“Bitcoin surrendered gains from earlier in the week, fell back toward $90,000 as traders braced for Wednesday’s Federal Reserve rate decision.”, — write: www.coindesk.com
Bitcoin slips back into danger zone ahead of Fed rate decision (Gaertringen/Pixabay modified by CoinDesk)
- A 25 basis-point interest-rate cut has been priced in for weeks, and risk assets could drop on the news if no fresh catalysts emerge.
- Tokens like HYPE, STRK, QNT and KAS fell 6%–9% in 24 hours
- CoinMarketCap’s altcoin-season index sits at a cycle low of 18/100.
- Bitcoin is down 20% over 90 days and more than half of the top-100 tokens have fallen at least 40%. FET and TIA are among the worst performers while ZEC, DASH, BNB and BCH stand out as rare stabilizers.
The price action mirrors last week’s performance when bitcoin rallied from $86,300 to $93,200 between Sunday and Tuesday before dropping back to $88,000 in the latter half of the week.
This week, the difference is Wednesday’s Federal Reserve interest-rate decision, with the market overwhelmingly predicting a 25 basis-point cut. Reductions are generally perceived as bullish for risk assets like cryptocurrencies because the dollar becomes less valuable to hold.
But the probability of a rate cut has been high for weeks, meaning that eventuality is likely to be priced in already. If that’s the case, risk assets could sell-off on the news because it would mean there are no more bullish catalysts for the rest of the year.
Derivatives positioning
- The market shows no signs of pre-Fed jitters with BTC and ETH 30-day implied volatility indexes, BVIV and EVIV, holding steady.
- On Deribit, activity is seen in the June expiry puts at strikes as low as $20,000 and calls above $200,000. These are most likely bullish volatility plays and not price directional trades.
- Overall, BTC and ETH puts remain pricier than calls, with block flows featuring risk reversals and put diagonal spreads in bitcoin.
- In ETH’s case, flows include call spreads and risk reversals.
- As for futures, most major tokens, including BTC and ETH, have seen a decline in open interest (OI). In BCH’s case the drop was 8%.
- ZEC’s OI has risen by 16% to 2.30 million ZEC, coming close to the record 2.32 million ZEC on Dec. 4.
Token talk
- The altcoin market continues to retreat, with several tokens underperforming bitcoin as investor appetite for speculative assets plunges to cycle lows.
- HYPE lost 8.6% in 24 hours while STRK, QNT and KAS are down 5.7%-6.3%.
- CoinMarketCap’s “altcoin season” indicator is also resting at cycle lows of 18/100, a far cry from Sept. 20, when it topped 78/100.
- Over the past 90 days bitcoin has dropped by around 20%. Still, that’s dwarfed by the altcoin sector, with more than half of the top-100 tokens by market cap sliding in excess of 40%.
- The worst-performing tokens include AI-focused FET, which is still reeling from a public spat with Ocean Protocol and accusations of token sales, and TIA$0.5793which has tumbled 67% in 90 days following a round of layoffs and a lack of any onchain activity.
- A handful of tokens have bucked the bearish trend, notably privacy coins zcash ZEC$409.26 and dash DASH$47.69and a deserved mention goes to BNB and BCH$574.07which have remained relatively flat despite the broader market weakness.
- As of October 2025, GoPlus has generated $4.7M in total revenue across its product lines. The GoPlus App is the primary revenue driver, contributing $2.5M (approx. 53%), followed by the SafeToken Protocol at $1.7M.
- GoPlus Intelligence’s Token Security API averaged 717 million monthly calls year-to-date in 2025, with a peak of nearly 1 billion calls in February 2025. Total blockchain-level requests, including transaction simulations, averaged an additional 350 million per month.
- Since its January 2025 launch, the $GPS token has registered over $5B in total spot volume and $10B in derivatives volume in 2025. Monthly spot volume peaked in March 2025 at over $1.1B, while derivatives volume peaked the same month at over $4B.
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Plume Network has received a commercial license from the Abu Dhabi Global Market, allowing expansion into the Middle East.
- Plume Network has received a commercial license from the Abu Dhabi Global Market, allowing expansion into the Middle East.
- The license enables Plume to scale real-world asset origination and distribution across the Middle East, Africa, and emerging markets.
- Plume plans to establish a permanent office in Abu Dhabi by the end of the year, with commercial announcements expected in early 2026.
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