Ether retreated 1.4% to $2,327, but still leads the major assets on the weekly chart with a 6% gain, continuing the outperformance that began earlier in the week. XRP held steady at $1.43 with a weekly gain of 6.4%, Solana rose 2.7% to $87.67, BNB added 0.7% to $629.89, and Dogecoin climbed 5.6% for the week to $0.0976, according to coindesk.com.
The MSCI All Country World index closed at a record high on Thursday before declining 0.1% in Asia. The S&P 500 index also hit an all-time high. The price of Brent crude fell 1.2% to $98.20 after President Donald Trump said the prospects for a permanent ceasefire with Iran “look very encouraging.”
Trump said, without producing evidence, that Tehran had agreed to give up its nuclear ambitions, hand over nuclear materials and reopen the Strait of Hormuz as part of the deal. Iran has not confirmed those concessions.
A 10-day truce between Israel and Lebanon was announced separately on Thursday, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirming the truce in a video message. Markets are reacting to the news as if an agreement is close, which is one reason why stocks have almost fully corrected the war premium, while oil remains near $98 and the Strait of Hormuz remains effectively closed.
Behind the steady bitcoin price movement, however, is a structure that some traders are paying attention to.
Bitcoin perpetual funding rates have turned significantly negative in recent sessions, reaching levels last seen in 2023. Funding is the periodic payments that traders of perpetual futures exchange with each other to keep contract prices in line with the spot. When fundings become negative, shorts pay longs, which only happens when the market is heavily congested with positions opposite to the price movement.
Two opposite scenarios
“Funding rates going so strongly negative indicates that the market is under significant pressure from shorts,” Daniel Reis-Faria, CEO of ZeroStack, said in a note provided to CoinDesk. – If bitcoin continues to rise despite this, many of these positions could be liquidated and the move could accelerate sharply.”
Reis-Faria expects bitcoin could reach $125,000 within the next 30-60 days if there is a compression of short positions.
CryptoVizArt, a blockchain analyst, countered that bitcoin’s “True Market Average” – a metric that estimates the average cost of active investors taking into account the exclusion of lost and inactive coins – indicates that the average active holder is currently at a loss.
Since 2016, significant periods below true market levels have coincided with bitcoin’s worst periods, including the 2018-19 bear market (-57% maximum drawdown, 282 days) and the 2022-23 reversal following the collapse of Luna and FTX (-56%, 339 days).
These two analyses need not necessarily contradict each other. A short-term “squeeze” due to negative funding and a structural decline from holders with unprofitable positions can be simultaneously true, with the former causing a sharp rise that is eventually absorbed by the latter.
Which scenario prevails probably depends on whether the truce between the US and Iran extends beyond next week.
