Bitcoin (BTC) threatens a fresh crash as December begins with a snap 5% BTC price drawdown.
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Bitcoin price volatility hits around the November monthly close, with BTC/USD returning to near $85,000.
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Analysis blames a lack of market liquidity for the move, while history warns that bearishness should continue in December.
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Key US inflation data is due as markets preserve Fed rate-cut bets despite concerns over Japan.
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The Coinbase Premium may have ended its brief trip into “green” territory thanks to the BTC price dip.
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Stablecoin dry powder hits all-time highs relative to BTC reserves on Binance.
Bitcoin “dead cat bounce” fields $50,000 target
Bitcoin price action went straight back to its pre-Thanksgiving range around the weekly and monthly close.
Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView confirms a classic “Bart Simpson” style chart pattern to start December.
Losses drove BTC/USD down to as low as $85,616 on Bitstamp before a modest bounce, while 24-hour liquidations stood at over $600 million at the time of writing, according to data from monitoring resource CoinGlass.
Reacting, some popular market participants were unsurprisingly bearish on what was to come. Trader Roman described a return to $50,000 as “inevitable.”
$BTC 1W
50k is inevitable.
Be ready to buy. pic.twitter.com/OkNCceCCbE
— Roman (@Roman_Trading) December 1, 2025
“Bitcoin needs to reclaim the $88,000-$89,000 level here; otherwise, it’ll drop towards the November low,” crypto investor and entrepreneur Ted Pillows warned in a post on X.
Examining long-term BTC price action, veteran trader Peter Brandt has even revived the idea of sub-$40,000 levels.
Last week, Brandt warned that Bitcoin’s recovery above $90,000 could constitute a “dead cat bounce” — one which he now suspects could be over.
Not to bust anyone’s banana, but the upper boundary of the lower green zone starts at sub $70s with lower boundary support in the mid $40s.
How soon before Saylor’s Shipmates ask about the life-boats? $BTC pic.twitter.com/YLfjSDdw9H— Peter Brandt (@PeterLBrandt) December 1, 2025
Meanwhile, more optimistic forecasts focus on a range-bound BTC/USD slowly reclaiming lost support levels.
“Overall: This could form a $80k – $99k range,” trader CrypNuevo concluded in his latest X thread.
CrypNuevo identified various key levels to flip, including the 50-week exponential moving average (EMA) and 2025 yearly open.
“My major concern is that we’re currently below the 1W50EMA which is a strong bull/bear market indicator. Could it be a deviation? Yes. There is past history of such deviations,” he wrote.
“Technically, I can’t support the bullish case until price is back above it ($99.8k).”
No “fundamental decline” in crypto
Bitcoin’s sudden dive just as the weekly and monthly candle closes concluded a grim month of downward volatility for bulls.
The latest data from CoinGlass confirms that BTC/USD finished November down 17.7% — its worst performance since the 2018 bear market.
Q4 losses currently total 24.4%, placing Bitcoin on par with its decline from its previous highs of $20,000 seven years ago.
As Cointelegraph reported, history suggests that a “red” November leads to copycat performance in the last month of the year.
Commenting on the monthly close drama, however, trading resource The Kobeissi Letter pointed to system market weakness as a result of losses that had already locked in.
“As seen countless times this year, Friday night and Sunday night often come with LARGE crypto moves. Just now, we saw Bitcoin fall -$4,000 in a matter of minutes without ANY news at all,” it wrote in a dedicated X post on the topic.
“Why? Liquidity is thin.”
Kobeissi nonetheless repeated its idea that crypto’s technical bear market — the result of a more than 20% drop from all-time highs — remains “structural.”
“We do NOT view this a fundamental decline,” it stressed.
CoinGlass’s liquidation heatmap showed fresh asks being added overhead on spot markets, with $85,000 acting as a nearby area of support at the time of writing.
Eyes on Japan as “hawkish” mood returns
The Federal Reserve’s “preferred” inflation gauge is making a long-awaited comeback after months of delays caused by the US government shutdown.
The Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) index will give officials key insights into inflation trends at a key point in time — the Fed’s next interest-rate decision is less than two weeks away.
Markets remain upbeat on the outcome, with CME Group’s FedWatch Tool putting odds of a 0.25% cut at over 87% at the time of writing.
cointelegraph.com