Bitcoin tracks equity bounce, but $390 million ETF outflow week keeps bulls on back foot

Bitcoin BTC$63,578.34 steadied above $63,000 on Monday, clawing back a fraction of last week's losses with a 0.8% gain since midnight UTC.

Without an obvious catalyst, the largest cryptocurrency appears to be tracking U.S. equities. Nasdaq 100 index futures are up 0.5% to their highest point since July 2.

Any positive reading will need to take into account last week’s net $390 million outflow from spot exchange-traded funds, including the first three-day stretch since the end of July. That was the largest weekly withdrawal from U.S. spot bitcoin products in six weeks.

Ether ETH$1,903.35 ETFs flows were limited, and solana (SOL) ETFs bucked the trend with their strongest weekly inflows since mid-May.

The bigger picture is the Clarity Act. Galaxy Research’s head of research, Alex Thorn, cut his odds of the landmark crypto bill becoming law in 2026 to roughly 10% on Aug. 14, joining prediction markets that now put the probability at around 17%. A cloture vote is scheduled for Sept. 15 when the Senate returns from recess, although market observers are expecting another delay.

Derivatives positioning

• Taker ratio stays balanced: the 24-hour long-short volume ratio for takers hangs in balance again, extending Friday’s trend. Takers are entities that pull liquidity from the order book by trading at available prices.
• Thin liquidity raises swing risk: BTC's notional open interest, at $48 billion, is now nearly double its 24-hour trading volume. XRP's market shows a similar pattern. That gap means any mass liquidation event could run into thin liquidity, raising the odds of wild price swings.
• BTC OI pulls back, XRP holds firm: in contract terms, BTC's open interest (OI) has pulled back to 750,000 BTC from Friday's 760,000 BTC. That's been a pattern since April, with spikes above 750,000 BTC often proving short-lived. XRP futures show the opposite dynamic, with OI holding steady at 10-month highs. Positioning in ETH and SOL remains relatively light in comparison.
• CC shows bearish buildup: Canton Network's CC token has dropped over 1.5% in 24 hours, making it one of the biggest losers among the top 100 coins by market value. OI in futures tied to the token has risen more than 5% over the same period. That combination points to shorts, or bearish bets, being built up. Negative annualized perpetual funding rates and a negative OI-adjusted 24-hour cumulative volume delta (CVD) both support that read, indicating bears are leading the market.
• ZEC bucks the trend: Privacy-focused ZEC is also an OI gainer. In this case, a positive 24-hour CVD, is a sign bulls are being more aggressive, taking longs via market orders rather than passive limit orders. ZEC's funding rate is also positive at +10%, indicating a growing bias toward bullish bets.
• Volatility and fear stay low: Bitcoin and ether's 30-day implied volatility indexes remain pinned near year-to-date lows, suggesting fear levels and demand for options-based insurance against price swings are both muted. Wall Street's VIX tells a similar story, sitting at its lowest level since January.
• Options positioning leans bullish near-term: On Deribit, the skew for BTC and ETH shows a bid for calls, or bullish bets, at the front end of the curve. The implied volatility term structure shows no signs of short-term stress either, despite Wednesday's scheduled release of the Fed minutes.
• Volume rankings show a split: 24-hour volume rankings show a mixed profile, with both BTC calls and puts among the top five most-traded instruments. The same holds for ether.

Token talk

• Pump.fun PUMP$0.002880 is one of the standout performers on Monday, adding 7.80% since midnight UTC with daily trading volume rising 55% to $90 million.
• ZEC has gained 4.70% since midnight at $508, extending a notable stretch for privacy coins following XMR's strong run last week.
• MORPHO advanced by 5% at $2.07, reversing some of Friday's weakness and leading the DeFi names higher.
• HYPE rose 3.53% to $59.08, continuing its steady grind and now up around 2% on the week.
• FET is one of the weakest altcoins on Monday, down 1.56% since midnight at $0.1196, giving back some of last week's gains as AI-adjacent tokens lose momentum.
• CoinMarketCap’s “Altcoin Season” indicator is at 46/100, recovering from the Aug. 7 low of 36/100 as optimism slowly returns to the altcoin sector. CoinMarketCap’s Fear and Greed index sits at 38/100, a “fear” reading.