Good morning Asia. This is what is making news in the markets:
Welcome to Asia Morning Briefing, a daily summary of top news during US time and an overview of market movements and analysis. For a detailed overview of the US markets, see CoinDesk’s Crypto Daybook Americas.
Bitcoin’s drop into the 90s has forced prediction markets into one of the fastest sentiment resets of the year, with traders abruptly abandoning bullish scenarios and repricing the drop as a deeper structural break rather than a routine correction.
The change marks a rare moment where retail and institutional bettors were caught off guard at the same time. Polymarkets’ year-end bitcoin price odds have swung sharply toward a further decline, reflecting a market that expected mild weakness rather than a multi-week sell-off that erased most of bitcoin’s year-to-date gains.
In a recent note, QCP warned that not even the professional desks were positioned for a weekly close below 100,000 or the loss of the 50-week moving average, calling the move a cycle-level inflection that traders are still digesting.
On-chain data from Glassnode shows similar stress, with oversold momentum, large realized losses, and moderate ETF outflows pointing to late-stage capitulation pressures as bitcoin trades in a zone where previous bottoms have formed.
But CryptoQuant maintains in a recent note that the market is still missing the last ingredient to reach a true bottom, noting that realized losses remain virtually non-existent and that long-term holders are still selling strongly.
For now, the market is among the first signs of exhaustion and the lack of capitulation that usually defines a durable bottom, creating a volatile stretch as traders decide which signal wins.
Market movement
BTC: Bitcoin fell to around 92,500 during the US session, down about 2% on the day and 27% from last month’s all-time high.
ETH: Ether remained just above 3,000, falling around 2% in the last 24 hours and extending its weekly decline to around 15%.
Gold: Gold fell to around $4,069 an ounce, down 0.3%, as weak expectations of a Fed rate cut in December and a firmer dollar weighed on the metal after briefly pushing it above $4,100 earlier.
Nikkei 225: Asia-Pacific markets fell on Tuesday after a tech-led decline on Wall Street, with Japan’s Nikkei 225 falling 0.92% as investors awaited Nvidia’s earnings and the September jobs report.
Elsewhere in Crypto
- DappRadar shuts down, citing “financially unsustainable” market (CoinDesk)
- Ethereum is the opposite of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX, says Vitalik Buterin (Decrypt)
- The man behind the Twitter hacks of Barack Obama and Jeff Bezos to return more than $5 million in stolen bitcoins (The Block)
