Bitcoin approaches Christmas 2025 in a fragile but interesting position. Price trades around the $93,000 area after weeks of pressure. Four key charts show a market late in its correction, yet still lacking a clear bullish trigger.

The data highlights three big forces at work. Recent buyers sit in heavy losses, while new whales are capitulating. Macro conditions still drive price, even as spot buying strength quietly returns.

Short-Term Bitcoin Holders are in Deep Pain

The first chart tracks short-term holder (STH) realized profit and loss. This group includes coins bought in recent months. Their “realized price” is the average cost basis for these coins. 

Earlier in 2025, STHs sat on strong gains. Their average position was 15–20% in profit as Bitcoin pushed higher. That phase encouraged profit-taking and added sell pressure near the highs.

Today, the picture has flipped. Bitcoin trades below the STH realized price, and the cohort shows about -10% losses. The histogram on the chart is red, marking one of the deepest loss regimes of 2025.

This has two consequences.

Near term, these underwater holders can sell into every bounce. Many simply want out at break-even, which caps rallies toward their entry zone.

However, deep and persistent loss pockets usually appear later in corrections. They signal that weak hands already took heavy damage.

At some point, the selling power of this group runs low.

75% of Short-Term Holder's coins are sitting in loss (over 4.36 million BTC).

Interestingly enough, this is a comparable trend to the prior two local bottoms of this Bitcoin cycle. pic.twitter.com/2w1J4rXzi9

— On-Chain College (@OnChainCollege) December 8, 2025

Historically, the key turning signal comes when price reclaims the STH realized price from below. That move tells you forced selling is mostly done and new demand absorbs supply.

Until that happens, the chart still argues for caution and range trading around current levels.

New Bitcoin Whales Just Surrendered

The second chart shows realized profit and loss by whale cohorts. It splits flows between “new whales” and “old whales”. New whales are large holders that accumulated recently.

Yesterday, new whales realized $386 million in losses in one day. Their bar on the chart is a large negative spike. Several other big negative bars cluster around recent lows.

Old whales tell a different story. Their realized losses and profits are smaller and more balanced. They are not exiting at the same pace as the newcomers.

This pattern is typical at late stages of a correction. New whales often buy late, sometimes with leverage or strong narrative bias. When price moves against them, they are first to capitulate.

That capitulation has a structural benefit. Coins move from weak large hands to stronger hands or smaller buyers. Future sell-side overhang from this group decreases after such events.

Short term, these flushes can still drag price lower. Yet medium term, they improve the quality of Bitcoin’s holder base.

The market becomes more resilient once panicked large sellers finish exiting.

Real Interest Rates Still Steer Bitcoin

The third chart overlays Bitcoin with two-year US real yields, inverted. Real yields measure interest rates after inflation. The series moves almost tick-for-tick with BTC across 2025.

When real yields fall, the inverted line rises. Bitcoin tends to rise alongside it as liquidity improves. Lower real yields make risk assets more appealing relative to safe bonds.

Since late summer, real yields have moved higher again. The inverted line trended lower, and Bitcoin followed it down. This shows macro conditions still dominate the larger trend.

Federal Reserve rate cuts alone may not fix this. What matters is how markets expect real borrowing costs to evolve. If inflation expectations fall faster than nominal rates, real yields can even rise.

For Bitcoin, a durable new bull leg likely needs easier real conditions. Until bond markets price that shift, BTC rallies face a macro headwind.

What is driving the drawdown in Bitcoin?

When you stop listening to Bitcoin pundits and start listening to what Bitcoin is saying about itself, then you will see the real truth

I am going to lay out the 3 major things you need to watch for Bitcoin right now 🧵 pic.twitter.com/FC60PPt2gG

— Capital Flows (@Globalflows) December 11, 2025

Spot Taker Buyers are Stepping Back In

The fourth chart tracks 90-day Spot Taker CVD across major exchanges. CVD measures the net volume of market orders that cross the spread.

It shows whether aggressive buyers or sellers dominate.

For weeks during the drawdown, the regime was Taker Sell Dominant. Red bars filled the chart as sellers hit bids across spot markets. This aligned with the grinding drift lower in price.

Now the signal has flipped. The metric just turned Taker Buy Dominant, with green bars returning. Aggressive buyers now outnumber aggressive sellers on spot venues.

Taker Buy momentum is back 🔄

Bitcoin's 90-day Spot Taker CVD just flipped to **Taker Buy Dominant** — marking a shift in market behavior after weeks of sell-side pressure.

Buy-side aggression is returning across major spot exchanges. pic.twitter.com/w5uaGcGHPi

— Maartunn (@JA_Maartun) December 11, 2025

This is an early but important change. Trend reversals often start with microstructure shifts like this.
First buyers step in, then price stabilizes, then larger flows follow.

One day of data is never enough. However, a sustained green regime would confirm that real demand is back. It would show spot markets absorbing supply from STHs and capitulating whales.

What It All Means For Bitcoin Price Heading Into Christmas

Taken together, the four charts show a late-stage correction, not a fresh bull market.

Short-term holders and new whales carry heavy losses and still sell into strength. Macro real yields keep a lid on risk appetite at the index level.

At the same time, some building blocks for a recovery are visible. Capitulation by new whales cleans up the holder base.

Spot taker buyers are returning, which reduces downside velocity.

Heading into Christmas 2025, Bitcoin looks range-bound with a bearish tilt, hovering around $90,000.

Downside spikes into the mid or high-$80,000s remain possible if real yields stay high. A clear bullish shift likely needs three signals together:

First, price must reclaim the short-term holders’ realized price and hold above it. Second, two-year real yields should roll lower, easing financial conditions.

Third, Taker Buy dominance should persist, confirming strong spot demand.

Until that alignment appears, traders face a choppy market shaped by macro data and trapped holders. Long-term investors may see this as a planning zone rather than a time for aggressive bets.

The post 4 Charts Explain Bitcoin’s Price Condition Heading into Christmas 2025 appeared first on BeInCrypto.

A US court has sentenced Terra founder Do Kwon to 15 years in prison, concluding one of the most consequential fraud cases in crypto history.

The decision, delivered on December 11, 2025, follows Kwon’s guilty plea earlier this year.

End of the 2022 Crypto Winter Saga?

The sentencing ends a three-year and seven-month legal saga that began after the collapse of Terra’s algorithmic stablecoin ecosystem in May 2022, which erased tens of billions in market value and triggered a cascade of failures across the crypto sector.

Prosecutors argued that Kwon knowingly misled investors about the stability of TerraUSD and the backing of its broader ecosystem.

Kwon’s sentence is shorter than the 25 years received by FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, though both cases have reshaped global regulatory attitudes toward digital assets.

Prosecutors highlighted the scale of damage caused by Terra’s implosion, citing widespread retail losses and systemic fallout across lending platforms and hedge funds.

Kwon had faced charges in both the United States and South Korea before being extradited. His guilty plea consolidated proceedings under US jurisdiction, enabling today’s sentencing.

The court emphasised investor protection and accountability as central factors in determining the term.

The decision marks a turning point for the Terra community, which continues to trade legacy tokens LUNC and LUNA despite the network’s collapse. Market reaction remains volatile as traders digest the implications of Kwon’s conviction.

With the case now closed, regulators are expected to use the verdict as a reference point for future enforcement actions involving algorithmic stablecoins and high-risk financial engineering in crypto.

The post Terra Founder Do Kwon Sentenced to 15 Years in Prison for Fraud appeared first on BeInCrypto.

Venture firm a16z has released its annual crypto predictions, outlining a sweeping shift in how blockchains, AI agents, and global payments will operate by 2026. 

The research highlights three core forces — autonomous agents, disappearing payment rails, and a new era of privacy-first blockchains. All of these developments together signal a structural redesign of the internet’s financial layer.

AI Agents Will Force a Massive Shift

The most consequential shift, according to a16z, is the rise of AI agents as economic participants. For every human in financial services, agents now outnumber workers nearly 100 to 1. 

However, these autonomous systems still lack identity, permissions, or compliance structures. The firm argues that 2026 will introduce the first version of KYA: Know Your Agent, a cryptographic identity layer linking agents to their owners, constraints, and liabilities. 

Without this, agents will remain “unbanked ghosts,” unable to transact safely or access real markets. With it, they become programmable market actors capable of spending, trading, and settling value in real time.

Payments Vanish into the Internet’s Plumbing

This shift drives the second major prediction: payments will vanish into the network itself. As AI agents trigger transactions automatically — buying data, paying for GPU time, or settling API calls — money must move with the same speed and granularity as information. 

Emerging primitives like x402 enable value transfer to occur instantly, permissionlessly, and without intermediaries. 

In this model, payments stop being an application layer and become a native network behavior. Banks, stablecoins, and settlement systems become invisible infrastructure running under agent-to-agent commerce.

Privacy Chains Will Dominate

Privacy forms the third pillar of a16z’s 2026 outlook. The firm argues that privacy will become the strongest moat in crypto, far outweighing performance or throughput. 

More specifically, once transactions become private, users face real friction when switching chains because moving secrets leaks metadata. This creates “privacy lock-in,” a winner-take-most effect for the chains that get privacy right.

Privacy will be the most important moat in crypto.

Why? Because secrets are hard to migrate.

Everyone is launching a new "high performance" blockchain lately. But these chains are hardly different from one another. Blockspace is functionally the same everywhere. And with…

— Ali Yahya (@alive_eth) December 5, 2025

Arthur Hayes echoed the same point earlier, stating that institutional adoption cannot scale on public-by-default blockchains. 

“These large institutions don’t want their information public or at risk of going public,” he said, noting that Layer-2 privacy solutions may emerge first while Ethereum remains the underlying security substrate.

Other a16z crypto predictions highlight rising stablecoin infrastructure, the shift from tokenization to on-chain origination, verifiable cloud computing through faster SNARKs, and the emergence of “staked media,” where commentators prove credibility through on-chain commitments.

The post a16z Predicts Three Crypto Narratives Will Shine In 2026 appeared first on BeInCrypto.

Ethereum’s long-term trajectory has become a focal point again after Arthur Hayes laid out a sweeping forecast for the asset’s institutional future, price potential, and competitive space. 

His comments arrived as Ethereum trades near $3,200, fluctuating between $3,060 and $3,440 over the past week. Major players such as Tom Lee’s BitMine also increased their Ethereum holdings at an unprecedented pace.

Ethereum Becomes the Institutional Default

Hayes believes the market still misunderstands how deeply traditional institutions intend to integrate Ethereum. He argues that after years of failed experiments with private blockchains, banks now recognize the need for a public settlement layer.

“These organizations finally understand that you cannot have a private blockchain; you must use a public blockchain for security and real usage,” he said.

He links this shift to the stablecoin boom, which has forced banks to accept the value of on-chain settlement. 

According to Hayes, Ethereum is positioned as the only platform with the security, liquidity, and developer depth institutions need.

He expects this shift to drive a significant price resurgence for Ethereum in the coming cycle, complementing aggressive treasury accumulation by firms such as BitMine.

BitMine bought 33,504 ETH ($112 million) this week and 138,452 ETH (~$435 million) earlier in December, bringing its total to roughly 3.86 million ETH. That scale of accumulation has strengthened the narrative that institutions are positioning for Ethereum’s next major cycle. 

Privacy Remains Ethereum’s Biggest Weakness, But L2s Will Cover It

Hayes acknowledges Ethereum still lacks the privacy guarantees large institutions require. He notes that this is “the biggest thing Ethereum doesn’t have yet,” though he says Vitalik Buterin’s roadmap is actively addressing it.

Despite this gap, he argues institutional adoption will not be delayed. Instead, enterprises will deploy privacy-enabled Layer-2 networks while relying on Ethereum for settlement. 

He believes Ethereum L1 remains the “security substrate” regardless of whether activity occurs on L2s like Arbitrum or Optimism.

“There may need to be a debate about how fees are distributed between L2s and Ethereum L1,” he said, but he stressed that this does not change the underlying reality: institutions will still secure their operations using Ethereum.

This aligns with current ecosystem trends. Exchange balances are at multi-year lows, and whales have accumulated over 900,000 ETH in recent weeks, according to Santiment data. 

Institutional architecture continues to form around the Ethereum base layer, even as fees fall amid L2 migration.

A Narrow Field of Winners: Ethereum First, Solana Second

Hayes sees the future of public blockchains consolidating around a very small group. He places Ethereum as the clear long-term winner, with Solana in a distant but durable second place.

He credits Solana’s rise from $7 to $300 to intense meme coin activity in 2023 and 2024. However, he states Solana “needs a new trick” to outperform Ethereum again. 

While he expects Solana to remain relevant, he does not expect it to match Ethereum’s institutional role or long-term price strength.

Hayes views nearly all other L1s as structurally weak. He dismissed high-FDV chains such as Monad as over-inflated projects likely to collapse after an initial pump. 

“Monad won’t be able to compete with Ethereum

I have no belief that this is a legitimate blockchain.

It’ll never have any real usage.”

— Arthur Hayes

if you understand network effects, you know Ethereum’s here to stay at the top.

Monad’s solution is simple: build on… pic.twitter.com/EuXpU6VK1N

— rip.eth (@ripeth) November 29, 2025

50 ETH to Become a Millionaire by Next Election

Hayes offered his most explicit numerical prediction when asked how much ETH one would need to become a millionaire in the next cycle. 

He stated that Ethereum could reach $20,000, implying that 50 ETH would be enough to reach a seven-figure portfolio.

The BitMex founder expects this price target to materialize by the next US presidential election. His outlook aligns with the current supply environment: exchange reserves are shrinking, institutions are accumulating, and treasury buyers like BitMine continue to deploy hundreds of millions into ETH.

Arthur Hayes was just asked about Tom Lee saying $ETH could flip $BTC.

He says Ethereum is the best L1, with the most developers, the best DeFi, and the strongest talent. pic.twitter.com/EsQ74JpNRV

— SamAlτcoin.eth 🌎 (@SAMALTCOIN_ETH) October 21, 2025

If Ethereum fails to meet these expectations, Hayes says it will be due to narrative breakdown. 

Also, if stablecoin usage slows or institutions retreat from on-chain trading, Bitcoin could outperform Ethereum for a prolonged period.

However, he argues that current market structure favors Ethereum’s long-term dominance—especially as banks prepare to execute Web3 strategies on public infrastructure.

The post Arthur Hayes Makes Wild Ethereum Prediction for 2026 and Beyond appeared first on BeInCrypto.