Bitcoin Rises Above $81,000 as Chip Stocks Rally and PEPE Posts 9% Jump

Bitcoin recovered above $81,400 as a rebound in Asian semiconductor stocks lifted sentiment across digital assets. Pepe (PEPE) also jumped 9.4%, emerging as one of the strongest performers in the crypto market.

Bitcoin (BTC) gained approximately 0.8% from midnight UTC to trade near $81,400 on Monday, following an earlier decline below $80,000. Ether (ETH) rose 0.9%, while the CoinDesk Memecoin Index advanced 1.3%, reflecting renewed strength across the broader market.

Asian Chip Stocks Fuel AI Stock Recovery

Asian technology shares led the latest recovery in artificial intelligence stocks. South Korea’s Kospi surged 6.6%, supported by an approximately 11% jump in SK Hynix after the company reported a sevenfold increase in profit.

Nasdaq-100 futures also climbed 0.5%, indicating improving sentiment toward technology companies.

Fed Rate Decision Keeps Traders Alert

Market participants were preparing for the Federal Reserve’s interest-rate announcement, scheduled for 18:00 UTC. CME’s FedWatch tool showed that traders saw roughly a 92% chance of interest rates remaining unchanged.

Investors were also looking to Fed Chair Kevin Wash’s press conference for indications of whether further rate increases could be on the table.

U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs attracted $176 million on Tuesday, marking their second consecutive session of inflows. Alphabet (GOOG) and Microsoft (MSFT) were also scheduled to report quarterly earnings after the U.S. market closed.

Derivatives Data Reveals Changing Market Positions

Crypto futures trading volume rose 7.5% over 24 hours to $163.2 billion, while open interest increased by only 1.3%. This suggests trading activity accelerated without a comparable rise in outstanding futures positions.

Liquidations climbed 38% to $183.6 million. Taker volume was almost evenly split, with buyers accounting for 50.7% and sellers representing 49.3%.

Bitcoin gained 2.3% even as its open interest declined 0.1%, indicating that the price advance was not accompanied by a significant increase in leveraged exposure. Ether rose 2.7%, while its open interest grew 1.7%.

Funding rates remained slightly positive at 0.0090% for BTC and 0.0079% for ETH, close to the 0.01% benchmark. These readings suggest that bullish positions were not excessively crowded.

Bitcoin and Ether recorded the largest liquidation totals, at $56.4 million and $46 million, respectively. Together, they represented more than half of the market’s total liquidations.

Zcash attracts fresh market exposure

Zcash (ZEC) recorded a 14% increase in open interest alongside a 6.3% price gain, suggesting new capital entered the market. Its funding rate remained at 0.0076%, indicating that positioning had not become excessively overheated.

ZEC liquidations reached $8.6 million, the highest level among altcoins.

Gold and crude oil futures diverge

Open interest in XAU futures fell 10% despite a 1.4% increase in price, suggesting traders reduced their exposure. Meanwhile, open interest in XAUT, Tether’s tokenized gold asset, rose 11.6% as its price gained 1.3%.

Crude oil derivatives showed a more bearish pattern. Open interest in the front-month CL contract increased 3.3% while prices slipped 0.7%. Trading volume surged 26%, and the funding rate reached -0.0135%, the most negative reading among the largest contracts. This points to a stronger preference for short positions among perpetual futures traders.

Semiconductor rally outpaces growth in open interest

SOXL, an exchange-traded fund offering three times the daily exposure to semiconductor stocks, jumped 12%, while its open interest increased only 2%.

SK Hynix gained 8.7% as open interest climbed 3.9%. SanDisk advanced 7.1%, even though its open interest dropped 1.8%.

The price gains therefore outpaced changes in outstanding positions. Funding rates were slightly negative for SOXL and SK Hynix and close to neutral for SanDisk, suggesting that the rally was not being driven by heavily crowded long trades.

Buying pressure remains positive across most cryptocurrencies

Open-interest-adjusted cumulative volume delta (CVD) was positive for most digital assets over the previous 24 hours. This indicates that market buy orders generally exceeded sell orders relative to open interest.

Stellar (XLM) recorded the strongest positive CVD reading, while XAUT registered the weakest result on the negative side.

Bitcoin options point to easing hedging demand

Bitcoin’s one-week put-call skew on Deribit fell below 1%, compared with nearly 10% a week earlier. The shift indicates that demand for put options, commonly used to hedge against falling prices, has declined.

However, options with one-, three- and six-month expirations continued to show a preference for puts, suggesting that longer-term caution remains.

The most-traded Bitcoin options contract over the previous 24 hours was a $65,000 put expiring October 30. For Ether, a $3,400 call expiring October 29 was the most actively traded contract.

Pepe Rallies as AI Tokens Lag

Pepe (PEPE) advanced 9.4% on Wednesday, topping the CoinDesk 100 Index. The rally followed a report from Arkham Intelligence claiming that wallets it associates with Tron founder Justin Sun hold around $51 million in PEPE, potentially making him the token’s largest holder outside exchanges.

Other leading memecoins also posted gains. Floki (FLOKI) rose 3.4%, while Dogecoin (DOGE) increased 1.9%.

AI-related cryptocurrencies moved lower for a second consecutive day despite the recovery in AI equities. Venice (VVV), the token associated with a privacy-focused AI platform, fell 8.2%. Grass (GRASS) declined 3.3%, while Kite (KITE) lost 2.4%.

DeFi assets also trailed the wider market. CoinDesk’s DeFi Index (DFX) rose just 0.6%, underperforming the CoinDesk 80’s 0.9% gain and becoming the weakest-performing index in the group.

Meanwhile, CoinMarketCap’s Altcoin Season Index increased to 60 out of 100 from 57 on Tuesday, suggesting a modest improvement in altcoin performance relative to Bitcoin.