Tom Lee has reiterated one of the most aggressive Ethereum targets in the market, telling attendees at Binance Blockchain Week on 4 December that ETH could eventually trade at $62,000 as it becomes the core infrastructure for tokenized finance.

“Okay, so let me explain to you why Ethereum, now that we’ve talked about crypto, […] is the future of finance,” Lee said on stage. He framed 2025 as Ethereum’s “1971 moment,” drawing a direct analogy to when the US dollar left the gold standard and triggered a wave of financial innovation.

Lee’s Thesis For Ethereum

“In 1971, the dollar went off the gold standard. And in 1971, it galvanized Wall Street to create financial products to make sure the dollar would be the reserve currency,” Lee argued. “Well, in 2025, we’re tokenizing everything. So it’s not just the dollar that’s getting tokenized, but it’s stocks, bonds, real estate.”

In his view, this shift positions ETH as the primary settlement and execution layer for tokenized assets. “Wall Street is, again, going to take advantage of that and create products onto a smart contract platform. And where they’re building this is on Ethereum,” he said. Lee pointed to current real-world asset experiments as early evidence, noting that “the majority of this, the vast majority, is being built on Ethereum,” and adding that “Ethereum has won the smart contract war.”

Lee also stressed that ETH’s market behavior has not yet reflected that structural role. “As you know, ETH has been range bound for five years, as I’ve shaded here. But it’s begun to break out,” he told the audience, explaining why he “got very involved with Ethereum by turning Bitmine into an ETH treasury company, because we saw this breakout coming.”

The core of his valuation case is expressed through the ETH/BTC ratio. Lee expects Bitcoin to move sharply higher in the near term: “I think Bitcoin is going to get to $250,000 within a few months.” From there, he derives two key ETH scenarios.

First, if the ETH/BTC price relationship simply reverts to its historical mean, he sees substantial upside. “If ETH price ratio to Bitcoin gets back to its eight year average, that’s $12,000 for Ethereum,” he said. Second, in a more aggressive case where ETH appreciates to a quarter of Bitcoin’s price, his long-standing $62,000 target emerges: “If it gets to 0.25 relative to Bitcoin, that’s $62,000.”

TOM LEE CALLS FOR $62,000 $ETH

“I think Ethereum’s going to become the future of finance, the payment rails of the future and if it gets to .25 relative to Bitcoin that’s $62,000. Ethereum at $3,000 is grossly undervalued.” pic.twitter.com/VydvLou9IE

— CryptosRus (@CryptosR_Us) December 4, 2025

Lee links these ratios directly to the tokenization narrative. “If 2026 is about tokenization, that means Ether’s utility value should be rising. Therefore, you should watch this ratio,” he told the crowd, arguing that valuation should track growing demand for ETH blockspace and its role as “the payment rails of the future.”

He concluded with a pointed assessment of current levels: “I think Ethereum at $3,000, of course, is grossly undervalued.”

At press time, ETH traded at $3,128.

Crypto analyst Miles Deutscher has issued one of the most forceful bottom calls of this cycle, assigning a 91.5% probability that Bitcoin’s low is already in. In a X thread on December 4, he wrote: “F*ck it. I’m putting my neck on the line here. I’m 91.5% certain that the BTC bottom is in. And if it is, A LOT of people are about to be caught offside.”

Is The Bitcoin Bottom In?

Deutscher bases his conviction on four “pillars”: market reaction to news, the historical behaviour of FUD events, a shift in flows, and an improving global liquidity backdrop. Each pillar is scored in an internal model that culminates in a 91.5/100 bullish reading.

He starts with price behaviour versus headlines. Over recent days, he notes, the market has digested an “influx of bad news” – including renewed Tether FUD, another round of “China banning crypto,” MicroStrategy scrutiny and concerns around a Bank of Japan–driven yen carry trade unwind.

“Despite all this bad news, price rallied,” he writes, calling this “the first time since the major selloff began” that Bitcoin has responded positively to a destructive news cycle. He underscores an old trading adage: “The reaction to news is more important than the news itself. This tells you everything you need to know.”

The second pillar is a systematic look at whether such FUD clusters tend to coincide with local lows. Deutscher says he backtested “every single time Tether, China, BOJ, and Microstrategy FUD entered the market” in a similar way. His conclusion is stark: “Every single time, these FUD events marked a local bottom. Tether FUD = bottom.

China ‘banning’ crypto = bottom. Bank of Japan/carry trade concerns = bottom. Microstrategy FUD = bottom.” On this basis, his AI model assigns the maximum score of 28/28 to this pillar. He cautions that “in isolation, this factor doesn’t matter much,” but argues that, combined with the first pillar, it “starts to paint a convincing bull case.”

The third pillar is flows, which he calls “the most critical factor (net buy/sell pressure).” For the past weeks, flows were “aggressively negative” with OG whales selling and ETFs dumping. Recently, he argues, this picture has changed. ETF inflows are “starting to stabilise & uptick,” treasury-company holdings remain stable, and “OG whales have stopped relentlessly dumping (this is clear on the orderbooks).” This earns a 22.5/25 score in his model. He adds one key caveat: as long as DATs exist, “there are material risks.”

The fourth pillar is the liquidity and macro environment. Deutscher notes that market liquidity had been tightening for months, but now “things are shifting back toward increased market liquidity,” with global financial conditions “reloosened to near highs.” He highlights “macro tailwinds” and adds that a new, potentially more dovish Fed chair is coming and “QT has now officially ended.” This set of factors receives a 9/10 score in his framework.

Aggregating all four pillars leads to the headline figure: “With all four market pillars taken into account, we arrive at a final score of 91.5/100.”

Deutscher, however, explicitly lists caveats. He points out that US markets “have been on a massive run” and may need to cool off, that DATs “are still seeing some short-term pressure,” and that ETF flows “can flip negative at any time.” His conclusion is probabilistic rather than absolute: “Markets are a game of probabilities, and I think the odds are in favour of the bottom being in – given the extreme FUD we’ve had and the market’s reaction to it.”

At press time, Bitcoin traded at $91,035.

Crypto research firm Delphi Digital argues that global dollar liquidity has quietly flipped from a structural headwind to a marginal tailwind for risk assets for the first time since early 2022 – with 2026 emerging as the key inflection point for digital assets.

In a macro thread on X, Delphi says “the Fed’s rate path heading into next year is the clearest it’s been in years.” Futures imply another 25-basis-point cut by December 2025, taking the federal funds rate to roughly 3.5–3.75%. “The forward curve prices at least 3 more cuts through 2026, putting us in the low 3s by year-end if the path holds,” the firm notes.

Short-term benchmarks have already adjusted. According to Delphi, “SOFR and fed funds have drifted toward the high 3% range. Real rates have rolled over from their 2023–2024 peaks. But nothing has collapsed. This is a controlled descent rather than a pivot.” The characterization is important: this is not a return to zero rates, but a gradual easing that removes pressure on duration and high-beta assets.

The more consequential shift is in the liquidity plumbing. “QT ends on December 1. The TGA is set to draw down rather than refill. The RRP has been fully depleted,” Delphi writes. “Together, these create the first net positive liquidity environment since early 2022.”

Crypto Bulls Can Rejoice As The Macro Regime Is Shifting

In a follow-up post, the firm is explicit: “The Fed’s liquidity buffer is gone. Reverse Repo Balances collapsed from over $2 trillion at the peak to practically zero.” In 2023, a swollen RRP allowed the Treasury to refill its General Account without directly draining bank reserves, because money-market funds could absorb issuance out of the RRP. “With the RRP now at the floor, that buffer no longer exists,” Delphi warns.

From here, “any future Treasury issuance or TGA rebuild has to come directly out of bank reserves.” That forces a policy choice. As Delphi puts it, “The Fed is left with two options: let reserves drift lower and risk another repo spike or expand the balance sheet to provide liquidity directly. Given how badly 2019 went, the second path is far more likely.”

In that scenario, the central bank would shift from shrinking its balance sheet to adding reserves, reversing a core dynamic of the past two years. “Combined with QT ending and the TGA set to draw down, marginal liquidity is turning net positive for the first time since early 2022,” Delphi concludes. “A key headwind for crypto could be fading.”

For the crypto market, the firm frames 2026 as the pivotal year: “2026 is the year policy stops being a headwind and becomes a mild tailwind. The kind that favors duration, large caps, gold, and digital assets with structural demand behind them.”

Rather than calling for an immediate price spike, Delphi’s thesis is that the macro regime is shifting toward a more supportive, liquidity-positive backdrop for Bitcoin and larger crypto assets as policy eases and the era of aggressive balance-sheet contraction comes to an end.

At press time, the total crypto market cap was at $3.1 trillion.

Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan is pushing back against one of the loudest bearish narratives around bitcoin treasury company Strategy (MSTR, formerly MicroStrategy): that it could be forced into a liquidation of its roughly $60 billion bitcoin stack. In his latest CIO memo, Hougan writes bluntly that “Michael Saylor and Strategy selling bitcoin is not one of” the real risks in crypto.

Will Strategy Sell Its Bitcoin?

The immediate trigger for market anxiety is MSCI’s consultation on whether to remove so-called digital asset treasury companies (DATs) like Strategy from its investable indexes. Nearly $17 trillion in assets tracks those benchmarks, and JPMorgan estimates index funds might have to sell up to $2.8 billion of MSTR if it is excluded.

MSCI’s rationale is structural: it views many DATs as closer to holding companies or funds than operating companies, and its investable universes already exclude holding structures such as REITs.

Hougan, a self-described “deep index geek” who previously spent a decade editing the Journal of Indexes, says he can “see this going either way.” Michael Saylor and others are arguing that Strategy remains very much an operating software company with “complex financial engineering around bitcoin,” and Hougan agrees that this is a reasonable characterization. But he notes that DATs are divisive, MSCI is currently leaning toward excluding them, and he “would guess there is at least a 75% chance Strategy gets booted” when MSCI announces its decision on January 15.

He argues, however, that even a removal is unlikely to be catastrophic for the stock. Large, mechanical index flows are often anticipated and “priced in well ahead of time.” Hougan points out that when MSTR was added to the Nasdaq-100 last December, funds tracking the index had to buy about $2.1 billion of stock, yet “its price barely moved.”

He believes some of the downside in MSTR since October 10 already reflects investors discounting a probable MSCI removal, and that “at this point, I don’t think you’ll see substantial swings either way.” Over the long term, he insists, “the value of MSTR is based on how well it executes its strategy, not on whether index funds are forced to own it.”

The more dramatic claim is the so-called MSTR “doom loop”: MSCI exclusion leads to heavy selling, the stock trades far below NAV, and Strategy is somehow forced to sell its bitcoin. Here Hougan is unequivocal: “The argument feels logical. Unfortunately for the bears, it’s just flat wrong. There is nothing about MSTR’s price dropping below NAV that will force it to sell.”

He breaks the problem down to actual balance sheet constraints. Strategy, he says, has two key obligations: about $800 million per year in interest payments and the need to refinance or redeem specific debt instruments as they mature.

Smaller DATs Are The Bigger Problem

On interest, the company currently has approximately $1.4 billion in cash, enough to “make its dividend payments easily for a year and a half” without touching its bitcoin or needing heroic capital markets access. On principal, the first major maturity does not arrive until February 2027, and that tranche is “only about $1 billion—chump change” compared with the roughly $60 billion in bitcoin the company holds.

Governance further reduces the likelihood of forced selling. Michael Saylor controls around 42% of Strategy’s voting shares and is, in Hougan’s words, a person with extraordinary “conviction on bitcoin’s long-term value.” He notes that Saylor “didn’t sell the last time MSTR stock traded at a discount, in 2022.”

Hougan concedes that a forced liquidation would be structurally significant for bitcoin, roughly equivalent to two years of spot ETF inflows dumped back into the market. He simply does not see a credible path from MSCI index mechanics and equity volatility to that outcome “with no debt due until 2027 and enough cash to cover interest payments for the foreseeable future.” At the time of writing, he notes, bitcoin trades around $92,000, about 27% below its highs but still 24% above Strategy’s average acquisition price of $74,436 per coin. “So much for the doom.”

Hougan ends by stressing that there are real issues to worry about in crypto—slow-moving market structure legislation, fragile and “poorly run” smaller DATs, and a likely slowdown in DAT bitcoin purchases in 2026. But on Strategy specifically, his conclusion is direct: he “wouldn’t worry about the impact of MSCI’s decision on the stock price” and sees “no plausible near-term mechanism that would force it to sell its bitcoin. It’s not going to happen.”

At press time, BTC traded at $92,086.

Dogecoin is hovering near $0.15, but a cluster of technical and on-chain indicators shared on X suggests the market structure is far healthier than during the last bear phase, prompting fresh upside calls from analysts.

Dogecoin Could Target $1.30

Trader Cryptollica posted a long-term monthly DOGE chart with the Mayer Multiple and a clear message: “DOGE Target > $1.30.” The Mayer Multiple, using 200- and 50-period moving averages with a 2.4 threshold, sits at 0.66005. Visually, that is far below the spikes above 5 that accompanied the 2017 and 2021 blow-off tops, indicating that Dogecoin is not yet in the overheated conditions historically associated with major market peaks.

Cryptollica also highlighted an Alphractal chart titled “Dogecoin: Number of Days Spent at a Loss.” The series overlays DOGE’s price with a multicolour histogram of how long coins have been held in unrealised loss.

Earlier cycle lows around 2014–2015 and the post-2021 unwind show extended peaks above roughly 1,200–1,500 days at a loss. In the latest segment, that metric has compressed back toward the lower end of the scale, resembling the early reset phases that preceded previous advances, and signalling that the proportion of long-suffering holders has markedly declined.

DOGE On-Chain Data Looks Strong

On the shorter-term on-chain side, Ali Martinez (@ali_charts) pointed to a sharp rebound in network activity. “Dogecoin just saw 71,589 active addresses. The biggest spike since September,” he wrote, sharing Glassnode data.

The chart “DOGE: Number of Active Addresses” plots daily active addresses as yellow bars against the DOGE price in black. From early November, activity ranged around 45,000–47,500 addresses while price drifted lower from about $0.17 to $0.14. On December 3, active addresses jumped to 71,589 as price recovered to $0.15181709, signalling a broadening of participation rather than a purely price-driven move.

Ali also drew attention to whale behaviour. Posting a Santiment chart of balances held by addresses with between 1,000,000 and 100,000,000 DOGE, he noted: “480 million Dogecoin bought by whales in 48 hours!”

The grey area representing holdings in this band trends down from around 35.6 billion DOGE in mid-October to below 28 billion by late November while price falls from above $0.18 to about $0.135, indicating sustained distribution. In the final days of the chart, holdings rose again to roughly 28.45 billion as price rebounded from $0.14 to $0.15, confirming a renewed net accumulation phase among large holders.

A third chart from Ali, “DOGE: Cost Basis Distribution Heatmap,” defines the next major technical hurdle. “$0.20 is the key resistance for Dogecoin. That’s where 11.72 billion $DOGE were accumulated,” he wrote.

The Glassnode heatmap highlights a dense band between $0.20284609 and $0.20442947, with an annotated supply of 11,723,527,138.97 DOGE whose on-chain cost basis lies in that range. This cluster marks a heavy realised-price node where a large volume of coins moves from loss to breakeven as spot revisits $0.20, creating a clearly defined resistance zone.

In combination, subdued valuation on the Mayer Multiple, a reset in “days at a loss,” the largest active-address spike since September, recent whale accumulation of 480 million DOGE and a well-defined $0.20 cost-basis wall form a favourable on-chain basis. Whether those higher levels are reached will depend on the market’s ability to absorb the 11.72 billion DOGE supply stacked around $0.20 and sustain the recent improvement in on-chain activity and large-holder demand.

At press time, DOGE traded at $0.14451.

Bitcoin is again trading under the shadow of a potential yen carry-trade shock as markets head into the 9–10 December FOMC meeting and a likely hawkish turn from the Bank of Japan at the December 18-19 meeting. The setup echoes last summer’s episode, when a policy shift in Tokyo triggered rapid deleveraging across risk assets, including crypto.

Will The Bitcoin Price Crash Next Week?

Analyst Benjamin Cowen explicitly links today’s environment to that July shock. He reminded followers that “in July 2024, the Fed cut rates while the BOJ raised rates, leading to the unwind of the carry trade. Bitcoin capitulated into it, and found a low 1 week later.” He added, “Good chance this happens again on December 10th (Fed cuts, BOJ raises rates). So maybe Bitcoin finds a low mid-Dec?”

The precise sequencing last year was more nuanced – markets aggressively priced Fed easing while the BoJ surprised with a hike – but the core mechanism Cowen highlights is the same: when US policy is moving toward looser conditions just as Japan tightens, the long-running yen carry trade becomes unstable and high-beta assets sell off hard.

Truflation’s thread lays out why this matters for Bitcoin and the wider crypto market. Large institutions and commercial banks “borrow money in Yen where interest rates are historically and famously low, and use that money to invest in the US.” They can park the funds in interest-bearing instruments to “earn healthy 3–4%” on the spread, or “more often, they invest in stocks and bonds to get way more.” This is reinforced by a BoJ policy of keeping the yen cheap against the dollar.

The danger arises when stocks fall and the yen starts to rise or is expected to rise. Then “institutional and Commercial borrowers may exit, so as not to get stuck with significant losses on their Yen debts.” They “sell whatever assets they purchased in the US and get back into Yen to pay back their loans in Japan, resulting in a cascade of US asset sales and Yen purchases.” After “years of Yen carry trade being a relatively safe way for big banks and institutional investors to make easy money,” even a modest normalization can force broad, mechanical de-risking — and Bitcoin, as a liquid, leveraged risk asset, sits directly in that firing line.

Crypto trader Kevin (@Kev_Capital_TA) underscores how tight the current window is. He notes that “we have the Fed’s preferred measure to track inflation via the Core PCE inflation and then the FOMC all in the next six days,” followed by a BoJ press conference on 19 December that will be “massive for Dollar, short end and long end of the yield curve not to mention Yen carry trade fears.” In a separate post, he stresses that “the JP10Y continues to make new highs. Pretty big deal folks,” highlighting that Japanese yields are grinding higher into that meeting and increasing pressure on the BoJ to act.

A few days ago, BitMEX founder Arthur Hayes connected that macro repricing directly to Bitcoin’s latest leg down. “BTC dumped cause BOJ put Dec rate hike in play. USDJPY 155–160 makes BOJ hawkish,” he argues, framing the sell-off as a funding shock rather than a crypto-native event.

Into December, futures and economist surveys put the probability of a Fed cut at roughly 80–87% for the 9–10 December meeting, even as the committee remains divided. At the same time, the BoJ is openly signalling it will “consider the pros and cons” of a hike at its 18–19 December meeting, with markets now pricing a high likelihood of tightening and 10-year JGB yields near multi-decade highs.

That combination — Fed easing expectations plus BoJ tightening risk — is exactly the configuration that threatens the yen carry and makes a repeat of July 2024’s pattern plausible: a sharp flush in Bitcoin and other risk assets, followed by a bottom once forced deleveraging runs its course.

At press time, BTC traded at $92,235.

At Binance Blockchain Week on December 3, Ripple Labs CEO Brad Garlinghouse argued that a rare alignment of regulatory change, institutional demand and real-world utility is setting up crypto for what he called powerful “macro tailwinds” heading into 2026.

“I personally will echo some of the things Richard said: there are so many macro factors that are continuing to provide tailwinds for this industry that I think as we go into 2026 I don’t remember being this optimistic in the last handful of years,” the Ripple CEO told CNBC’s Dan Murphy, speaking alongside Binance CEO Richard Teng and Solana Foundation President Lily Liu.

Ripple CEO Is Optimistic For 2026: Here’s Why

He framed the latest drawdown not as the start of a structural bear market but as a risk-off interlude against a fundamentally improved backdrop. “Crypto has gone through cycles and when you have risk-on people are excited […] now you have kind of a risk-off moment, there’s uncertainty,” he said. The difference this time, he argued, is that the United States—the largest single economy and roughly “22% of global GDP”—is finally moving away from what he described as years of open hostility toward the sector.

“This is a market that has been really openly hostile to crypto for four or five years or maybe longer, and now you have that that has changed significantly, pretty quickly,” he said. Institutions, in his view, are only beginning to adjust. He pointed to the visible presence of traditional asset managers at the event: “You saw Franklin Templeton on stage here, you saw BlackRock on stage just this week. I think Vanguard has now opened up […] Vanguard historically has said ‘we won’t touch crypto’ and now they’ve had a massive sea change.”

On crypto ETFs, the Ripple CEO rejected the idea that the trade was over-hyped. “Definitely no,” he said when asked whether the ETF “floor” narrative had been exaggerated. He stressed how new these vehicles still are in the United States and highlighted early demand for XRP products. “In the last two or three weeks over $700 million have flowed into XRP ETFs, which is just pent-up demand from institutional investors, from investors who want access because they don’t want to custody themselves,” he said.

He argued that the key metric is crypto’s still-small slice of the overall ETF universe. “The total ETF market—only one or two percent of the total ETF market is crypto. I will bet anybody here that a year from now that will be more than one or two percent,” he said. Short-term outflows from Bitcoin products, he suggested, should be viewed in context: “Over 2026 do we really think crypto ETFs are only going to be one or two percent of the total ETF market? No chance.”

Garlinghouse said Ripple’s own prime brokerage business is already seeing that shift in behavior. Institutions that had remained “on the sidelines” due to regulatory uncertainty or risk aversion are now “getting involved and they’re starting small, and they’re going to walk, then they’re going to crawl—or crawl then walk then run.” Asked directly whether recent volatility had deterred institutional capital, he replied: “Definitely not.”

Stablecoins Will Be A Key Pillar

Stablecoins were another pillar of his 2026 thesis. He agreed that in the latest risk-off phase, capital largely rotated into stablecoins rather than exiting on-chain rails, which he said reflects both utility and trust. “People are recognizing stablecoins can be stable and easier to manage,” he said.

Garlinghouse highlighted that Ripple’s own stablecoin, launched “just over a year ago,” has “just passed about a billion market cap,” is “approved and whitelisted in Abu Dhabi,” and is being used as “good collateral on various platforms from a lending point of view.” For him, stablecoins are an entry ramp to broader adoption, alongside other applications that will be built across Solana, Binance and Ripple ecosystems.

On US policy, he said the trajectory has clearly improved, especially for payment tokens. He cited the GENIUS Act as “regulatory clarity for stablecoins” and linked it to growing corporate interest in on-chain payments. After Ripple’s acquisition of GTreasury, which has visibility into “over 10 trillion dollars of payments,” he said “the number of those customers that are already approaching us interested in leveraging stablecoins […] because of that clarity, people are leaning in.”

The Ripple CEO noted that XRP has already received a form of clarity from US federal courts but said broader legislation is still needed. He referenced the “Clarity Act” for crypto, saying there is “still forward momentum” and predicting that “sometime in the first half of next year we’ll see passage of legislation, which will continue to unlock and create more tailwinds for the whole industry.”

He closed with an explicit price target for the next cycle, acknowledging he was “going out on a limb”: “I’ll say Bitcoin $180,000 December 23rd—or December 31st—2026.”

At press time, XRP traded at $2.15.

Bitcoin may be sliding into a new bear phase unless fresh macro liquidity – particularly through spot ETFs – returns to the market, according to CryptoQuant CEO Ki Young Ju.

Bitcoin Bear Market Incoming?

Sharing a composite on-chain dashboard overlaid on the BTC price, Ju wrote on X: “Most Bitcoin on-chain indicators are bearish. Without macro liquidity, we enter a bear cycle.” The chart stacks ten CryptoQuant metrics behind the price in a red-to-green heatmap from 2021 to 2025, highlighting how regime shifts in prior cycles coincided with clusters of bearish readings.

The indicators in the panel include the MVRV Z-score, CryptoQuant P&L Index, the Bull-Bear Cycle Indicator, Inter-Exchange Flow Pulse, Network Activity Index, Stablecoin Liquidity, Bitcoin Demand Growth, Trader On-chain Profit Margin, Trader Realized Price and a Technical Signal metric. When the majority are bullish, the backdrop turns light green; when they flip bearish, it shifts to red. In the latest section of the chart, as BTC has pulled back from its highs, red once again dominates – the visual basis for Ju’s warning.

For the next major move, Ju argues that on-chain data is now subordinate to macro conditions and ETF flows. Quoting his own post, he wrote: “It is simple. If you think macro gets better next year, you buy. Otherwise, you sell. I’m not a macro expert, so find macro bros. New ETF inflows are the key.”

That line pinpoints what he believes can “save” Bitcoin from a deeper drawdown: renewed demand from spot ETFs as a conduit for institutional capital. In earlier stages of the cycle, rising ETF inflows coincided with strong price appreciation; more recently, slowing or negative flows have mirrored the loss of upward momentum.

Ju frames the current environment as one that demands flexible scenario management rather than rigid forecasts. “At this stage, it is more about being reactive than predictive. Set your scenarios and trade accordingly,” he told followers. The composite chart is designed for exactly that purpose, showing how past bull tops and bear markets aligned with persistent stretches of red across profit, valuation and liquidity metrics.

Despite the bearish tilt, Ju does not foresee a repeat of the 2022 collapse, when Bitcoin fell roughly 65% from peak to trough. He cites the behaviour of Michael Saylor led Strategy as a stabilizing factor. “If Strategy holds its 650K BTC this cycle (or sells only a little), we would not see another -65% drawdown like in 2022,” he wrote. In his view, that supply remaining largely off the market reduces the probability of a violent deleveraging event.

Ju characterizes the current pullback as substantial but not extreme in historical context. “We are about -25% from ATH now, and even if a bear cycle comes, the downside would likely be smaller and look more like a broad sideways range,” he argued, suggesting that prolonged consolidation is more likely than a single dramatic crash.

His message to long-term investors is explicitly calming. “Long-term holders should avoid panic selling,” he advised. While cyclical on-chain indicators flash red, he insists the structural backdrop has improved: “Bitcoin has more liquidity channels now, so the long-term outlook is obviously strong, imo.” Those channels include ETFs and a deeper institutional market structure than in prior cycles.

At press time, Bitcoin traded at $92,494.

Moonrock Capital founder Simon Dedic says the crypto industry is nearing a decisive transition from an early-adopter niche to a mainstream market, assigning a 75% probability that the sector will “finish crossing the chasm and enter the early-majority phase next year.”

Is The Crypto Market Crossing The Chasm?

Dedic frames his outlook using the classic technology adoption curve, which splits the market into innovators (2.5%), early adopters (13.5%), an early majority (34%), late majority (34%) and laggards (16%). The critical “chasm” lies between early adopters—“people who want newest things” and accept a minimum feature set—and the early majority, who demand a “whole product solution” and prioritize complete, convenient offerings.

In his base case, Dedic argues that crypto is now close to exiting that chasm. If so, he says, “the classic 4-year cycles are dead. The market will have matured and will increasingly correlate with macro cycles and industry fundamentals rather than self-fulfilling narratives.” Under this scenario, pricing would be governed less by reflexive narratives around halvings or “altseason” and more by the sector’s real economic role and its interaction with broader financial conditions.

He assigns a 20% probability to a less advanced stage of adoption in which the industry is “still in the early-adopter phase and only now beginning to cross the chasm.” In that case, he believes crypto could face “a 1-3 year bear market while the industry finds itself and pushes toward early-majority adoption.” Here, the established four-year pattern could remain intact, with another prolonged downturn before mainstream product-market fit is fully achieved.

The remaining 5% is reserved for a failure scenario in which the sector never secures such fit. “We get stuck in the chasm and never find true mainstream pmf,” Dedic writes, warning that crypto could then “turn into a zero sum game and we will just PvP trade money from one to the other.”

Dedic makes clear he views that outcome as unlikely. He cites “regulatory tailwinds, institutional adoption, and the accelerating fundamentals of our industry” as reasons to believe the market is already in scenario one, “standing right in front of the biggest adoption wave crypto has ever seen, and likely ever will see.”

He also argues that market structure and culture must evolve alongside adoption. “The 4 year cycles and simple narrative chasing are dead,” he says. While “the onchain online casino will always be part of our identity, it will shrink into a niche. It’s time for the industry to mature and start playing the serious game.”

For Dedic, that conviction is not theoretical. “An incredible decade lies ahead for those willing to evolve,” he concludes, adding that he is “betting basically all my money on the idea that this is only just getting started.”

At press time, the total crypto market cap stood at $3.15 trillion.

Ethereum’s Fusaka upgrade is now live on mainnet, marking a major structural change in how the network handles data and scaling. The upgrade was activated at epoch 411392 at 21:49:11 UTC, with the official Ethereum account first signalling “upgrade in progress . . . activating Fusaka @ epoch 411392 // 21:49:11 UTC” and then confirming that “Fusaka is live on Ethereum mainnet!”

In its announcement, the account highlighted three core elements of Fusaka. PeerDAS “now unlocks 8x data throughput for rollups,” substantially expanding the amount of data that rollup-based layer 2 networks can publish to the network. The upgrade also introduces “UX improvements via the R1 curve & pre-confirmations,” and is described as explicit “prep for scaling the L1 with gas limit increase & more.” The project added that community members and core developers will “continue to monitor for issues over the next 24 hrs.”

Why Fusaka Is ‘Significant’ For Ethereum

Vitalik Buterin framed the core of the upgrade in unusually direct terms. “PeerDAS in Fusaka is significant because it literally is sharding,” he wrote. “Ethereum is coming to consensus on blocks without requiring any single node to see more than a tiny fraction of the data. And this is robust to 51% attacks – it’s client-side probabilistic verification, not validator voting.” In other words, the network can now agree on blocks even though no node has to download all of the associated data, relying instead on probabilistic verification on the client side.

Buterin tied this to a long-running research line, noting that “sharding has been a dream for Ethereum since 2015, and data availability sampling since 2017,” and linking back to early research work on data availability and erasure coding. With Fusaka, that architecture is no longer just a roadmap concept but a live mechanism securing Ethereum’s data layer.

At the same time, Buterin was clear that Fusaka does not complete the sharding roadmap. He stressed that “there are three ways that the sharding in Fusaka is incomplete.” First, he argued that “we can process O(c^2) transactions (where c is the per-node compute) on L2s, but not on the ethereum L1,” adding that “if we want to scaling to benefit the ethereum L1 as well, beyond what we can get by constant-factor upgrades like BAL and ePBS, we need mature ZK-EVMs.”

Second, he pointed to the “proposer/builder bottleneck,” where “the builder needs to have the whole data and build the whole block,” and said “it would be amazing to have distributed block building.” Third, he noted bluntly: “We don’t have a sharded mempool. We still need that.”

Despite those caveats, Buterin called Fusaka “a fundamental step forward in blockchain design.” He argued that “the next two years will give us time to refine the PeerDAS mechanism, carefully increase its scale while we continue to ensure its stability, use it to scale L2s, and then when ZK-EVMs are mature, turn it inwards to scale ethereum L1 gas as well.”

He closed by sending “big congrats to the Ethereum researchers and core devs who worked hard for years to make this happen,” underscoring that for the Ethereum community, Fusaka is not a routine protocol update but the arrival of a long-promised sharding era on mainnet.

At press time, ETH traded at $3,194.

BlackRock chairman and CEO Larry Fink has framed Bitcoin’s latest boom-and-bust swing as the clearest expression yet of its core narrative: not a growth asset, but “an asset of fear.”

Speaking at the New York Times’ DealBook “Crypto and Capital” event alongside Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, Fink contrasted the $13.5 trillion BlackRock manages with the motivations behind Bitcoin demand. BlackRock’s portfolios, he said, are essentially “managing hope” over decades: “The $13.5 trillion that BlackRock managed on behalf of our clients, it’s basically managing hope. That’s all it is. I mean, why would anybody invest in a 30-year outcome unless you’re hopeful that in 30 years you’re going to have the compounding effect.”

Why Bitcoin Is ‘An Asset Of Fear’

Bitcoin, by contrast, he placed on the opposite side of the psychological ledger. “Bitcoin is an asset of fear,” Fink said. “You own Bitcoin because you’re frightened of your physical security. You own it because you’re frightened of your financial security. The long-term fundamental reason you own it [is] because of debasement of financial assets because of deficits.”

His comments came against the backdrop of a sharp reversal in the Bitcoin market. The asset hit an all-time high above $125,000 in early October 2025 before sliding nearly 30% and briefly dropping below $90,000 in mid-November. Fink explicitly referenced that move to illustrate just how violent the swings can be. “If you had bought it at $125,000 and it’s now sitting at $90,000,” he said, anyone treating it as a trade is dealing with “a very volatile asset” and “you’re going to have to be really good at market timing, which most people aren’t.”

For investors using Bitcoin as a macro hedge, he argued, the volatility looks different. “If you’re buying it as a hedge against all your hope, you know, then it has a meaningful impact on a portfolio.” In his telling, Bitcoin rallies when fear rises and retreats when fear subsides, citing episodes such as a US–China trade agreement or talk of a possible Ukraine settlement, after which Bitcoin “fell a little bit.” The pattern, he suggested, is consistent with a fear-driven hedge against geopolitical risk and fiscal slippage.

Fink also underscored that structurally, the market remains fragile. “The other big problem of Bitcoin is it is still heavily influenced by leveraged players,” he said, linking the asset’s outsized volatility to leverage even as flows through his firm’s spot ETF channel normalize.

Since launching IBIT, BlackRock has already lived through several drawdowns on the order of 20–25%, he noted, yet the holder base is shifting. “We’re seeing more and more legitimate long-only investors investing in it,” he said, citing a large foundation endowment and adding that “a number of sovereign funds” are “adding incrementally at $120k, at $100k,” and “bought more in the $80k’s.” For those allocators, he stressed, “this is not a trade. You own it over years. This is not a trade. You own it for a purpose.”

The stance marks a striking reversal from Fink’s 2017 description of Bitcoin as an “index for money laundering… and thieves.” He told the audience that during the pandemic he “took it upon myself to visit and talk to a lot of people who were advocates of it,” asking, “What am I missing?” and that “around 2021–22” he began to “evolve those views.” It is, he conceded, “a very glaring public example of a big shift in my opinion,” adding, “I have very strong views but that doesn’t mean I’m not wrong.”

At press time, Bitcoin traded at $93,107.

US Senator Cynthia Lummis has reignited speculation that the United States could move to materially increase its Bitcoin holdings, after posting a Bitcoin-themed image on X with the caption: “₿ig things coming for Franklin!”

Lummis Revives Strategic Bitcoin Reserve Hype

The image is drawn as a children’s book cover titled “FRANKLIN BUYS BITCOIN AND FINDS FINANCIAL FREEDOM.” At the center sits Franklin, a cartoon turtle in a backwards red cap and bandana, seated at a wooden desk. In front of him is a laptop emblazoned with the orange Bitcoin logo, clearly signaling that he is using Bitcoin-related software or services—most obviously, buying or managing BTC. Franklin’s eyes project bright “laser beams” at the screen, echoing the well-known “laser eyes” meme in Bitcoin culture.

On the desk lie physical coins stamped with the Bitcoin symbol, and a glass jar filled with more of these Bitcoin coins. The jar seems to function as a visual metaphor for saving and stacking sats over time. The subtitle “and finds financial freedom” explicitly connects Bitcoin accumulation with the idea of long-term economic sovereignty.

Bitcoin-focused accounts immediately interpreted the post as a policy signal rather than a simple meme. Bitcoin Magazine summarized the moment as: “JUST IN: US Senator Cynthia Lummis hints at buying Bitcoin”. Bitcoin Archive went further, claiming: “JUST IN: US Senator Cynthia Lummis hints at a potential US Bitcoin buy. Senator Lummis has recently submitted legislation to have the US government buy 1 million Bitcoin.”

That reading is consistent with Lummis’ own public rhetoric. On November 5 she wrote via X: “I truly believe the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve is the only solution to offset our national debt. I applaud @POTUS and his administration for embracing the SBR, and I look forward to getting it done.” Her legislation has pushed for a formal US Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and explicitly contemplated the government holding up to 1 million BTC over time.

The meme also lands after President Trump’s executive order from March this year establishing a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve framework. While it has become very quiet around the topic, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent recently attended the opening of the Bitcoin bar PubKey in Washington. For many in the market, those developments, combined with Lummis’ latest post, suggest that concrete steps toward expanding US Bitcoin reserves may be progressing quietly in the background.

So far, however, there has been no official confirmation of state-level Bitcoin purchases. For now, Franklin remains a symbolic turtle with laser eyes at a Bitcoin laptop—but in a market hyper-attuned to political signals, Lummis’ image is being read as the clearest hint yet that the United States could one day be the largest sovereign Bitcoin buyer.

At press time, Bitcoin traded at $93,381.

Strategy CEO Phong Le signaled the company may eventually lend part of its bitcoin holdings once large US banks fully enter the market with institutional-grade custody and lending infrastructure, while stressing that the core strategy remains to “buy and hold bitcoin.”

Building A Dollar Buffer Around A Bitcoin Core

Speaking on Bloomberg Crypto on December 2, Le outlined why the company built a $1.4 billion dollar reserve to fund dividends and interest, even as BTC price has endured a sharp drawdown from its early-October high near $125,000 to a brutal November that saw a further 17% decline before a rebound above $92,000.

Le framed Strategy’s balance sheet as a barbell between long-term BTC exposure and short-term cash obligations: “We have long-term strategy, which is to buy and hold bitcoin. That is our primary treasury reserve asset. And we have short-term dollar obligations created because of the dividends we have on our preferred notes.”

To avoid being forced to sell BTC when the company’s equity trades close to or below the value of its underlying holdings, Strategy created a dedicated US dollar reserve: “If we want to really create a bulletproof balance sheet, let’s have the global reserve digital asset, bitcoin, for the long term, and the global reserve digital currency for the short term. That is why I created the US dollar reserve, to pay down dividends in the short term any case that we needed.”

Le said Strategy recently issued equity “in 8.5 days” to pre-fund roughly 21 months of preferred dividends, and now aims to maintain a cash buffer equal to “two to three years of dividends,” a policy he expects to maintain for “the next five or 10 years” before reassessing as the capital structure evolves.

He defended the company’s insistence on continuing the dividend, arguing that suspensions “create fear, uncertainty, doubt” and harm equity holders: “Our objective is to pay the dividend into perpetuity. Never say never, but I think preserving the payment of the dividend […] is the right thing for the short term. It is also important for the bitcoin asset class.”

At the same time, he sought to defuse concerns that Strategy is overleveraged or at imminent risk of selling BTC. Le said Strategy has “12% leverage” on its debt alone and “27% leverage” including preferreds, versus “60% to 80%” at a typical US public company. If the company continues to grow its cash reserves to cover multiple years of dividends, he said, “really [we’re] talking about the end of 2028” before any realistic scenario where selling bitcoin to fund dividends might be considered.

Le also pushed back against MSCI’s suggestion that “digital asset treasury” companies may resemble funds and could be excluded from indices. He argued Strategy is a “fully integrated, vertically integrated bitcoin operating company” that buys bitcoin, issues securities, creates products, generates operating income and employs full corporate staff, and therefore should trade at a premium reflecting its ability “to grow our treasury and our operating income over time.”

From HODL To Considering Bitcoin Lending

On lending, Le said Strategy has deliberately kept its business “very simple” so far: “We buy and we hold bitcoin.” However, that may change as traditional finance ramps up BTC offerings: “Over the course of the next year […] big, real banks will offer custody, lending service and staking and otherwise. I think when they enter that space and when they have different counterparties, it is something we would consider and be enthusiastic about.”

Le added that Strategy has already had “a lot of constructive discussions” with large US banks exploring bitcoin custody, exchange and lending and is “excited to partner with them” once those platforms are fully in place.

At press time, Bitcoin traded at $92,997.

XRP is testing a key inflection zone above $2.00 as two independent frameworks from crypto analysts Dom (@traderview2) and Osemka (@Osemka8) converge on a potential reversal – with clearly defined levels at roughly $2.00, $2.22 and $2.50 marking the battlefield.

XRP Price Consolidation Nears Its End

On the higher-timeframe 2-day chart, Osemka frames the structure as a classic flat correction built on top of the 2021 high. “Here’s the range and levels to help you navigate it. We’re basing on top of 2021 high,” he writes, adding that “we’ve also never broken down after going sideways for this long, so I remain with my view of this being an accumulation range and a flat correction.”

His chart shows XRP oscillating in a horizontal band whose floor aligns with the 2021 high, labeled as a “Reaccumulation” area. Price has repeatedly tagged this support and bounced, while midrange resistance in the low-to-mid $2 zone has capped multiple rallies. Above, a higher horizontal line marks the January spike, which Osemka treats as the cycle top.

Internally, he maps an A–B–C corrective sequence. The B leg forms a dotted ascending channel, labeled as a 3-legged “abc” wave. “That dotted ascending range in the middle (3 legged abc wave in B) has me optimistic as that is a corrective move that is synonymous for a flat correction,” he explains. “Meaning the top was in January and this indeed is only a sideways correction.” The current C leg is contained within a downward “Corrective channel” pointing back toward the lower band.

For Osemka, even a deeper test of support would not necessarily be bearish for the larger structure: “If we end up taking the lower end of the range with C leg it’ll remain to be seen. But if so, it’d be a great buying opportunity.” He also calls XRP “a perfect example on why I view BTC also as a flat correction with the top in January,” arguing that “while Bitcoin is messy, XRP is very clean.”

Why Its Now Or Never For XRP

Dom zooms in on the last six weeks of that broader range and focuses on the microstructure that could trigger a move back toward the upper band. “If you inverse the chart over the last 6 weeks, you’ll see a perfect 3 drive pattern, a very accurate reversal setup in crypto,” he writes. On the non-inverted chart, this corresponds to three downside pushes that fail to extend lower, followed by what he calls a higher low: “We can see a HL has finally formed which can hint at the first sign of a trend change developing.”

His 8-hour chart highlights the monthly rolling VWAP as the key pivot. “Bulls needs to regain the monthly rVWAP around $2.22 and that would be the shift for a rally back towards ~$2.50,” Dom says. That ~$2.50 area aligns with higher VWAP clusters and the upper portion of Osemka’s range.

Order-book and skew data back his view that conditions are ripe for a break if buyers step in. “Orderbooks are clear, if there was a time, it’s now for this trend to shift,” he notes, pointing to relatively clean liquidity overhead and a recovering skew after a washed-out short side.

The downside is equally explicit: “If this setup fails, acceptance under $2 is next and the end of year is ugly.” That would mean a decisive loss of the long-defended support band built on the 2021 high and a deeper completion of the C leg in Osemka’s flat-correction structure.

For now, XRP remains compressed between the $2.00 support, the $2.22 monthly rVWAP trigger and the ~$2.50 upside magnet, with the six-week 3-drive pattern and flat-correction range jointly defining one of the clearest technical inflection points on the XRP chart this year.

At press time, XRP traded at $2.1798.

Shiba Inu’s core development team is escalating its response to the Shibarium bridge exploit after a new on-chain investigation mapped the hacker’s Tornado Cash laundering trail to KuCoin deposit accounts. Reacting to on-chain sleuth Shima (@MRShimamoto) on X, core developer Kaal Dhairya wrote “Great work! This needs to be amplified. I will also ensure it’s sent to the FBI attached to the open investigation report and request Kucoin to cooperate.”

Shiba Inu Sleuth Exposes Shibarium Hacker

The Shibarium bridge was exploited in mid-September in an attack estimated at around $2.3–$2.4 million, after the perpetrator seized a super-majority of validator keys and withdrew assets including ETH, SHIB and KNINE. K9 Finance DAO, Shibarium’s liquid-staking partner, launched a bounty process that started at 5 ETH, later advanced to a 20 ETH smart-contract offer and ultimately to a final 25 ETH proposal endorsed directly by the Shiba Inu team. The exploiter never accepted, and K9 Finance has since confirmed that the unclaimed ETH in the bounty contract has been returned to contributors, with Shib.io receiving back 20 ETH.

In a detailed 1 December thread, Shima said the “Shibarium Bridge hacker foolishly chose not to accept the K9 bounty – it’s finally time to share the investigation we’ve been working on,” describing months of tracing that involved thousands of transactions and 111 wallets. His reconstruction shows 260 ETH flowing from exploit-linked wallets into Tornado Cash, with 232.49 ETH ultimately reaching KuCoin through 48 deposits into 45 unique KuCoin deposit addresses, which he believes are largely operated by money mules rather than the hacker directly.

According to his write-up and an accompanying MetaSleuth dashboard, the trail begins with the original exploit address and nine “dumping” wallets. Those wallets received the stolen tokens, liquidated them gradually for ETH over roughly a week, and sent a total of 260 ETH into Tornado Cash. Of that amount, 250 ETH entered the mixer’s 10-ETH pool and 10 ETH the 1-ETH pool in an attempt to break on-chain linkability between the hack and any later withdrawals.

The critical breakthrough, Shima says, came about forty days after the exploit. A wallet already tied to the hacker cluster sent exactly 0.0874 ETH to what was intended to be a clean Tornado withdrawal wallet. That minor top-up, he describes as “one stupid mistake” that “completely unravelled their Tornado Cash laundering,” because it established a direct on-chain connection between the exploit side of the graph and a supposedly anonymous post-mixer address. From that contaminated node he was able to work outward, clustering multiple Tornado withdrawal wallets, intermediaries and final KuCoin “funnel” wallets.

Shima reports that each funnel wallet typically routes funds to two KuCoin deposit addresses, creating a final cluster of 45 KuCoin endpoints and roughly two dozen depositors that he argues can be treated as money-mule cash-out accounts. He says the full address list, transaction graph and methodology were first shared privately with the Shibarium team so they could approach law enforcement and KuCoin while any funds remained within reach. However, he recounts that KuCoin’s fraud desk insisted on receiving a formal law-enforcement case number before acting on the evidence.

The official ShibariumNet X account has now publicly backed the research: “Thanks to @MRShimamoto for doing all the hard work here to compile this thread. We truly appreciate your diligence and methodical approach. Hopefully this investigation can continue with the help of the proper authorities. The communities need answers.”

At press time, Shiba Inu (SHIB) traded at $0.00000878

Dogecoin is staging a sharp rebound from a key technical level that one analyst has flagged as the potential low of its current correction.

Is The Dogecoin Bottom In?

On X, crypto analyst Kevin (@Kev_Capital_TA) highlighted the $0.138 region as the decisive line. Posting a weekly DOGE chart, he wrote: “$0.138 still holding strong on Dogecoin. If DOGE can hold this level (Macro .382 + 200W SMA) and BTC + USDT hold their respective support and resistance levels then $0.138 will be the lows for this corrective period. Still got work to do. Main focus is still BTC and USDT D.”

His chart shows Dogecoin trading on the 1-week timeframe, with the price recently wicking down into a dense support cluster around $0.138 and rebounding. That area coincides with the 0.382 Fibonacci retracement of the prior advance, explicitly marked “0.382 (0.13827),” and the rising 200-week simple moving average that has now climbed into the same zone. Furthermore, this area coincides with an upward trendline that has guided DOGE’s price action since mid-2023; a decisive break below it would be technically fatal.

The bounce has been visible on lower timeframes as well. DOGE traded as low as $0.13443 yesterday before surging to $0.152 today, gaining more than 13% at the intraday high.

Kevin has been emphasizing this level for weeks. On November 22 he told followers: “$0.138 is massive support on Dogecoin folks. You really do not want to see that lost on 3D-1W closes. Obviously BTC’s performance will be the determiner to that outcome so focus there first along with USDT D.” In his framework, the integrity of the DOGE support cluster is inseparable from Bitcoin’s higher-timeframe structure and stablecoin flows.

The macro background is shifting in his favor. Yesterday Bitcoin rebounded from $86,184 to $92,307, extended to $93,958 today and is currently around $92,816. Commenting on BTC, Kevin noted: “A close above $91K on the 3D-1W candle supports the idea that the counter trend rally is beginning in my BTC corrective phase reversal zone. One day doesn’t make a trend let’s see what we can do.”

That statement builds on his November 25 outlook, where he argued that the corrective phase he has been tracking since August–September on BTC and the “Total 2” altcoin index is nearing completion. “There will be a bottom formed and a counter trend rally in the coming weeks on BTC and Altcoins,” he wrote, adding that “the corrective phase is almost over” but still needs “a little more time to form a proper bottom.”

Kevin’s DOGE chart maps the alternatives clearly. Above, horizontal resistance near the 0.5 Fibonacci retracement sits around $0.19, while lower support is marked at the 0.236 retracement near $0.093 alongside longer-term trendlines.

Whether $0.138 becomes the definitive bottom of Dogecoin’s correction depends on two conditions Kevin keeps repeating: DOGE must continue to hold the macro 0.382 plus 200-week SMA and the uptrend line on 3-day to weekly closes, and Bitcoin must confirm its own counter-trend rally with sustained higher-timeframe strength.

For now, the market has made its tell clear. The answer to whether the Dogecoin bottom is in starts—and potentially ends—at $0.138.

At press time, Dogecoin traded at $0.14976.

Macro strategist Alex Krüger is tying Bitcoin’s next macro chapter directly to the coming reshuffle at the Federal Reserve, warning that investors are underpricing how far US rates could fall under a Trump-aligned central bank.

In a long X post titled “2026: The Year of the Fed’s Regime Change,” he argues that “the Federal Reserve as we know it ends in 2026” and that the most important driver of asset returns will be a new, much more dovish Fed led by Kevin Hassett. His base case is that this shift becomes a key driver for risk assets broadly and Bitcoin in particular in 2026, even if crypto markets are currently trading as if nothing fundamental has changed.

Why The Federal Reserve Will Dramatically Change

Krüger’s scenario is anchored in personnel. He notes that prediction platform Kalshi put the odds of Hassett becoming chair at 70% as of 2 December, and describes him as a supply-side loyalist who “champions a ‘growth-first’ philosophy, arguing that with the inflation war largely won, maintaining high real rates is an act of political obstinacy rather than economic prudence.”

A few hours after Krüger’s thread, Trump himself added fuel, telling reporters at the White House that he would announce his Fed pick “early next year” and explicitly teasing National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett as a possible choice, after saying the search had been narrowed down to one candidate.

To explain how this would translate into policy, Krüger reconstructs Hassett’s stance from his own 2024 comments. On 21 November, Hassett said “the only way to explain a Fed decision not to cut in December would be due to anti-Trump partisanship.” Earlier he argued, “If I’m at the FOMC, I’m more likely to move to cut rates, while Powell is less likely,” adding, “I agree with Trump that rates can be a lot lower.” Across the year he endorsed expected rate cuts as merely “a start,” called for the Fed to “keep cutting rates aggressively,” and supported “much lower rates,” leading Krüger to place him at 2 on a 1–10 dove–hawk scale, with 1 being the most dovish.

Institutionally, Krüger maps a concrete path: Hassett would first be nominated as a Fed governor to replace Stephen Miran when his short term expires in January, then elevated to chair when Powell’s term ends in May 2026. Powell, he assumes, follows precedent by resigning his remaining Board seat after pre-announcing his departure, opening a slot for Kevin Warsh, whom Krüger treats not as a rival but as a like-minded ally who has been “campaigning” for a structural overhaul and arguing that an AI-driven productivity boom is inherently disinflationary. In that configuration, Hassett, Warsh, Christopher Waller and Michelle Bowman form a solidly dovish core, with six other officials seen as movable votes and only two clear hawks on the committee.

The main institutional tail risk, in Krüger’s view, is that Powell does not resign his governor seat. He warns that this would be “extremely bearish,” because it would prevent Warsh’s appointment and leave Powell as a “shadow chair,” a rival focal point for FOMC loyalty outside Hassett’s inner circle. He also stresses that the Fed chair has no formal tie-breaking vote; repeated 7–5 splits on 50-basis-point cuts would look “institutionally corrosive,” while a 6–6 tie or a 4–8 vote against cuts “would be a catastrophe,” turning the publication of FOMC minutes into an even more potent market event.

On rates, Krüger argues that both the official dot plot and market pricing understate how far policy could be pushed lower. The September median projection of 3.4% for December 2026 is, he says, “a mirage,” because it includes non-voting hawks; by re-labeling dots based on public statements, he estimates the true voters’ median closer to 3.1%. Substituting Hassett and Warsh for Powell and Miran, and using Miran and Waller as proxies for an aggressive-cuts stance, he finds a bimodal distribution with a dovish cluster around 2.6%, where he “anchors” the new leadership, while noting that Miran’s preferred “appropriate rate” of 2.0%–2.5% suggests an even lower bias.

As of 2 December, Krüger notes, futures price December 2026 fed funds at about 3.02%, implying roughly 40 basis points of additional downside if his path is realized. If Hassett’s supply-side view is right and AI-driven productivity pushes inflation below consensus forecasts, Krüger expects pressure for deeper cuts to avoid “passive tightening” as real rates rise. He frames the likely outcome as a “reflationary steepening”: front-end yields collapsing as aggressive easing is priced in, while the long end stays elevated on higher nominal growth and lingering inflation risk.

What This Means For Bitcoin

That mix, he argues, is explosive for risk assets like Bitcoin. Hassett “would crush the real discount rate,” fueling a multiple-expansion “melt-up” in growth equities, at the cost of a possible bond-market revolt if long yields spike in protest. A politically aligned Fed that explicitly prioritizes growth over inflation targeting is, in Krüger’s words, textbook bullish for hard assets such as gold, which he expects to outperform Treasuries as investors hedge the risk of a 1970s-style policy error.

Bitcoin, in Krüger’s telling, should be the cleanest expression of this shift but is currently trapped in its own psychology. Since what he calls the “10/10 shock,” he says Bitcoin has developed “a brutal downside skew,” fading macro rallies and crashing on bad news amid “4-year cycle” top fears and an “identity crisis.” Even so, he concludes that the combination of a Hassett-led Fed and Trump’s deregulation agenda would “override the dominant self-fulfilling bearish psychology, in 2026” — a macro repricing he insists “markets aren’t ready” for yet.

At press time, Bitcoin traded at $92,862

Michael Burry has escalated his long-running war on Bitcoin, calling it “the tulip bulb of our time” and insisting it is “not worth anything.” Speaking on Michael Lewis’ “Against the Rules: The Big Short Companion” podcast released on December 2, Burry recoiled at how normalized such valuations have become in financial media.

Burry Revives Tulip Bubble Comparison For Bitcoin

“I think that Bitcoin at $100,000 is the most ridiculous thing,” he said. “Sane people are sitting on TV talking about Bitcoin, they’re just casually, ‘it’s 100,000, it’s down now, it’s 98,000.’ It’s not worth anything. Everybody’s accepted it. It’s the tulip bulb of our time.” He then pushed the analogy further: “It’s worse than a tulip bulb because this has enabled so much criminal activity to go deep under.”

The exchange was triggered when Lewis asked whether Burry’s “institutional pessimism” nudged him toward refuges like “Bitcoin or gold or one of these refuges that people” talk about. Burry rejected Bitcoin outright and drew a sharp contrast with his own positioning: “I have had gold since 2005.” In his framework, Bitcoin is not “digital gold” but a speculative token whose perceived value rests on social consensus and leverage, while simultaneously, in his view, providing a powerful channel for illicit flows rather than productive capital formation.

Burry’s critique is consistent with his broader view that markets are again trapped in a cross-asset bubble driven by narrative and cheap money rather than fundamentals. But he does not present himself as a crypto macro-trader looking to time Bitcoin’s next leg lower. Instead, Bitcoin appears in the interview as a kind of exhibit A in a system that, he argues, has once more stopped asking what anything is intrinsically worth and simply extrapolates price action and stories.

Burry’s Critique Is Not New

The podcast marks the latest chapter in a Bitcoin skepticism that Burry has been voicing since the last cycle. In late February 2021, with BTC near its then-record zone, he tweeted that “BTC is a speculative bubble that poses more risk than opportunity despite most of the proponents being correct in their arguments for why it is relevant at this point in history,” adding a warning on hidden leverage: “If you do not know how much leverage is involved in the run-up, you may not know enough to own it.”

By June 2021, as meme stocks and crypto surged together, Burry widened the lens. He described the environment as the “greatest speculative bubble of all time in all things. By two orders of magnitude,” and cautioned that “all hype/speculation is doing is drawing in retail before the mother of all crashes,” explicitly including cryptocurrencies in that warning.

Today’s “tulip bulb” broadside on Lewis’ podcast does not represent a new stance so much as the culmination of that trajectory: from calling Bitcoin a leveraged “speculative bubble” in early 2021 to declaring in 2025 that, at the kinds of levels now discussed on television, it is simply “not worth anything” at all.

At press time, BTC traded at $93,226.

Canary Capital CEO Steven McClurg has thrown fuel on the long-running debate over privacy coins, branding Zcash’s latest rally a “pump and dump” which has been rug-pulled while promoting Litecoin as his preferred privacy asset for regulated markets.

Litecoin Better Than Zcash?

In a series of posts on X, McClurg said the Zcash surge that began roughly two months ago “triggered my curiosity.” After revisiting the project for the first time since 2016–2017, he wrote that he initially “bought into the Zcash narrative” but ultimately reached two conclusions.

“Litecoin has broader reach in terms of users, and MWEB an easier tool for selecting private wallets/transactions. It is my choice for privacy in US or UK due to compliance,” he argued. By contrast, “ZEC is a pump and dump getting ready to rug-pull. Be careful out there,” he posted last week via X.

Via X, McClurg followed up by highlighting Zcash’s sharp reversal on Monday. “Zcash [is] down 50% since this post. I hope people saw the post survived the rug pull. There is still further down to go,” he wrote, attributing the move to “a stunt by bad actors.” He did not name specific counterparties, venues or structures, and his language focused on market behavior rather than protocol design.

Despite the harsh assessment of recent trading, McClurg stressed that his criticism is not a rejection of Zcash as a technology. “Btw, I have nothing against ZEC, as it was the first currency with private/public option,” he said. In the same thread he described himself as “longterm bullish on Litecoin, Monero, Dash, and Zcash in that order,” explicitly placing ZEC last in his personal privacy stack but still on the list.

The distinction he draws hinges on how privacy is implemented and how that interacts with compliance. Litecoin’s MimbleWimble Extension Block (MWEB) design adds an optional confidential layer alongside the transparent base chain, allowing users to move coins into a separate privacy domain while leaving total supply auditable. That structure, plus Litecoin’s broader distribution and exchange support, underpins McClurg’s claim that LTC is “my choice for privacy in the US or UK.”

Pressed on Monero’s role, McClurg said he has not researched it “in several years” but that, based on earlier work, he “always felt that it would be the winning currency for people in authoritarian regimes. Pure privacy.” At the same time, he added that Monero is “unfortunately likely not compliant for US citizens (not that it shouldn’t be),” capturing the tension between default privacy and current regulatory expectations.

Zcash, with its dual transparent and shielded address system, historically sat between those two poles. McClurg’s comments suggest that, in his view, the recent ZEC rally and crash reflect structural weaknesses in how the market around the asset is behaving, even if the underlying cryptography remains important.

He closed by warning that he hopes “this stunt by bad actors didn’t damage the importance of privacy chains and privacy features,” underscoring that his target is speculative excess rather than the broader push for on-chain financial privacy.

At press time, ZEC traded at $324.

Bitcoin has opened December 2025 on the back foot, and market structure around the new monthly candle is already drawing close scrutiny from traders.

How Will Bitcoin Perform In December?

Sharing a year-to-date chart on X, trader Daan Crypto Trades highlighted a recurring pattern in 2025: Bitcoin often sets its monthly extreme early. “We know by now that the first move does often create the monthly high or low within the first ~12 days,” he wrote. “This happens about 80% of the months.” His chart marks how February’s low, March’s high, April’s low, May’s low, July’s inflection, and the key October and November pivots all occurred within that window, with June and August flagged as exceptions.

December, so far, is conforming in form if not yet in outcome. “Price has taken a quick dive straight from the candle open so far in December, leaving no wick above either,” Daan noted. “This doesn’t make for the strongest high.” That kind of immediate one-sided move, he argues, is often revisited: “Good to watch closely in the 1–2 weeks ahead. Often these instant moves from the open, do end getting retested. October was a good example of that recently.”

Zooming in, Daan’s second chart sets out the key levels. After bottoming near $80,714 on November 21, Bitcoin staged roughly a +15% relief rally into a thick prior support-turned-resistance zone in the low-$93,000s. That first test failed, with price rejected and rolling back over.

“BTC rejecting from the previous support & resistance area,” he wrote. “Not something you want to see as a bull. Price saw a decent +15% relief rally but has lost steam again after a week already.” On that same chart he plots a short-term Fibonacci retracement from the $93,175 local high down to the $80,714 low. The 0.786 retracement level sits around $83,381, close to spot at the time of posting.

“It is early in the week/month,” he added, “and we do often see sharp moves straight from that new monthly candle. These often aren’t the strongest highs/lows set straight at the start of a new month. So good to watch in the days ahead. (You guys also know I love my .786 fib retests so watching closely around this area).”

That leaves a clear tactical map: immediate downside levels around the 0.786 retrace and the prior low, with upside conviction only returning if price can re-enter and reclaim the mid-to-high-$80,000s former support zone.

A separate post from Daan situates this setup within December’s broader historical profile. Sharing a Coinglass table of Bitcoin’s monthly returns from 2013 onward, he described December as “pretty mixed but [one that] has seen some big outliers with a lot of volatility.”

The data support that: past Decembers range from large gains above 30–40% to deep drawdowns exceeding -30%. The average December return sits in modest positive territory (+4.75%), while the median is slightly negative (-3.22%), underscoring that there is no simple “Santa rally” effect; instead, dispersion and volatility dominate.

For Daan, part of that behaviour is structural. “Don’t be surprised if you see some weird flows at the end and start of the year,” he warned. “Generally this is a period where large holders/funds and such rebalance their books. We might also see the effect of tax loss harvesting at some point.” Those portfolio adjustments and tax-driven trades can magnify moves in both directions, particularly in an asset that still trades with pockets of thin liquidity.

His practical takeaway is deliberately conservative: “Good to just be allocated in a way that feels comfortable for you. Whatever the end of 2025 and start of 2026 will bring.”

At press time, BTC traded at $87,323.