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 today it was 22, so it’s somewhat optimistic compared to 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 see the dip as a buying opportunity while others are taking a more cautious approach. Regardless, the coming days will be interesting.
What Happened to BTC?
Yesterday saw Bitcoin hit its lowest levels since March 2025 as it hit 84k but 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 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 BTC decline in the past week. Most troubling was the flash selloff, which saw BTC drop 5% in 5 hours. Many believe the initial drop caused panic selling and furthered the drop in price. BTC recovered over the trading session and retraced some of its daily losses. Another factor is the Bank of Japan may raise their 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 biggest coin by market cap touched 2.7k USD but bounced back and is currently trading around the 2.8k USD level. In the past 24 hours, open interest has gone up 4%, which indicates that speculators are opening new positions, inflows of 650m USD. ETH has experienced this pattern in the past, 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 pieces of data 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, increasing the 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 from mainly institutional investors. A Hong Kong firm, mFI, recently raised 500m USD for their 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 in the market 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 had an inflow of 670m USD despite the drop in price, 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 regulatory approval was given by the Singaporean Monetary Authority. 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 greenlight last month to carry out regulated financial activities, increasing its global footprint even further.
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 major selloff and correction and 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 block-chain 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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