Bitcoin reached a one-week high on Wednesday, trading near $83,500 and gaining 0.6% since midnight UTC, driven by an earnings-led recovery in Asian technology shares that pushed risk assets higher.
SpaceX and Super Micro Computer set a strong tone following positive results in the U.S. on Tuesday. South Korea’s Kospi climbed 3.29% and Nasdaq 100 futures increased 0.44%. Elon Musk, chief executive officer of both SpaceX and Tesla, stated that the two corporations have established special committees to evaluate a potential merger, which would consolidate more than 30,000 bitcoin valued at $2.5 billion currently held across their corporate treasuries.
Altcoins tracked bitcoin’s movement, with ether climbing 0.6% toward $2,460 and the CoinDesk 80 index advancing 0.47%, compared to a 0.64% increase for the CoinDesk 5. The CoinDesk Memecoin Index gained 1.2%, outperforming the CoinDesk 100’s 0.84% rise.
Solana’s Alpenglow upgrade, designed to achieve transaction finality in roughly 150 milliseconds, goes live today, while Meta Platforms is scheduled to report earnings after the U.S. market close.
Derivatives positioning
- Futures activity picked up, and liquidations jumped: 24-hour crypto futures volume is $190 billion, up 19%. Open interest is $145 billion, up nearly 4%. Liquidations total $284 million, up 76%. The taker long/short volume ratio sits close to 53% to 47%, showing a clear tilt toward bullish positions.
- BTC and ETH rallies are being driven more by price than by new bets: Over the span of 24 hours, spot prices increased by 2.6% for BTC and 3.35% for ETH, whereas futures open interest grew by only 3% and 2%. Bitcoin’s open interest climbed roughly in line with its price, indicating minimal influx of fresh capital. Ether’s open interest lagged behind its price increase, implying that traders reduced their positions denominated in coins. Overall market positioning stays modest, with open interest totals remaining far below historic highs.
- Privacy coins are drawing fresh leverage: Zcash open interest is up 24% alongside a 12% price increase, pointing to the addition of new positions. Its annualized funding rate rests at 10%, yet the 24-hour open interest-adjusted cumulative volume delta is negative. This indicates that sellers are matching bids throughout the upward movement. Monero open interest grew by 8% to surpass $300 million, approaching record levels, with spot prices up 2% and a funding rate of 4%. Its cumulative volume delta is positive, standing as the solitary major asset with this characteristic.
- BTW shorts are paying a steep price to stay short: The token features an annualized funding rate of minus 77%, demonstrating the heavy costs bears accept to maintain their positions. This positions BTW as an asset to monitor for potential volatility, given that a rapid price rebound could trigger a severe short squeeze. Arbitrage and Ethereum Classic represent two additional tokens exhibiting slightly negative funding rates.
- Volatility expectations for bitcoin and ether are cooling: Bitcoin’s 30-day implied volatility index, known as BVIV, dropped back beneath 40%, reversing the minor surge past 42% recorded on October 15. Ether’s EVIV demonstrates a comparable sense of calm, signaling that investors anticipate steady market conditions.
- Bitcoin options still lean toward puts, yet the most-traded bets are upside plays: On Deribit, the one-month put-call skew registered at 8% at the time of writing, reflecting a relative preference for puts. The one-week and three-month skews indicated the exact same trend. Even so, call options with strike prices above the current spot value formed the top five most traded contracts. The majority of that trading volume originated from synthetic multi-legged strategies instead of straightforward bullish bets.
- Ether options lean toward puts, though less than bitcoin’s: The bias toward puts within ether skews is slightly less pronounced compared to bitcoin. The overall volume distribution presented a varied outlook.
Token talk
- Zcash rose 0.9% since midnight to reach roughly $1,260, extending its 24-hour gains to about 11% after developers scheduled a November activation date for NU7. This upgrade shortens block times from 75 to 25 seconds, allowing payments to confirm three times faster while routing 60% of transaction fees into a reserve pool disbursed gradually over time. The token remains down roughly 12% on a monthly basis.
- Near Protocol emerged as the top performer within the CoinDesk 100, advancing 6.0% to approximately $5.23. This upward movement aligns with the expansion of NEAR Intents, a cross-chain swap utility whose fees partially support token buybacks, alongside a governance recommendation to reduce yearly token issuance from 2.5% to 1.6% across a two-year timeline.
- Ethena, the asset behind the USDe synthetic dollar, gained 4.8%, recovering from an approximate 22% monthly drawdown. The circulating USDe supply of nearly $4.7 billion continues to sit well below the $7.5 billion threshold required to trigger Ethena token buybacks.
- Aerodrome, the exchange token for Base, dropped 4.4% to register the steepest loss in the CoinDesk 100, giving up a portion of its weekly gain of approximately 6%. Meanwhile, Morpho fell 2.7% as the decentralized finance sector lagged behind, with the sector index increasing a modest 0.22% compared to 0.84% for the wider CoinDesk 100.
- Injective declined 2.1%, reducing a monthly gain of about 18% that had been fueled by pending U.S. exchange-traded fund filings associated with the token.
Originally published at https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2026/10/21/crypto-rises-with-asian-tech-stocks-zcash-extends-gain-after-setting-upgrade-date.
