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Bitcoin Funding Rates Briefly Went Negative, Usually Marks a Local Bottom: Van Straten

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Bitcoin (BTC) has not broken below $90,000 since Nov. 18, and continues to swing between $90,000 and $100,000.

The sentiment generally flips bullish when bitcoin approaches $100,000 and investors try to continue the bull market. However, this also works the other way and as bitcoin heads toward $90,000, like on Thursday, investors turn bearish.

Bitcoin will move where maximum pain occurs, so far that is the chopping period between these two valuations.

Derivatives in bitcoin play a large part in these volatile price swings; derivatives such as futures and options only make up a few percentage points of the overall market capitalization but are becoming a greater influence in the market.

One metric that traders keenly observe is the futures perpetual funding rate. This is defined as the average funding rate (in %) set by exchanges for perpetual futures contracts. When the rate is positive, long positions periodically pay short positions. Conversely, when the rate is negative, short positions periodically pay long positions.

During a bull market, bitcoin tends to have a positive funding rate as traders believe the price will continue to rise, but when the market gets overheated, it tends to run out of steam, and the price starts to fall, which leads to liquidation cascades.

However, the same is true for the bear market as price floors become developed over the years, prices can rebound quickly, leading traders to scramble to cover. In these moments, local bottoms are formed.

As of Thursday, Glassnode data shows that the funding rate briefly went ( -0.001%), the first time this year and only a few times since November. This lead to a leverage flush and a sentiment re-shift before bitcoin moved back above $94,000. To compare how mild the negative funding rate was on Thursday, during covid-19 in March 2020, we saw negative funding rates peak at (-0.309%).

A negative funding rate doesn’t always lead to immediate price rebounds or bottoms, but can be watched alongside other price-chart tools and technical indicators to form a market view. Negative funding rates could also signal a continued bear market rather than an immediate bottom. Similarly, positive rates during a bull market might not mean the market is overheated, but could reflect continued strong demand.

Since 2023, the funding rate has mostly been positive due to bitcoin being in a bull market, yet it has come with brief periods of negative rates, which tend to occur during price bottoms. This was seen during the Silicon Valley Bank collapse in 2023, and 2024, just before bitcoin climbed higher in both years.

A floor tends to emerge when the funding rate goes negative and bears become overconfident. The same occurs when bulls become complacent, and the spot price can no longer keep up with the leverage being used. On both occasions, traders tend to get liquidated, and in this instance, it was the bears.

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Taiwanese Crypto Exchange BitoPro Likely Hacked for $11M in May, ZachXBT Says

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Taiwanese cryptocurrency exchange BitoPro is suspected to have lost over $11.5 million worth of tokens in a May 8 exploit, widely-followed blockchain sleuth ZachXBT said in his Telegram group on Monday.

The exploit involved unauthorized access to BitoPro’s hot wallets across multiple blockchains, including Ethereum, Tron, Solana, and Polygon.

The stolen assets were then sold on decentralized exchanges, with proceeds laundered through privacy protocols such as Tornado Cash and Thorchain, and eventually moved to Wasabi Wallet, a Bitcoin mixing service.

BitoPro has not issued any public statements acknowledging the breach since the supposed explicit. Users were informed of a temporary service suspension due to «system maintenance” last month, and there was little social chatter in popular crypto X circles around the incident at the time.

“BitoPro has yet to formally disclose the incident on X or Telegram and told users the exchange was just offline for «maintenance,” ZachXBT said.

BitoPro has been based in Taiwan since 2018 and is operated by BitoGroup. It is mostly focused on the local market and mainly supports Taiwanese dollar (TWD) fiat pairs for major tokens such as bitcoin BTC, ether ETH and others.

It processed over $20 million in trading volumes in the past 24 hours, data shows, and is the top locally-focused exchange by that metric.

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Post Pectra ‘Malicious’ Ethereum Contracts Are Trying to Drain Wallets, But to No Avail: Wintermute

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Malicious Ethereum contracts designed to drain wallets with weak security aren’t profiting from the operation, crypto market maker Wintermute said Friday, identifying these contracts as «CrimeEnjoyors.»

The whole issue is tied to the Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP)-7702, part of the Pectra upgrade that went live early last month. It allows regular Ethereum addresses, secured by private keys, to temporarily operate as smart contracts, facilitating batched transactions, password authentication and spending limits.

The regular Ethereum addresses delegate control of their wallets to smart contracts, granting them permission to manage or move their funds. While it has simplified the user experience, it has also created a risk of malicious contracts draining funds.

As of Friday, more than 80% of delegations made through EIP-7702 involved reused, copy-and-paste contracts designed to automatically scan and identify weak wallets for potential theft.

«Our Research team found that over 97% of all EIP-7702 delegations were authorized to multiple contracts using the same exact code. These are sweepers, used to automatically drain incoming ETH from compromised addresses,» Wintermute said on X.

«The CrimeEnjoyor contract is short, simple, and widely reused. This copy-pasted bytecode now represents the majority of all EIP-7702 delegations. It’s funny, dark, and fascinating all at once,» the market maker added.

Notable cases include a wallet that lost nearly $150,000 through malicious batched transactions in a fishing attack, as anti-scam tracker Scam Sniffer noted.

Still, the large-scale money drain has not been profitable for the attackers. The CrimeEnjoyors spent approximately 2.88 ETH to authorize around 79,000 addresses. One particular address –0x89383882fc2d0cd4d7952a3267a3b6dae967e704 – handled more than half of these authorizations, with 52,000 permissions granted to it.

Per Wintermute’s researcher, the stolen ether can be traced by analyzing the code of these contracts. For the above example, the ETH is destined to flow the address –0x6f6Bd3907428ae93BC58Aca9Ec25AE3a80110428.

However, as of Friday, it had no inbound ETH transfers. The researcher added that this pattern appears consistent across other CrimeEnjoyors as well.

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Metaplanet Acquires 1,088 Bitcoin to Bring BTC Stash to Over $930M

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Japan’s Metaplanet said on Monday it has purchased additional 1,088 bitcoin BTC to bring its total holdings to over 8,888 BTC, now worth over $930 million.

The latest acquisition cost the company 16.885 billion Japanese yen ($117.5 million), with an average purchase price of approximately 15.5 million yen ($108,051) per bitcoin, per a disclosure.

Metaplanet’s aggressive bitcoin accumulation strategy, which began with its official adoption of a Bitcoin treasury policy in April 2024, has propelled the firm to the top spot among corporate BTC holders in Asia and the top ten globally.

The firm has now added 7,126 BTC 2025 so far, pacing to its year-end target of 10,000 BTC. Its latest move follows the company’s issuance of $50 million in zero-interest bonds last week, providing additional capital for BTC purchases without diluting existing equity.

Metaplanet reported a BTC Yield of 66.3% for year-to-date, BTC Gain, expressed in Bitcoin terms, rose to 2,684 BTC, while BTC ten Gain translated to approximately 40.5 billion yen.

BTC was hovering over $105,000 in Asian hours Monday, little changed over the past 24 hours.

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