Crypto Markets Today: Gold tokens shine as bitcoin rises to $89,000

Gold surged to record, bringing cheer to digital tokens backed by the metal traditionally seen as a haven investment.

XAUT$4,412.65, the largest gold-backed token by market value, rose to an all-time high of $4,425 while PAXG (PAXG) and kineses gold (KAU) also rose, lifting the total market value of gold-backed tokens to $4.38 billion.

"The message is clear. Investors are still hedging macro uncertainty rather than leaning aggressively into risk. That divergence continues to cap enthusiasm for crypto, even as liquidity conditions improve," BRN's head of research Timothy Misir, said in an email.

Bitcoin, referred to by some followers as digital gold, rose to $89,800 while the dollar index dropped and technology stocks lifted Asian equity indexes higher. Notably, heavyweight chipmakers Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing and Samsung Electronics gained, helping calm fears of an AI bubble. Futures tied to the S&P 500 advanced roughly 0.3%, pointing to a positive U.S. open on Monday.

While the price uptick is encouraging, a sustained recovery will require a renewed appetite for institutional investment vehicles, which currently appear to have cooled. Last week, digital asset investment products listed worldwide registered a net outflow for the first time in four week, losing $952 million, according to data source CoinShares.

Derivative insights

• Market stability has yet to galvanize demand for renewed risk taking. Futures are painting a mixed picture, with BTC, ETH, HYPE and BNB seeing small increases in open interest (OI) over 24 hours. Other major cryptocurrencies have seen capital outflows.
• BTC longs raised with borrowed money continue to rise on Bitfinex. Historically, this has been a feature of sustained bear markets.
• BTC's 30-day implied volatility remains steady at around 45%, pointing to dull trading as the year draws to a close.
• Ether's 30-day implied volatility dropped to 70%, the lowest since Oct. 9.
• On the CME, open interest in BTC futures dropped below 120K BTC for the first time since early 2024. That's a sign of dwindling institutional participation.
• BCH, SHIB, WLFI and TON are seeing negative funding rates in perpetual markets, indicating a bias for short positions. Funding rates for majors remain mildly positive.
• On Deribit, block flows paint a mixed picture, with both BTC call and put spreads crossing the tape. In ETH's case, traders chased calendar spreads.
• Overall, BTC and ETH puts continue to trade at a premium to calls, although the put bias has weakened slightly since Friday.

Token Talk

• Curve DAO voted down a proposal to send 17.45 million CRV tokens, worth around $6.3 million, to Swiss Stake AG, a company led by Curve Finance founder Michael Egorov that handles core development for the decentralized exchange.
• The protocol's CRV token is up around 4% in the last 24 hours, outperforming the wider crypto market. The CoinDesk 20 (CD20) index rose 0.35% in the same period.
• The proposal, which aimed to fund protocol development, infrastructure and security work for the 25-person team at Swiss Stake, failed with 54.46% of votes against and 45.54% in favor.
• Wallets tied to Yearn Finance and Convex Finance, two major players in decentralized finance, cast nearly 90% of the votes opposing the measure, according to on-chain data.
• Some DAO members flagged concerns around the transparency of reporting of previous expenditures.
• “The DAO deserves an itemized and transparent list of expenses and shouldn’t be expected to authorize any more funding until this requirement is met and the community has the opportunity to openly discuss whether those expenses are reasonable,” a DAO member wrote.