Digital asset investors are making another attempt to recover their losses before the year ends, as Bitcoin approached the $90,000 threshold for the second consecutive day on Tuesday before its upward momentum paused.
The leading cryptocurrency has been fluctuating between approximately $85,000 and $95,000 following a decline in October that threatens to mark its first annual drop in three years. Since last December, Bitcoin’s value has decreased by about 5%. Earlier this year, it experienced a roughly 30% increase and hit an all-time high in early October.
Jasper De Maere, a desk strategist at Wintermute, noted that traders should anticipate significant volatility amid low trading volumes through the New Year period. He cautioned against overinterpreting short-term trends until market activity normalizes again.
Impact of Trump-era Policies on Cryptocurrency Markets
The new year began with positive momentum for digital currencies due to optimism surrounding support from the Trump administration. However, apprehensions regarding President Donald Trump’s tariff strategies—which unsettled global markets—negatively affected Bitcoin’s price. While other risk assets like U.S. equities rebounded after mid-October’s turmoil when record leveraged positions were liquidated, Bitcoin remained subdued.
Bitcoin-focused exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have experienced outflows recently that exert downward pressure on prices. According to Bloomberg Intelligence data, these ETFs lost around $6 billion during Q4 as Bitcoin struggled to stay above $90K.
Rising Open Interest Amidst Reduced Trading Activity
As previously reported by Cryptopolitan, despite a 40% decrease in trading volume throughout December, Open Interest within digital assets surged by $2.4 billion during the same timeframe. Specifically,BTC and ETH futures contracts expanded from $35 billion up to nearly $38 billion—a 7% increase in leveraged positions.
This month alone saw Bitcoin’s Open Interest rise from approximately $22 billion to about $23 billion while Ethereum’s grew by roughly $1.4 billion—from near$13billionto$15billion.CryptoQuant analysts highlightedthatthisoccurredwithBitcoinhoveringaround$88KandtheFearIndexregisteringat37points.
Larger exchanges such as Binance , OKX , and Bybit continued accumulating positions throughout December . CryptoQuant interprets this trendasindicativeoftradersmaintainingoptimismratherthangivingupinthefaceofmarketuncertainty .