CoinDesk 20 Index: 1,868.26 -3.74%
Bitcoin (BTC): $60,722.20 -0.88%
Ether (ETH): $2,366.16 -3.13%
S&P 500: 5,709.54 -0.01%
Gold: $2,647.23 -0.49%
Nikkei 225: 38,552.06 +1.97%

Bitcoin was flat during the Asian and European mornings, trading about 0.8% lower in the last 24 hours at around $60,750. Iran’s air strikes on Israel, for which the latter has vowed to retaliate, continue to weigh on risk assets, such as bitcoin. Other major cryptos are nursing more significant losses than BTC with ether down over 4.5% at $2,350. The broader digital asset market as measured by the CoinDesk 20 Index is around 4.2% lower. XRP is the worst affected, having dropped 11% after the SEC filed an appeal against the ruling in Ripple's favor over their long-standing legal dispute.

Despite the generally negative direction in crypto prices, whales are continuing to accumulate bitcoin at unprecedented rates, CryptoQuant founder Ki Young-Ju said in an X post.Whales colloquially refer to influential entities that hold largest amounts of any asset - and on-chain data shows new bitcoin whales are making sizable purchases in anticipation of a bull run ahead. "Real whales move the market through spot trading and OTC markets," he wrote. "That’s why on-chain data is crucial. The older whales haven’t seen particularly high returns, and the whales who entered in this recent bull run have barely made any profits."

Tokyo-listed bitcoin holder Metaplanet Inc. is now using bitcoin options to boost its BTC stash. The company announced the sale of 223 contracts of bitcoin put options at the $62,000 strike with a maturity date of Dec. 27. The transaction involved Singapore-based QCP Capital as the counterparty and generated a premium of 23.972 BTC ($1.44 million). Metaplanet posted $13.826 million as margin collateral, with each contract offering a 0.1075 BTC premium, which Metaplanet received upfront. The transaction resulted in a nominal yield of 10.75% and an annualized yield of 45.63%. Metaplanet will use the premium received to purchase more bitcoin. The company’s total bitcoin holdings are worth around $32 million.

XRP's options market shows a greater risk of an extended price decline than renewed gains as renewed regulatory uncertainty overshadows Bitwise's proposal to list an XRP ETF and weighs over the cryptocurrency's price.

Bitwise's action was quickly followed by the SEC filing a notice of appeal, pushing back against the ruling that fintech company Ripple Labs did not violate programmatic sales to retail exchanges and did not violate securities rules.

Options traders on Deribit seem relatively more bearish on XRP than bitcoin and ether, according to the seven-day call-put skew, which measures the difference between call and put volatility (demand).

At press time, XRP's seven-day skew was -3.2%, a sign of bias for puts offering protection against price slides. BTC and ETH's seven-day skews were 0% or neutral and 2.8%, according to data source Amberdata.

Meanwhile, funding rates in the XRP perpetual futures market have turned positive, reversing the brief overnight negative flip, which represented a bearish bias.

- Jamie Crawley