The beginning of this week was a bit cranky for the financial market, with sharp declines across major stock indexes and digital assets amid the launch of DeepSeek’s artificial intelligence (AI) model.

Despite the volatility that came with the sell-off, open interest in perpetual swaps for Bitcoin and other leading cryptocurrencies remained stable, while funding rates momentarily became negative before recovering. The options market also recorded an uptick in trading activity during the sell-off.

Ethereum Options More Bullish Than Bitcoin

However, according to a report by the crypto exchange Bybit and the institutional-grade research firm Block Scholes, the aftermath of the risk-off event sees Ethereum options looking more bullish than Bitcoin options. Ethereum options have maintained a volatility premium over their Bitcoin counterparts.

Over the past month, trading volume for Ethereum options has been at strong levels. The derivatives saw similar activity levels between late December 2024 and early January 2025. However, the latest data shows more call activity. Open interest data has also tilted majorly toward call options.

The spot sell-off earlier this week caused investors to briefly refrain from placing call options; however, Ethereum options have continued to trade at higher volatility levels relative to Bitcoin. Notably, the same cannot be said for ether’s (ETH) spot price, which has been lagging behind bitcoin’s (BTC).

Bitcoin Options Volatility Declines

Even Solana options are seeing solid open interest in puts and calls, with trading activity exceeding levels seen during a price rally driven by the launch of two presidential memecoins on the network. Bybit and Block Scholes said stable levels of newly opened put options on the Solana network suggest investors are strategically buying to hedge profitable long positions in other financial instruments.

As for Bitcoin, current data shows little change in the options market over the past week, except for the expiration and reopening of short-dated trades.

“Short-tenor options are trading with lower volatility and a neutral skew, while longer-dated volatility smiles are trading with increased volatility expectations and a persistently bullish skew toward OTM calls — as they have for much of the post-election period,” the report explained.

Meanwhile, the Bitcoin options market recorded the highest single-day trading volume for calls this month, reaching $250 million during the spot price decline. However, volatility has continued to decline in both realized and implied terms since then.

Bitcoin is once again dropping lower after failing to breach the $108K resistance level.

Investors are worried that this could be the start of a much deeper correction as the asset is currently beneath the coveted $100,000 mark.

Technical Analysis

By Edris Derakhshi (TradingRage)

The Daily Chart

On the daily chart, it is evident that BTC’s price has been consolidating below the $108K level and is now breaking the $100K support zone to the downside.

If this level is lost, a deeper drop toward the $92K area could be expected in the coming weeks. With the RSI also showing values below 50%, it is quite likely that this bearish scenario will become a reality.

The 4-Hour Chart

On the other hand, the 4-hour chart offers more hope for a rally higher in the coming months, as the asset is moving inside a large bullish flag pattern.

At the moment, the price is dropping toward the lower boundary of the pattern, and if it holds, the market could rise higher and break the pattern to the upside, which could lead to a bullish continuation. However, if the lower trendline breaks down, things can get ugly very quickly, and the market will drop to the $92K level and probably even lower.

On-Chain Analysis

By Edris Derakhshi (TradingRage)

Long-Term Holder SOPR

Bitcoin’s price has been consolidating around all-time high values over the past few months, and this is likely due to the massive amount of profit-taking by investors. This is observable on the Long-Term Holder SOPR metric.

The Long-Term Holder SOPR indicates the ratios of profits taken by investors who have held their BTC for more than 6 months. As the 30-day moving average of this metric shows, these holders have been actively selling their BTC to realize profits, which has led to the market’s failure to rally higher.

However, these profit-realization values are still lower than those witnessed last summer when the market was trading lower. Therefore, if the selling pressure is somehow reduced, there is a high probability that BTC will rally even higher.

TL:DR;

• The overall market crash that started late last night only worsened in the past few hours, and Ripple’s native token is among the poorest performers, with a massive 15% daily drop.
• This comes despite a highly positive endorsement from SBI’s CEO, who predicted that XRP’s price could shoot up in the next few weeks.

It’s worth noting that XRP’s price drop is far from a corner case. The entire crypto market turned red in the past 24 hours, perhaps driven by the geopolitical uncertainty following President Trump’s tariffs against China, Canada, and Mexico.

Bitcoin, for instance, plunged below $100,000 earlier today and kept nosediving to a three-week low of its own at $97,000. Many other altcoins have posted double-digit price declines.

XRP stood at $3.07 yesterday, as reported, but slumped beneath the $3 mark earlier today and kept dropping to $2.53 (on Bitstamp). This intraday low became the asset’s lowest valuation since January 14.

What’s particularly compelling in XRP’s case is the fact that this crash came just hours after Crypto Twitter (X) started sharing a video of SBI’s CEO, Yoshitaka Kitao, who noted that he anticipates the case between Ripple and the SEC to be resolved in a few weeks.

Moreover, he said he expects XRP’s price to “soar significantly” if the court determines that the asset is not a security – which has been the main dispute between the company behind the token and the SEC for over four years now.

The crypto market is typically quite susceptible to such big endorsements from prominent figures, but today’s politically driven crash seems to be an exception. This only proves a recent report that the crypto industry reacts more violently to FUD than actual positive news.