Sophia Bennett
Crypto Analyst
June started exactly the way May ended, with Bitcoin and Ether sliding while equities pointed higher and one corner of the crypto market completely ignored the negativity.
June kicked off in the red for crypto markets as the US and Iran exchanged fire and peace talks failed to translate into reduced tensions in the region. The CoinDesk 20 Index fell 2% since midnight UTC, with Bitcoin and Ether both losing about 1%.
At $72,700, Bitcoin is currently negative for a sixth time in seven days, following a 3.5% slide last month, usually a period with positive returns. It averages a 7.4% rise in May, according to Coinglass data.
Starting June below $73,000 after a historically strong month failed to deliver is not where most bulls had hoped to be.
The ETF Outflow Record Nobody Wanted to Break
The past ten days have been brutal for spot Bitcoin ETF flows, and the numbers just hit a milestone that nobody in the market wanted to see.
A record 10 days of net withdrawals from spot Bitcoin ETFs saw $2.97 billion leave the investment vehicles.
Ten consecutive days of institutional outflows, totalling nearly $3 billion, tells you what the smart money has been doing while retail traders were hoping for a recovery. They were leaving.
Derivatives: A Small Bright Spot in a Gloomy Picture
Not everything in the market data was negative on Monday. The derivatives market offered something modest to hold onto.
BTC open interest sits at $19.5 billion, essentially level from a week ago, with speculative positioning also broadly unchanged. Funding rates are positive across multiple venues at 0% to 10% annualised. The three‑month annualised basis is 2.8%, up from 2.2% last week, pointing to a mild improvement in institutional risk appetite.
Options positioning leans modestly bullish. Put/call volume over the past 24 hours splits 61 to 39 in favour of calls, while front‑end implied volatility has ticked up to 37 from multi‑month lows, suggesting the recent compression may be easing.
Coinglass data shows $282 million in 24‑hour liquidations, with a 60‑40 split between longs and shorts. ETH at $59 million and BTC at $48 million were the leaders in notional liquidations. The Binance liquidation heatmap indicates $72,280 as a core level to monitor in the event of a further price drop.
XLM Just Had Its Biggest Day in Years
While everything else was falling, Stellar's XLM was moving in a completely different direction, and the reason behind it is one of the most significant pieces of news in crypto's real‑world asset story this year.
Stellar's XLM jumped 40.4% in 24 hours to $0.2862, lifting its market cap above $9.6 billion, on the back of a May 27 announcement that DTCC, Wall Street's central clearinghouse, will connect its tokenised securities platform to the Stellar network in the first half of 2027. The deal makes Stellar the first public blockchain in DTCC's multichain tokenisation strategy.
The scale of what DTCC represents cannot be overstated. DTCC oversees more than $114 trillion in assets and processes about $2.5 quadrillion in securities transactions annually, putting Stellar's selection at the centre of how Wall Street brings tokenised stocks, ETFs, and US Treasuries onto a public blockchain.
Spot turnover on XLM hit about $2.3 billion on the day, up about 34%, showing the move was backed by real demand rather than a thin‑liquidity spike. Open interest in XLM perpetuals rose 10.9% to about $361 million as the rally unfolded, a combination of expanding open interest alongside rising spot volume that points to fresh long positioning rather than short covering.
HYPE Keeps Running, Four Records in Four Days
Hyperliquid's HYPE token was the other standout performer in an otherwise quiet market.
Hyperliquid's HYPE added 1.26% since midnight, with a five‑day streak of gains taking it to a record high of $73.94, its fourth record in four days, as capital enters newly introduced ETFs based on the token, which started trading only last month.
DeFi and ONDO Struggling After a Tragic Week
Not every part of the market had a catalyst. DeFi tokens broadly underperformed.
The CoinDesk DeFi Select Index led the day's decliners, dropping 2.6% since midnight, with all six members lower. Ondo Finance's ONDO token fell 2.8% and has now lost 17% since founder Nathan Allman died unexpectedly last week.
The loss of Allman has cast a real shadow over one of DeFi's most promising real‑world asset protocols, and the price action is reflecting that uncertainty directly.
What June Needs to Look Different From May
US equity index futures added about 0.2% on both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100, a divergence from crypto that has now persisted for weeks. The gap between a rallying stock market and a declining crypto market is the defining tension in risk assets right now.
Until Bitcoin ETF outflows reverse and geopolitical uncertainty around Iran resolves, June faces the same headwinds that defined a disappointing May. XLM and HYPE showed today that specific catalysts can still produce explosive moves. The market is waiting to see what catalyst finally moves everything else.