BTC price hits April lows while AI tokens surge, exposing a split in the crypto market

Bitcoin drops toward $69,000 as Saylor sale spooks investors while AI tokens buck the trend

The price of bitcoin fell to its lowest since April 7 as Strategy's sale dented sentiment, while AI tokens H and NEAR surged and DeFi TVL hit a 20-month low.

Bitcoin BTC$69,304.97 fell to its lowest level since April 7 on Tuesday, breaking below $70,000 in a downswing that has accelerated sharply since Sunday. Seven of the past eight four-hour candles have closed red, leaving the largest cryptocurrency down more than 2% since midnight UTC.

The move was compounded by growing unease over Strategy's (MSTR) bitcoin thesis after the largest publicly traded holder of the cryptocurrency sold $2.5 million worth of the token. That's seen as a signal of potentially more sales after $30 million of BTC was transferred to a Coinbase Prime wallet last week.

Ether (ETH) tracked the slide, shedding around 1.7% since midnight UTC and continuing to trade below the key $2,000 level.

Not everything is pointing lower, however. Optimism around artificial intelligence is providing a boost for AI-adjacent tokens, with Humanity Protocol (H) rising 18% on Tuesday alone, part of a remarkable 278% rally since May 28.

Elsewhere in the altcoin market, Stellar (XLM) lost more than 6% since midnight as it continues to unwind a 102% surge from last month, while SUI and ETHFI lost around 3% apiece.

Derivatives positioning

• Bitcoin open interest (OI) sits at $19.2 billion, essentially unchanged from a week ago, with speculative positioning broadly unchanged.
• Funding rates remain positive across multiple venues at 0%–10% annualized. The three-month annualized basis rose to around 3%, up from 2.4% last week, pointing to a continued mild increase in institutional risk appetite.
• Options positioning is sending mixed signals. The put/call volume over the past 24 hours splits 65/35 in favor of calls, but one-week 25-delta skew has spiked to 17% from 11% a week ago, indicating a sharp pickup in demand for downside protection. Front-end implied vol (DVOL) has recovered to 39 from multimonth lows, confirming the recent volatility compression has ended.
• Coinglass data shows $768 million in 24-hour liquidations, with a 84-16 split between longs and shorts. BTC ($448 million) and ETH ($92 million) led in terms of notional liquidations. Binance liquidation heatmap indicates $68,600 as a core liquidation level to monitor in case of a price drop.

Token talk

• The AI sector is outperforming the broader crypto market on Tuesday, with Humanity Protocol (H) and Near Protocol (NEAR) posting gains of 8% and 14.5%, respectively, over the past 24 hours, although NEAR has been flat since midnight UTC following a bout of profit-taking.
• The AI-dominated CoinDesk Computing Select Index (CPUS) has not fully captured that strength, however, losing 1.7% with chainlink LINK$8.7851, the heaviest component, dragging the benchmark lower as it fell 2.5%.
• The DeFi sector tells a different story. Total value locked (TVL) across all protocols has slumped to the lowest since October 2024, sitting at around $78 billion after shedding 1.85% in the past 24 hours, a sign that the liquidity rebuild many expected this year has yet to materialize following a series of hacks.
• CoinMarketCap's "Altcoin Season" index has picked up the momentum, climbing from 38/100 to 45/100 since Monday as it diverges from bitcoin.