Crypto Market Today: OG, ASTR Rocket as Bitcoin Holds Firm at $112K

Bitcoin's fortress holds at $112K while altcoins stage their own rebellions.

ALTSEASON ACCELERATES

OG and ASTR lead the charge with double-digit surges—proving once again that when Bitcoin stabilizes, the alts go hunting. These aren't your grandfather's penny stocks; we're talking serious blockchain projects catching institutional attention.

BITCOIN'S BATTLEGROUND

The $112K defense line becomes crypto's Maginot Line—every trader watching whether it holds or collapses. Massive liquidations loom on both sides, but Bitcoin's resilience continues to shock traditional finance pundits who still think it's just 'digital gold.'

MARKET PSYCHOLOGY AT BREAKING POINT

Traders are splitting between 'buy the dip' maximalists and profit-taking skeptics. The real story? Institutional money keeps flowing while retail investors panic-sell at the first 2% drop—classic Wall Street behavior, just with more memes.

As traditional finance scrambles to understand why a decentralized asset keeps outperforming their precious ETFs, remember: the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent. Especially when your financial advisor still thinks blockchain is something you use to lock your bicycle.

Token Talk

By Oliver Knight

• The 0G (Zero Gravity) issued its native token alongside the rollout of the Aristotle mainnet on Sep. 18, marking its transition from testnet to a live, fully operational AI-focused layer-1 blockchain.
• 0G made community rewards a prominent part of its launch strategy: early contributors, active participants in community campaigns, Discord users, holders of certain NFTs (e.g. the One Gravity collection), and other grassroots actors were eligible for airdrops.
• The project’s modular architecture, combining data availability, storage, compute, and a dedicated chain for AI inference, coupled with integrations & partnerships has bolstered hype and contributed to 0G's 54% rise of the past 24 hours.
• It currently has a market cap of $1.23 billion with daily trading volume hitting $3.3 billion, according to CoinMarketCap.
• The tokenomics are structured to balance short- and long-term incentives. With a total supply of 1 billion tokens, with 21.3% is unlocked immediately.
• 0G Labs raised over $350 million before or during launch, including a seed round ($40 million) and a large token purchase commitment ($250 million), with additional capital from node sales.
• Key investors include Hack VC, OKX Ventures, Delphi Ventures, Samsung Next, and Animoca Brands.
• Right after its launch, 0G achieved rapid listings on major exchanges, including Kraken and Binance, helping generate liquidity, visibility, and trading volume early in its lifecycle.

Derivatives Positioning

by Omkar Godbole

• Global notional futures open interest has dropped to $102 billion from last week's high of $110 billion, as Monday's massive liquidations cleared over leveraged bets.
• AVAX, MNT, NEAR and XMR have bucked the broader market trend with notable gains in open interest. AVAX’s 25% surge in open interest confirms the bullish momentum behind the cryptocurrency’s price rally.
• Open interest in ASTR, the native token of Hyperliquid competitor Aster, has surged to $12.63 million—the highest level since January. In recent months, Hyperliquid has ceded market share in on-chain perpetuals to rising challengers Aster and Lighter.
• XRP, BNB, ADA, LINK and Binance-listed 1000SHIB perpetual futures continue to see negative funding rates, indicating a dominance of bearish short positions. It suggests scope for a "short squeeze" higher in case the market shows renewed resilience.
• The growth in the CME-listed BTC futures OI has stalled while options OI increased to 52.84K BTC, the highest since April. In ether's case, both futures and options OI hovers near record highs.
• On Deribit, BTC and ETH put skews in short-dated and near-dated options have eased as traders chased bullish BTC call options. On the OTC desk Paradigm, block flows featured BTC calendar spreads and writing of Solana put options.

Token Talk

By Oliver Knight

• The 0G (Zero Gravity) issued its native token alongside the rollout of the Aristotle mainnet on Sep. 18, marking its transition from testnet to a live, fully operational AI-focused layer-1 blockchain.
• 0G made community rewards a prominent part of its launch strategy: early contributors, active participants in community campaigns, Discord users, holders of certain NFTs (e.g. the One Gravity collection), and other grassroots actors were eligible for airdrops.
• The project’s modular architecture, combining data availability, storage, compute, and a dedicated chain for AI inference, coupled with integrations & partnerships has bolstered hype and contributed to 0G's 54% rise of the past 24 hours.
• It currently has a market cap of $1.23 billion with daily trading volume hitting $3.3 billion, according to CoinMarketCap.
• The tokenomics are structured to balance short- and long-term incentives. With a total supply of 1 billion tokens, with 21.3% is unlocked immediately.
• 0G Labs raised over $350 million before or during launch, including a seed round ($40 million) and a large token purchase commitment ($250 million), with additional capital from node sales.
• Key investors include Hack VC, OKX Ventures, Delphi Ventures, Samsung Next, and Animoca Brands.
• Right after its launch, 0G achieved rapid listings on major exchanges, including Kraken and Binance, helping generate liquidity, visibility, and trading volume early in its lifecycle.

Derivatives Positioning

by Omkar Godbole

• Global notional futures open interest has dropped to $102 billion from last week's high of $110 billion, as Monday's massive liquidations cleared over leveraged bets.
• AVAX, MNT, NEAR and XMR have bucked the broader market trend with notable gains in open interest. AVAX’s 25% surge in open interest confirms the bullish momentum behind the cryptocurrency’s price rally.
• Open interest in ASTR, the native token of Hyperliquid competitor Aster, has surged to $12.63 million—the highest level since January. In recent months, Hyperliquid has ceded market share in on-chain perpetuals to rising challengers Aster and Lighter.
• XRP, BNB, ADA, LINK and Binance-listed 1000SHIB perpetual futures continue to see negative funding rates, indicating a dominance of bearish short positions. It suggests scope for a "short squeeze" higher in case the market shows renewed resilience.
• The growth in the CME-listed BTC futures OI has stalled while options OI increased to 52.84K BTC, the highest since April. In ether's case, both futures and options OI hovers near record highs.
• On Deribit, BTC and ETH put skews in short-dated and near-dated options have eased as traders chased bullish BTC call options. On the OTC desk Paradigm, block flows featured BTC calendar spreads and writing of Solana put options.