After failing to hold above $83,000, Bitcoin's decline continued for nearly three weeks, with prices falling to their lowest level since early April. Meanwhile, S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 futures continued to rise, approaching all-time highs, indicating a clear divergence in short-term performance between crypto assets and US stocks.

Bitcoin falls back to April range

Bitcoin hit its lowest level since early April on Thursday and only rebounded slightly on Friday. CoinDesk believes that after encountering resistance above $83,000, the market may further form a lower high structure since last October.

Ethereum's price action mirrors Bitcoin's. ETH briefly fell to $1965 on Thursday before recovering to above $2000, but overall remains within a weak range.

Futures and options signals differ

In the futures market, BTC open interest rose to $20.05 billion, up from $19.7 billion a week earlier, indicating a slight increase in speculative positions. Most platforms maintained positive funding rates, with annualized rates below 10%, but Deribit briefly reached 44%.

The three-month annualized basis is close to 3%, up from 2.2% last week, reflecting a slight recovery in institutional risk appetite. However, the options market has not provided the same clear direction.

• The skewness of the 25-delta oscillation increased to 12.85% in one cycle.
• The implied volatility at the front end has decreased to approximately 36.
• This is the lowest level since September of last year.

This means that traders are betting on a convergence of short-term volatility while simultaneously increasing downside protection. Coinglass data shows that approximately $224 million was cleared across the network in the past 24 hours, with BTC and ETH recording approximately $46 million and $43 million in clearings, respectively.

XLM bucked the trend and led the gains.

While mainstream cryptocurrencies faced pressure, some altcoins bucked the trend and strengthened. XLM surged 25% in the past 24 hours, becoming one of the best-performing tokens. This was driven by the announcement from the U.S. Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC) that it plans to integrate its tokenized securities platform with the Stellar network.

ALGO, INJ, HBAR, and HYPE also recorded double-digit gains during the same period, indicating that funds are still active in specific themes. However, the overall altcoin market is not strong, with CoinMarketCap's "Altcoin Season" index dropping from 37 to 34.

BCH continued its weakness, falling 7.2% in the last 24 hours and extending its weekly decline to 20%. The DeFi sector was also under pressure, with ENA, JUP, and UNI experiencing declines of up to 18% over the past week.