Bitcoin slips as U.S. inflation fails to spark gains, ETFs see August's first two-day drawdown

Bitcoin BTC$62,848.13 dropped below $63,000, losing 1.14% since midnight UTC as a second day of outflows from spot exchange-traded funds and a lack of bullish catalysts weighed on the crypto market.

Spot bitcoin ETFs experienced the first back-to-back days of outflows since late July with $192 million exiting the products, according to SoSoValue.

The largest cryptocurrency is now trading at its lowest point since Aug. 3 having wiped out all of last week’s rally. Ether ETH$1,877.70 is down by 0.73% since midnight, while a portion of the altcoin market continues to show resilience, outperforming crypto majors.

U.S. equities were boosted on Thursday by producer price inflation data, which cooled to 4.7%, below forecasts. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 both rallied following the report, and futures on the indexes remain marginally in the black.

Derivatives positioning

• Futures churn continues: While the crypto market is under pressure, the long-short taker ratio in futures remains balanced, with longs accounting for half of the flow. 24-hour volume growth is again outpacing open interest (OI) growth by a wide margin. That’s a sign of churn rather than fresh positioning.
• BCH sees heaviest fresh shorting: Futures tied to Bitcoin Cash BCH$205.29 are the biggest OI gainer of the past 24 hours, adding 10% to 1.64 million tokens as the spot price drops 3%. That combination points to short positions being built up. Deeply negative annualized funding rates support that interpretation. The 24-hour OI-adjusted cumulative volume delta (CVD) is negative too, signaling that shorts are trading more aggressively via market orders rather than passive limit orders. Together, these signals point to positioning for a deeper selloff in the token.
• BTC OI rises alongside falling price: Bitcoin is another OI gainer, with the tally rising over 3% to 765,000 BTC alongside a negative CVD. Annualized funding rates, however, still hold mildly positive.
• HBAR shows the clearest bearish tilt: The token's 24-hour CVD is the most negative among the top 25 coins, with funding rates around -20%, pointing to a market clearly dominated by bears. More broadly, all the top 25 are showing negative CVD.
• Bitcoin volatility cools: BTC's 30-day implied volatility index, BVIV, fell back below 36%, erasing a spike to nearly 39% earlier this week. That points to continued investor interest in overwriting strategies — approaches aimed at generating extra yield on top of spot holdings. Ether's equivalent index, EVIV, is showing the same pattern.
• Options positioning stays mixed: On Deribit, BTC calls at the $70,000, $69,000 and $67,000 strikes rank among the five most-traded bets. For ETH, puts at the $1,700 and $1,780 strikes ranked higher instead.

Token talk

• Ether.fi (ETHFI) is the standout performer over the past 24 hours, rallying by 11.5% after adding tokenized stocks and DeFi loans to its neobank platform. The token gave back some of the gains on Friday, dropping 3.3%.
• Cosmos ATOM$1.5590 also experienced upside. The token surged by more than 10% in 24 hours and trading volume jumped by 232% to $51 million despite the absence of a clear news catalyst.
• Fetch.ai FET$0.1365 and monero (XMR) extended their positive weeks, rising 0.55% and 0.81%, respectively, since midnight UTC.
• NEAR, MORPHO, TAO and JUP all lost around 2% since midnight as cautious sentiment remains the dominant theme across the crypto market.