Bitcoin BTC$68,201.79 cooled off in Asia hours on Thursday, trading at $68,600 after testing $70,000 during a ferocious U.S. session on Wednesday.

As February draws toward a close, the largest cryptocurrency remains in a trading range that has persisted since early in the month, having tested $62,500 on Tuesday and $71,100 to the upside on Feb. 15.

It's worth noting that bitcoin broke a similar trading range to the upside in January, trapping breakout traders before the price tumbled from $98,000 to $60,000 over the subsequent three weeks, forming a lower high in this recent bearish cycle.

A few tokens outshone the broader altcoin market. HYPE is up 4.3% since midnight UTC as it moves back toward $30, while privacy token decred (DCR) rose to its highest since November after adding 4%.

U.S. stock index futures are little changed, with NVIDIA's earnings report failing to generate sustained upside amid lingering concerns that AI valuation is overdone.

Derivatives positioning

• Total crypto futures market open interest (OI) has increased by over 6.6% to nearly $100 billion. This is bigger than the increase in the total crypto market cap, indicating there's been an influx of fresh capital into the market.
• ADA and ETH futures stand out with OI increases of 21% and 15%, respectively. Several other altcoins have seen increases of 9%.
• Bitcoin's OI growth of over 3% appears largely due to the spot price gain.
• BTC and ETH's 30-day implied volatility indices, BVIV and EVIV, remain near weekly lows, indicating market calm and supporting continued price gains.
• Annualized perpetual funding rates for most tokens, including bitcoin and ether, have stabilized to slightly above zero, indicating a renewed bias for bullish, long bets.
• On Deribit, bitcoin's price bounce triggered demand for call options at strikes ranging from $85,000 to $90,000. However, the overall options market continues to show a bias for puts, a sign that downside reservations still linger.
• The $60,000 put option remains the most popular bet, with a notional open interest of over $1.4 billion.

Token talk

• Layer-1 token DOT$1.5772 posted a 21% gain over the past 24 hours. While the move petered out in European hours, investors are showing appetite ahead of the network's reward halving coming in March.
• Uniswap's governance token (UNI) also jumped, adding 15%. The move can be attributed to a new governance vote that proposes increasing the protocol’s revenue capture across several layer-2 networks.
• One token that particularly underperformed was ATOM$1.9091, which lost more than 6%, with the selloff continuing into European hours. There is no clear bearish catalyst for the move, which reflects persistent altcoin vulnerability due to a lack of liquidity.
• Crypto majors ADA$0.2911 and ether (ETH) rose by around 8.5% since Wednesday morning. The moves were intriguing because open interest for both assets increased, suggesting they was backed by leverage as opposed to spot buying, according to Coinalyze.