If December closes in the red, it will be the fourth month in a row with a loss and 9 in total this year. This already happened in 2018, and we all know how it ended globally for the asset.
Many have bought a coin and are now panicking - friends, don't worry and calmly hold your positions further. Yes, the market is falling, it is unpleasant, but it is impossible to draw any conclusions about the global structure, since we have an extremely controversial market configuration.
Altcoins fall only because of $BTC , like $ETH . There is no individualism, and in such conditions it is impossible to evaluate the project itself.
I've noticed an interesting trend: over the past month, many large wallets have suddenly started opening long positions in ETH, buying up the asset, and exiting BTC in favor of ETH. Here's a clear example: a whale sold another $45.35 million in BTC and transferred $45.24 million to ETH.
Over the past three weeks, he's accumulated $181.42 million in Ethereum. There are many such wallets, and they've only begun to move in the last few weeks.
They've also been exiting BTC for ETH before, but not as actively as they are now.
Also, ETF results for two years
With the launch of spot ETFs and purchases by companies and corporate investors, the total volume of BTC held by public and private companies has grown from 197,000 BTC to 1,080,000 BTC, a 450% increase since January 2023.
Many spot ETFs are still pending. Currently, decisions are pending on 126 applications for a variety of altcoin spot ETFs. However, don't get too excited, as the launches of SOL spot ETFs have shown that demand for altcoins is weak, and large capital is only interested in BTC and ETH, which currently look weak.
Currently, there are 15 pending applications for $BTC spot ETFs, 10 for $XRP , 9 for $SOL , 7 for $ETH , 4 for $AVAX, and many other altcoins. I believe almost all of them will be approved by 2026, and while BTC and ETH are in demand, something like AVAX is extremely unlikely.
However, no matter how you look at it, the news surrounding the approval of a spot ETF for a particular coin is a major event, and you can try buying coins from the waiting list in hopes of pumps of 15% to 50%, depending on the coin's market capitalization.
🩸Statistically, 2026 could be an extremely negative year for cryptocurrencies.
If we look at history and how $BTC performs during the US midterm elections, we'll see a 59% correction in 2014, a 75% correction in 2018, and a 64% correction in 2022. History doesn't have to repeat itself, especially since everything points to cycle shifts, but it's best to keep this in mind.
If a bear market begins in 2026, we could very well fall somewhere around $30,000
🐋 $BTC inflows to Binance from whales are noticeably declining. Currently, the average annual figure is 6,500 BTC, which is extremely low. If we look at the weekly figure, it's 5,200 $BTC — the lowest value for this cycle.
However, it's not clear that this trend is positive, as there are currently a large number of exchanges, and not all investors are considering Binance. Some find it more convenient to trade on other exchanges.
📉 Short-term $BTC investors are suffering losses and are preparing to capitulate.
The market's protracted phase continues, and liquidity is gradually accumulating, preparing us for a momentum move in one direction. Short-term Bitcoin holders are still losing money. The average loss for this category of players is 10%.
This has often been a harbinger of a strong move due to the large amount of stuck liquidity. All this points to market growth and the removal of short-term liquidity. A withdrawal to $100,000 will eliminate over $6 billion in liquidity in the form of stops.
Over the past five years, ETH has traded very close to the average purchase price for whales holding at least 100,000 coins only four times. Two of these occurred in 2022, and the remaining instances occurred this year.
However, as soon as the price attempts to fall below this price, thereby pushing major players into the red, they actively buy back in each of these instances.
Bitmine continues to accumulate its $ETH positions. The company remains bullish on Ethereum's prospects and continues to increase its holdings. They made another purchase, acquiring 4,959 ETH, equivalent to $46 millions.
Bitmine remains a leading investor in $ETH , and this purchase further widened the gap between them.
Based on this, we can conclude that whales are ready to buy back any dips in the asset and are quite confident in its potential, as they are not eager to sell their coins, but rather continue to accumulate them.
Amid expectations of a key rate cut, the company decided to purchase an additional 33,504 ETH for a total of $112 million.
Currently, it holds 3,864,951 $ETH , along with 193 $BTC
The CEO of BitMine is optimistic and is betting on market growth early next year.
Overall, my position is similar. I also expect a positive start to the year, so I recommend you consider buying Ethereum ecosystem coins, although I've already mentioned them. Perhaps some haven't yet decided to add to their positions, but now is the time.
Bitwise's chief investment officer, Matt Hougan, presented their model for valuing $BTC . Their target is $1.3 millions in 10 years. This theory is based on the potential growth of $BTC share of gold's market capitalization from 9 to 25 percent.
This is essentially a guess—who will even remember all these conferences and big talk in 10 years? If BTC doesn't even come close to this target, the company will simply remain silent. If it does, headlines like "We warned you" will appear.
This is a viable idea for buying BTC for 10 years, but this strategy is only suitable for those with capital of $50,000+ and who can afford to leave it alone for the entire 10 years. Otherwise, it's better to work in cycles and not just with BTC.
All indications are that the market is recovering – leverage has decreased, speculative interest has declined, and some risky positions have been eliminated.
The market is improving, but now is the most important moment that will determine the subsequent trend.
The Fed has cut rates for the third time in a row. Overall, as everyone expected, we saw a key rate cut. However, as I told you, with a 25-basis cut, we expect only a slight increase, given that this was already priced into the market.
📊 There was some volatility based on expectations, with $BTC hitting the $94,000 mark, but as of now, we've returned back to the $90,000 region.
We likely won't see any major price movements by the end of the year; everyone is slowly starting to prepare for the holidays and relax. For now, I'm leaning toward a sideways range of $85,000 - $90,000 without any major moves
🐋 Whales and sharks are showing a tendency to accumulate Ether, having accumulated approximately 930,000 ETH over the past three weeks.
Retail investors, however, are leaning toward selling the asset; they have sold 1,040 coins over the past week, but compared to whales' purchases, this is a small amount and has no impact on the altcoin's price.
$ETH has shown a net gain of +9% over the past 24 hours, which is, of course, largely due to its strong correlation with $BTC . But the trend is clearly positive, and we could still see significant growth in this asset in the current cycle.
📉 Investors began to realize the collapse of companies.
As soon as the $BTC spot ETF launched, many companies began buying $BTC and $ETH onto their balance sheets, and their shares skyrocketed. I think you remember all that news, and even then I told you that I didn't understand the logic, as the companies themselves were greatly overvalued.
But it was just hype, and companies, realizing this, began buying BTC en masse. As time went on and the market correction intensified, investors realized that buying BTC wasn't helping companies develop. The hype died down.
Now we see a picture of company shares plummeting. On average, the decline in such shares has reached 43%, and for some projects, as much as 99%. Now companies are struggling to pay interest and dividends on bonds and preferred shares issued to finance the acquisition of crypto onto their balance sheets.
The signs are extremely alarming and everything is gradually preparing for a large-scale bear market collapse.
In just the first eight days of December, large wallets bought an additional 47,000 $BTC . The market is in an active accumulation phase, which is not typical for the potential bearish trend that many are raising. While we don't have a certain stability in the sideways movement and the potential for a correction remains, in percentage terms, we are heavily biased toward a normalization of the situation.
💰 Strategy also made another purchase of $BTC .
Despite the fact that the pace of this company's purchases has significantly slowed this year, it still continues to gradually accumulate the asset.
They recently purchased 10,624 BTC for ~$962.7M, at an average price of $90,615 per coin. The firm's cryptocurrency reserves have reached 660,624 BTC—approximately $59.5B. Since August 2020, Strategy has spent a total of approximately $49.35B on digital gold acquisitions.
For now, the market is frozen in anticipation of the December 10 rate decision and Powell's speech, which will carry even more weight than the rate change data itself.
💰The supply of $ETH on exchanges is gradually declining.
Currently, there is a trend of ETH being withdrawn from exchanges and moved into long-term storage through staking or restaking.
The volume of coins held on exchanges has fallen to 8.7% of the total supply, a record low since the network's launch.
This trend will significantly reduce selling pressure, and we will not see any significant correction in the current cycle.
Also, CoinShares' weekly report on attractive inflows.
This week turned out to be profitable, with $716M in inflows to the community. $BTC, of course, had the largest inflow, with $352M. $XRP , surprisingly, came in second with $245M, and $LINK came in third with $52.8M.
Investment inflows were broad-based, led by the United States ($483M), Germany ($96.9M), and Canada ($80.7M).
Short positions recorded negative outflows following the talks, indicating a easing of negative sentiment.
📊 A strong sign that altos are preparing for a rally.
Altcoin trading volumes have dropped sharply, which often happens during periods of accumulation and peaks of market fear. We're back in the buying zone: 30-day volumes have fallen below the annual average.
Altos still have potential to fall by around 20% to 30% overall, but all indications are that this will be the final round of correction, which will largely offset the squeezes in altos.
🐋 Also, one of the whales has been actively buying.
He recently bought 10 assets worth approximately $13.9 million, taking advantage of the market crash and moving them to an on-chain wallet.
We've now reached a difficult market area where all we can do is guess and try to flip a coin in our favor. The current correction has reached 32%—a level that could prove to be either a local bottom, like in 2021, or a harbinger of a new bear cycle, like at the very beginning of 2022.
And no one can give you a definitive answer right now, no analytics will help. The pattern resembles the 2021 corona-dump, but it also resembles the start of a bear cycle, albeit not metrically.
Now more than ever, you need qualities such as patience, faith, and composure. Everyone must place their bet, a bet where everything is on the line.
Altcoins can grow even during a bearish trend; it's enough to lose the capitalization of $BTC and its ratio to the total market capitalization, so that while $BTC is falling, altcoins can rebound by 2-3x and quickly zero out their growth, passing the baton to the next coin and the next.
🐋 Major $BTC whales are gradually switching from selling to accumulation.
The trend has begun to gradually reverse, and the aggressive selling we observed in November is gradually subsiding. Systematic buying is now occurring among virtually all whale groups. If this trend continues, we could soon return to the $100,000 range for Bitcoin.
There's also an interest rate forecast. The probability of a rate cut is over 90%. With only four days left until the key market day, we've fully factored in our expectations, namely a 25 basis point reduction.
The market is still sluggish; trading volumes dropped significantly over the weekend. We'll see what happens at the start of the work week.
🐋 One of the whales began transferring his coins to Binance while other whales were launching stablecoins.
This investor held his assets for over a year, but his investment is now in the red, with an unrealized loss of $4 million.
Here is the list of coins: - 3.43 million $ONDO ($1.69 million), loss of $1.03 millions - 621,914 $WLD ($387,000), loss of $1.11 millions - 967,558 $FET ($243,000), loss of $1.07 millions - 623,055 $ARKM ($146,000), loss of $1 millions
Most likely, he is wary of a further market correction and decided to lock in the losses on his positions.
🐳 At the same time, several whales have transferred funds to exchanges over the past 24 hours. $USDe stablecoins worth $48.9 million, $11.5 million, and $8.9 million were sent to Bybit.
These stablecoin transfers to exchanges may indicate whales' desire to gradually begin buying back the market.