Crypto markets were broadly higher ahead of Friday’s U.S. nonfarm payrolls report, with bitcoin dominance approaching 60% and Tether’s USDT share slipping to about 6.3%, a pairing that suggested traders were growing more willing to take risk.
Bitcoin traded above $86,000 at 9:10 UTC, up 3.4% over the past 24 hours. Ether, XRP, Solana and BNB also rose, but none matched bitcoin’s pace.
Further down the market-cap rankings, the gains were larger. SKY, AAVE and APT climbed 7% to 10%, making them the strongest performers among the 100 biggest tokens.
Bitcoin dominance, or BTC’s share of the total crypto market, is closing in on 60%. At the same time, the share held by USDT, the largest dollar-pegged stablecoin, has fallen to roughly 6.3%. Taken together, those moves indicate that some traders are shifting out of cash and into tokens.
Jobs report and yields in focus
The U.S. nonfarm payrolls report is due at 8:30 a.m. ET. FactSet consensus estimates point to 90,000 jobs added in September, down from 162,000 in August, while the unemployment rate is expected to remain at 4.1%.
For bitcoin, the more important question may be how Treasury yields respond, especially inflation-adjusted real yields. Analysts are also watching the Oct. 14 consumer price index report for the same reason.
Oliver Carding, head of marketing at Tesseract Group, which manages $500 million in assets, said: “I am watching Friday’s payrolls and the 14 October CPI mainly for their effect on longer-dated yields. I use a 10-year real yield of about 3% as a monitoring level, and a sustained move above it would make a retest of $80,000 to $82,000 more likely than a run at $90,000.”
After dovish remarks from New York Fed President John Williams and Fed Vice Chair Philip Jefferson, markets now price in a 30% chance of a rate hike in October, down from 70%. Lower odds of a hike usually support risk assets such as bitcoin.
That pricing may not change much unless payrolls come in well above forecasts. A strong upside surprise could revive rate-hike bets and put pressure on bitcoin.
Derivatives show leveraged longs building
BTC open interest rose to $22.4 billion from $20.9 billion a day earlier. Funding rates also started to climb on some venues, running at 9% to 10% annualized on Hyperliquid and OKX. On Deribit, the 3-month annualized basis held above 6%.
Higher open interest alongside firmer funding rates points to traders adding leveraged long positions.
Options flow remained heavily tilted toward calls. The 24-hour put/call ratio stood at 88% in favor of calls, up from 83%. The 1-week 25-delta skew flattened further to about 1.5% from about 4%, while the at-the-money term structure stayed in contango, with the front end around 27% to 28% and rising to about 40% by late 2027.
Coinglass data showed $344 million in liquidations over the past 24 hours, up from $100 million the previous day, with a 28-72 split between longs and shorts. By notional value, BTC accounted for $132 million, ETH for $70 million and other tokens for $26 million.
Binance’s liquidation heatmap showed $87,400 as a key liquidation level to watch if prices continue to rise.
Rotation across tokens picks up
Quant (QNT) led the decliners after a highly volatile week, falling about 15% over 24 hours to trade near $250. The interoperability token had more than tripled during a multi-day surge, but profit-taking set in as some of the market’s recent outperformers cooled.
Among larger-cap tokens, LayerZero’s ZRO and Aave were top gainers, up about 11% and 9% over 24 hours. ZRO traded near $1.91, while AAVE reached $182 as buying momentum built around proposed protocol upgrades and fee-switch governance discussions.
Yesterday’s leaders moved the other way. Ethena (ENA) and Near Protocol (NEAR) fell about 9% and 8.6%, respectively, over 24 hours. ENA dropped to around $0.25 after earlier reaching multi-week highs, while NEAR slipped back below $5.00.
Memecoins showed pockets of resilience. Dogwifhat (WIF) added 6.2% over 24 hours to trade near $0.26. Pump.fun’s PUMP token also attracted fresh buying, rising nearly 4% as speculative capital rotated within the sector.
Stacks (STX) and Midnight (NIGHT) both paused their sharp multi-day rallies, falling roughly 5% and 5.6%, respectively, over 24 hours. STX held around $0.38 after Wednesday’s executive leadership announcement, while NIGHT pulled back to $0.04 after gaining more than 20% earlier in the week.