The cryptocurrency market remained choppy on Friday with bitcoin having spent the last seven days between $88,000 and $94,000 in a week dominated by the Federal Reserve’s decision to cut interest rates by 25 basis points.
Interest rate reductions are generally seen as bullish catalysts for risk assets like bitcoin, as investors are less incentivized to hold fiat currencies like the dollar, thus seeking returns elsewhere.
But neither bitcoin nor the broader crypto market performed as expected, with BTC falling below $90,000 after the cut before rising back to the upper side of the range. The CoinDesk 20 index is up 0.57% since midnight UTC.
The altcoin market remains relatively weak as several tokens, including , and have faced double-digit declines this week.
Derivatives positioning
- BTC’s 30-day implied volatility, represented by the Volmex BVIV index, continues to decline, falling to its lowest level since November 10. Traders appear to anticipate choppy price action in the final weeks of 2025.
- The ether volatility index has fallen to the lowest level since the end of October.
- On Deribit, the BTC and ETH selling bias remains intact across all time frames.
- Block flows were skewed by calendar spreads in BTC and ETH.
- In the futures market, ZEC open interest (OI) has increased by 16% to 2.28 million ZEC, approaching the all-time high of 2.32 million ZEC.
- HYPE, SUI and SOL have also seen notable increases in OI over 24 hours, indicating new capital inflows. OI has remained virtually stable in BTC and ETH.
symbolic talk
- Privacy coins continue to be the best performers in the altcoin market like zcash led the way with a 9% gain in the last 24 hours.
- There were also notable intraday recoveries for AAVE, HYPE, and LIDO, but performance over the past week remains subdued.
- CoinMarketCap’s “altcoin season” indicator is now at a cycle low of 16/100, a sign that traders are refusing to turn to the speculative altcoin market.
- The chronic underperformance is demonstrated by CoinDesk’s Memecoin Index (CDMEME), which is down 59% so far this year, in contrast to the CoinDesk 10 (CD10, which is down 7.3%.
- The demise of the memecoin market, once the basis of hype-driven crypto speculation, indicates a change in investor profile behavior over the past year.
- While the market used to be dominated by retail investors, the rise of ETFs and digital asset treasury (DAT) companies has sidelined that demand; replacing it with slow and steady price action.
