Crypto market brief · 2026-11-02

US traders bid Bitcoin under global for 58 days

Day 58 of the American discount. On Nov 2, US traders bid Bitcoin below the global price for the 58th straight day, with $BTC at $78,237 and up only 0.11% over 24 hours.

Bitcoin holds 59.95% of a $2.6T crypto market, and the Fear & Greed index reads 37, in fear. Order flow toxicity, a gauge of how one sided and informed trading is, reads 0.13 for Bitcoin, the 25th percentile of the last 90 days.

The sharpest move in leverage came on $AVAX, where open positions fell 7.7% as price dropped 2.5%. Leveraged longs were the ones squeezed out.

Source: ByKaranteli, https://bykaranteli.com/brief/2026-11-02#2026-11-02-0900-daily-brief, data as of 2026-11-02 09:00 UTC

Bitcoin option buyers favored calls over puts

Bitcoin option buyers spent $3.1M on calls, the contracts that pay if the price rises, against $2.5M on puts, which pay on a fall, in the 24 hours to Nov 2.

The largest single trade of the past two days was a $743.6K purchase of $30,000 calls expiring Dec 25, done on the open order book. The next two were put sales. One was $386.8K of $74,000 puts for the same date, negotiated as a block. The other was $312.4K of $160,000 puts expiring September 2027.

Blocks, trades arranged off the order book and then reported to the venue, carried 27% of all premium dollars across 11,202 recorded trades.

Since 2021, days in this very low band saw a median -0.2% BTC move over the next 7d (n=404, base +0.1%, 5y of records). History, not a forecast.

Source: ByKaranteli, https://bykaranteli.com/brief/2026-11-02#2026-11-02-0810-options-flow-daily, data as of 2026-11-02 08:10 UTC

Bitcoin stays cheaper in the US for 58 days

Nov 1 made it 58 days in a row that Bitcoin traded cheaper on Coinbase than on global venues. American buyers paid -0.158% under the world price for $BTC that day, slightly shallower than the -0.186% seven day average for the same gap.

Quarterly futures priced it differently. Contracts that expire at the end of the quarter traded above spot at an annualized +6.28%, so traders in that market paid extra to hold Bitcoin exposure further out.

Since 2017, days in this very low band saw a median -0.1% BTC move over the next 7d (n=666, base +0.5%, 9y of records). History, not a forecast.

Source: ByKaranteli, https://bykaranteli.com/brief/2026-11-02#2026-11-02-0720-premium-daily, data as of 2026-11-02 07:20 UTC

Miners shed hashrate over the past week

A week of falling computing power still leaves Bitcoin's network stronger than it was a month ago. On Nov 1, hashrate, the total machine power securing the chain, read 1024 EH/s. That is a 7 day change of -10.1%, set against +9.2% over 30 days.

Difficulty, the bar every miner has to clear to find a block, was 148.36T. Block space stayed cheap, with fees at 0.5 sat/vB, and miner revenue came to 3.2 BTC.

Since 2017, days in this very high band saw a median +0.0% BTC move over the next 7d (n=640, base +0.5%, 8y of records). History, not a forecast.

Source: ByKaranteli, https://bykaranteli.com/brief/2026-11-02#2026-11-02-0540-network-daily, data as of 2026-11-01 00:20 UTC

CL longs just lost $4.1M in 30 minutes

$CL buyers using leverage just took the hit. Across the major venues, $4.1M of long positions were closed automatically in the last 30 minutes, once their collateral no longer covered the move against them.

The short side came through nearly untouched, with $5.9K liquidated over the same window. That gap means this flush landed on traders positioned for a rise, not on both sides at once.

The figures come from the raw liquidation streams of the major venues.

Source: ByKaranteli, https://bykaranteli.com/brief/2026-11-02#2026-11-02-1407-event-liq-burst, data as of 2026-11-02 14:07 UTC

Ether shorts squeezed for $5.6M

Ether just moved hard against the bears. In the last 30 minutes, the major venues closed $5.6M of leveraged $ETH short positions. These were borrowed money bets on a lower price, shut automatically once their collateral could no longer cover the move.

The long side barely registered, with $27.7K liquidated over the same half hour. Nearly all of the damage landed on traders positioned for a fall.

The tally covers the major venues only, so the full market count sits at or above it.

Source: ByKaranteli, https://bykaranteli.com/brief/2026-11-02#2026-11-02-0137-event-liq-burst, data as of 2026-11-02 01:37 UTC

Tokenized SPHR trades at a -7.15% premium

Holders of the Solana wrapper of $SPHR are marked at a -7.15% premium, so the token trades below the SPHR it is built to track. A buyer of the wrapper pays less than the underlying costs, and a seller of the wrapper receives less.

The premium is the gap between the wrapper's market price and the price of the underlying asset. This is a single reading, with no earlier value or usual range attached.

A premium is not a directional reading. It describes how the wrapper prices against SPHR on Solana, not which way SPHR itself moves.

Source: ByKaranteli, https://bykaranteli.com/brief/2026-11-02#2026-11-02-1241-data-spotlight, data as of 2026-11-02 12:41 UTC

Tokenized CYPH on Solana trades below CYPH

Tokenized CYPH on Solana changes hands at -5.24% against the CYPH it tracks. Anyone buying the wrapper pays less than the underlying asset costs, and anyone selling it gets less.

The premium is the gap between the wrapper's market price and the price of the underlying. A negative sign means a discount. This is a single reading with no earlier value attached, so it does not show whether the gap is opening or closing.

A gap like this measures how the Solana wrapper is priced on its own market, not which way $CYPH itself moves.

Source: ByKaranteli, https://bykaranteli.com/brief/2026-11-02#2026-11-02-0740-data-spotlight, data as of 2026-11-02 07:40 UTC

A $1.5M short on Aster was forced out

A single bet against Bitcoin was the most expensive position closed in the 24 hours to Nov 2. The top hit was a short liquidation of $1.5M on Aster, a trader positioned for a lower price whose position the exchange closed.

$BTC ended the window at +0.83%, last at $78,169. Our collectors logged 662 recorded prints of $1K or more on the candles.

The heatmap behind the candles is an estimate of where leveraged positions sit. The prints on them are recorded closures.

Leveraged buyers took most of the day's losses

On Nov 1, traders who borrowed to bet on higher prices carried most of the forced closures. Our streams recorded $84.4M across 11 venues, 682 symbols and 41,449 events, with longs losing $51.6M (61.1%) and shorts $32.8M.

$BTC was the exception among the largest names. Its short liquidations reached $10.7M against $5.5M on the long side. $ETH leaned to longs, $8.6M against $5.7M, and $XPL longs lost $7.1M against $170.3K for shorts.

The total was up 89.8% from $44.5M on Oct 31 and well under the $270.2M seven day average. These totals come from the venues' public streams, so they are a floor rather than the whole market.

Leveraged longs took most of a lighter day

Leveraged buyers took the larger share of a lighter day on Binance's stock and commodity perpetuals. On Nov 1 our recorded stream logged $2.69M in forced closures, split 58% longs / 42% shorts, with $1.6M from longs and $1.1M from shorts.

That total is down 19% from Oct 31's $3.32M. The losses were spread across 93 contracts and 1,121 separate events.

$SNDK led at $477K, ahead of $SOXL at $354K and gold at $353K. The biggest single forced close was a $185K SK Hynix position.

Bybit halts USDC withdrawals on Aptos

Bybit has stopped USDC withdrawals on the Aptos network. The exchange's own currency list, in our daily read, shows the $USDC APTOS route as closed.

Anyone who planned to send USDC from Bybit to an Aptos wallet has no way out through that network as of this read. Deposits and other networks may still be open.

A withdrawal pause is the earliest public sign an exchange gives when something is off, and most of them turn out to be routine maintenance.

WhiteBIT closes USDC withdrawals on Base

WhiteBIT's own currency list shows USDC withdrawals on the Base network as closed, as recorded in our daily read of the venue.

For anyone holding $USDC on WhiteBIT, sending it directly to a Base wallet isn't possible through that route as of this read.

Deposits and other networks may still be open. A closed withdrawal route is the earliest public signal an exchange gives when something is off, though most of these pauses turn out to be routine maintenance.

Chainlink longs pay 10.95% to stay in

Leveraged Chainlink longs on Binance were paying 10.95% a year in funding to keep their bets open in the Nov 2 read at 05:25 UTC. Borrowing $LINK itself on margin at the same exchange cost just 0.58%.

That left a recorded 10.37% gap between what longs pay and what the coin costs to borrow, the widest across the 15 assets and three venues we track.

For USDT, Bybit was the cheapest lender at 3.93% a year and Binance the dearest at 5.55%. The median across venues was 4%.

Cosmos shorts pay the most to stay in

Cosmos tops the negative side of the funding board on Nov 2. Traders short $ATOM pay longs to keep their positions open, with funding at -0.02%, and open interest (the total of open futures bets) still grew 2.79% over 24 hours.

Tron pays the same -0.02% with a different picture. Open interest on $TRX fell 6.93%. Injective sits at -0.01%, and its open interest grew 8.97%, the largest gain on the board.

The large coins lean the other way. Solana, XRP and Dogecoin all carry 0.01%, with longs paying, and Ether sits flat at 0%.

Since 2019, days in this high band saw a median +0.0% BTC move over the next 7d (n=597, base +0.4%, 7y of records). History, not a forecast.

Bybit shuts TRX withdrawals on Tron network

TRX can no longer leave Bybit on its own chain. The exchange's currency list, in our daily read, shows withdrawals on the TRX network as closed.

For anyone holding $TRX on Bybit, sending it straight to a Tron wallet through that route isn't possible as of this read.

A closed withdrawal route is the earliest public signal a venue gives when something is off, though most of these pauses turn out to be routine maintenance. Deposits and other networks may still be open.

Insurance funds hold steady after a -8.49% week

Exchange insurance funds held almost still in the 24 hours to Nov 2, after a -8.49% week. These are the reserves venues keep to cover liquidations that close below the bankruptcy price. The 10 venues we track held $6.97B, a +0.08% day worth +$5.5M.

Every large fund ticked up. OKX, the largest at $2.94B, changed +0.10%. Binance at $1.85B changed +0.04%, and Bybit at $1.14B had the biggest move at +0.13%.

Together the funds equal 14.87% of open perpetual futures positions on the coins we track. Each figure is a balance the venue reports, not an audit.

Deribit lines up 14 Bitcoin expiries Tuesday

Tuesday, Nov 3 brings 14 dated Bitcoin futures up for delivery on Deribit. Bullish adds a single $BTC contract and Deribit one $AVAX contract on the same day.

The last 24 hours were quiet by comparison. Only one dated contract settled, Deribit's USDC margined Avalanche future, which closed at $8.541 at 08:00 UTC on Nov 2.

Over the next 7 days, 141 dated futures and 7,013 option contracts expire across 15 venues.

Longs took $1.34B of the week's liquidations

Leveraged buyers carried most of the pain from Oct 26 to Nov 2. Our collectors recorded $1.88B of forced closures across 530,143 events, $1.34B of it from longs and $538.3M from shorts. $BTC alone accounted for $520.5M.

Open positions across 27 venues ended the week at $70.73B, a 0.04% change over seven days. Hyperliquid's top 300 wallets finished 42.2% long.

US spot Bitcoin ETFs logged -$202.6M of net flows over the last five settled days, and Ether ETFs -$431.5M.

All of it, plus 2,016 order book snapshots taken every 5 minutes across 29 venues, is in the free datasets.

Sellers add depth above Bitcoin's price

Sellers did most of the building in the $BTC spot book over the 24 hours to 09:39 UTC on Nov 2. Resting asks within 2% of mid grew 18.3% against a day earlier, while bids added only 2.2%.

That leaves asks slightly heavier, $159.3M against $151.1M across 21 spot venues, a -2.6% imbalance. Price went nowhere over the day, $78.0K then and $78.1K now, a 0% change.

The biggest sell wall sits right on top of price, $32.0M at $78.2K, just 0.15% above mid. The largest bid wall is much further down, $35.4M at $73.0K, 6.55% below. Resting orders can be pulled at any time, so this is a snapshot of the book, not a map of what comes next.

Whale sellers edged out buyers

Whale sized sellers edged ahead in the 24 hours to 10:00 UTC on Nov 2. Across 3,862 large trades, sells came to $3.62B and buys to $3.31B.

Buyers held 47.7% of that money. That's below an even split but still inside the 45% to 55% range we treat as two sided, so neither side took clear control.

$BTC drew the most size, $3.63B across 1,934 large trades. The biggest single order of the day came on $ETH instead, at $14.1M.

Bitcoin longs have almost no cushion

Leveraged Bitcoin buyers had almost no room beneath them at 11:00 UTC on Nov 2. $BTC traded at $77,945, and the nearest estimated long liquidation level was $77,905, just under the price.

Estimated exposure leans to the downside. Within 3% of price, more modeled liquidation levels belong to long positions than to shorts. The largest modeled long cluster sits further down, at $75,447.

Above, the first modeled short level is $78,452 and the largest is $80,819. Those are the prices where traders betting on a fall would be forced to buy back.

ByKaranteli's Android app lands on Google Play

The ByKaranteli Android app is on Google Play. It leads the 5 changes this week, spread across the site and our infrastructure.

Symbol pages are faster, and three web servers now sit behind the site. Live charts and symbol pages also received their first browser tour fixes.

Smaller items shipped this week include chart toolbar menus on desktop, changes to the member area's first paint, and one stamp shape. One more change sits in the full changelog.

Avalanche traders cut futures bets 7.42%

Avalanche saw the heaviest unwinding of futures bets in the 24 hours to Nov 2, 11:35 UTC. Open interest, the value of futures positions still open, fell 7.42% as the price dropped 2.44%. Our tracker classes that mix as deleveraging on the way down for $AVAX.

$LINK shed 5.14% of its open positions on a 3.99% price drop, and BNB lost 2.97% on a 1.25% slide. $BTC open interest eased 2.16% with price almost unchanged at -0.1%.

Dogecoin and XRP went the other way. Positions there grew 2.74% and 2.61% on small price dips of -0.44% and -0.35%.

HTX and OKX add 7 new futures contracts

HTX did most of the listing on Nov 2. NU, SMR, MPWR, OXY and EWZS all went live there as perpetual contracts in one batch, first seen at 07:52 UTC.

OKX followed at 11:52 UTC with $ADI and FLEX, the only other new contracts in the window.

That puts the count at 7 new perpetual contracts over the 24 hours to 12:30 UTC, split between HTX and OKX, with ADI the top name on the list.

Ether shorts carry more risk near price

Traders betting against Ether carried more of the risk near price at 13:00 UTC on Nov 2. Within 3% of the $2,284 price, the estimated liquidation map puts more modeled exposure above price, on short positions, than below it on longs.

The nearest modeled short level is $2,299, with a larger short cluster at $2,320. On the other side, the first modeled long level is $2,278, almost on top of price, and the larger long cluster sits at $2,272.

Above $2,299 the modeled short liquidations begin. These are estimated levels built from open positions and leverage, not recorded liquidations.

Bitcoin and Ether trade above Nov 1 range

Bitcoin and Ether perpetuals spent 70% of yesterday's time at price inside a band only 0.55% wide, and both now trade above it.

$BTC's value area ran from $77,677.65 to $78,104.02 around a most traded price of $77,929.59. It closed the session at $78,313.00 and trades at $78,127.40 ahead of the US open, still over the top of that band.

$ETH built its value area from $2,260.18 to $2,272.58, centred on $2,267.50, and now trades at $2,296.12. Both coins opened the day lower than where they settled. The first hour held Bitcoin between $77,462.20 and $77,671.80, beneath the range where most of the session's trading ended up.

Chainlink's book charged the most for size

Of the eight books we track, Chainlink's charged traders the most for size on Nov 2. A $1.0M market order in $LINK cost an estimated 23.1 bps between the quoted price and the average fill at 14:00 UTC. The same order in $BTC cost 0.1 bps.

$ETH filled at 0.9 bps, Solana at 3.6 bps and XRP at 5.2 bps. At the thin end, Cardano cost 19 bps, Dogecoin 8.3 bps and BNB 6.7 bps.

The same gap applies to forced closes. When liquidations hit a thin book like Chainlink's or Cardano's, each $1.0M of orders moves the price further than it would on Bitcoin's, whichever side is being closed.

Bitcoin's big buyers wait 6.35% lower

Bitcoin's largest resting buy order is a long way from price. At 13:57 UTC on Nov 2, across 21 spot venues, $35.8M of bids sat at $73,017, 6.35% below $77,968. The biggest block of sell orders, $34.6M, rested at $78,007, only 0.05% above.

Within 2% of price the book tilts slightly to sellers, $164.7M of asks against $157.0M of bids, an imbalance of -2.4%.

Ether looks different. Its biggest walls hug the price on both sides, $14.6M of bids at $2,288 and $15.7M of asks at $2,293, with $ETH at $2,289. Within 2%, bids edge ahead, $89.2M to $88.0M.

These are orders waiting in the book, not trades, and they can be pulled.

Leveraged SNDK buyers lose $1.8M

A one sided flush just hit $SNDK. Over the last 30 minutes, the major venues liquidated $1.8M of long positions, meaning exchanges automatically closed borrowed money bets on a higher price once the traders' collateral could no longer cover the drop.

The opposite side barely felt it. Short liquidations came to $5.9K over the same 30 minutes, a small fraction of the long side.

The pain landed on buyers who were using leverage, and the traders betting against SNDK came through almost untouched.