Panic premium lingers in options even as bitcoin recovers from lows

Markets Share Share this article Copy link X icon X (Twitter) LinkedIn Facebook Email Panic premium lingers in options even as bitcoin recovers from lows Bitcoin rebounded above $68,000 as ETF outflows hit $6.8 billion and funding flips positive. A break above $72,000 is needed to confirm a bullish shift. By Oliver Knight , Saksham Diwan | Edited by Sheldon Reback Feb 20, 2026, 11:35 a.m. Make us preferred on Google Bitcoin recovers from lows as altcoins outperform (Indira Tjokorda/Unsplash modified by CoinDesk) What to know : BTC has rallied from $65,60, but remains in a pattern of lower highs and lower lows. A price of $72,000 is the key level to signal a trend reversal. U.S. spot ETFs have shed 100,300 BTC ($6.8 billion), while open interest rises to $15.8 billion and funding rates turn positive, signaling stabilizing leverage. Short-term options show elevated “panic premium,” liquidations hit $179 million, and altcoins outperform as traders rotate during consolidation. The crypto market pulled back from potential peril on Thursday, with bitcoin BTC $ 67,824.54 rising 3.9% from a local low of $65,600. Prices advanced overnight, with bitcoin adding 2% since midnight UTC, solana (SOL) gaining 2.7% and ether (ETH) rising 1.2%. 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 & conditions and privacy policy . The broader downtrend, however, remains intact with bitcoin printing a series of lower lows and lower highs to give back all of the gains it made in the 12 months ended October 2025. In the short term, bitcoin needs to break above $72,000 to confirm a bullish shift from the range-bound price action that has seen it float between support and resistance. Spot bitcoin ETFs in the U.S. have posted their largest drawdown of this cycle, with 100,300 BTC in withdrawals since October. That equates to around $6.8 billion of extra selling pressure on an already fragile market. Derivatives positioning: Market dynamics are stabilizing. Open interest rose to $15.8 billion, signaling a shift from leverage cleanup toward a firmer floor, and retail sentiment is rebounding, with funding rates flipping flat to positive across all venues and hitting 10% on Bybit and Hyperliquid. Institutional conviction remains anchored, with the three-month annualized basis persisting at 3%. The BTC options market shows a slight shift in sentiment, with 24-hour volume reaching a 51/49 split in favor of calls. While the one-week 25-delta skew has jumped to 17%, the implied volatility (IV) term structure remains in short-term backwardation. This persistent front-end spike confirms that traders are still paying a "panic premium" for immediate protection, even as longer-dated tenors stabilize near 49%. Coinglass data shows $179 million in 24-hour liquidations, with a 56-44 split between longs and shorts. BTC ($59 million), ETH ($46 million) and others ($16 million) were the leaders in terms of notional liquidations. The Binance liquidation heatmap indicates $68,400 as a core liquidation level to monitor in case of a price rise. Token talk Altcoins were perky overnight, lending token MORPHO rose by more than 12% since midnight UTC and AI payment token KITE added 11%, extending its 30-day rally of 153%. The rotation was also seen among DeFi tokens such as jupiter (JUP), which jumped by more than 3.6% after hitting its lowest point in seven days on Thursday. The CoinDesk Smart Contract Platform Select Index (SCPXC) was the best-performing benchmark over the past 24 hours, posting a gain of 2.25%, closely followed by CoinDesk's Memecoin Index (CDMEME), up by 2.2% over the same period. The bitcoin-dominant CoinDesk 20 (CD20) gained by 1% as crypto majors posted more restrained gains. Altcoins typically perform well during periods of consolidation as traders have the freedom to rotate capital into more speculative bets without risking missing a move on the likes of bitcoin, ether and XRP. Crypto Markets Today Derivatives Altcoins More For You Zoomex: Precise Systems of Fairness and Transparency by Design By CoinDesk Jan 31, 2026 Commissioned by Zoomex Read full story More For You Bitcoin difficulty jumps 15% largest increase since 2021, despite price slump By James Van Straten | Edited by Sam Reynolds 4 hours ago Bitcoin difficulty rebounds to 144.4T as hashrate recovers to 1 ZH/s despite multi year low hashprice. What to know : Bitcoin mining difficulty rose to 144.4T, jumped 15%, the biggest percentage increase since 2021. Hashrate has recovered to 1 ZH/s from 826 EH/s, even as hashprice sits at multi year lows around $23.9 per PH/s. 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