BTC Tests 90K Again

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Market Snapshot: Overnight Moves

Daily Updates:

• The festive weekend saw sideways trading in both BTC and US equities. That persisted until early Monday morning when BTC broke out past $90K in Asian trading hours, though as we have seen it do in the past few tries — it failed to hold above that resistance level for long. 
• Now trading at $89.4K, BTC remains 29.1% below its October all-time high, compared to a rangebound Friday move in US equities just below record high levels. 
• Overall, trading was muted in both markets in the post-Christmas day session, with BTC only breaking out earlier today. 
• The move past $90K for BTC saw ETH follow suit — it too extended gains beyond its $3K resistance mark, though similar to BTC, failed to hold above it for long. 

• The spot rally also encouraged a constructive rebound in derivatives markets sentiment. Funding rates on BTC perps rose to their highest level since mid-October earlier today, a level that was last seen a few days after BTC reached a record high of $126K. 
• 7-day BTC volatility smiles even very briefly flipped just above neutral levels, following the bearish put-option skew that has dominated since late November — OTM call options traded with a modest 0.4 vol point premium over puts. Similar to the $90K spot level, that premium did not hold however, and skew is now back towards puts. Nonetheless, the derivative market is showing some early signs of backing any further rally in spot price before the year-end. 

• Implied volatility levels have picked up at short tenors as the Christmas break passes into the rear-view mirror, likely as a result of depressed activity levels over the holiday. We highlighted in Friday’s comment that ETH IV was at its lowest levels since President Trump’s re-election. However, longer-term implied volatility levels remain low (at 45% and 63% for BTC and ETH respectively over a 180 day tenor) without a clear catalyst.
• Neither are options markets obviously pricing in the MSCI index constituent decision on Jan 15, 2026, which may result in DATs (such as MSTR) being excluded from several of their administered indices.

• As we head into the new year, Spot ETF inflows continue to act as a drag on spot price. On Friday, Spot Bitcoin ETFs sold $275.9M worth of bitcoins, extending their outflow streak to the sixth consecutive session. Spot ETH ETFs did not fare much better either — they sold $38.7M of Ether and have seen net outflows in 10 out of the 11 past trading sessions. 

• Precious metal markets did not receive the muted Christmas trading memo however. On Friday, gold, silver and platinum all extended their advances to reach new highs.
• Silver rallied 10% in Friday’s session, the biggest one-day increase since 2008, breaking out past $80 per ounce for the first time ever. 

This Week’s Calendar:

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Charts of the Day: