The crypto market is updating its lows but avoiding sharp changes

Market Picture

The crypto market set another trap for bulls yesterday afternoon, jumping to $3T and then falling to $2.85T. However, on Friday morning, it is once again flirting with buyers, trading at the same level of $2.95T, where it has remained since the beginning of the week.

On Thursday, Bitcoin replayed Wednesday’s micro-drama, soaring towards $90K, only to soon fall below its previous local lows. As a result, by the end of the day, the intraday low had fallen back to $84K, which we last saw almost five weeks ago. However, on Friday morning, the price is back at the $87K level, around which it has been trading for the last four days.

Although Bitcoin has buyers stopping really sharp declines, other top altcoins are gradually drifting down. It appears that large holders have been quietly exiting them over the last three to five months. This is clearly visible in Ethereum, XRP, and Solana. Zcash, in its traditional manner, soars sharply on signs of a reversal in larger coins, but then falls just as dramatically.

News background

The options market is hedging against the risk of Bitcoin falling below $85K, according to Derive.xyz. Market participants anticipate an increase in volatility at the end of the year. The situation is exacerbated by unstable inflows into ETFs and a decline in liquidity ahead of the holidays.

BTC’s growth is also being hindered by investor doubts about the return on investment in the American artificial intelligence (AI) sector, amid a liquidity shortage. Bitcoin’s correlation with the Nasdaq has strengthened due to the influx of large investors.

BitcoinForCorporations predicts an outflow of up to $15 billion from DAT companies accumulating cryptocurrency if MSCI decides to exclude them from its indices. Eighteen firms are at risk of exclusion.

In 2025, Bitcoin’s volatility was lower than that of Nvidia’s shares, according to Bitwise. The emergence of spot ETFs and other traditional instruments caused the ‘fundamental reduction in risk’ of the asset.

An increase in the number of users and an expansion of the gas limit has led to the ‘inflation’ of the Ethereum blockchain, which negatively affects the operation of nodes, warned the Ethereum Foundation (EF) team, proposing several possible solutions. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin called for Ethereum to be simplified. In his opinion, the complexity of using the ecosystem of the second-largest cryptocurrency by capitalisation hinders its mass adoption.