Crypto Markets Today: Fear Dominates as Altcoins Lag, Bitcoin Tests Key Levels

Markets Share Share this article Copy link X icon X (Twitter) LinkedIn Facebook Email Crypto Markets Today: Fear Dominates as Altcoins Lag, Bitcoin Tests Key Levels Bitcoin’s struggle to reclaim the $90,000 range leaves the broader crypto market vulnerable, with altcoins suffering sharp liquidity-driven underperformance. By Oliver Knight , Omkar Godbole | Edited by Sheldon Reback Nov 24, 2025, 11:30 a.m. Crypto market remains fearful (Unsplash/Modified by CoinDesk) What to know : The Fear and Greed Index sits at 12/100, signaling "extreme fear." Altcoin liquidity remains thin, with shallow market depth in tokens like TON and DOT exacerbating volatility and forced selling. Bitcoin faces a critical test, with rejection below $95,000 potentially confirming a fourth lower high, while a drop toward $81,000 risks another broad market sell-off. In this article ETH ETH $ 2,798.13 ◢ 0.62 % Crypto majors bitcoin BTC $ 86,097.37 , ether ETH $ 2,798.13 , XRP $ 2.0604 and solana SOL $ 129.11 consolidated over the past 24 hours following a volatile week that saw the broader market fall to the lowest levels in months. The market is still gripped by "extreme fear" with the Fear and Greed Index standing at 12/100, although it's worth noting that prolonged periods below 20/100 typically pave the way for a market bounce. 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 . Altcoins continue to struggle with a lack of liquidity and lack of demand for speculative risk assets. The CoinDesk Memecoin Index (CDMEME) is down by 30% in the past month, underperforming CoinDesk 5 (CD5), which has lost 23%. Bitcoin now faces a test in order to reverse the bear-market trend. A rejection anywhere up to $95,000 would indicate a fourth lower high, confirming a downtrend. Derivatives positioning Volmex's BVIV, the 30-day options-based implied volatility index, has bounced back to nearly 60%, erasing an early decline to 57.55%. The rebound comes as the spot price faces renewed downside pressure, maintaining the inverse relationship seen through the recent market swoon. Rising demand for BTC puts on Deribit, coupled with declining trader interest in call overwriting, is responsible for the recent upswing in volatility indexes. Traders seem to be rolling long positions in puts to lower strike prices, as evident from the growing popularity of the $80,000 put, which now has over $2 billion in open interest. BTC and ETH call-put skews remain defensive or negative. Block flows over the past 24 hours have featured preference for strategies that benefit from a broad range play in spot prices, such as the BTC call condor. Put calendar spreads have dominated block flows in the past 24 hours. In the futures market, XRP, DOGE and HYPE have seen increases in open interest while BCH saw a 5% drop in open positions. Token talk By Oliver Knight The altcoin market showed weakness against bitcoin trading pairs over the past 24 hours as issues around a lack of liquidity persisted. Market depth, a measure of liquidity for particular trading pairs, remains low for tokens like TON $ 1.4859 and DOT $ 2.2672 . At the time of writing, the 2% market depth on TON is between $500,00 and $800,000, which means it would take a trade of less than those figures to move the market by 2%. The depth is lower on DOT and even worse across several smaller altcoins, this means that when a market is volatile, moves become exaggerated due to positions forcibly closing amid liquidations or stop-loss triggers. CoinMarketCap's "Altcoin Season" indicator ticked down to 23/100 from last week's 30/100 to suggest that traders are opting to hold bitcoin or stablecoins as opposed to more speculative altcoin tokens. While sentiment remains fearful, from a technical perspective crypto tokens are in a "neutral" zone, exhibiting neither oversold nor overbought conditions. Where we go from here will depend on whether bitcoin BTC $ 86,097.37 can steer its way out of trouble with a move back into the $90,000 range, which would inspire confidence across the entire market. A drop back to last week's low of $81,000 could trigger another panicked sell-off, in which altcoins will fare worse due to their abject liquidity situation. Crypto Markets Today Derivatives Markets Mais para você Protocol Research: GoPlus Security Por CoinDesk Research 14 de nov. de 2025 Commissioned by GoPlus O que saber : 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. 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Tom Lee Thinks So Nov 22, 2025 Turning ‘$11K to Half a Billion Dollars From Trading Memecoins’: Tales From a Crypto Wealth Manager Nov 22, 2025 In this article SOL SOL $ 129.11 ◢ 0.50 % TON TON $ 1.4870 ◢ 1.35 % DOT DOT $ 2.2672 ◢ 2.99 %