Crypto Daily 18 Apr: Volume Confirms Bounce, XRP Leads

Bitcoin briefly touched $78,000 this week and is holding at $77,015 today, up 3.19% in 24 hours, and this time the move came with real participation. Aggregate crypto trading volume jumped 24.7% alongside a 2.67% rise in total market cap to $2.69 trillion. That distinction matters. Bounces built on thin liquidity tend to fade at the first test of resistance. Bounces built on expanding volume tend to push through it. The macro catalyst was US-Iran de-escalation on Thursday, with Trump signalling that Iran agreed to open the Strait of Hormuz and that a uranium deal was in progress, sending oil lower and risk assets higher. XRP has been the quiet standout of the week, up 8.19% over seven days and outperforming both bitcoin and ether while its derivatives positioning remains constructively tilted. The sentiment gauge still reads deep in Fear territory, which means the market is recovering into scepticism. That combination of improving price action and unconvinced positioning is not a bad backdrop.

Total crypto market capitalisation is $2.69 trillion, up 2.67% over 24 hours with aggregate volume near $147 billion. Bitcoin dominance, the share of total crypto market value held in bitcoin, stands at 57.3%, with Ethereum holding 10.8%. The Crypto Fear and Greed Index, a sentiment gauge scored from zero to one hundred where higher scores reflect greater investor confidence, reads 26 today, placing it in the Fear zone. Price action this week is beginning to push against that ceiling.

Bitcoin is at $77,015 (around £61,500), up 3.19% over the past 24 hours. The daily structure has improved materially this week, with the push from the mid-$74,000 area to $77,000 coming on strengthening volume rather than a thin-air drift. Open interest in Bitcoin perpetual futures, the continuously rolling leveraged derivative contracts that dominate crypto trading, sits at roughly 106,000 BTC on Binance while funding rates remain slightly negative. Negative funding means short sellers are paying a small recurring fee to hold their positions, which builds upward pressure when those positions start to close. The derivatives picture suggests a meaningful portion of this week’s move was a short squeeze, short sellers covering as the price refused to fall, as much as fresh speculative buying. Bitcoin briefly reached $78,000 before pulling back. A clean daily close above that level is the next structural test.

XRP is at $1.47, up 2.54% in 24 hours and 8.19% over the past seven days, the strongest performer among large caps this week. Unlike bitcoin and ether, where perpetual funding has drifted slightly negative, XRP’s derivatives positioning remains modestly positive, with open interest around 290.7 million XRP on Binance. Modestly positive funding means buyers are willing to pay a small premium to stay long, a constructive signal when the price is also making higher highs and higher lows on the daily and weekly charts. There is no single fresh catalyst driving this today. The strength reflects persistent institutional and product-development interest in XRP-linked vehicles, and flow-driven outperformance from a large liquid asset without a news peg usually signals rotation into quality rather than a one-day speculative spike.

Ethereum is at $2,404.97 (around £1,920), up 3.40% on the day and 7.44% over the past week, giving it a narrow weekly edge over bitcoin in percentage terms. ETH has held above the psychologically significant $2,400 level while funding on Binance has flipped slightly negative and open interest sits around 2.28 million ETH. The medium-term investment case for Ethereum is increasingly tied to regulatory clarity: US market structure legislation, which defines which regulator oversees which categories of digital assets and trading venues, is closer to completion than at any point in recent years. Clearer rules unlock institutional use of decentralised finance and tokenisation, the process of representing real-world assets such as bonds or property on a blockchain, where Ethereum remains the dominant infrastructure layer.

Solana is at $88.32, up a more modest 0.59% on the day and 4.18% over the past week, visibly lagging the other large caps in this session. Solana typically accelerates faster than its peers when the market shifts decisively into higher-beta risk appetite; higher-beta simply means more volatile and more responsive to market direction. The fact that it is participating but not leading says this recovery remains selective rather than broad. Perpetual funding is barely positive and open interest sits near 9.55 million SOL on Binance.

The story that set the tone for this week was not internal to crypto. News on Thursday that the United States and Iran had made substantive progress toward a deal covering the Strait of Hormuz and Iranian enriched uranium sent oil prices lower and macro risk sentiment higher. In crypto markets, that improvement hit hardest in digital-asset treasury stocks, the publicly traded companies that hold bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies on their balance sheets, which surged 10% to 20% in a single session as bitcoin reclaimed $78,000. The correlation between easing geopolitical risk and rising crypto prices reinforces how embedded bitcoin has become in the broader risk-asset complex. On the regulatory front, Senator Elizabeth Warren accused newly confirmed SEC Chair Paul Atkins of potentially misleading Congress about his financial ties to crypto. Nothing has been proven, but the exchange serves as a reminder that the shift toward more crypto-friendly oversight in Washington is contested rather than settled. Stablecoin and market structure legislation remain live variables.

Bitcoin’s near-term pivot is a clean daily close above $78,000, which would force further covering of the crowded short trade. A rejection there followed by a drift back below $75,000 would instead confirm the range. Ethereum needs a few daily closes above $2,400 with reasonable volume before a push toward $2,450 becomes credible. XRP’s weekly structure holds above $1.45, and a move through $1.50 to $1.51 on volume would reinforce its current leadership. The Iran diplomatic backdrop is also worth watching: the bounce was partly built on those headlines, and any reversal in that progress would remove a tailwind the market priced in quickly.

Crypto Daily is Cristoniq’s daily guide to cryptocurrency markets, published every morning for informational purposes only. Nothing here is financial advice. Always do your own research before making any investment decisions.