Cryptocurrency momentum following the Federal Reserve’s rate hike carried forward into Friday. Decentralized finance (DeFi) and layer-2 assets took the reins from the haven and privacy coins that dominated Thursday’s advances, marking a clear pivot back toward risk-inclusive trading strategies.
Bitcoin climbed past $78,000 during early European trading hours, locking in a 2.1% increase since midnight UTC and a 1.9% gain across the prior 24 hours. Even so, it remains 5% below its September 4 monthly peak of $82,284 following a two-week period of range-bound price action.
While nearly every asset in the CoinDesk 100 printed green for the day, attention centered on the DeFi Select Index (DFX). It outpaced the rest of the market, jumping 8.3% since midnight and 16% over the last 24 hours.
These market advances arrive on the heels of a more supportive macroeconomic climate. The 10-year Treasury yield retreated below 5%, and Brent crude pulled back under $103 after touching $109 earlier in the week, successfully easing inflation fears sparked by the recent rate adjustment.
Equities futures also displayed resilience, with S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 contracts moving up 0.3% and 0.6% respectively, while gold and silver appreciated by 1.1% and 2.8% individually.
Derivative positioning
- Futures market signals positional trading revival: The crypto derivatives sphere points toward a resurgence in positional trading activity. This evolution is highlighted by an almost 5% rise in total open interest (OI), reaching $141.2 billion, juxtaposed against a 3% contraction in daily trading volume down to $95 billion. Taker buy-sell volumes remain well-balanced, indicating that capital is entering structurally instead of through aggressive momentum-chasing behavior.
- Bitcoin open interest builds as the price gains: Open interest in bitcoin futures crept up from 670K BTC to 680K BTC since midnight UTC, moving in tandem with BTC’s upward push. Observers typically view this combination as an accumulation of long or bullish positions. Nevertheless, this increase remains modest, and total open interest sits well under the 800K BTC high registered earlier in the year, meaning broader market exposure remains light.
- Binance trader ratios show institutional conviction: The ratio of top trader long-short accounts on Binance softened to 1.52—still indicating a bullish bias, though below Wednesday’s peak near 2. Meanwhile, the long-short position ratio held elevated at 2.36. This divergence signifies that fewer individual whales are leaning long, but those who maintain positions have significantly enlarged their bets, pointing to robust institutional conviction.
- UNI futures open interest surges to near record: Among alternative coins, open interest for Uniswap’s UNI futures rocketed to 86.61 million tokens—approaching an all-time high and jumping from yesterday’s 76.89 million tokens. This expansion underscores substantial capital inflows moving alongside a 30% surge in the token’s spot valuation. This renewed enthusiasm for top DeFi altcoins stems from mounting market optimism regarding collaborative, clear regulations anticipated from the SEC and CFTC.
- Bullish momentum dominates major tokens’ volume delta: This optimistic sentiment is further underscored by the 24-hour volume-weighted open interest cumulative delta, which stays positive for the vast majority of major tokens aside from GRAM, SHIB, HBAR, and BNB. A positive reading indicates that buyers are showing more aggression by executing long trades through market orders instead of relying on passive limit orders.
- Implied volatility drops to May’s lows: Following the resolution of major catalysts like the Clarity Act vote alongside central bank meetings from the Fed and the Bank of Japan, bitcoin’s 30-day annualized implied volatility index (BVIV) slid to 36%. This threshold has served as a cyclical floor since May, pointing toward expectations for near-term price stability.
- Options skew turns short-term bullish for BTC and ETH: Deribit options data reveals that BTC’s one-week put-call skew shifted positive, showing that call options or bullish bets are relatively pricier than puts. However, one-month and two-month skews continue to reflect a slight put bias. Ether’s one-week skew similarly indicates bullish sentiment, while 24-hour volume activity reflects mixed sentiment with both calls and puts featuring heavily on the active lists.
Token talk
- The upward movement of the DeFi Select Index on Friday was largely anchored by uniswap (UNI), which advanced 13% since midnight UTC and 25% over the past 24 hours, alongside ethena (ENA) climbing 9.6% and liquid staking protocol lido adding 6.6%.
- Layer-2 assets mirrored DeFi’s strength, spearheaded by starknet (STRK) surging 18% on the day and 21% across 24 hours, while arbitrum (ARB) grew 17% and 25%, stacks (STX) climbed 9.2%, and optimism (OP) rose 8.9%. STRK currently trades at its strongest level since June 19, whereas ARB at 20.9 cents has not seen these prices since January.
- Solana (SOL) added 4.5% to reach $106.14, but the more dramatic action occurred within its ecosystem where the Solana-based DEX token raydium (RAY) jumped 16% to $1.71, while liquid staking token jito (JTO) lagged with a 1.6% move, a divergence highlighting targeted DEX volume rather than sweeping network accumulation.
- Thursday’s frontrunner encountered a slowdown. Zcash (ZEC) exchanged hands at $1,490.10, marking a 1.6% daily gain against 7.6% over 24 hours, indicating that nearly all of its appreciation happened during the previous day. Competing privacy asset dash (DASH) stood as one of just two CoinDesk 100 assets in negative territory, slipping 0.53% alongside world liberty financial (WLFI) which dropped 0.31%.
- CoinMarketCap’s Altcoin Season gauge currently sits at 44 out of 100, climbing from Tuesday’s trough of 32 out of 100, signaling that speculative trading serves as the primary market driver on Friday.
Originally published at https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2026/09/18/layer-2-and-defi-tokens-lead-broad-crypto-advance-as-post-fed-hike-nerves-fade.
