Trading Moment: With a super central bank week approaching, Bitcoin faces a directional choice, awaiting a clear breakout signal in the short term.

Daily market data review and trend analysis, produced by PANews.

1. Market Observation

According to the latest analysis from Wall Street, the global economy and financial markets are undergoing profound structural changes. The core risk facing the US economy in 2026 may shift from a traditional economic recession to one directly caused by a stock market crash. The approximately 2.5 million people who retired early due to the stock market boom after the pandemic, representing "excess retirement," have their consumption power closely linked to stock market performance, forming a highly sensitive demand side. The Federal Reserve is caught in a dilemma between dealing with persistent inflation and maintaining financial stability. Analysts believe the Fed may prioritize avoiding a market crash, tolerating higher inflation, and taking aggressive interest rate cuts when the economy weakens. Meanwhile, the divergence in global central bank policies is intensifying. The Bank of Japan is expected to raise interest rates by 25 basis points to 0.75% at its December 19 meeting, reaching a 30-year high, which could alter global capital flows. The European Central Bank is expected to maintain its interest rate, while the Bank of England may complete the final rate cut in its current cycle. Against this backdrop, the upcoming US non-farm payroll and CPI data are attracting significant attention. The US stock market rally is beginning to diverge, and funds may rotate to undervalued European markets, adding complexity and uncertainty to global asset allocation in 2026.

In the field of artificial intelligence, the market's fervent enthusiasm is facing a severe test of reality. Recently, Oracle's stock price plummeted 14.8% in two days due to disappointing earnings and rumors of project delays, resulting in a significant reduction in market capitalization. Although the company denied delays in its data center project for OpenAI, its earnings report showed slowing growth in core cloud revenue, while capital expenditures surged to $12 billion. The company also raised its full-year guidance by 43% to $50 billion, and free cash flow deteriorated to negative $10 billion, shifting towards a "high investment, slow return" model. Similarly, despite releasing better-than-expected revenue and profit figures, chip giant Broadcom's stock price plunged 11.4% due to investor dissatisfaction with its $73 billion AI order book, and the company did not provide full AI revenue guidance for 2026. This sentiment spread throughout the semiconductor industry, with the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index closing down over 5% and Nvidia falling over 3%. Furthermore, Fermi, an AI infrastructure company founded by former government officials, saw its stock price halve by as much as 46% intraday after a major customer withdrew a $150 million investment commitment. Market concerns about the sustainability of AI computing power spending and the overvaluation bubble are becoming increasingly apparent. In the future, industry attention will shift to the Moore's Threads MUSA Developer Conference and the ByteDance Jumping Mountain Engine Conference, with expectations for the release of the next-generation GPU architecture and the AI assistant "Doubao".

Amidst macroeconomic uncertainties and internal industry adjustments, Bitcoin is undergoing a critical correction. Currently, the price of Bitcoin has been trading below the key on-chain cost base (approximately $102,000 to $105,000) for nearly two months, and the buying power of ETFs has also weakened significantly. Analysts point out that this is due to a decline in traditional capital risk appetite and the convergence of the futures basis from a peak of 25% to less than 5%, leading to the exit of arbitrage funds. External pressures are also evident, with the market anticipating a possible interest rate hike to 0.75% by the Bank of Japan on December 19th. Some analysts, based on historical data, point out that previous rate hikes by the Bank of Japan have been accompanied by significant Bitcoin corrections of over 20%, thus warning of a further risk of the price falling to $70,000. While Strategy founder Michael Saylor hinted at continuing to buy during the decline, market analysts are deeply divided: pessimists believe a bear market may have begun, with technical patterns pointing to a deep correction target of $70,000 or even $50,000; while optimists believe the short-term target of $87,700 has been reached and have already reversed their positions to go long, setting a long-term target of $112,000. In the short term, the market generally believes that prices will fluctuate between $87,000 and $93,000, awaiting a clear breakout signal.

Compared to Bitcoin's dramatic fluctuations, Ethereum exhibits a "lagging" and weak consolidation pattern, which offers a different perspective for long-term investors. Analyst EliZ points out that Ethereum typically underperforms Bitcoin in the early stages of a cycle because capital prioritizes the "safer" Bitcoin. However, this isn't a true weakness, but rather a build-up of strength for a subsequent surge. Historically, when Bitcoin's upward momentum slows, capital rotates to Ethereum, often resulting in a rapid and sharp rise. Therefore, for investors with a long-term perspective, the current price pullback is seen as a good opportunity to build positions in stages. From a technical perspective, according to analyst CyrilXBT, Ethereum is attempting to establish a bottom around $3050, but is still facing resistance at the key 50-day moving average (approximately $3281). If it successfully breaks through and holds this resistance level, it could open up space to above $3500; conversely, if it fails to hold here, it may retest the support areas of $3000 or even $2800. It is worth noting that despite cautious market sentiment, on-chain data shows that a whale wallet known as "Bitcoin OG" has recently significantly increased its Ethereum long positions by approximately $555 million, demonstrating the strong confidence of some smart money in the future of Ethereum.

2. Key Data (as of 13:00 HKT, December 15)

(Data source: GMGN, CoinAnk, Upbit, Coingecko, SoSoValue, CoinMarketCap)

• Bitcoin: $89,604 (down 4.24% year-to-date), daily spot trading volume $35.43 billion.

• Ethereum: $3,128 (down 6.26% year-to-date), daily spot trading volume $20.05 billion.

• Fear of Greed Index: 16 (Extreme Fear)

• Average GAS: BTC: 1.2 sat/vB, ETH: 0.04 Gwei

• Market share: BTC 58.5%, ETH 12.4%

• Upbit 24-hour trading volume rankings: BTC, XRP, ETH, MOVE, SOL

• 24-hour BTC long/short ratio: 47.91% / 52.09%

• Sector Performance: The crypto market generally declined, with the Layer 2 sector leading the drop at 3.59%, followed by the RWA sector, which fell 3.41%.

• 24-hour liquidation data: A total of 96,924 people worldwide were liquidated, with a total liquidation amount of $267 million. This included $102 million in BTC liquidations, $56.55 million in ETH liquidations, and $12 million in SOL liquidations.

3. ETF Flows (as of December 12)

• Bitcoin ETF: +$287 million

• Ethereum ETF: +209 million

• Solana ETF: +$33.6 million

4. Today's Outlook

• The U.S. SEC's Cryptocurrency Working Group will hold a roundtable meeting on financial regulation and privacy on December 15.

• Aster has announced the Season 3 airdrop schedule: the inspector will open on December 1st, and tokens can be claimed on December 15th.

• Yala initiates institutional BTC exit process and announces preliminary announcement of retail user redemption plan on December 15.

• The Hong Kong High Court is scheduled to hear the case of eight defendants in the JPEX case on December 15. Xu Zhengyu stated that he will update the regulatory framework.

• Daylight launches its new DeFi protocol, DayFi, and will begin a $50 million pre-deposit campaign on December 16th.

• US November unemployment rate: Expected value 4.4% (December 16, 21:30)

• US November Non-Farm Payrolls Change (in thousands): Expected value: 5 (December 16, 21:30)

The top 100 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization with the largest gains today are: MYX Finance up 12.6%, Rain up 6.4%, Ultima up 3.5%, Canton Network up 3.4%, and TRON up 2.5%.

5. Hot News

• Data: ZRO, ARB, STRK and other tokens will see large-scale unlocking, with ZRO unlocking value estimated at approximately $38.6 million.

• This Week's Preview | HASHKEY is expected to be listed on December 17th; Coinbase plans to launch prediction markets and tokenized stocks.

• Lighter TVL surpassed a record high of $1.456 billion, but recently saw a net outflow of over $40.59 million in a single day.

• Japanese and South Korean stock markets opened lower across the board, with South Korea's KOSPI index falling 2.67%.

• Robinhood tokenizes its stock on Arbitrum, pushing its market capitalization above $13 million.

• A fund flagged as potentially belonging to Matrixport withdrew 3 million ASTER tokens from Binance.

• It appears the ZORA team transferred approximately 52.525 million tokens to three new addresses, worth over $2.6 million.