Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino and market analysts pushed back against S&P Global’s downgraded rating of USDt’s (USDT) ability to maintain its US dollar peg, saying that the ratings agency did not account for all of Tether’s assets and revenues.
The Tether Group’s total assets at the end of Q3 2025 totaled about $215 billion, while its total stablecoin liabilities were about $184.5 billion, according to Ardoino, who referenced Tether’s Q3 attestation report. He added:
“Tether had, at the end of Q3 2025, about $7 billion in excess equity, on top of the about $184.5 billion in stablecoin reserves, plus about another $23 billion in retained earnings as part of our Tether Group equity.
S&P made the same mistake of not considering the additional Group Equity, nor the roughly $500 million in monthly base profits generated by US Treasury yields alone,” Ardoino continued.
S&P Global downgraded USDt’s dollar-peg rating to “weak” on Wednesday, the lowest score on its scale, prompting fear, uncertainty, and doubt from some analysts about the company, which has become a critical piece of crypto market infrastructure.
Arthur Hayes, a market analyst and founder of the BitMEX crypto exchange, speculated that Tether is buying large quantities of gold and BTC to compensate for income shortfalls produced by falling US Treasury yields.
As the Federal Reserve slashes interest rates, the gold and BTC should go up in value, Hayes said, but he also warned that a steep correction in these assets could spell trouble for Tether.
“A roughly 30% decline in the gold and BTC position would wipe out their equity, and then USDt would be, in theory, insolvent,” he said.
Joseph Ayoub, the former lead digital asset analyst at financial services giant Citi, said he spent “hundreds” of hours researching Tether as an analyst for the company, and rebuffed Hayes’ analysis.
Tether has excess assets beyond what it reports, has an extremely lucrative business that generates billions of dollars in interest income with only 150 employees, and is better collateralized than traditional banks, Ayoub said.
Several crypto-linked stocks climbed on Friday as prediction-market odds of a December rate cut surged to 87% on Polymarket, the highest level this month.
Three US-listed Bitcoin miners led the rally, with Cleanspark, Riot Platforms and Cipher Mining all rising in the session and showing double-digit gains over the past five days.
Probability of a US rate cut in December. Source: Polymarket
Yahoo Finance data showed Circle, the issuer of USDC, jumped nearly 10% in early trading, while Michael Saylor’s Strategy and Coinbase notched more modest increases at the time of writing.
Bitcoin (BTC) was also up around 7% on the week, after dropping to around $82,000 on Nov. 21, according to CoinGecko data.
Much of the volatility in prediction-market pricing this month has been driven by comments from Federal Reserve officials.
On Oct. 29, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said a December cut was “not a foregone conclusion,” a remark investors took as hawkish — which means the Fed could delay rate cuts and keep conditions tight. Polymarket odds slipped from 89% the day before to as low as 22% by Nov. 20.
Sentiment shifted on Nov. 17 after Fed Governor Christopher Waller said the central bank should consider cutting rates next month, arguing that “the labor market is still weak and near stall speed” and that inflation is now “relatively close” to the Fed’s 2% target.
Prediction markets, such as Kalshi and Polymarket, which enable bettors to wager on the outcomes of real-world events, have expanded their reach and influence this year.
On Nov. 13, Polymarket inked a multi-year agreement with TKO Group Holdings to serve as the official prediction-market partner for the Ultimate Fighting Championships and Zuffa Boxing. The partnership came shortly after it partnered with North American fantasy sports operator PrizePicks.
The same month, Kalshi raised $1 billion from Sequoia Capital and CapitalG, pushing its valuation to $11 billion, according to a TechCrunch report citing a person familiar with the deal. The new round followed a $300 million raise in October.
On Nov. 19, rumors emerged that Coinbase is developing its own prediction-market platform after tech researcher Jane Manchun Wong posted screenshots of an unreleased site. Wong’s images indicated the product would be offered through Coinbase Financial Markets and backed by Kalshi.
On Wednesday, Robinhood said prediction markets have quickly become one of its fastest-growing revenue drivers, with more than one million users trading nine billion contracts since the product launched in March through a partnership with Kalshi.
The native token of the Ethereum network, Ether (ETH), is undervalued in nine out of 12 commonly used valuation models, according to Ki Young Ju, a market analyst and CEO of crypto market analysis platform CryptoQuant.
A composite “fair value” using all 12 valuation models prices ETH at about $4,836, an over 58% gain compared to its price at the time of this writing.
Each valuation model was rated on a three-tiered scale for reliability, with three being the most reliable. Eight out of the 12 models feature a reliability rating of at least two. “These models were built by trusted experts across academia and traditional finance,” Ju said.
12 different ETH valuation models signal that ETH is undervalued at current market prices just north of $3,000. Source: ETHval
The App Capital valuation model, which accounts for total on-chain assets, including stablecoins, ERC-20 tokens, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), real-world tokenized assets (RWAs), and bridged assets, prices ETH at a fair value of $4,918, according to ETHval.
Using Metcalfe’s Law, which states that the value of a network grows in proportion to the square of real active users or the number of nodes in the network, projects an ETH price of $9,484, meaning the asset is over 211% undervalued, according to the model.
Valuing ETH through the Layer-2 (L2) framework, which accounts for the total value locked (TVL) in Ethereum’s layer-2 scaling network ecosystem, projects a price of $4,633 per ETH, meaning that ETH is about 52% undervalued.
The composite fair value of ETH over one year. Source: ETHval
The Ethereum community and analysts continue to debate how to value the world’s first smart contract platform properly, with many saying that traditional valuation models are not sufficient to value nascent digital assets and decentralized blockchain networks.
Despite the mostly rosy outlook, one valuation model says ETH is grossly overvalued
The Revenue Yield valuation model, which values ETH by the annual revenue generated by the network, divided by the staking yield on ETH, says that ETH at current prices of over $3,000 is overvalued by over 57%.
ETH is overvalued, according to the Revenue Yield valuation model. Source: ETHval
Revenue Yield is the most reliable valuation model for accurately pricing ETH, according to ETHval’s criteria and methodology.
ETH should carry a price tag of about $1,296, according to the model, highlighting the Ethereum network’s dwindling revenue generation as fees reach record lows and competing networks absorb some of its market share.
Asset manager CoinShares withdrew its Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) application for a staked Solana exchange-traded fund (ETF) on Friday.
The structuring deal and asset purchase behind the proposed fund were never completed, according to the SEC filing, which states:
“The Registration Statement sought to register shares to be issued in connection with a transaction that was ultimately not effectuated. No shares were sold, or will be sold, pursuant to the above-mentioned Registration Statement.”
The first staked Solana (SOL) ETF, issued by REX-Osprey, debuted in the United States in June, followed by investment company Bitwise’s staked SOL ETF in October.
Net inflows into Solana ETFs since Nov. 10. Source: CoinGlass
Bitwise’s ETF launched with nearly $223 million in assets on its first day of trading, managing to rack up about half the value accrued in the REX-Osprey ETF, which had been trading for months at that point, according to ETF analyst Eric Balchunas.
Despite the launch of staked Solana ETFs and investor demand for these products, the price of SOL has not kept pace and has been in a downtrend since its high of over $250 per coin in September.
SOL ETFs drop to much fanfare, but SOL’s price remains depressed
Solana ETFs attracted over $369 million in capital flows during November, as investors chased the yield-bearing opportunities of staked SOL investment vehicles advertising 5-7% staking rewards.
The Solana ETFs bucked the trend exhibited by BTC and Ether (ETH) ETFs that experienced record outflows during October and November by clocking multiday inflow streaks, even as crypto prices were collapsing.
SOL’s price action remains depressed and well below all-time highs reached at the start of 2025. Source: TradingView
SOL’s price hit a five-month low of approximately $120 in November, representing a 60% reduction from its all-time high of around $295 reached in January 2025.
The token’s meteoric rise in January was attributed to the launch of the Official Trump memecoin on the network, fueling memecoins trading on Solana.
Disclosure: This is a paid article. Readers should conduct further research prior to taking any actions. Learn more ›
The digital asset landscape has matured significantly over the past several years. Simple spot holding is no longer the only viable strategy for generating substantial returns. Today’s market rewards precision, algorithmic discipline, and above all else, liquidity.
For skilled traders, the barrier to entry is rarely knowledge. Instead, it is capitalization. A trader may possess a strategy with a high Sharpe ratio and disciplined risk management, yet find their growth stunted by a personal account size that renders the math irrelevant.
This disconnect between skill and capital has given rise to a sophisticated ecosystem of crypto proprietary trading. The concept extends far beyond simply borrowing funds. It represents access to institutional-grade infrastructure that bridges the gap between retail speculation and professional execution.
The Capital Efficiency Paradox
Why do profitable traders fail to scale?
The answer often lies in mathematics rather than market movement. A trader operating with a 5,000 USDT personal account must take outsized risks to generate a livable income. This frequently leads to over-leveraging positions to the point of ruin. In contrast, a trader managing a funded account of 200,000 USDT can target conservative, low-variance moves and still generate substantial returns.
This dynamic creates what we might call the efficiency paradox: having more capital allows a trader to take less risk while making more money. By utilizing a proprietary firm’s resources, the focus shifts from desperate account flipping to sustainable wealth generation. The pressure to hit “home runs” evaporates entirely, replaced by the professional pursuit of consistent base hits.
Psychological Detachment as an Edge
When personal savings are on the line, emotional attachment distorts decision-making in profound ways. The fear of loss triggers the amygdala, causing traders to cut winners early. Even worse, it often leads to revenge trading after a loss. Proprietary trading constructs a firewall between the trader’s lifestyle and their trading capital, fundamentally changing the psychological equation.
In a funded environment, the downside is capped at a defined level. A trader might face a drawdown limit, but they are not risking their mortgage payment or emergency savings. This psychological freedom allows for the execution of strategies with cold, calculated precision. When the risk is systemic rather than personal, the trader can finally operate with the objectivity required to extract value from volatile markets.
Evaluating the Execution Environment
Not all funding models are created equal, and the differences matter significantly. In the early days of prop trading, firms were largely focused on Forex. They treated crypto as an afterthought, offering poor spreads and artificial slippage. The modern crypto trader requires a specialized environment built specifically for digital assets. If the underlying technology does not mirror live exchange conditions, the strategy is doomed to fail regardless of its theoretical merit.
A robust trading infrastructure must offer direct access to order books without intermediaries. Whether a trader is scalping Bitcoin perpetuals or navigating complex options strategies, the execution must be instantaneous.
This is where the distinction between a simulation and a career-building platform becomes evident. Identifying the best crypto prop trading firm requires careful examination of the execution model. The key is looking for firms like HyroTrader that route through major liquidity providers like ByBit or Binance rather than internal dealing desks that trade against their clients.
The Importance of True Market Data
A chart is only as good as its data feed, and this principle cannot be overstated. Artificial “wicks” designed to stop out retail traders are a hallmark of inferior platforms that prioritize their own profit over trader success. Professional prop firms utilize real-time data streams that ensure what a trader sees on the chart matches the global order book with complete accuracy.
For algorithmic traders and those utilizing automated bots, this transparency is non-negotiable. Strategies that rely on technical levels or high-frequency inputs cannot function properly if the price feed is manipulated or delayed. The ability to integrate tools like TradingView or connect via API directly to the exchange liquidity is what separates a gamified experience from a professional trading operation.
Meet HyroTrader
Founded in 2022 and based in Prague, HyroTrader is a proprietary trading firm specializing in cryptocurrency for traders. The company offers funded accounts of up to 200,000 USDT, which can be scaled to 1 million USDT with consistent performance.
Traders utilize real-time data to trade on ByBit or Binance through CLEO, ensuring authentic trading conditions. Profit sharing begins at 70% and can increase to 90%, with payouts made in USDT or USDC within 12-24 hours after earning $100 in profit.
Unlike many competitors, HyroTrader provides unlimited evaluation periods and refunds the challenge fee after the first payout, lowering entry costs. With over $2 million paid out and a global community, it offers a legitimate opportunity for skilled crypto traders to access institutional capital without risking personal funds.
Navigating Risk and Drawdown Constraints
The primary critique of proprietary trading is often the strictness of risk rules. However, these constraints are actually the training wheels of professionalism when viewed through the right lens. A 5% daily drawdown limit or a 10% maximum loss ceiling is not a trap designed to fail traders. It is a standard institutional risk parameter used by professionals worldwide. No hedge fund manager in the world is permitted to lose 20% of a portfolio in a single afternoon, and for good reason.
Learning to navigate these parameters is what refines a gambler into a genuine risk manager. The best environments offer unlimited time for evaluation, recognizing that quality trading cannot be rushed. The artificial pressure of a “30-day challenge” often forces traders to violate their own risk management rules just to beat the clock. Removing the time limit allows the trader to wait patiently for the highest probability setups, aligning their activity with market conditions rather than an arbitrary calendar deadline.
Scaling: The Path to Seven Figures
The trajectory for a crypto prop trader should not end at the initial funding stage. The true goal is scalability over time. A static account size eventually limits potential regardless of skill level, whereas a dynamic scaling plan rewards consistency and discipline.
Consider a roadmap that begins at 200,000 USDT. Through consistent performance, avoiding significant drawdowns, and hitting modest profit targets, a trader can see their allocation grow to 1,000,000 USDT. At this level, a profit split of 80% or 90% becomes genuinely life-changing, transforming trading from a side pursuit into a legitimate wealth-building vehicle.
The Cash Flow Advantage
Liquidity is king in any trading endeavor. In traditional finance, waiting 30 days for a wire transfer is standard practice. In the crypto ecosystem, money moves at the speed of the blockchain itself. Traders who live off their market returns require agility. They need the ability to request a withdrawal on a Sunday and receive USDT or USDC within hours rather than weeks.
This fluidity turns trading from a speculative venture into a reliable business operation with predictable cash flows. When profits can be realized and withdrawn immediately upon hitting a threshold, the feedback loop of success is powerfully reinforced. It allows the trader to compound their personal net worth steadily while leaving the firm’s capital at work in the markets.
The Future of Decentralized Opportunity
The convergence of cryptocurrency volatility and proprietary capital offers a unique moment in financial history. It allows individuals with skills to act as institutional players, regardless of their geographic location or personal net worth. The playing field has never been more level for talented traders seeking meaningful opportunities.
Whether employing high-frequency trading bots, executing manual price-action strategies, or hedging with options, the vehicle matters as much as the driver. By leveraging significant capital without personal risk, utilizing direct exchange execution, and operating within professional risk parameters, traders can unlock the full potential of the crypto markets. The era of the undercapitalized retail trader is ending. The era of the funded professional has arrived.
Disclaimer: This is a sponsored post. CryptoSlate does not endorse any of the projects mentioned in this article. Investors are encouraged to perform necessary due diligence.
The United Kingdom will require domestic crypto platforms to report all transactions from UK-resident users starting in 2026, expanding the scope of the Cryptoasset Reporting Framework (CARF).
The change will give His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) — the UK’s tax authority — automatic access to both domestic and cross-border crypto data for the first time, tightening tax compliance ahead of CARF’s first global information exchange in 2027.
CARF, designed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), is a framework for the automatic cross-border exchange of crypto transaction data between tax authorities worldwide. Its rules require crypto asset service providers to perform due diligence, verify user identities, and report detailed transaction information on an annual basis.
The framework primarily focuses on cross-border activity, meaning that crypto transactions occurring entirely within the United Kingdom would fall outside automatic reporting channels, according to a policy paper shared by HMRC on Wednesday.
By expanding the framework to cover domestic users, the government aims to prevent crypto from becoming an “off-CRS” asset class, one that escapes the visibility applied to traditional financial accounts under the Common Reporting Standard.
UK officials say the unified approach will streamline reporting for crypto companies while giving tax authorities a more complete data set to identify noncompliance and assess taxpayer obligations.
The UK also proposed a “no gain, no loss” tax framework on Wednesday that would defer capital gains liabilities for decentralized finance (DeFi) users until they sell the underlying tokens, a shift the local industry has broadly welcomed.
Governments step up crypto tax oversight worldwide
As crypto moves further into the financial mainstream, governments worldwide are updating their tax codes to capture digital asset activity more clearly and consistently.
In South Korea, the National Tax Service announced in October that it will seize cryptocurrency held in cold wallets and conduct home searches for hardware devices if it suspects taxpayers are hiding digital assets to evade obligations.
More recently, Spain’s Sumar parliamentary group proposed raising the top tax rate on crypto gains to 47%, according to local reports. The amendments would shift crypto profits into the general income bracket and set a 30% flat rate for corporate holders.
On Thursday, Switzerland announced that it had postponed the start of automatic crypto information exchange with foreign tax authorities until 2027, as it determines which countries it will share data with. CARF rules will still enter Swiss law on Jan. 1, but their rollout has been delayed, with transitional measures planned to ease compliance for domestic crypto firms.
Meanwhile, in the United States, Representative Warren Davidson introduced a bill in November that would allow Americans to pay for federal taxes in Bitcoin, with the contributions routed into a strategic national BTC reserve.
The proposal, known as the Bitcoin for America Act, would exempt these payments from capital gains taxes by treating the transferred Bitcoin as neither a gain nor a loss for the taxpayer.
Bitcoin’s big buyers seem to have stepped off the gas.
For the better part of the last year or so, it felt like there was a constant tailwind behind Bitcoin’s price. ETFs vacuumed up coins, stablecoin balances kept climbing, and traders were willing to go to insane levels of leverage to bet on more upside. NYDIG called these the “demand engines” of the cycle in its latest report. The company argued that several of those engines have reversed course: ETFs are seeing net outflows, the stablecoin base has stalled, and futures markets look cautious.
That sounds rather ominous if you only read the headline. Unfortunately, as always, the truth is always somewhere in the middle. We will walk through each of those engines, keep the focus on dollars in and out, and end with the practical question everyone cares about: if the big machines are really slowing, does it break the bull market or slow it down?
When the ETF hose stops blasting
The simplest engine to understand is the ETF pipe. Since their launch in January 2024, spot Bitcoin ETFs in the US have brought in tens of billions of dollars in net inflows. That money came from advisers, hedge funds, family offices, and retail investors who chose a brokerage ticker as their preferred method of Bitcoin exposure. The crucial detail is that they were net buyers almost every week for most of the year.
But that pattern broke over the past month. On several days in November, the ETF complex logged heavy redemptions, including some of the largest outflows since launch. A few of the funds that had been reliable buyers (think BlackRock) flipped to net sellers. For anyone looking at a single day of data, it sure could have felt like the entire ETF market blew up.
Graph showing the cumulative flow for spot Bitcoin ETFs in the US from January 2024 to November 2025 (Source: Farside)
The longer view is, of course, less dramatic but important nevertheless. Cumulative flows are still deeply positive, and all funds still hold a huge pool of Bitcoin. What changed is the direction of marginal money: instead of new cash flowing steadily in, some investors are taking profits, cutting exposure or moving into other trades. That means spot price no longer has a constant mechanical buyer sitting underneath it.
A lot of that behavior is tied to how investors now hedge and manage risk. Once regulators allowed much higher position limits on ETF options (from 25,000 to 250,000 contracts), institutions could run covered-call strategies and other overlays on top of their ETF holdings. That gave them more ways to adjust risk without dumping shares, but also drained some of the pure “buy and hold at any price” energy. When price surged toward the top, some investors capped their upside for income. When price rolled over, others used the same options market to hedge instead of adding more spot.
The second engine sits in stablecoins. If ETFs are the Wall Street-friendly funnel into Bitcoin, stablecoins are the crypto-native cash pile that lives inside the system. When USDT, USDC, and peers grow, it usually means more fresh dollars are arriving or at least being parked on exchanges ready to deploy. For much of the last year, Bitcoin’s big legs higher lined up with a growing stablecoin base.
That pattern is wobbling, as the total stablecoin supply has stopped growing and even shrunk a little in the past month. Different trackers disagree on the exact amount, but the drop is clear enough. Some of that can be put down to simple risk reduction: traders pulling money out of exchanges, funds rotating into Treasuries, and smaller tokens losing market share. But some of it is real withdrawal of capital from the market.
The takeaway here is straightforward: the pool of digital dollars that can chase Bitcoin higher is no longer expanding. That doesn’t automatically push price down, but it does mean every rally has to be funded out of a more or less fixed pot. There’s less “new money” sloshing around on exchanges that can instantly flood into BTC when sentiment turns.
The third engine lives in derivatives. Funding rates on perpetual futures are a fee that traders pay to keep those contracts in line with spot price. When funding is strongly positive, it usually means many traders are long with leverage and are paying to stay that way. When funding goes negative, shorts are paying longs and the market is skewed toward bets on downside. The “basis” on regulated futures like CME is simply the gap between futures and spot. A big positive basis usually shows strong demand to be long with leverage.
NYDIG points out that both of these gauges have cooled. Funding on offshore perpetuals has flipped negative at times. CME futures premia have compressed. Open interest is lower than it was at the peak. This tells us a lot of leveraged longs were washed out in the recent drawdown and haven’t rushed back. Traders are more cautious, and in some pockets they’re now willing to pay for downside protection instead of upside exposure.
This matters for two reasons. First, leveraged buyers are often the marginal force that takes a move from a healthy uptrend to a vertical blow-off. If they’re nursing losses or sitting on the sidelines, moves tend to be slower, choppier and significantly less fun for anyone hoping for instant all-time highs. Second, when leverage builds in one direction, it can amplify both gains and crashes. A market with less leverage can still move a lot, but it’s less prone to sudden air pockets triggered by liquidations.
So if ETFs are leaking, stablecoins are flat, and derivatives traders are cautious, who’s on the other side of this selloff?
Here is where the picture becomes more subtle. On-chain data and exchange metrics suggest that some long-term holders have used the recent volatility to take profits. Coins that sat dormant for long periods have started to move again. At the same time, there are signs that newer wallets and smaller buyers are quietly accumulating. Some address clusters that rarely spend have also added to their balances. And some retail flows on large exchanges still lean toward net buying on the worst days.
That is the core of NYDIG’s “reversal, not doom” framing. The most visible, headline-friendly demand engines have shifted into reverse just as price cooled. Underneath that, there’s still a slow transfer from older, richer cohorts to newer ones. The flow of this money is choppier and less mechanical than the ETF boom period, which makes the market feel harsher for anyone who arrived late. But it isn’t the same thing as capital vanishing altogether.
What this actually means for you
First, the easy mode is more or less gone for now. For much of the year, ETF inflows and growing stablecoin balances acted like a one-way escalator. You didn’t need to know much about futures funding or options limits to understand why price kept grinding higher, because new money kept arriving. That background bid has faded and, in some weeks, flipped into net selling, making drawdowns feel heavier and rallies harder to sustain.
Second, a slowdown in demand engines does’t automatically kill a cycle. Bitcoin’s long-run case still revolves around fixed supply, growing institutional rails and a steady expansion of places where it can sit on balance sheets, and those structures are still in place.
What changes is the path between here and the next high. Instead of a straight line driven by one giant narrative, the market will start trading more on positioning and pockets of liquidity. ETF flows may swing between red and green, stablecoins may bounce around a plateau instead of sprinting higher, and derivatives markets may spend more time in neutral. That kind of environment rewards patience more than bravado.
Finally, if you zoom out, reversals in the demand engines are part of how every cycle breathes. Heavy inflows set the stage for overextension, but then outflows and cooling leverage force a reset. New buyers arrive at lower prices, usually quieter and with less fanfare. NYDIG’s argument is that Bitcoin is somewhere in that reset phase, and the data supports that view.
The engines that drove the first leg of the bull run are running slower, some in reverse, but it doesn’t mean the machine is broken. It means the next leg will depend less on automatic pipes and more on whether investors still want to own this thing once the easy part has passed.
Strategy would consider selling Bitcoin only if its stock falls below net asset value and the company loses access to fresh capital, CEO Phong Le said in a recent interview.
Le told the What Bitcoin Did show that if Strategy’s multiple to net asset value (mNAV) were to slip under one and financing options dry up, unloading Bitcoin becomes “mathematically” justified to protect what he calls “Bitcoin yield per share.”
However, he noted that the move would be a last resort, not a policy shift. “I would not want to be the company that sells Bitcoin,” he said, adding that financial discipline has to override emotion when markets turn hostile.
Strategy’s model hinges on raising capital when its shares trade at a premium to NAV and using that money to buy Bitcoin (BTC), increasing BTC held per share. When that premium disappears, Le said, selling a portion of holdings to meet obligations can be acceptable to shareholders if issuing new equity would be more dilutive.
The warning comes as investors scrutinize the company’s expanding fixed payments tied to a suite of preferred shares introduced this year. Le put annual obligations near $750 million to $800 million as recent issues mature. His plan is to fund those payouts first through equity raised at a premium to mNAV.
“The more we pay the dividends out of all of our instruments every quarter, that’s seasoning the market to realize that even in a bare market, we’re going to pay these dividends. When we do that, they start to price up,” he said.
Beyond balance-sheet mechanics, Le defended the long-term thesis on Bitcoin as a scarce, non-sovereign asset with global appeal. “It’s non-sovereign, has a limited supply… people in Australia, the US, Ukraine, Turkey, Argentina, Vietnam and South Korea — everyone likes Bitcoin,” he added.
Last week, Strategy launched a new “BTC Credit” dashboard to reassure investors after Bitcoin’s latest drop and a sell-off in digital-asset treasury stocks. The company, the largest corporate holder of BTC, says it has enough dividend coverage for decades, even if Bitcoin’s price stays flat.
Strategy claims its debt remains well-covered if BTC falls to its average purchase price of about $74,000, and still manageable even at $25,000.
Bitcoin (BTC) failed to reclaim $93,000 despite positive momentum in the US stock market and rising gold prices. With the S&P 500 trading just 1% below its all-time high, traders are evaluating what could spark sustainable bullish momentum for Bitcoin.
Key takeaways:
Demand for BTC put (sell) options and stagnant ETF inflows kept momentum capped despite easing macroeconomic conditions.
AI-driven tech relief has cut market stress, but BTC strength relies on holding $90k as investors bet on liquidity support amid softer job market data.
Fed target rate expectations for Dec. 10. Source: CME Group FedWatch Tool
Bond market futures data from CME Group shows traders assigning 87% odds to an interest rate cut on Dec. 10, up from 71% the prior week.
Signs of weakness US the US job market prompted investors to expect a more expansionary monetary policy. The US Labor Department noted that continuing claims climbed to 1.96 million in the week ending Nov. 15.
Meanwhile, the sentiment in BTC derivatives was not significantly altered by the recent price weakness, yet demand for bullish positioning remains notably cautious.
Bitcoin monthly futures held a 4% premium over spot markets on Saturday, unchanged from the previous week.
Under neutral conditions, this basis typically ranges from 5% to 10% to reflect carrying costs. The lack of appetite for leveraged long positions may indicate lingering concerns after Bitcoin’s 18% pullback over the past 30 days.
BTC options markets can help evaluate whether whales and market makers fear additional downside. Bearish phases are often marked by increased demand for put (sell) options.
Bitcoin options put-to-call premium volumes at Deribit, USD. Source: laevitas.ch
Volumes on put options far exceeded call (buy) instruments on Thursday and Friday, signaling elevated uncertainty. A more neutral market would require put-to-call premium volumes at 1.3x or below. While still well off the 5x peak level favoring downside protection seen on Nov. 21, overall sentiment in Bitcoin derivatives remains cautious.
Part of this hesitation stems from stagnant flows into Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETF), which added only $70 million in net assets during the week ending Nov. 28.
Additionally, none of the companies that use Bitcoin as a primary reserve asset have expanded their holdings over the past two weeks, according to CoinGlass data.
Top companies holding BTC reserves. Source: CoinGlass
Strategy last added Bitcoin on Nov. 17. More concerningly, holdings attributed to SpaceX moved 1,163 BTC to two new addresses on Thursday, fueling speculation about a potential sale.
It remains unclear whether Elon Musk’s privately held aerospace company changed custodians, as no official statements have been issued.
Trump’s tax-cut plans boosted scarce assets
During the US holiday, President Donald Trump reiterated plans to substantially cut income taxes, citing revenue expected from import tariffs.
Investors grew more willing to take risks as it became clear that government debt would remain under heavy upward pressure, a backdrop typically supportive of scarce assets. Gold gained 3.8% during the week, while silver surged to a new all-time high.
Concerns around the artificial intelligence sector eased after Google’s custom TPU chip enabled Gemini to top benchmarks in coding, math, science and multimodal reasoning.
The breakthrough boosted investor confidence, as the technology uses far less energy than GPU-based processing. Alphabet (GOOG US) gained 6.8% on the week, helping reduce fears about Nvidia’s (NVDA US) growth outlook.
S&P 500 Index (left) vs. Bitcoin/USD (right). Source: TradingView / Cointelegraph
Bitcoin’s path to $100,000 appears increasingly independent of broad macro trends, however, as its correlation with tech stocks continues to fade.
The longer BTC holds above $90,000, the more confident bulls become, supported by the return of ETF inflows, less risk aversion in BTC derivatives, and the likelihood of liquidity injections from the central bank.
This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.
Bitcoin (BTC) is repeating its latest bull market bottom with near 100% correlation in 2025.
Key points:
Bitcoin is tracking the 2022 bear market with concerning accuracy, with the end of the year just a month away.
November is among the worst on record for BTC price action.
Stocks inflows are picking up, and with them the return of institutional capital to crypto ETFs.
Analysis on BTC price: “It feels bad because it is”
Grim new BTC price analysis from network economist Timothy Peterson concludes that this year is eerily similar to 2022.
Bitcoin has disappointed bulls with its 36% comedown from all-time highs — just when many believed that the bull market’s biggest gains were about to hit.
Now, as the last month of 2025 begins, BTC/USD is anything but bullish. According to Peterson’s data, the pair is even mimicking its last bear-market bottom.
“2H2025 Bitcoin is the same as 2H2022 Bitcoin,” he told followers in a post on X Saturday.
On a daily and monthly basis, the correlation between this year and 2022 is striking. Correlation on daily timeframes is now 80%, while the monthly equivalent has reached a full 98%.
An accompanying chart shows that if history continues to repeat itself, a true BTC price comeback may not happen until well into Q1 next year.
“It feels bad because it is bad,” Peterson wrote about November performance in previous analysis last week.
“This month ranks in the bottom 10% of daily price paths since 2015.”
BTC price November performance comparison. Source: Timothy Peterson/X
As Cointelegraph reported, a “red” November for BTC/USD historically results in December delivering the same result, albeit with less intense downside.
Crypto ETFs tease end to massive investor rout
A macro sentiment change still has the potential to deliver a classic “Santa rally” across risk assets before year-end.
Crypto suffered conspicuously more than stocks during the past month’s drawdown, but signs of a turnaround are quickly mounting.
Reporting figures from Bloomberg and JPMorgan this weekend, trading resource The Kobeissi Letter announced “massive inflows” for US equities.
Equity funds have seen $900 billion in new capital since November 2024, with $450 billion in the last five months alone.
“By contrast, other asset class funds have pulled in just +$100 billion,” it commented.
“Put differently, equities have attracted more inflows than all other asset classes COMBINED. Equity inflows remain remarkably strong.”
Macro asset class inflows. Source: The Kobeissi Letter/X
The latest data covering the US spot Bitcoin and Ether exchange-traded funds (ETFs), meanwhile, hints that the worst of the institutional crypto sell-off could be in the past.
Bitcoin ETFs finished Thanksgiving week with $220 billion in inflows, while the Ether equivalents took in $312 million.
US spot Bitcoin, Ether ETF netflows (screenshot). Source: Farside Investors
This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.
