Bitcoin hovered around $78,000 on Tuesday as the market took a breather after last week’s sharp advance, while Arbitrum’s ARB token surged nearly 30% as Robinhood Chain revenue climbed rapidly.

BTC was trading near $78,000, slipping about 0.4% since midnight UTC and 0.7% over the past seven days. The cryptocurrency has been consolidating after a short squeeze sent it from below $63,000 to a peak of roughly $81,400 last week.

Even with the pause, Bitcoin continued to outperform traditional risk assets. Nasdaq 100 futures were down around 0.5% since midnight, putting BTC’s recent performance ahead of US technology stocks.

Spot Bitcoin ETFs remain an important source of demand. The funds attracted about $3.04 billion over nine consecutive sessions before a $202 million outflow on Friday ended the streak. Inflows returned Monday, with another $217 million entering the funds, according to SoSoValue.

Altcoins were less decisive. The Altcoin Season Index fell to 26 from 34 on Friday, marking its lowest level in more than 90 days.

Futures Traders Hold Back

Crypto derivatives markets showed limited directional conviction for a second consecutive day. The 24-hour taker buy-sell ratio remained broadly even, while aggregate open interest held around $136 billion.

Futures volume fell 7%, indicating that traders are largely waiting for a clearer catalyst instead of aggressively increasing bullish or bearish exposure.

ARB was the top performer among the 100 largest tokens, climbing almost 30%. Open interest in ARB futures rose more than 10%, suggesting new long positions were entering as traders attempted to push the token above resistance around 11 cents.

Funding rates remained near 8% annualized, indicating that leverage has not yet reached particularly stretched levels.

Monero’s derivatives market also expanded. XMR futures open interest reached roughly 640,000 tokens, the highest since February 2024. Funding rates have eased to around 15% from more than 50%, suggesting the previous concentration of bullish bets has diminished.

Still, negative open-interest-adjusted CVD indicates sellers remain active. XMR slipped to about $525 after reaching nearly $548 on Monday.

Tron has attracted heavy bearish positioning. TRX funding rates stood near minus 80%, indicating that short exposure is crowded and costly to maintain. The token fell for a third consecutive day and traded around 33 cents.

Bitcoin and Ether futures open interest remained near multi-week lows.

Volatility expectations have also cooled, with Bitcoin’s BVIV and Ether’s EVIV 30-day implied volatility indexes retreating from their mid-August peaks.

Options positioning, however, remained relatively bullish. The $80,000 Bitcoin call expiring Sept. 25 was the most actively traded Deribit contract over the previous 20 hours. Ether traders showed the strongest interest in the $2,500 call.

Robinhood Chain Becomes ARB Catalyst

The sharp move in ARB is being fueled by the rapid growth of Robinhood Chain, a dedicated network built using Arbitrum technology.

Robinhood Chain sends 10% of its net protocol revenue to the Arbitrum ecosystem. Offchain Labs co-founder Steven Goldfeder said transaction revenue exceeded $2 million over 24 hours Monday, compared with approximately $1.22 million the previous day.

At that level, Arbitrum’s annual revenue share could reach about $73 million.

ARK Invest’s Lorenzo Valente highlighted the speed of the increase. His figures show Robinhood Chain’s gross daily revenue jumping from $54,676 on Aug. 22 to $1.088 million on Aug. 30, representing almost a 20-fold increase. Arbitrum’s portion increased from about $5,400 to $108,000 over the same period.

Other DeFi tokens also benefited from the sector-wide bid.

Curve DAO’s CRV gained roughly 14% over 24 hours to around 35 cents, supported by $119 million in trading volume.

Uniswap’s UNI added about 8% since midnight to approximately $5.80 after rising 12% during the previous session. The token has gained around 34% over seven days, with trading volume near $519 million.

Aave climbed about 1.9% to $126.54, while Morpho advanced roughly 2% to $2.55.

Bitcoin’s sideways action suggests traders are consolidating after August’s rally, but the sharp gains in ARB and other DeFi assets indicate that speculative interest remains active in selected areas of the crypto market.