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BTC price holds near $75,000 as short-term holders look for profit opportunities: Crypto Markets Today

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BTC price holds near $75,000 as short-term holders look for profit opportunities: Crypto Markets Today

Bitcoin BTC$74,622.84 is still hovering near $75,000 as it hits a wall of supply while institutional demand remains steady, with traders weighing progress in U.S.-Iran peace talks during a two-week ceasefire.

The CoinDesk 20 (CD20) index rose around 1.9% in the past 24 hours, compared with bitcoin’s 1%, amid reports of a ceasefire extension, improving risk sentiment.

The increases come alongside a softer U.S. dollar, which slipped to a near six-week low, and easing Treasury yields, conditions that often support crypto prices by lowering the relative appeal of holding cash. Gold also gained, pointing to a market balancing risk appetite with hedging demand.

Still, the backdrop remains tense. The U.S. blockade of Iranian ports and Iran’s threats to disrupt shipping routes in the Persian Gulf and nearby waterways continue to cloud the outlook for the global economy.

Energy supply shocks have already begun feeding into inflation expectations, a factor that could shift central bank policy and ripple into crypto markets.

Onchain data also show bitcoin supply tends to appear when prices reach key cost-basis levels for short-term holders. That’s around $76,800, a level that could act as resistance as investors cash out when breaking even.

Derivatives positioning

  • Crypto futures open interest (OI) has risen 2.5% in the past 24 hours even as trading volume dropped 16% and liquidations fell 48% to $220 million.
  • The divergence suggests traders are adding or holding positions despite a slowdown in activity, pointing to a buildup of exposure without strong conviction. The sharp decline in liquidations indicates reduced volatility and fewer forced exits.
  • Among the biggest tokens, XRP and DOGE stand out with OI increases of at least 3%, showcasing a bullish combination of positive perpetual funding rates and OI-adjusted cumulative volume delta (CVD).
  • DOGE has the most positive 24-hour CVD, indicating that buyers have been more aggressive in lifting offers and driving trades.
  • On decentralized exchange Hyperliquid, perpetuals tied to commodities continue to do solid business and now account for 30% of the platform’s total notional open interest.
  • Bitcoin and ether’s 30-day implied volatility indexes, BVIV and EVIV, continue to hover below their 200-day averages, indicating market calm.
  • In the BTC options market, the one-week implied volatility is now trading cheaper relative to realized or actual volatility. In other words, short-dated options are now cheap. This kind of setup often has traders taking bullish volatility bets via straddle/strangle strategies that involve buying both call and put options.
  • The Deribit-listed bitcoin and ether options continue to show a bias for puts. The persistent demand for downside hedges indicates that the sustainability of recent rally is still being questioned.

Token talk

  • CoW Swap, a decentralized exchange aggregator tied to CoW Protocol, on Tuesday suffered a domain name system (DNS) hijacking attack that redirected users to a malicious site and drained funds from connected wallets.
  • The breach did not touch the protocol’s smart contracts or back-end systems. Instead, attackers used social engineering to gain control of the project’s domain registrar, allowing them to reroute traffic from cow.fi to a cloned interface designed to capture wallet approvals.
  • Losses appear limited to affected users rather than the protocol itself. Onchain data points to at least $1 million drained, including a single wallet that lost 219 ETH.
  • The COW token fell about 2.6% that day, with trading volume spiking as news spread. Prices continued to drift lower in the following sessions, and are now 11% lower.
  • CoW DAO reclaimed control of the cow.fi domain little over half a day ago, but sentiment for the protocol doesn’t appear to have improved. The token is down another 6% since then.

Healthcare faces cyberattack every 10 hours – driven by known flaws and high ransom payments

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Healthcare faces cyberattack every 10 hours – driven by known flaws and high ransom payments

Attackers aren’t using new techniques – they’re exploiting known weaknesses, and healthcare is paying

Healthcare organizations are being hit by cyberattacks at an alarming rate – about every 10 hours – and attackers are succeeding using vulnerabilities that are already known and fixable, according to new research from Securin.

Ransom payment rates range from 68% to 72%, making the sector one of the most reliable and profitable targets for cybercriminals.Share

“Ransomware in healthcare has become a repeatable business model,” said Dr. Srinivas Mukkamala, CEO of Securin. “Attackers are walking through doors that were left open – and getting paid for it. Once they’re inside, the disruption is so severe that organizations are often forced into costly decisions – in many cases tied to issues that could have been addressed earlier.”

The problem is getting worse for a simple reason: attackers are succeeding – and once inside, the cost of disruption often forces difficult decisions. Ransom payment rates range from 68% to 72%, making the sector one of the most reliable and profitable targets for cybercriminals.

This isn’t about sophisticated, never-before-seen threats. Every vulnerability exploited in these attacks is already listed in the U.S. government’s Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog.

Attackers are repeatedly exploiting unfixed, well-documented weaknesses, allowing them to scale attacks quickly using proven, repeatable methods.

The report analyzed 592 incidents across 94 ransomware groups between January 2025 and February 2026:

  • 59% of attacks involved ransomware
  • 56% targeted U.S.- based organizations

How attackers are getting in

Securin identified 29 actively exploited vulnerabilities, with a clear pattern:

  • Authentication bypass is the most common entry point
  • VPN and remote access systems account for roughly one-third of initial access
  • Attackers often exploit vulnerabilities long after they are disclosed and patchable

Across incidents, attackers follow the same sequence:

  • Initial access
  • Credential harvesting
  • Lateral movement
  • Data exfiltration
  • Encryption

In many cases, access to healthcare systems is purchased for as little as $2,000 to $50,000, lowering the barrier to entry.

Certain groups – including Qilin, Incransom, and Cl0p – have scaled attacks by exploiting the same vulnerability across multiple organizations.

Why healthcare continues to be targeted

Healthcare remains a top target because the economics favor attackers:

  • 68-72% ransom payment rate (vs. ~40% in other sectors)
  • Medical records sell for $250-$1,000 each
  • Hospitals can lose $1M-$2M per day during disruptions

Faced with these pressures, many organizations make difficult decisions to restore operations quickly – reinforcing the cycle attackers rely on.

Bitcoin funding rates turn most negative since 2023, signaling potential market bottom

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Bitcoin funding rates turn most negative since 2023, signaling potential market bottom

Bitcoin BTC$74,554.75 funding rates have hit their most negative levels since 2023, a signal that has historically coincided with market bottoms, as BTC continues to push higher through $75,000.

On a seven-day moving average, funding rates have dropped to around -0.005%, according to Glassnode data.

Funding rates are periodic payments exchanged between long and short traders in perpetual futures contracts, designed to keep prices aligned with the underlying spot market. When the rate is positive, long traders pay short traders, reflecting bullish positioning. When the rate turns negative, shorts pay longs, indicating a market skewed toward downside bets.

Despite the current sustained stretch of negative funding throughout March and April, bitcoin has continued to grind higher, climbing from the low to mid $60,000s to around $75,000.

Historically, deeply negative funding rates have often coincided with local bottoms in bitcoin’s price. This dynamic typically reflects crowded short positioning, which can create the conditions for a squeeze higher as bearish bets are unwound.

This pattern has played out across multiple market cycles. In March 2020, during the COVID-19 induced market crash, bitcoin fell to around $3,000 as funding rates turned sharply negative.

A similar setup emerged in mid 2021 amid China’s mining ban, when prices dropped to $30,000. Funding rates were also at their most extreme during the FTX collapse in November 2022, when bitcoin bottomed near $15,000.

The trend continued into 2023, when funding rates flipped negative during the Silicon Valley Bank crisis, coinciding with bitcoin briefly dipping below $20,000 before recovering. More recently, episodes such as the yen carry trade unwind in August 2024 and the April 2025 “Liberation Day” selloff also saw negative funding align with local lows.

The persistence of negative funding rates suggests that bearish positioning remains elevated, even as price action trends higher. This divergence may indicate that the market is climbing a wall of worry, with short positioning potentially acting as fuel for further upside.

Crypto Protocols Almost Never Disclose Market-Maker Terms, Study Finds

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Crypto Protocols Almost Never Disclose Market-Maker Terms, Study Finds

A review of more than 150 major crypto protocols shows that disclosure of market-making arrangements is almost nonexistent, despite their central role in token trading.

The research, conducted by crypto advisory company Novora, found that fewer than 1% of protocols disclose any terms related to market makers. Across the full dataset, only one protocol, decentralized liquidity platform Meteora, was found to have publicly disclosed details of its market-making arrangements, citing the project’s 2025 Annual Token Holder Report.

The study covered leading sectors, including decentralized exchanges, lending platforms, perpetual futures, layer-1 and layer-2 networks, bridges and centralized exchange tokens, with protocols ranging in size from roughly $40 million to $45 billion in fully diluted valuation.

Novora said the protocols were assessed using a binary transparency framework covering disclosure practices and third-party data coverage, with checks against public sources including Artemis, Token Terminal, Dune, DefiLlama and Blockworks Research.

“This is the single most consequential transparency gap in the industry,” Novora founder Connor King wrote on X, saying that such material agreements are routinely disclosed in traditional markets. “In crypto, every market participant operates without this information,” he added.

Disclosure metrics assessed across 150+ protocols. Source: Novora

Related: Polymarket expands into equities and commodities with Pyth price feeds

Crypto’s investor reporting gap

The finding points to a broader investor relations (IR) gap in crypto. Novora said 91% of the protocols it reviewed generated trackable revenue, but only 18% published quarterly updates and just 8% issued token holder reports, suggesting the data exists but is rarely packaged into structured investor communication.

At the same time, third-party analytics infrastructure has matured, with coverage rates exceeding 85% across major platforms, suggesting the underlying data is widely accessible but rarely formalized in reporting.

The state of crypto IR. Source: Novora

Sector-level breakdowns show uneven transparency. Perpetual futures protocols and decentralized exchanges tend to lead on disclosure and value accrual mechanisms, while L1 and infrastructure projects lag despite larger market capitalizations.

Related: US crypto wash trading case reaches court as 3 extradited, 10 charged

Market-maker deals draw scrutiny

Opaque market-maker arrangements have long fueled scrutiny in crypto, especially around token loan structures that critics say can create incentives to dump borrowed tokens into the market. The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has even previously charged so-called crypto market makers with price manipulation.

As Cointelegraph reported, some market-maker arrangements are poorly structured and can quickly turn harmful. One widely used arrangement, the “loan option model,” involves projects lending tokens to market makers who then deploy them for liquidity provision and trading activity, often tied to listing agreements.

In practice, critics say this structure can create strong incentives to sell borrowed tokens into the market, triggering price declines that benefit the market maker while leaving early-stage projects with weakened liquidity and damaged token performance.

Magazine: Bitcoin’s ‘biggest bull catalyst’ would be Saylor’s liquidation — Santiment founder