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As the United States awakens from its Thanksgiving turkey coma, the cryptocurrency market is doing anything but sleeping. Bitcoin is once again flirting with the psychological $91,000 level, altcoins are flashing green in pockets, and behind the scenes, some of the most significant structural changes in years are quietly taking shape. Here’s the most comprehensive snapshot of where crypto stands right now.

Bitcoin Holds the Line at $91K – But the Real Story Is Beneath the Price
After dipping to an overnight low of $90,600, BTC has reclaimed $91,000 in Asian and early European trading hours, currently trading around $91,200–$91,800 (depending on the exchange). The 24-hour change looks modest (+1.8 % on average), but the price action tells a bigger tale:

- Open interest in BTC perpetual futures has risen 6 % in the last 48 hours while funding rates remain only mildly positive (0.008–0.012 %). Translation: leverage is piling in, but not in a reckless way yet.
- The CME Bitcoin futures basis (annualized) has jumped back above 11 %, signaling that traditional institutions are once again paying a premium to hold long exposure into year-end.
- On-chain data from Glassnode shows the percentage of Bitcoin supply that is illiquid (held by entities with no history of selling) just hit a new all-time high of 81.3 %. In simple terms: HODLers are not blinking.

Analysts are split. Some (e.g., CryptoQuant’s Ki Young Ju) argue that $100 k is now “programmed” before January 2026 because of this supply shock. Others warn that Bitcoin dominance sitting at 58.5 % means capital is still rotating back into BTC at the expense of altcoins, delaying any meaningful “altseason.”

Ethereum Just Executed One of Its Most Important Upgrades in Years – And Hardly Anyone Noticed
While headlines chase price, Ethereum validators quietly voted to raise the block gas limit from 30 million to 60 million – a 100 % increase. The change was activated at epoch 217,008 earlier this week.

What does this actually mean?

- Theoretical maximum throughput jumps from ~120 TPS to ~240 TPS (real-world will be lower, but still a massive boost).
- Average gas price during Asian hours has already fallen from 12 gwei to sub-7 gwei.
- Rollup-centric roadmap gets breathing room: L2s now have far more “block space” to inherit before the next hard fork (likely Pectra in mid-2026).

The upgrade passed with 54.7 % validator support – not overwhelming, but enough to show the network can still coordinate major economic changes without endless drama.

XRP, Ripple, and the ETF That Refuses to Pump
Despite Brad Garlinghouse’s optimistic comments about “strong inflows” into the Grayscale XRP Trust and the newly launched Franklin Templeton XRP ETF, the numbers tell a different story. Combined assets under management for both products sit at just under $180 million – peanuts compared to the billions flowing into Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs.

XRP price remains trapped in a multi-month symmetrical triangle, with resistance at $0.74 and support at $0.62. Binance’s XRP holdings just hit their lowest level of 2025 (1.87 billion XRP), which is typically bullish, yet sentiment on X remains sour. One viral post summed it up: “If XRP can’t rally on ETF news, regulatory clarity, and a pro-crypto U.S. administration, what exactly will make it rally?”

Whales Are Moving – And They’re Not Selling (Yet)
The biggest on-chain story of the week continues to be the “9-year-old Ethereum whale” that has now moved 6,000 ETH (~$18.2 million at current prices) in six separate 1,000–1,300 ETH chunks since November 17. All transfers have landed at Wintermute OTC desks. This is not panic selling; it looks like a sophisticated entity repositioning liquidity ahead of expected year-end volatility.

Meanwhile, in Bitcoin land, the number of addresses holding ≥1,000 BTC has risen by 127 in the past 30 days – the fastest accumulation pace since January 2025.

Macro Tailwinds Are Lining Up Perfectly
Markets are now pricing an 85–87 % probability of a 25 bps Fed rate cut at the December 17–18 FOMC meeting. Historically, the first rate cut of an easing cycle has been rocket fuel for risk assets, including crypto. Add in:

- Donald Trump openly calling Bitcoin “the greatest financial revolution since the internet” in a Thanksgiving interview.
- Eric Trump demonstrating a $500 million Bitcoin transfer with $0.87 in fees “to show banks what’s coming.”
- The Philippines announcing a national goal of tokenizing $60 billion in real-world assets by 2030 (they’ve already tokenized 47 % of outstanding government bonds).

Altcoin Bright Spots (Yes, They Still Exist)
While Bitcoin dominates capital flows, a few narratives are outperforming:

1. Privacy coins: Zcash +28.86 %, Dash +20.09 %, Monero +11 % in 24 h – likely rotation ahead of expected U.S. regulatory clarity on self-custody.
2. Real-World Assets (RWA): Ondo Finance, Centrifuge, and Sky (formerly Maker) all up 4–9 % as BlackRock’s Larry Fink doubles down on tokenization.
3. AI tokens: DeepSeek, Alibaba Cloud AI, and Bittensor making headlines after Chinese tech giants name-drop specific cryptos in year-end forecasts.

What to Watch in the Next 10 Days
- December 3–4: Deadline for SEC to appeal the Ripple programmatic sales ruling (most expect no appeal).
- December 6: U.S. jobs report – a weak print could push Fed cut odds to 100 %.
- December 9: Potential spot Solana ETF decision deadline (VanEck, 21Shares, and Franklin Templeton filings).
- December 17–18: FOMC meeting – the event that could ignite the next leg up.

Final Takeaway
Crypto in late November 2025 feels eerily similar to late 2020: Bitcoin grinding sideways near previous all-time highs, on-chain holders refusing to sell, institutions quietly accumulating, macro turning friendly, and most retail investors sitting on the sidelines convinced “it’s different this time.”

It probably isn’t.

The ingredients for a violent Q4–Q1 move are all here. The only question is whether the spark comes from the Fed, from politics, from another black-swan whale move, or simply from price breaking $94,000 and triggering the mother of all short squeezes.

Buckle up. The quiet never lasts long in this industry.

(Always DYOR. None of this is financial advice.)

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