The crypto market remained volatile on Friday with bitcoin after spending the last seven days stuck 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 cuts are generally seen as bullish catalysts for risky assets like bitcoin, as investors have less incentive to hold fiat currencies like the dollar, thereby seeking returns elsewhere.
But neither bitcoin nor the broader crypto market performed as expected, with BTC falling below $90,000 after the decline before climbing back into the high end 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 faced double-digit declines this week.
Positioning of derivative products
- BTC’s 30-day implied volatility, as represented by Volmex’s BVIV Index, continues to decline, falling to its lowest level since November 10. Traders seem to expect unstable price action in the final weeks of 2025.
- The Ether Volatility Index fell to the lowest since late October.
- On Deribit, the BTC and ETH sell bias remains intact across all periods.
- Block flows exhibited a bias for BTC and ETH calendar spreads.
- In the futures market, ZEC open interest (OI) jumped 16% to 2.28 million ZEC, closing in on the all-time high of 2.32 million ZEC.
- HYPE, SUI, and SOL also saw notable increases in 24-hour OI, indicating further capital inflows. OI remained largely stable on BTC and ETH.
Symbolic discussion
- Privacy coins continue to be top performers in the altcoin market under the name 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 last week’s performance remains subdued.
- CoinMarketCap’s “altcoin season” indicator is now at a cyclical 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% year to date, in contrast to the CoinDesk 10 (CD10, which is down 7.3%).
- The demise of the memecoin market, once the bedrock of hype-driven crypto speculation, indicates a shift in investor profile behavior over the past year.
- While the market was once dominated by retail investors, the rise of ETFs and digital asset treasury (DAT) companies has pushed this demand aside; replace it with slow and steady price action.
