Crypto Slumps While U.S. Index Futures Flatline – What Traders Missed on August 18, 2025

Crypto markets bled out today as traditional finance played it cool—classic divergence or just another fakeout?

Digital Assets Take a Hit

Bitcoin and altcoins slid while Wall Street’s paper hands kept futures unnervingly steady. No panic, no rally—just the usual institutional indifference.

Futures Freeze in Place

S&P and Nasdaq contracts barely twitched, proving yet again that legacy markets move slower than a SEC approval process. Meanwhile, crypto traders got whiplash from the volatility.

Remember: When crypto zigs, traditional markets zag—until they don’t. Today’s lesson? The only certainty is that someone’s hedge fund is getting liquidated right now.

Derivatives Positioning

- Omkar Godbole

• Bitcoin’s price decline since Friday is marked by a steady increase in futures open interest (OI), which has surged to 720,000 BTC, the most since Aug. 2.
• At the same time, positive funding rates are fading, indicating that bearish short positions are gaining momentum in the market.
• The same can be said for the ether market, where open interest has increased to 14.34 million ETH, also the highest since Aug. 2.
• OI in LINK, which has bucked the broader market weakness, reached a record high 68.13 million LINK, alongside annualized funding rates of around 10%. The combination points to investor interest in chasing price gains.
• On the CME, open interest in Solana futures hovers at a record high of over 4.6 million SOL. However, the annualized three-month premium has declined sharply to 15% from 35% last week. The premium for BTC and ETH remains locked near 10%.
• Open interest in CME bitcoin futures remains well below July highs, pointing to low participation from institutional traders. The OI here has continued to print lower highs since December, diverging bearishly from the new highs in the spot price.
• On Deribit, risk reversals out to November expiry showed a bias for put options as the spot price drop spurred demand for downside protection. In ETH's case, bearishness was pronounced at the short-end.
• Block flows featured a giant short strangle, involving writing of $4.4K puts and $4.7K calls. The trader collected a premium of $680,000, betting on a rangeplay between $4,040 and $5,020.
• In BTC's case, a trader picked up the Sept. 25 expiry put option at $110,000, anticipating a price sell-off.

Token Talk

• Solana's on-chain liquidations exceeded wipeouts at centralized exchanges during the weekend slump, with $37.4 million of SOL flushed on the blockchain versus $20.9 million on CEXs. Drift and Hyperliquid carried most of the flow, showing how much perp activity has migrated on-chain.
• Hyperliquid OI in SOL hit a record $1.2 billion even as Binance volumes slipped. Total OI is back near $5 billion, with whales split: 59 wallets long, 70 short. One standout, “White Whale,” holds a $79 million 20x leveraged long now sitting $1.22 million in the red.
• Ecosystem fees are back above $1 million a day as Jupiter, Jito and Kamino see fresh inflows. Stablecoins on Solana have crossed $12 billion, with nearly half of new capital migrating in from Ethereum.
• A Shiba inu (SHIB) whale shifted 3 trillion SHIB (~$38 million) off Coinbase Institutional into cold storage on Aug. 15, signaling conviction over trading. The wallet had no prior history.
• The move coincided with SHIB’s burn rate jumping nearly 2,000% in 24 hours, with 4.7 million tokens destroyed. Supply compression remains a key narrative for the community.
• Developers are prepping cross-chain expansion to Base and Solana using Chainlink CCIP alongside a new dev hub and DEX to deepen liquidity. Price action is steady near $0.000013, with technicals pointing to a slow grind higher.