The cryptocurrency market suffered a harsh week, ending a volatile November, and saw a slight rise today after a pump. After a drastic selloff across the entire market over the last couple of days, it got a short-term bump, indicating that market sentiment may be slightly more positive.
Although confidence in the crypto market hasn’t fully returned, the slight bounce could see more upward movement. The Fear and Greed Index was around 20 last week and 22 today, so it’s somewhat more optimistic than the previous week.
Market capitalization for was 4.4t USD earlier this year but is currently around 3t USD, signaling strong investment aversion. The market saw liquidations of 700m in the past few days with futures and open interest lagging at monthly lows.
Leveraged positions are still quite large, which may cause more of a market decline. Analysts have stated that some futures leveraged positions are as high as 180 times. These open positions could see the market unwind to new lows.
Some traders and many investors see the dip as a buying opportunity, while others are taking a more cautious approach.
BTC Shows Excellent Value Buying Potential
Yesterday saw Bitcoin hit its lowest levels since March 2025 as it hit 84k, but it has since recovered to its current price of 86.9k USD. The selloff is mainly from the retail side, and that is a worry as analysts have pointed out that most of the leveraged BTC is retail. These BTC liquidations amount to almost 800b USD, mostly perpetual futures, and if BTC doesn’t bounce, the market will continue to slide.
Analysts attribute a couple of factors to the decline in BTC over the past week. Most troubling was the flash selloff, which saw BTC drop 5% in 5 hours. Many believe the initial drop triggered panic selling and furthered the price decline. BTC recovered over the trading session and retraced some of its daily losses. Another factor is the Bank of Japan may raise its interest rates because of the weakening Yen, and this could have also rattled the crypto market.
Fusaka Upgrade for Ethereum
Ethereum suffered with the rest of the market and was down 2.4% for the week. The 2nd-largest coin by market cap touched 2.7k USD but bounced back and is currently trading around 2.8k USD. Over the past 24 hours, open interest has risen 4%, indicating that speculators are opening new positions, with inflows of 650m USD.
ETH has exhibited this pattern in 2017 and 2020, signaling an imminent breakout. Whales have apparently staked over 90k ETH, and this coincides with sustained accumulation and new highs.
The Fusaka upgrade will go live tomorrow, and this could have influenced the bounce and renewed interest in ETH. The main upgrade will enable node operators to check small data sets instead of downloading all the data (PeerDAS), saving time and money. The number of transactions per second per block will also be increased, enabling developers/users to utilize the faster technology and the growing demand.
Bitcoin Cash is on Institutional Investor Radar
Bitcoin Cash weathered the past week better than most of its peers. The altcoin was up over 2% over the week and is currently trading at 530 USD. While the rest of the market sold off, BCH held up, and positive sentiment continues to gain strength, mainly from institutional investors.
A Hong Kong firm, mFI, recently raised 500m USD for its BCH treasury, which validates BCH as a stable digital store of value in the market. BCH has also expanded its payment integrations with Visa, MasterCard and PayPal, totaling 4.2b USD with over 1.5k different payment apps on BCH. This well-known altcoin is gaining institutional recognition and will continue its run.
Ripple ETF and RLUSD Expansion
Recent ETF demand for Ripple and possible regulatory wins in the coming weeks should rally the XRP price even higher. The XRP spot ETFs saw inflows of 670m USD despite the price drop, led by Canary Capital. This inflow represents around 27% of Assets Under Management (AUM) and has locked up 352m XRP.
Ripple received a Major Payment Institution (MPI) license yesterday after the Monetary Authority of Singapore granted regulatory approval. This will enable XRP to expand to institutional and retail investors with its RLUSD stablecoin and increase cross-border transactions. The United Arab Emirates gave XRP the green light last month to conduct regulated financial activities, further expanding its global footprint.
These two factors (ETF/RLSUSD) only strengthen XRPs’ credibility in the crypto market and in the financial solutions sectors.
The last week was a very volatile one with a significant selloff and correction, and it has since stabilized as of today. A small number of selective altcoins showed resilience against the bearish downturn as a combination of several factors; ETFs, a blockchain upgrade and macroeconomic headwinds made the week a tough one for traders. The shakeup of the market this past week has set the stage for an uncertain coming week, bull or bear…?
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