In brief
- Bitcoin topped $90,000 Monday morning—fueled by futures market speculation, not organic spot buying, as shown by diverging on-chain volume data.
- Key demand indicators are weak: the Coinbase premium is negative, and U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs have seen sustained outflows over recent weeks.
- The sole bullish signal is from corporate treasuries, which poured $2.23 billion into digital assets last week—the highest inflow since September.
Bitcoin rallied to an eight-day high of $90,353 on Monday, but on-chain data casts doubt on the sustainability of this uptick.
Since then, the top crypto has pulled back and is now trading at just under $90,000, up 2.2% on the day, per CoinGecko data.
Data indicate the move was driven by speculative futures trading rather than genuine investor demand.
Since December 18, open interest and the cumulative volume delta (CVD) for perpetual futures have trended upwards, while the spot CVD has declined, according to Velo data. That divergence is a classic signature of a derivatives-led move, where leveraged bets push the price higher without corresponding buying in the underlying spot market.
Broader market indicators reinforce this caution.
The “Coinbase premium,” which tracks the price difference for Bitcoin on the U.S.-based Coinbase exchange versus global averages, has flipped negative after a brief positive period in late November and mid-December. It indicates a lack of premium buying demand from U.S. investors, a key demographic.
Furthermore, U.S. spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have recorded net outflows over recent weeks, with no sign of sustained institutional inflows returning.
As a result, the technical picture remains challenging.
Aggregate open interest has been trending down since late November, and Bitcoin has faced repeated rejections each time it has attempted to break and hold above the $90,000 level, underscoring persistent selling pressure.
The one notable exception to the bearish flow data comes from corporate balance sheets. Digital Asset Trusts (DATs) saw approximately $2.23 billion in net inflows for the week of December 15-21, according to data from DeFiLlama. This represents a 72% surge from the $1.293 billion in total DAT inflows reported just days earlier on December 17, according to a previous Decrypt report.
This marks the largest weekly inflow since late September and was driven by significant corporate treasury purchases of Bitcoin, XRP, and Ethereum.
The driver of this surge in DAT accumulation was the Federal Reserve’s December 10 interest rate decision, Decrypt was told.
A vulnerable rally
Still, this concentrated institutional accumulation has not been enough to generate broad market strength. With a typical pattern of year-end liquidity drying up, the current rally—built on futures market activity—appears vulnerable to the same headwinds that have reversed previous attempts to sustain momentum above $90,000.
Reflecting this bleak outlook are users on the prediction market Myriad, owned by Decrypt’s parent company Dastan, who put just a 3% chance on a “Santa rally” over the holiday period.
Other analysts frame the current activity as a consolidation within a defined range rather than a directional move.
“Bitcoin trading around $90,000 doesn’t signal either strength or weakness at this point,” Georgii Verbitskii, Founder of DeFi platform TYMIO, told Decrypt. “Technically, Bitcoin is still stuck in a sideways range between roughly $85,000 and $95,000, and for now it’s a market without a clear directional bias.”
Verbitskii does not expect a resolution until mid-January, when the market gets clarity on “whether companies with Bitcoin-heavy treasuries will remain eligible for inclusion in the MSCI index.” Until then, he views the market as “consolidation rather than the start of a new trend.”
Ryan Lee, chief analyst of crypto exchange Bitget, however, anticipates a more contained range through the holidays.
“For the holiday period, our outlook anticipates BTC trading in the $86,000 to $93,000 range and ETH in the $2,800 to $3,200 corridor,” Lee told Decrypt. He cited returning institutional inflows and the potential for clearer regulatory developments as key supports.
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