Altcoins outperform Bitcoin as Celestia jumps 16%, Warsh silent on interest rate plans

Celestia jumped 16%, Injective rose 7.7% and layerzero rose 7.3%, while Bitcoin was little changed near $82,100 and the Fed chairman gave no indication on interest rates.

Bitcoin was little changed from around $82,100 at midnight UTC after bouncing back from a dip to $81,600 around 03:30 UTC.

Celestia was up 16%, injective was up 7.7% and layerzero was up 7.3%, more than two-thirds of CoinDesk 100 members were higher and CoinDesk 5 remained flat.

Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh declined to say what the central bank will do later this month, and the odds of an October rate hike fell to about 15 percent from nearly 30 percent.

Bitcoin at $82,071.33 Bitcoin is little changed since midnight UTC and is trading around $82,100 at around 03:30 UTC after bouncing back from losses around $81,600. It's comfortably above Thursday's brief break below $80,000, the first in a month.

Altcoins led the way, with Ether Ether at $2,460.14 up 0.5 percent near $2,450 and CoinDesk 80 (CD80) up 0.46 percent, while bitcoin heavyweight CoinDesk 5 (CD5) was flat. Celestia (TIA) jumped 16, INJ $9.2578 injection rose 7.7% and zero layer ZRO $2.2028 added 7.3%, leading four out of five members of the CoinDesk 100 Index (CD100) and raising the Altcoin index on the previous day from 5 to 60 days ago CoinMarketCap.

Asian shares were flat after falling on Thursday, with South Korea's Kospi up 2.05 percent and Japan's Nikkei up 1.39 percent, while S&P 500 futures were little changed after the index's three-day rout.

In a speech at the International Monetary Fund and World Bank meeting in Bangkok, Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh declined to state the central bank's goals for the meeting later this month. According to the CME Fedwatch tool, the probability of an interest rate hike in October drops from about 30 percent to about 15 percent. Treasury yields were largely flat.

Volume drops, leverage resets: Crypto futures volume fell 20% to $200 billion in 24 hours, while open profit rose 2% to $142.21 billion. Liquidations fell to $311 million from nearly $1 billion yesterday. Quieter trading with positions still building suggests that forced selling has run its course.

Sellers are comfortable: 24-hour long/short volume ratio is balanced compared to shorts at 52% yesterday. Aggressive selling has faded.

BTC, ETH and SOL profits lack new long bets: Bitcoin's notional open profit increased by only 0.3% against a 1% price increase, which means that the number of outstanding contracts decreased slightly. Ether and Solana show the same pattern, with open interest lower than their spot prices. These moves appear to be driven by traders closing shorts, not by new buying positions.

XRP traders benefit from this rally: XRP open interest fell 1% while its spot price rose 1.4%, so contracts closed higher. Its 24-hour OI-adjusted cumulative volume delta, which follows aggressive net buying and selling at market prices rather than inactive limit orders, is also negative. This jump has little support from derivatives traders.

ZEC leads new bullish bets: ZEC futures open interest rose 14 percent against an 11.5 percent gain, so traders added contracts to the rally. The OI-adjusted Cumulative Volume Andelta is the most positive among majors, a sign that buyers are aggressive. TRX, XAUT and ETH also show positive readings while BTC is neutral and UNI, HBAR and XRP are negative.

Funding represents an upward slope but no bottoming out: annual perpetual funding rates for core tokens hover between 5-10%. This shows a bias towards long but nothing out of the ordinary, so the market is far from overheated and has room for further gains.

Implied volatility continues to decline: BVIV, Bitcoin's 30-day implied volatility index, fell to 38% from yesterday's high of 42%, and Ether's implied volatility also fell. Options traders are pricing in a quieter market that fits the financing picture.

As options traders eye Ether to the upside, the decentralized exchange appears to have pointed to a large Bitcoin spread that crossed the bar earlier this week, betting on a decline to $78,000. The $80,000 put is the most traded on options giant Deribit, so some traders are still buying bearish protection. In Ether, the $2,600 call is the most traded in the last 24 hours.

Celestia (TIA), the data availability modular network token, rose 16% to around $0.68, the biggest gainer on the CD100 and the highest price in 2026. The token has advanced about 59% over four weeks, coinciding with Celestia Fiber's rally, which reached 3.07 terabits per second on a throughput benchmark and the introduction of a proposed economic upgrade called the Sustainable Bubble.Economy.

Injective INJ $9.2578, the finance-focused Tier 1 token, rose 7.7% to around $9.19. While there is no overt narrative, there are three pending US exchange-traded fund applications related to the token. CoinMarketCap shows $289.7 million in INJ volume in 24 hours, up 128% from the previous day.

LayerZero ZRO $2.2028, the cross-messaging token, rose 7.3% to around $2.24, fueling a rally linked to its ATLAS trading infrastructure, which devotes most of its spending to buying and burning tokens. Ether.fi (ETHFI), the liquid replenishment token, rose 4.2%.

Starknet STRK $0.08292 was the CD100's weakest member, down 9.6% to $0.08 after an 11% gain on Thursday, and STX $0.4071, a bitcoin equity layer token, fell 4.2%.

Bigger names were up with Solana (SOL) up 1.2% to around $107, XRP up 0.5% and Monero (XMR) up 2.9% to around $565, while BNB barely moved.