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Bitcoin tops $80,000 as altcoins rally and risk appetite returns
Crypto markets climb Tuesday with BTC above $80,000, altcoins gaining momentum, and investors rotating into higher-risk plays amid improving sentiment.
May 5, 2026, 10:05 a.m. 3 min read
What to know:
- Bitcoin rose above $80,000 during Asia hours, trading around $80,690 while ether lagged after failing to break April highs.
- Altcoins outperformed majors, with the DeFi Select Index up 2.7% and tokens like ENA, ONDO, and TON posting strong gains.
- Broader risk sentiment improved as equities and metals edged higher and traders rotated toward more speculative crypto bets.
U.S equities are up in pre-market trading, with Nasdaq 100 futures and S&P 500 futures increasing by 0.5% and 0.3% respectively on Tuesday, spurred by investors buying the dip after jitters on Monday in relation to the Strait of Hormuz.
Precious metals gold and silver also ticked higher on Tuesday but remain significantly lower than the speculative blow off top in early March.
Derivatives positioning
- Futures tied to Cardano’s ADA are seeing record participation. Open interest (OI), the total number of active futures contracts, has surged more than 18% to 2.17 billion tokens, surpassing the previous peak from January.
- Despite this buildup, positioning in ADA does not appear excessively overheated. Perpetual funding rates are running at an annualized 9%, which signals bullish sentiment but not extreme leverage. Meanwhile, ADA has posted one of the highest cumulative volume deltas (CVD) over the past 24 hours among major tokens. It means that buyers are driving trading activity by placing more market orders than sellers, rather than using passive limit orders.
- TON is another standout. Open interest has jumped 40% to a record 200.2 million tokens. It also shows the strongest CVD among the top 30 cryptocurrencies, pointing to aggressive buying pressure. However, funding rates remain slightly negative, an unusual combination. This suggests a more nuanced positioning: traders may be buying TON in the spot market while simultaneously shorting futures to hedge, rather than outright speculative long positioning.
- There is one broader caution signal. Despite bitcoin’s breakout above $80,000, the OI-adjusted 24-hour CVD is negative for bitcoin and most major tokens, with the exception of ADA, TON and M. This indicates that the rally is not being strongly supported by aggressive derivatives buying, raising the risk that price gains could lack follow-through if spot demand weakens.
- Looking more closely at bitcoin, its open interest has risen about 3% to 785,000 BTC, approaching the recent record near 800,000 BTC. In contrast, derivatives activity in ether, XRP and solana has been relatively muted over the past 24 hours, suggesting a more selective market rather than a broad-based altcoin expansion.
- Volatility is also starting to stir. Bitcoin’s 30-day implied volatility index (BVIV) jumped 5% on Monday to move back above 40%, the sharpest one-day increase since mid-March. This rebound from multi-month lows is worth watching closely. A continued rise in implied volatility can signal growing demand for hedging or expectations of larger price swings, and in some cases may coincide with risk aversion and unwinding of recent gains. Ether’s equivalent measure (EVIV), however, has yet to show a similar pickup.
- In traditional markets, there are also early signs of hedging demand. Social media chatter points to large purchases of call options on the VIX — Wall Street’s “fear gauge,” which typically moves inversely to the S&P 500.
- Otions markets on Deribit show that risk reversals for both bitcoin and ether remain skewed toward puts across maturities. This means downside protection is still priced at a premium relative to upside exposure. Rather than outright bearishness, this likely reflects a shift in market structure: institutions are playing a larger role, and they tend to systematically hedge downside risk or generate yield by selling calls. The result is a market that is less euphoric, more hedged than in previous crypto cycles.
