Last week was a volatile one for Bitcoin as it failed to recover to levels above $100,000 due to a lack of bullish momentum in the market. Overall, cryptocurrency market capitalisation dropped approximately 2.6% to $3.46 trillion by late Friday after hitting a weekly high of $3.6 trillion after Christmas day. A risk-off sentiment prevailed across the market due to a lack of any solid catalysts, and the market lull intensified towards the middle of the week, with liquidity and trading volumes dipping as a result of the holiday season. Early week profit taking by long-term holders and poor performance of US Bitcoin exchange-traded funds kept market sentiment subdued, with the effect spilling over to the altcoin market as well. The crypto fear and greed index had dropped to neutral levels around the low 50s, confirming the lack of momentum in the market. By the end of the week, only a handful of the top tokens managed to retain gains from the post-election rally that began after Donald Trump won the 2024 US elections. Even though some whale buying and institutional activity returned towards the end of the week, analysts remained cautious, with many expecting a deeper correction scenario to play out. Will Bitcoin rise again? Bitcoin showed some late-week resilience after a $14.2 billion options expiry with a ‘max pain’ point of $85,000, which initially had traders anticipating a major correction. However, the flagship cryptocurrency managed to hold above key support levels and even peaked above $97,330 at 9:06 a.m. UTC on Dec. 27, just an hour after the expiry event. Yet, a prominent trader on TradingView pointed to BTC’s negative correlation with the USDT Dominance Index, which measures USDT’s overall market share. Notably, the metric shows signs of a rebound, which is typically seen when BTC hits a local top. Basically, this rebound indicates a capital flight to safety as liquidity moves to Tether when traders expect volatility or further downside pressure. The analyst warns that a potential bulltrap scenario might be playing out soon where the bellwether sees a short spike before quickly correcting. He urged caution as the sudden rise could mislead many into believing the up trend has resumed again. Some other forecasts see Bitcoin dropping towards the $80 – $60k range in the coming days. According to Mark Newton, managing director at Fundstrat, Bitcoin will target price levels as high as $250,000 next year but could correct to as low as $60,000 before that happens. Fellow analyst Benjamin Cohen also expects a similar drop but notes it could be a flash crash on the day Donald Trump takes office , drawing parallels with past performance of the Invesco QQQ Trust as current BTC price action is showing similarities. Meanwhile, analyst Ali Martinez believes Bitcoin needs to hold above $93,806, or else it could risk dropping towards $70k, pointing to factors such as increased BTC transfers to exchanges and increased profit taking. However, a sustained close above $97,300 or a daily close above $100k would invalidate this scenario. At the time of writing, the leading crypto exchanged hands at $94,171, down 2.7% over the past week. A more pronounced drop was seen for several altcoins, but the top performers managed to pull in notable gains over the week. Top altcoins this week Bitget token Bitget (BGB) outperformed the market with an over 100% rally over the past week. The altcoin boasted a market cap of over $11.3 billion, making it the largest altcoin on the list. Source: CoinMarketCap BGB continued to capitalise on the hype generated by several developments that were unveiled over the course of December. Most recently, the altcoin got a boost after the Seychelles-based crypto exchange announced it would merge BGB with the Bitget Wallet Token (BWB) into a single utility token. Prior to that, the exchange’s planned collaboration with the Tron blockchain and its meme coin launcher, SunPump, acted as a catalyst for the past week’s rally. Virtuals protocol Virtuals Protocol (VIRTUAL) was one of the best-performing artificial intelligence-focused cryptocurrencies, with gains of over 44% recorded in the past week. On the yearly time frame, the gains are locked in at over 23,000%, making it one of the best-performing tokens this year. Source: CoinMarketCap VIRTUAL rode the AI agent wave and the broader growth in the AI sector. As a decentralised AI agent network, the protocol has drawn in a plethora of users over the past year to launch such agents. With the number of AI agents increasing on the platform, users have locked in VIRTUAL tokens, leading to a surge in its price. When writing, VIRTUAL held a market cap of $3.36 billion. Movement Movement (MOVE), an Ethereum layer 2 network, rallied 27% this week to hit a market cap of over $2.3 billion late Friday, just weeks after launching earlier in the month. Source: CoinMarketCap MOVE surged amid excitement surrounding its mainnet beta launch and token generation event (TGE) on December 9. 1 billion tokens were distributed as a part of the TGE, which led to increased trading activity. The price rally got a major boost after the network integrated Wrapped Bitcoin on December 19, bringing more liquidity towards its decentralised finance ecosystem. Alongside this, on-metric shows increased activity on the network with a surge in active addresses on the network. The post BGB and VIRTUAL break out this week as Bitcoin stalls below $100k appeared first on Invezz
