Ethereum demonstrates strength with solid weekly and monthly gains, even as futures positions cool down.
Gold is projected to hit new highs in 2026, driven by declining interest rates, central bank purchases, and geopolitical uncertainties.
Good morning, Asia! Here’s what’s moving the markets today:
Crypto markets kick off the year in a phase of adjustment rather than decline, with Bitcoin holding steady above $90,000 and Ether showing renewed strength as institutions reset their positions.
As Hong Kong opened its Wednesday trading session, Bitcoin dipped slightly in the short term but stayed within a range after surpassing the key $90,000 mark.
“With stocks, gold, and other precious metals at record highs, we view the situation as a tug-of-war between prices correcting upward to align with these assets and potentially declining over the coming months to follow the 4-year cycle,” said George Mandres, crypto analyst at trading firm XBTO, in a note to CoinDesk. He added that the latter scenario “can quickly become a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
So far, neither upward nor downward pressure has taken control of Bitcoin’s price. Rather than a steep correction, Bitcoin has traded sideways, indicating a phase of digestion rather than distribution. Mandres highlighted the calendar effect as a key factor distinguishing the current situation from late 2025.
“What’s changed now compared to a few weeks ago, aside from Bitcoin surpassing $90K, is that a new year has begun, resetting P&Ls to zero, and investors are looking to allocate capital to attractive risk/reward opportunities,” he explained.
Ethereum presents a slightly different picture. Although ETH has outperformed Bitcoin over weekly and monthly periods, futures data show that positioning has cooled.
Bradley Park, founder of DNTV Research, noted that CME Ethereum futures open interest provides valuable insight beyond spot price movements.
“Increasing open interest has largely reflected institutional activity through DAT-style ETF arbitrage trades, while declining open interest signals unwinding positions,” Park said in a note to CoinDesk.
That unwinding now seems well underway.
“The recent pullback looks less like a structural shift and more like a loss of momentum, with positioning resetting to roughly July 2025 levels,” Park added.
Crucially, this reset has not triggered a sharp spot market sell-off.
A recent Glassnode report echoes this theme across assets. Options markets have de-risked significantly, with contracting open interest and rising volatility expectations. Meanwhile, U.S. spot ETF flows have returned to net inflows, indicating renewed institutional demand but also greater sensitivity to near-term profit-taking.
Overall, these signals suggest consolidation and rotation rather than a widespread risk-off selloff. Bitcoin is balancing conflicting macro factors without losing its trend, while Ethereum appears less crowded and better positioned to benefit if institutional flows pick up again.
Market Movement:
BTC: Bitcoin is consolidating above $90,000, trading sideways after a recent rise. The price action reflects balance between macro support and caution from the market cycle, rather than fresh selling pressure.
ETH: Ether is hovering around $3,247, showing slight declines on short-term charts but maintaining strong gains over weekly and monthly periods, demonstrating resilience despite a recent pullback in futures positioning.
Gold: Following a nearly 65% rally in 2025, gold is expected to reach new highs in 2026, driven by falling interest rates, ongoing central bank purchases, and geopolitical uncertainties.
Nikkei 225: Japan’s Nikkei 225 dropped 0.45% on Wednesday as Asia-Pacific markets showed mixed results. Meanwhile, Australia’s ASX 200 gained 0.38% after inflation data came in below expectations.
Dogecoin rose another 2% following a 4% rebound on Sunday, marking its fifth consecutive day of gains.
Shiba Inu paused after surging nearly 12% on Sunday, having broken out of a falling channel formation.
Pepe is approaching its 200-day EMA, with bulls eyeing a breakout after a 77% rally over the past four days.
Meme coins including Dogecoin (DOGE), Shiba Inu (SHIB), and Pepe (PEPE) are leading the broader crypto market rally, fueled by the U.S. cross-border operation to detain Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Dogecoin has extended its advance for a fifth straight session, while SHIB and PEPE are taking a brief pause. Despite this consolidation, the technical outlook for the major meme coins remains bullish.
Venezuela is reportedly shifting from the petrodollar to cryptocurrencies like Tether’s USDT stablecoin to settle crude oil sales, with an estimated value between $10 billion and $15 billion. It’s believed that Maduro converted USDT into Bitcoin (BTC) to prevent his wallet from being frozen.
Along with a $2 billion gold-for-Bitcoin swap conducted between 2018 and 2020 and the seizure of BTC mining assets, Venezuela’s shadow reserve is estimated to hold around 600,000 BTC.
If the US Strategic Bitcoin Reserve seizes or absorbs Venezuela’s BTC holdings, it would effectively reduce Bitcoin’s available supply, potentially triggering a surge in demand. The current market recovery appears to reflect anticipation of this possible supply constraint.
Dogecoin Gains Bullish Momentum Above $0.15
Dogecoin rose 2% on Monday, building on Sunday’s 4% gain. The dog-themed meme coin has surpassed its 50-day Exponential Moving Average (EMA) at $0.14339 and is trading above the key $0.15 level.
This recovery follows a breakout rally from a descending wedge pattern on the daily logarithmic chart. The next target for Dogecoin is the 200-day EMA at $0.18202, which aligns with a resistance zone between $0.18100 and $0.18500.
Momentum indicators show strong buying pressure: the Relative Strength Index (RSI) stands at 65, leaving room before overbought territory, while the Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) continues to climb with green histogram bars, signaling growing bullish momentum.
If DOGE slips below the key support near $0.14399, it could negate the recent breakout and expose the meme coin to further downside pressure, potentially testing the next psychological floor around $0.13 or lower. Technical breakdowns below critical support often increase the risk of deeper corrections, as previous analyses have shown DOGE facing renewed bearish momentum if it fails to hold near support levels.
Shiba Inu Pauses After Four-Day Rally, Holding Above 50-Day EMA
Shiba Inu surged nearly 12% on Sunday, breaking above the resistance trendline formed by the October 13 and November 11 highs. As of Monday, SHIB has pulled back slightly, down over 1%.
If the recovery continues, Shiba Inu could target the 200-day EMA at $0.00001065.
Similar to Dogecoin, daily momentum indicators show strong bullish momentum for SHIB. The RSI stands at 65, approaching the overbought zone, while the MACD has crossed above the zero line with increasing green histogram bars, signaling growing upward momentum.
On the downside, if SHIB falls below the 50-day EMA at $0.00000821, it would invalidate the recent breakout, potentially exposing the coin to a drop toward the October 10 low of $0.00000678.
Pepe Eyes Breakout Above 200-Day EMA
Pepe slipped nearly 2% on Monday after soaring almost 18% on Sunday, pausing its four-day rally that has surged over 77%. This pullback reflects resistance near the 200-day EMA at $0.00000749.
If PEPE breaks above this level, the rally could extend toward the September 25 low at $0.00000886.
The RSI stands at 79, indicating overbought conditions and potentially unsustainable buying pressure. However, the rising MACD suggests continued bullish momentum.
On the downside, a potential reversal in PEPE may test the former resistance, now support zone, around $0.00000650.
The entire crypto market, tracking over 18,000 tokens across centralized and decentralized exchanges, is currently valued at nearly $3 trillion. This represents a 31% decline from the all-time high of $4.37 trillion recorded in early October, just before the recent crypto market crash.
Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency by market cap, is hovering around $88,000, accounting for more than half of the total market value at $1.77 trillion. Despite its dominant position, Bitcoin is poised to end the year with a negative annual return.
Since 2012, this marks the fourth year Bitcoin has underperformed, albeit by a significantly smaller margin compared to previous down years. For context, Bitcoin’s annual losses were -50.2% in 2014, -72.1% in 2018, and -62% in 2022. If Bitcoin maintains its current price level near $88,000, its annual underperformance in 2025 would be the “best of the worst” at around -6%.
Compared to Bitcoin, traditional asset classes like stocks and gold/silver have delivered substantially better returns this year on average. This contrast raises important questions about crypto’s position and outlook heading into 2026.
Is the Crypto Market Mature Enough for Significant Exposure?
The core purpose of the blockchain ecosystem is to transform the traditional money system through trustless finance. In simple terms, it leverages advances in cryptography combined with a full software stack to make transacting value as seamless as sending a message on an app.
While online banking and payment processors like PayPal have long provided similar convenience, the blockchain ecosystem offers a fundamental overhaul. Instead of relying on a single intermediary that acts as a bottleneck, automated smart contracts on an immutable ledger—the blockchain—execute all value transfers autonomously.
This decentralized approach eliminates single points of failure, increases transparency, and enhances security, paving the way for a new era of financial innovation.
This newly reinvented financial system—decentralized finance (DeFi)—has shown tremendous promise. Its total value locked (TVL) skyrocketed from $600 million in 2020 to $176 billion by late 2021, marking an astonishing growth of over 29,000%. Such rapid expansion is a clear indicator of a nascent industry emerging.
However, following the FTX collapse in late 2022 and a wave of bankruptcies among overleveraged crypto ventures, DeFi’s TVL has stabilized around $50 billion for the past two years. It was only after President Trump’s second term and the removal of the previously antagonistic SEC Chair Gary Gensler that DeFi began to recover, reaching approximately $168 billion TVL in early October.
Looking at this entire period from 2020 to now, several key conclusions emerge:
Without active institutional and legislative support, blockchain finance risks remaining confined to the enthusiast fringe. Like many cultural phenomena, mass adoption tends to be top-down driven, as exemplified by Elon Musk’s influence on Dogecoin’s surge.
One major hurdle to crypto’s wider adoption is the inflation of new tokens, which fuels recurring boom-and-bust cycles. This token oversupply undermines investor attention, market legitimacy, and overall capital efficiency.
The current ecosystem—where tokens are staked to earn more tokens in a closed-loop, casino-like economy—must give way to real utility derived from external value rather than internal dilution.
Moreover, Web3 crypto usage remains far from user-friendly and secure, with frequent incidents like bridge hacks and wallet incompatibility. According to Chainalysis, over $3.4 billion in crypto funds were stolen in 2025 alone. Ideally, blockchain finance should be so seamless that users are unaware they’re interacting with decentralized technology.
Notably, the market rally following the removal of SEC Chair Gary Gensler signals that blockchain’s underlying value hinges on how well it integrates with the broader, compliance-driven economy. As such, 2026 is shaping up to be a pivotal year for crypto’s maturity and mainstream acceptance.
Bitcoin and Stablecoin-Based Institutional Integration: The 2026 Catalyst
While DeFi protocols sought to establish dominance, new intermediaries such as foundations, early adopters, venture capitalists, and miners quickly asserted control. Despite the promise of decentralization, the ease of creating new tokens generated persistent dilution pressure across the crypto ecosystem.
Bitcoin, however, avoided this recursive dilution trap by imposing a physical energy barrier through its proof-of-work algorithm. This barrier limits token creation ex-nihilo, allowing Bitcoin’s network effect to remain robust. Following the October market crash, Bitcoin’s mining difficulty held steady, even increasing before stabilizing at pre-crash levels as the price hovered around $88,000 towards year-end.
Amid rising inflation fears, geopolitical tensions, and trade conflicts, gold and silver have regained their status as trusted hedges. Nevertheless, Bitcoin’s deterministic scarcity and digital-native nature position it uniquely for the modern economy, contrasting with gold’s pseudoscarcity.
Although many financial institutions underestimated Bitcoin’s 2025 price — with forecasts from Standard Chartered ($200k), VanEck ($180k), JPMorgan ($165k), Bernstein ($200k), and Fundstrat ($250k) — these projections may be delayed signals for 2026. As of early December, JPMorgan analysts suggested Bitcoin could reach $170k in 2026, assuming it begins to trade similarly to gold.
Moreover, recent research from K33 indicates that selling pressure from long-term holders (LTH) is nearing exhaustion. If this holds true, Bitcoin is poised to lead a renewed altcoin market rally in 2026, but with some notable distinctions:
The full implementation of the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation will channel the majority of European crypto trading volume into regulated entities, while simultaneously triggering a flight of activity to less restrictive jurisdictions.
Meanwhile, tokenized stocks are poised for wider adoption as the US clears key regulatory hurdles. Notably, SEC Chair Paul Atkins issued a no-action letter to the Depository Trust Company (DTC) to facilitate the rollout of tokenized securities. However, offerings from platforms like Robinhood, Kraken, and Dinari remain heavily geo-restricted.
As the EU seeks to curb USD-based stablecoin flows—evidenced by Kraken’s fiat-only tokenized stock trading—the US stands to gain renewed competitive advantage.
Institutional oversight in the US is becoming increasingly crypto-friendly, likely aiming to solidify USD dominance via stablecoins. For example, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) is revising its rules on banks’ exposure to cryptocurrencies. Together with more accommodating regulators such as the FDIC and OCC, it is now highly likely that US banks will hold cryptocurrencies in 2026.
Following the passage of the GENIUS Act, stablecoin flows are expected to significantly boost the broader crypto market. On one side, Circle’s upcoming Arc blockchain—backed by Blackrock, Visa, and Amazon—will support institutional stablecoin settlements. On the other, stablecoins are rapidly becoming the primary consumer-facing crypto product.
While MiCA’s vague definition of “decentralization on a spectrum” may hinder true DeFi innovation, it nonetheless accelerates capital formation around compliant crypto primitives.
The Bottom Line
Since 2020, the crypto ecosystem has created transformative wealth but also faced setbacks due to excessive experimentation. The strict regulatory stance under SEC Chair Gary Gensler cooled early enthusiasm, turning much of crypto activity into speculative trading rather than real financial innovation.
Following President Trump’s SEC repeal of SAB 121, crypto entered a new phase of integration under traditional finance (TradFi) rules. Despite macroeconomic and geopolitical headwinds, crypto moves into 2026 on its most stable footing yet.
Unlike prior cycles dominated by retail sentiment, institutional investors — pension funds, insurers, and endowments — are expected to reduce volatility through spot ETFs and altcoin trusts on high-performance chains like Solana and Sui.
The rise of Real World Assets (RWA) will foster a unified liquidity layer, linking tokenized stocks, RWAs, and TradFi blockchain networks with DeFi protocols. In this emerging hybrid finance, stablecoins will be the backbone, enabling DeFi’s transformation into a regulated, compliant capital market.
Bitcoin traded steadily on Tuesday, as a pickup in risk appetite lent support to the world’s largest cryptocurrency early in 2026, though renewed concerns surrounding treasury-focused firms limited further upside.
On Monday, Strategy Inc. (NASDAQ: MSTR), the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin, reported a significantly larger unrealized loss on its digital assets for the fourth quarter, reflecting the decline in the value of its holdings throughout 2025.
The broader crypto market also edged higher alongside Bitcoin, but gains generally lagged those seen in other risk-oriented sectors, particularly technology stocks.
Market sentiment improved as investors looked past the initial shock of a U.S. military action in Venezuela, which resulted in the capture of President Nicolás Maduro. Attention has now turned to Washington’s next steps for the region.
Bitcoin rose 1.3% to $93,576.7 at 00:59 ET (05:59 GMT), though it remained down more than 6% for 2025.
Saylor’s Strategy reports $17.44B unrealized loss in Q4
Michael Saylor’s Strategy announced on Monday night that it recorded a substantial $17.44 billion in unrealized losses for the fourth quarter of 2025, largely due to a decline in the value of Bitcoin, its largest asset.
A directly comparable figure for the fourth quarter of 2024 was unavailable, although the company had reported a net loss of $670.8 million in Q4 2024. Last year, Strategy adopted new accounting rules requiring it to mark its Bitcoin holdings to fair value in its earnings—a change that has led to significant swings in quarterly results.
The company’s shares, which function as a Bitcoin proxy, fell nearly 50% in 2025 as investors grew increasingly skeptical about the long-term viability of its crypto accumulation strategy. A prolonged downturn in Bitcoin prices, along with Strategy’s exclusion from a major U.S. stock index, further weighed on market sentiment.
The steep decline in Strategy’s share price has also raised concerns that the firm could be forced to liquidate part of its Bitcoin holdings to meet future debt and shareholder commitments—an outcome that could trigger substantial selling pressure on Bitcoin itself.
Altcoins climb as XRP leads gains
The broader crypto market traded mostly in positive territory in line with Bitcoin, with XRP outperforming the rest.
XRP jumped 12% amid stronger capital inflows into spot exchange-traded funds, while supplies of the token were also seen shrinking on major exchanges.
The world’s second-largest cryptocurrency, Ether, gained 2% to $3,220.24, while BNB advanced 0.6%.
Solana and Cardano rose by 2.5% and 5.5%, respectively.
In the memecoin space, Dogecoin added 0.4%, while $TRUMP climbed 2.6%.
THE ETERNAL SOVEREIGN 