First Mover Americas: Aptos Rallies While Major Cryptos Trade Lower

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A token that’s designed to fool users into thinking it's an authentic version of Aptos temporarily shut down services on Korean exchange Upbit for the APT token after some were able to deposit and cash out the counterfeit coin. According to on-chain data, the token, which originated from the airdrop scam site ClaimAPTGift.com, is held by approximately 400,000 wallets. On X (formerly known as Twitter), one user highlighted a bug on Upbit that caused the exchange to accept the fake tokens because it didn’t thoroughly check the underlying source code.

Aptos’ APT token was one of the only digital asset tokens trading in the green on Monday, rallying 10% over the past 24 hours. Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency by market value, traded down almost 2% over the same time period. Chainlink’s LINK was the only other digital asset that gained on Monday, up 2% after a strong week last week. Looking forward, eToro analyst Simon Peters noted in a morning update that this week looks slow for cryptocurrencies due to few macroeconomic updates. “With little in the way of major macro updates this week, there is little to stir the market bar unplanned events,” said Peters. “The market is looking for signals to take a direction and has been moving fairly flat for some time now.”

On Friday at 08:00 UTC, a total of 1.217 million bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) options contracts with a notional value of $4.8 billion will expire on leading crypto options exchange Deribit. Roughly 10% or 117,000 contracts out of the total are tied to bitcoin, while the rest are ether options. On Deribit, one options contract represents one BTC and one ETH. Options are derivatives that give the purchaser the right to buy or sell the underlying at a predetermined price at a later date. These derivatives contracts will be valuable or worthless depending on how the top two cryptocurrencies trade by the end of the week. Both seasoned traders and retail investors track monthly and quarterly options expiries, given their propensity to influence markets ahead of and following the settlement.

- Omkar Godbole