Bitcoin (BTC) heads into year-end 2025 stuck around $90,000 as stocks and precious metals roar higher.
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Bitcoin sees only a modest uptick after its last weekly close of the year, as liquidity analysis warns of a fresh dip.
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Traders’ cost bases form the backbone of support reclaim targets heading into 2026.
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Risk assets, except crypto, are in party mode despite low expectations of another Federal Reserve interest-rate cut in January.
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Bitfinex whales are an island of hope in a defeated crypto landscape, with longs at their highest levels in nearly two years.
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Compared to Bitcoin history, this year’s bull market drawdown is still firmly “for ants.”
Bitcoin starts the week with $90,000 fakeout
Bitcoin price volatility returned with a vengeance into the weekly close, with a spike above $90,000 coming soon after.
This, in line with previous attempts, failed to flip that key level back to definitive support, data from TradingView shows.
With the all-important yearly candle close around the corner, traders are far from relaxed when it comes to what could happen next.
For trader CrypNuevo, Friday’s $24 billion options expiry meant that the door was open to higher volatility as standard.
“Record levels of options expired on Friday, so I’m expecting a lot of volatility for the next few weeks,” he wrote in a thread on X.
“Those options kept price stuck in a range – price will be more volatile now.”
An accompanying chart put $94,300 and $100,000 as important resistance points to watch next.
To the downside, CrypNuevo tapped exchange order-book liquidity for signals, warning that the mid-$80,000 range could come back into play.
“In terms of liquidations, in HTF there are more to the upside at $96k. But in LTF, there are more liquidations to the downside around $85k,” he wrote about high and low-timeframes liquidation clusters.
“So in terms of efficiency, it’s more efficient to drop price to low $80’s first, before bouncing back and targetting the upside liquidity.”
Data from monitoring resource CoinGlass showed liquidity thickening around the spot price over the past three days in anticipation of the last TradFi trading days of the year.
Closer to home, crypto trader, analyst and entrepreneur Michaël van de Poppe eyed the 20-day simple moving average (SMA) as a target.
“Nothing confirmed, as it has been breaking above this 20-Day MA during the previous correction,” he wrote on the day.
“The important part is whether it will sustain above this 20-Day MA after US Open later today & holds above it in the coming days.”
Van de Poppe said that breaking through and flipping the 20-day SMA, $89,400 at the time of writing, would mark a “change of scenery” for BTC price action.
Realized BTC price points the way higher
Going forward, key BTC price resistance levels to flip back to support coincide with hodlers’ cost bases.
Also known as “realized price,” cost bases reflect the aggregate buy-in price for various types of Bitcoin investors, from diamond hands to newcomers and speculators.
The latest data from onchain analytics platform Glassnode put the realized price of short-term holders (STHs) at $99,785. These are entities holding a given amount of BTC for up to six months, typically influenced by sudden price volatility and more prone to selling at short notice.
As Cointelegraph reported, the STH cost basis tends to function as support during bull markets, and reclaiming it is essential during a bull-market correction.
In some of its most recent findings, Glassnode showed STH entities still moving coins onchain at a loss, more than two months after Bitcoin’s latest all-time high.
“The realized loss volume, after filtering out in-house transactions and smoothing with a 90-day SMA, is now at $300M per day,” pseudonymous lead research analyst CryptoVizArt reported on X over the weekend.
“Despite the price stabilizing above the True Market Mean ($81K), selling at a loss, due to top buyers’ frustration with time, has not declined significantly.”
CryptoVizArt referred to another important price point, which measures the cost basis of the broader active investor base. During the current drawdown, the BTC price has failed to close below it.
Crypto remains the 2025 macro outsider
The new year period is a quiet one when it comes to US macroeconomic data prints, but markets have next year’s issues in mind.
Tuesday’s release of the Federal Reserve’s December meeting minutes should help form an impression of future policy.
This is significant for risk-asset traders, as the current consensus sees a highly mixed bag of US financial conditions going…
cointelegraph.com