Oil Tops $93 After Iran Strikes as Bitcoin Retreats Below $76,500

Bitcoin slipped to roughly $76,500 as the latest escalation in U.S. strikes on Iranian targets weighed on risk sentiment. BTC has fallen more than 1% since midnight UTC and is down about 3% over the past seven days.

The conflict also sent crude prices higher, with Brent rising above $93 a barrel and West Texas Intermediate nearing $90. The Dollar Index edged up 0.13% over the same period.

Rising energy costs added to inflation concerns, pushing the 10-year U.S. Treasury yield toward 4.8%. Equity markets also pointed lower, with Nasdaq 100 futures declining 0.31% and S&P 500 futures slipping 0.11%.

Bearish Signals Strengthen

Derivatives data shows growing selling pressure, although bitcoin traders have yet to significantly increase their leverage.

The 24-hour long-short taker ratio turned bearish, with short trades representing 51.5% of the total flow, according to CoinGlass. The shift came after several consecutive neutral readings. Overall crypto trading volume jumped 19% to $203 billion, while open interest held near $136 billion for a second straight day.

Bitcoin futures open interest remained around 700,000 BTC. The stability suggests traders are not aggressively adding leveraged shorts despite the decline in BTC. Open interest is also comfortably below this year’s high of 801,000 BTC.

Ether is showing a clearer increase in bearish exposure. ETH prices declined while open interest rose slightly, a combination often interpreted as traders adding short positions. ETH open interest reached 13.72 million tokens, its highest since Aug. 18, but remained below May’s record of 15.68 million.

CVD data reinforces the bearish shift. Bitcoin and ether both posted negative 24-hour cumulative volume deltas, indicating that short-side trades are being executed at market prices rather than through passive limit orders. The same pattern appeared across most major tokens, with UNI the main exception.

UNI Keeps Climbing

UNI continued to outperform, adding 4% over 24 hours to reach a seven-month high of $6.37. Futures open interest rose to a record 89.44 million tokens, lending support to the spot-market advance.

The rally has not yet produced signs of excessive leverage. Annualized funding rates remain below 10%, indicating a bullish bias without the heavy crowding that can precede a long squeeze.

TRX presents the opposite picture, with funding rates near minus 85% for a second consecutive day, pointing to heavily crowded short positioning.

Volatility expectations have also moderated. The 30-day implied volatility indexes for bitcoin and ether have given up their mid-August increases, suggesting traders expect market swings to remain relatively contained.

Options positioning is becoming more cautious. The $70,000 bitcoin put expiring Sept. 25 was the most actively traded BTC contract on Deribit over the past 24 hours, although four of the other five highest-volume contracts were calls.

Ether options leaned more defensive, with the $2,200 put expiring Sept. 11 topping volume and most of the remaining top-five contracts also being puts. Traders use puts both to hedge against downside risk and to speculate on falling prices.

Altcoins Move in Different Directions

ETHFI was one of the few tokens to advance strongly, gaining 4.63% since midnight to about 58.9 cents.

Monero rose 2.27% to roughly $516, extending its climb from $464 a week ago. XMR has remained relatively independent of broader market movements and has been among the more consistent performers over the past two weeks.

Zcash gained 1% to $824.63 and has advanced 71.23% over the past 30 days.

ARB extended Tuesday’s rally with another 9.33% gain over 24 hours, reaching 11.68 cents. Continued revenue from Robinhood Chain flowing to the Arbitrum DAO treasury has helped support the token.

DASH led losses, falling 4.72% to $41.82. PUMP declined 3.54% to 0.4223 cents, while NEAR fell 2.29% to $1.8429. XRP was also among the weaker large-cap tokens, dropping 1.72% to $1.3281 and extending its weekly decline to 6.22%.