Crypto rises with Asian tech stocks, zcash extends gain after setting upgrade date

Bitcoin BTC$83,354.72 reached its highest level in a week on Wednesday, trading around $83,500 and adding 0.6% since midnight UTC, as an earnings-led rebound in Asian technology stocks lifted risk assets.

SpaceX SPCX and Super Micro Computer (SMCI) set the tone with strong results on Tuesday in the U.S. South Korea’s Kospi advanced 3.29% and Nasdaq 100 futures rose 0.44%. Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla TSLA, said the two companies have formed special committees to discuss a merger, which would combine more than 30,000 bitcoin ($2.5 billion) held on their balance sheets.

Altcoins moved with bitcoin, with ether ETH$2,465.10 gaining 0.6% to near $2,460 and the CoinDesk 80 (CD80) rising 0.47%, against 0.64% for the CoinDesk 5 (CD5). The CoinDesk Memecoin Index rose 1.2%, ahead of the CoinDesk 100’s 0.84%.

Solana’s Alpenglow upgrade, which targets finality of about 150 milliseconds, goes live today, while Meta Platforms META reports after the U.S. close.

Derivatives positioning

• Futures activity picked up, and liquidations jumped: 24-hour crypto futures volume is $190 billion, up 19%. Open interest (OI) is $145 billion, up nearly 4%. Liquidations are $284 million, up 76%. The taker long/short volume ratio is nearly 53% to 47%, a notable tilt toward longs or bullish plays.
• BTC and ETH rallies are being driven more by price than by new bets: Over 24 hours, spot prices rose 2.6% for BTC and 3.35% for ETH, while futures OI rose 3% and 2%. Bitcoin’s OI rose about as much as its price, so little fresh money came in. ETH’s OI lagged its price, which suggests traders trimmed positions in coin terms. Overall positioning remains light, with OI tallies well below lifetime peaks.
• Privacy coins are drawing fresh leverage: ZEC’s OI is up 24% against a 12% price gain, so new positions are being added. Its annualized funding rate is 10%, yet the 24-hour OI-adjusted cumulative volume delta (CVD) is negative. That suggests sellers are hitting bids into the rally. XMR’s OI rose 8% to above $300 million, near record highs, with the spot price up 2% and funding at 4%. Its CVD is positive, the only major coin where that is true.
• BTW shorts are paying a steep price to stay short: The token’s annualized funding rate is minus 77%, which shows how much bears are willing to pay to hold their positions. That makes BTW one to watch for volatility, since a sharp bounce could squeeze them. ARB and ETC are two other tokens with slightly negative funding rates.
• Volatility expectations for bitcoin and ether are cooling: BTC’s 30-day implied volatility index, BVIV, has fallen back below 40%, unwinding the minor pump to over 42% on Oct. 15. Ether’s EVIV shows a similar calm, pointing to investor expectations of steady market action.
• Bitcoin options still lean toward puts, yet the most-traded bets are upside plays: On Deribit, the one-month put-call skew was at 8% as of this writing, showing a relative bias for puts. The one-week and three-month skews showed the same. Even so, calls at strikes above the going spot price were the top five most traded bets. Most of that volume came from synthetic multi-legged strategies, not outright bullish plays.
• Ether options lean toward puts, though less than bitcoin’s: The bias for puts in ETH skews is slightly weaker than in BTC. The volume profile painted a mixed picture.

Token talk

• Zcash (ZEC) rose 0.9% since midnight to about $1,260, extending the 24-hour jump to about 11% after developers set a November activation date for NU7, an upgrade that cuts block times from 75 to 25 seconds so payments confirm three times faster and sends 60% of transaction fees into a reserve paid out over time. The token is still down around 12% over the month.
• Near NEAR$5.1825 was the CD100’s biggest gainer, up 6.0% to about $5.23. The rally coincides with growth in NEAR Intents, its cross-chain swap product whose fees partly fund token buybacks, and a governance proposal to cut annual issuance from 2.5% to 1.6% over two years.
• Ethena (ENA), the token behind the USDe synthetic dollar, rose 4.8%, bouncing from a drop of about 22% over the month. USDe supply of about $4.7 billion remains well short of the $7.5 billion that would initiate ENA buybacks.
• Aerodrome (AERO), the Base exchange token, fell 4.4%, the CD100’s steepest loss, giving back part of a gain of about 6% over the week, while morpho MORPHO$2.3919 lost 2.7% as DeFi lagged, with the sector index up only 0.22% against 0.84% for the CD100.
• Injective INJ$8.7626 slipped 2.1%, trimming a gain of about 18% over the month that was built on pending U.S. exchange-traded fund applications tied to the token.

UPDATE (Oct. 21, 11:00 UTC): Changes lead graphic.