Crypto Markets Today: Bitcoin Holds Steady Amid Wave of Sell Pressure as Altcoins Slide

Markets Share Share this article Copy link X icon X (Twitter) LinkedIn Facebook Email Crypto Markets Today: Bitcoin Holds Steady Amid Wave of Sell Pressure as Altcoins Slide A long-term BTC holder moved hundreds of millions to exchanges, but the market absorbed the supply shock as altcoins suffered broad declines. By Oliver Knight , Omkar Godbole | Edited by Sheldon Reback Nov 20, 2025, 11:30 a.m. Bitcoin holds steady amid wave of sell pressure (tridland/Shutterstock modified by CoinDesk) What to know : The BTC price held steady as volume rose to $81 billion and a long-term holder sent $228 million in bitcoin to Kraken. MARA Holdings moved $58 million to FalconX and Coinbase Prime Ether fell 3.4%, pushing the CD20 down 0.66%, while the altcoin season index fell to 26/100. Cosmos (ATOM) and zcash (ZEC) stood out, posting gains. Base founder Jesse Pollak announced a new token despite past “content tokens” collapsing Memecoins continue to lag, with the CDMEME index down over 40% since September. The bitcoin BTC $ 91,462.00 price is little changed over the past 24 hours despite a wave of sell pressure across multiple crypto exchanges. Lookonchain revealed that one long-term holder shifted a $228 million stack of bitcoin to Kraken, while bitcoin miner MARA Holdings (MARA) transferred $58 million worth of BTC to Falcon X and Coinbase Prime. The market absorbed this increased level of supply as trading volume for BTC increased by 5% to $81 billion. STORY CONTINUES BELOW Don't miss another story. Subscribe to the Crypto Daybook Americas Newsletter today . See all newsletters Sign me up By signing up, you will receive emails about CoinDesk products and you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy . The altcoin market underperformed bitcoin. Ether ETH $ 3,033.72 tumbled by 3.4% alongside several other tokens, some of which, including canton (CC), fell by more than 10%. Derivatives positioning Over $600 million worth of leveraged crypto futures positions have been liquidated in the past 24 hours, with the majority being long bets. This suggests that bullish leverage continues to unwind. Yet the open interest (OI) in ZEC, BTC, SOL and DOGE futures has increased, while XRP, ETH, ASTER, AVAX have seen capital outflows. Annualized funding rates in TRX and ZEC perpetuals remain negative, indicating a bias for shorts. The rest of the major cryptocurrencies are seeing mildly positive rates. On the CME, OI in bitcoin futures has dropped to 133.25K, the lowest since late September. Overall positioning remains light, with the tally well below the December 2024 high of over 200K BTC. ETH's CME OI slide has stalled near 2 million ETH, down from the record high of 2.63 million in late October. On Deribit, call spreads and strangles have dominated block flows. One large trade featured the Nov. 28 expiry $90,000 put option. In ETH's case, put spreads accounted for 43% of the 24-hour block flow. Token talk By Oliver Knight The altcoin market gave back much of Wednesday's gains over the past 24 hours as ether ETH $ 3,033.72 slipped by 3.4%, dragging several other tokens down with it. CoinMarketCap's "altcoin season" indicator fell by five points to 26/100 as bitcoin remained flat. The CoinDesk 20 (CD20) index posted a 0.66% drop. There were a few outliers to the bearish market trend, in particular ATOM $ 3.0224 rose by more than 10% in the period as it staged a technical breakout, while zcash ZEC $ 671.33 extended its two-month long ascent with a gain of 8.7%. Base founder Jesse Pollak said he planned to issue a token on Thursday under the ticker JESSE. The move attracted skepticism because Pollak had previously shared a number of of "content tokens," all of which rapidly lost value after being unveiled. "Content coins track short term attention, creator coins track long term content," Pollak wrote on X in response to concerns. "Value paired together they create a flywheel that puts ownership, control, and upside back in the hands of creators and their followers. With $jesse, my flywheel will be complete." Memecoins and viral tokens, of which JESSE could be considered an example, have underperformed the wider market in recent months. The CoinDesk Memecoin index (CDMEME) has dropped by more than 40% since September, while the CoinDesk20 is down by around 30% in the same period. Crypto Markets Today More For You Protocol Research: GoPlus Security By CoinDesk Research Nov 14, 2025 Commissioned by GoPlus What to know : As of October 2025, GoPlus has generated $4.7M in total revenue across its product lines. The GoPlus App is the primary revenue driver, contributing $2.5M (approx. 53%), followed by the SafeToken Protocol at $1.7M. GoPlus Intelligence's Token Security API averaged 717 million monthly calls year-to-date in 2025 , with a peak of nearly 1 billion calls in February 2025. Total blockchain-level requests, including transaction simulations, averaged an additional 350 million per month. Since its January 2025 launch , the $GPS token has registered over $5B in total spot volume and $10B in derivatives volume in 2025. Monthly spot volume peaked in March 2025 at over $1.1B , while derivatives volume peaked the same month at over $4B. View Full Report More For You Ark Invest Buys the Slide, Adds Almost $40M of Crypto Stocks, as Market Drops By Jamie Crawley | Edited by Sheldon Reback 1 hour ago Cathie Wood's investment manager added to its holdings of Bullish (BLSH), Circle Internet (CRCL) and Bitmine (BMNR) as all three companies' stock prices fell. What to know : Ark Invest added to its holdings of Bullish (BLSH), Circle Internet (CRCL) and Bitmine (BMNR) as the crypto market fell on Wednesday. Circle and Bitmine both dropped by around 9%, while Bullish lost 3.63%. The investment management firm often goes bargain hunting when share prices fall. 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