively modest, indicating that holding the new positions was not particularly costly.

ENA’s rally brought a surge in trading activity. Ethena’s open interest expanded 16.85% over 24 hours as its price advanced 8.36%. Volume jumped 81.51%. However, OI declined 2.04% in the most recent hour, suggesting some traders had begun closing positions opened during the rally.

Crude oil stood out with negative funding. Oil perpetual futures recorded a funding rate of -0.0077%, making crude the only negatively funded market among the top 20. Prices fell 1.55%, and open interest declined 7.37%, indicating that positions were being unwound as the market weakened. Volume surged 190.88%, while the remaining positions showed a short bias.

Market-order flows were divided across tokens. Open-interest-adjusted cumulative volume delta (CVD) was positive for XMR, ZEC, GRAM, CC and SOL, suggesting market buys outweighed market sells. DOGE, LINK, HYPE and XLM showed negative CVD readings.

Bitcoin options continued to favor downside protection. The most actively traded contract was the Oct. 28 $77,000 put, followed by the Oct. 28 $84,000 call. Bitcoin’s one-month options skew narrowed to approximately 12.5% from 14.5%. Puts remained more expensive than calls, although the difference had decreased.

Ether options also showed stronger demand for puts. Four of the six most active contracts were puts, led by the Oct. 29 contract with a $2,000 strike price. Ether’s one-week skew declined to about 8.7% from 13.3%, indicating that downside protection remained more expensive than upside exposure.

Token talk

Uniswap (UNI) gained 1.9%, while Ethena (ENA) advanced roughly 1%, despite Maelstrom’s weekend sale of 323,000 UNI tokens and 14 million ENA tokens. The fund is associated with Arthur Hayes.

AI-related cryptocurrencies generally underperformed. Grass (GRASS), a data network used for AI training, dropped 2.7%, while Near Protocol (NEAR) fell 1.4%. The declines coincided with Elon Musk’s Sunday warning that lenders had cut off credit to roughly 200 cloud providers focused exclusively on AI.

Hyperliquid (HYPE) rose approximately 1% as traders continued assessing Friday’s announcement from Hyperliquid Strategies (PURR), the Nasdaq-listed company holding the token. The company more than tripled its share-buyback program to $100 million, although the program applies exclusively to PURR shares rather than HYPE tokens.

Meanwhile, CoinMarketCap’s Altcoin Season Index slipped to 53 out of 100, down from 58 on Friday.

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