Bitcoin (BTC) dipped below $92,000 during the overnight trade, revisiting levels that have proven resilient multiple times since December. However, the latest move comes with a notable uptick in perpetual futures open interest and price action that indicates seller dominance.

The number of open futures bets or open interest in the BTC/USDT pair trading on Binance rose by roughly 12,000 BTC (worth over $1 billion) as BTC’s price fell from $96,000 to under $92,000, according to data tracked by Coinglass.

An uptick in open interest alongside a price decline is said to represent an influx of bearish short positions. In other words, traders likely opened fresh shorts as the price dropped, perhaps in anticipation of an extended sell-off.

The cumulative volume delta (CVD) across both futures and spot markets on the exchange was already negative and has deepened further with the price drop, indicating that selling pressure has outpaced buying activity.

The CVD measures the net capital flows into the market, where positive and rising figures indicate buyer dominance, while negative values reflect increased selling pressure.

BTC chalks out bearish marubozu candle

Bitcoin dropped 4.86% on Monday with sellers dominating the price action throughout the day.

That’s reflected in the shape of Monday’s candlestick, which features negligible upper and lower shadows and a prominent red body. In other words, opening and closing prices are almost the same, a sign buyers had little say in the price action.

Technical analysts categorize this as a bearish marubozu pattern. The appearance of the bearish candlestick while prices hover below key 50- and 100-day simple moving averages (SMA) may embolden sellers, potentially leading to deeper losses.

Support (S) is seen near $89,200, the Jan. 13 low, followed by the 200-day SMA at $81,661. On the flip side, the Feb. 21 high of around $99,520 is the level to beat (R).

Crypto majors slid as much as 14% in the past 24 hours as a Monday sell-off extended into Tuesday amid generally bearish sentiment and the lack of actionable catalysts that may help support the market.

Solana’s SOL fell 14% — bringing 7-day losses to over 20% — while dogecoin (DOGE), xrp (XRP) and ether (ETH) fell more than 8%. Bitcoin lost the $92,000 level for the first time since late November, threatening a potential downside break of the multi-week consolidation between $90,000 and $110,000

Overall market capitalization fell 6.6%, while the broad-based CoinDesk 20 (CD20), a liquid index tracking the largest tokens, dropped more than 7%.

Traders said the current bearish sentiment could be overblown and macroeconomic decisions were key to support market growth.

“Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana shouldn’t be trading this far below their all time highs,” Jeff Mei, COO at crypto exchange BTSE, said in a Telegram message. “On the U.S. side, inflation concerns and a pause in Fed rate cuts have kept markets down, but this could change as weak economic data released last week could spur Fed officials to take further action.”

Augustine Fan, head of insights at SignalPlus, mirrored the sentiment: “The ‘slowdown’ narrative will likely dominate the narrative in the near term, with stocks and bonds trading back in positive tandem with correlation nearing the highs of the past 12 months.”

Fan explained that the «bad data is now good» once again, as markets refocus their attention on Fed eases, and provide tailwinds to both gold and BTC in the near future.

Data released early this month showed, the widely-watched Consumer Price Index (CPI) surged 0.5% month-over-month in January, much more than the expected 0.3% gain, sending investors to prefer cash positions or risk-off bets until clear signs of a government intervention to boost the economy.

The U.S. CPI measures the average change over time in the prices paid by urban consumers for a market basket of consumer goods and services. Changes in CPI readings tend to impact bitcoin, and the broader crypto market, as investors view the asset class as a hedge against inflation.

The token associated with defunct crypto exchange FTX surged briefly Monday night after Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder and onetime CEO of the platform tweeted for the first time in two years.

Bankman-Fried, who was convicted on seven different counts of fraud and conspiracy in November 2023, is serving out a 25-year prison sentence. He’s currently detained in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn as his lawyers work through an appeal of his conviction. Still, his account on X (formerly Twitter) posted a 10-tweet thread about layoffs, seemingly referencing Elon Musk’s push to have federal employees email their work activities from the past week or risk resignations.

«I have a lot of sympathy for [government] employees: I, too, have not checked my email for the past few (hundred) days,» his thread began. FTT, the token associated with FTX, briefly spiked from roughly $1.55 to $2.07 after his tweets before falling back to around $1.78, according to CoinGecko.

Bankman-Fried does not have direct access to sites like X or email, but can send messages through the Corrlinks system, which lets prisoners in the U.S. communicate with others, a person familiar confirmed.

It was not immediately clear who might be posting the tweets on Bankman-Fried’s behalf.

Over the weekend, Musk, who according to court documents is a special government employee, tweeted that federal employees would have to tell the Office of Personnel and Management what they did last week, with a non-response being considered a resignation. While some federal agency heads or other leaders told their employees not to respond, others said their employees should reply.

It’s another step in Musk’s efforts to lay off broad swaths of the federal workforce at the behest of U.S. President Donald Trump.

Bankman-Fried’s tweets referenced layoffs and detailed circumstances that might cause an employer to fire employees.

«It isn’t the employee’s fault, when that happens. It isn’t their fault if their employer doesn’t really know what to do with them, or doesn’t really have anyone to effectively manage them. It isn’t their fault if internal politics lead their department to lose its way,» the thread said.

After Bankman-Fried’s tweets, another X account claiming without evidence to be him linked a contract address, claiming he received a pardon from Trump and now works for DOGE, the government entity that may or may not be led by Elon Musk. The linked token saw some immediate trading volume, according to on-chain data. The new, seemingly fake account has a label saying «it is a government or multilateral organization account,» suggesting a government agency account may have been compromised and renamed.

Read more: Private Jets, Political Cash Among $1B in Sam Bankman-Fried’s Forfeited Assets: Court

UPDATE (Feb. 25, 2025, 04:05 UTC): Adds information about SBF_DOGE account.