Daily Crypto Signals: Bitcoin Faces $60K Retest Fears, Kraken’s xStocks Surpasses $25 Billion in Volume
Bitcoin's options market signals growing bearish sentiment amid $910 million in ETF outflows, while Kraken's tokenized equities platform
Quick overview
- Bitcoin's options market shows increasing bearish sentiment with $910 million in ETF outflows, as the cryptocurrency struggles to maintain support above $66,000.
- In contrast, Kraken's tokenized equities platform, xStocks, has achieved $25 billion in cumulative transaction volume, reflecting a growing interest in real-world asset tokenization.
- Public Bitcoin miners are shifting focus towards artificial intelligence infrastructure, proposing to add nearly 30 gigawatts of new power capacity.
- The xStocks platform has over 80,000 onchain holders and $3.5 billion in trading volume, indicating a significant rise in the adoption of tokenized stocks.
Bitcoin’s BTC/USD options market signals growing bearish sentiment amid $910 million in ETF outflows, while Kraken’s tokenized equities platform xStocks crosses $25 billion in cumulative transaction volume and 80,000 onchain holders, highlighting a stark divergence between traditional crypto and the booming real-world asset tokenization sector.
Crypto Market Developments
A time of significant divergence is currently being experienced by the larger cryptocurrency market. Tokenized real-world assets have increased 13.5% in value during the same 30-day period, whereas Bitcoin and other significant digital assets have lost around $1 trillion in market value since the beginning of 2026. A total of 14 publicly traded miners are proposing to add almost 30 gigawatts of new power capacity, which is almost three times the 11 GW that is already online. This indicates that public Bitcoin miners are actively shifting their focus to artificial intelligence infrastructure.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong joined US Senator Bernie Moreno at a World Liberty Financial forum to advocate for a legislative resolution on stablecoins and market structure. Moreno told CNBC that he expects the CLARITY Act, a comprehensive crypto market-structure bill, to pass “hopefully by April.”
Bitcoin Options Market Signals Caution
Bitcoin was under pressure going into the week, rejecting close to $71,000 on Sunday and then battling to maintain support over $66,000 for the rest of the week. Put options are currently selling at a 13% premium over calls on Deribit, which is significantly beyond the neutral range of -6% to +6%. This level has been maintained for four weeks in a row, indicating that the options markets are feeling the strain. Bear diagonal spreads, short straddles, and short risk reversals—all of which are designed to profit from sideways or decreasing prices—have been the most commonly traded strategies during the last 48 hours. To put it briefly, professional traders are not placing bets on a recovery.
There is hardly much consolation in institutional demand. Given that Bitcoin is currently trading about 47% off its all-time high, gold has risen 15% in only two months, and the S&P 500 is only 2% off its peak, the $910 million net outflows from US-listed Bitcoin ETFs since February 11 are concerning. Although this is an improvement over the 1.4% discount observed earlier in the week, the USD stablecoin demand in China, a helpful indicator of the mood of the cryptocurrency market, is currently at a 0.2% discount to the dollar/yuan exchange, indicating modest capital outflows. Before making any directional moves, traders seem to be awaiting a definitive explanation for why Bitcoin fell so precipitously to $60,200 on February 6.
Kraken xStocks: The Tokenization Stablecoin Moment
Less than eight months after its 2025 launch, Kraken’s tokenized stock platform, xStocks, has reached $25 billion in total transaction volume, a 150% increase since it first surpassed $10 billion in November. The statistic includes minting and redemption activities in addition to trading on both controlled and decentralized exchanges. Backed Finance, a regulated asset provider, is the issuer of the tokens. It produces 1:1 backed tokenized versions of publicly traded equities and exchange-traded funds (ETFs), such as shares associated with Amazon, Meta, Nvidia, and Tesla. The main platform for trading and delivery of the instruments is Kraken.
One particularly noteworthy development factor that has surfaced is onchain activity. With over 80,000 distinct onchain wallets and $3.5 billion in onchain trading volume, xStocks is demonstrating that users are not only trading tokenized stocks but also incorporating them into DeFi ecosystems. The xStocks ecosystem now has eight of the top 11 tokenized stocks by number of unique holders. Comparisons to the early days of stablecoins are being made by market watchers, as tokenized stocks, which were essentially nonexistent six months earlier, gained a $1.2 billion market cap in December, indicating that the industry may be going through a turning point toward widespread acceptance.
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