Bitcoin’s price action has been grossly dramatic throughout the year. After reaching its current all-time-high price of $126,000 in early October, the world’s leading cryptocurrency saw a rapid flip to the downside. Since reaching its October high, Bitcoin spiraled to as low as $80,500, a more than 15% negative deviation in reviewing year on year growth. 

As the market sentiment thus ostensibly leans bearish, an on-chain analysis has recently been published, proffering reasons to believe that the negative sentiment among investors could be growing stronger.

$91,000 Max Pain Point Breached After Friday Options Expiry

In a QuickTake post on CryptoQuant, crypto pundit GugaOnChain brings to light the expiry of about $3.4 billion in Bitcoin options. This expiration event, which took place on Friday, 5th December, is one that typically triggers a “gravitational force” which attracts price to itself. By extension, price tends to move towards a specific price level referred to as the Maximum Pain Point, where option buyers incur the greatest losses, and sellers realize the most profits.

In this scenario, the Maximum Pain Point stood at approximately $91,000. As such, the Bitcoin price saw a rapid decline towards this mark. However, by the end of the session, Bitcoin had already slipped beneath its “gravitational force,” reaching as low as $89,500, and entering a range that amplified its buyers’ losses, while also maximizing its sellers’ (market makers) gains.

Negative Funding Rate Further Strengthens Bearish Narrative

GugaOnChain also references readings from the Bitcoin: Funding Rates metric, which tracks the average funding rate across all major perpetual futures exchanges. As the analyst explains, this metric is useful in reading the prevalent market sentiment. For example, negative Funding Rates, such as the current reading of -0.001206, typically indicate the willingness of short traders to pay the longs for their positions. As such, it is evident that the market sentiment is more bearish than bullish.

There appears to be an alignment between the negative funding rates and the sell pressure supplied by the $3.4 billion expired options and breach of the $91,000 Maximum Pain Point. GugaOnChain explains that such a correlation further strengthens the narrative that the Bitcoin market could see an additional significant drop in its price.

While the long-term market direction may be well-defined, its short-term sentiment, however, reflects a more modest stance of utmost caution.  As of press time, Bitcoin is valued at about $89,250. Over the past 24 hours, the premier cryptocurrency has lost approximately 3.38% of its value, per CoinMarketCap data.

Featured image from Shutterstock, chart from Tradingview

Ethereum presently trades around $3,000 following a broader crypto market rebound in the last week. During this time, the market’s largest altcoin gained by 7.22%, providing a much-needed relief after an extended correction that dominated the majority of the last two months. As price stabilizes, crypto analytics platform XWIN Research Japan shares a forward-looking assessment of Ethereum’s outlook, especially considering developments in the futures market.

Ethereum Bulls Buy The Dip After Weak Position Exits

Amid the widespread correction of the crypto market in Q4 2025, Ethereum’s prices crashed from $4,700 to as low as $2,900, representing a 38% price decline. XWIN Research Japan reports this price fall coincided with certain relevant developments in the futures market.

In particular, Ethereum’s open interest across all exchanges dropped from $21 billion to around $17 billion in late November, as overleveraged long positions were closed down, forcing traders to open new positions with moderate leverage size. Meanwhile, funding rates stayed positive but declined to around 0.002, meaning that the dominant bullish sentiment from mid-2025 greatly reduced.

Looking at on-chain data, the Market Value to Realized Value (MVRV) is at 1.27, while Binance data shows it to be around 1.0, both values indicating Ethereum is in a neutral to fair value zone, suggesting a period of stability before the next major trend emerges. Meanwhile, the recent market recovery kick-started after ETH retested the realized price of whale addresses, indicating that large market players are bolstering their holdings. 

XWIN Research Japan supports this theory, noting that Ethereum Treasury BitMine has boosted its market holdings to 3.63 million ETH. Additionally, a BlackRock client recently acquired tens of millions of dollars’ worth of ETH, further reinforcing the strength of current market demand. However, despite this robust market demand, ETH Spot ETF net outflows for November hit $1.42 billion, indicating there is significant selling pressure in the market.

Ethereum Market Outlook

At the time of writing, Ethereum trades at $3,003, reflecting a 0.22% loss in the past day. Despite its gains in the last week, the altcoin is still down by 22.34% over the last month, suggesting the majority of short-term holders are in losses.

XWIN Research Japan explains that although the overleveraged position has been cleared out with market whales now ramping up their holding, Ethereum remains in a “bottom-building phase”.  Therefore, investors should still anticipate a “choppy, sell-on-rally” price action in the short term. The analysts predict a major trend reversal with time as the current price area becomes increasingly attractive to investors for massive accumulation opportunities.