2025 in Review, 2026 on the Horizon

GM Anon!

BTC is finishing the year in a quiet holiday band. Price is sitting near $87K and moving between roughly $86K and $89K. Conditions are thin, and moves tend to start and stall. Short-term moving averages keep capping every bounce, and there’s very little follow-through in either direction.

ETF flows have leaned risk-off. Funds have been trimming rather than adding, which removes demand at the margin. Derivatives have lightened up: leverage has bled out, and funding is only mildly positive. On the other side, whales and mid-sized holders continue to accumulate while coins keep drifting off exchanges.

It feels slow, but there is a lot happening underneath the surface.

Looking Back On The Year

This year reminded everyone what a maturing asset looks like.

We saw the arrival of major crypto products, with ETF flows swinging between strong accumulation and meaningful redemptions, deep pullbacks turning into fast recoveries, and long stretches of range trading in between. Retail participation stayed relatively muted, but new users still arrived through institutional products and regulated channels.

On-chain, fewer coins sit on exchanges than at the start of the year, with more supply migrating to stronger hands while institutions keep building out the infrastructure layer in the background.

At the same time, macro liquidity kept expanding: M2 made new highs, the dollar softened, gold and silver rallied, and equity leadership concentrated even further. Across asset classes, capital behaved as if it still expects a world where liquidity matters more than the day-to-day news flow.

Overall, it wasn’t an easy year to stay in crypto, even with a supportive macro backdrop, but yet underneath the surface the foundations kept moving in a healthier direction.

The Mixed Picture Today

Currently, short-term and long-term signals are telling very different stories. In the short term, BTC is still range bound, ETF flows are uneven, options exposure is heavy, and many shorter-term holders remain underwater and sell into strength.

Further out, supply continues to leave exchanges as larger entities absorb coins, stablecoin liquidity stays firm, adoption keeps climbing, and banks, corporates, and institutions are positioning for a world where BTC sits inside the financial system rather than outside it.

This is what a transition phase looks like: pressure builds, price chops, and the foundations quietly shift.

Looking Toward 2026

The conversation around BTC is starting to change in a big way. There is increasing talk that major United States banks could custody BTC, lend against it, and treat it as collateral, while liquidity models that compare BTC to gold still place fair value well above current prices.

None of that is a guarantee; it simply frames the risk. Short-term weakness can coexist with long-term strength, and range trading can sit alongside ongoing structural adoption.

The path from here is one where BTC increasingly anchors itself inside traditional finance, eventually carrying other parts of the crypto market with it.

And that is likely the world we are heading into.

If price drifts lower into high liquidity support zones, it does not automatically mean something is broken. In this environment, it often means the longer-term accumulation window just became a bit more attractive.

Wrapping Up

This year reminded everyone that BTC rarely moves in a straight line. It ranges, tests patience, shakes confidence, and then eventually rewards the people who built structure and stayed disciplined.

As we head into the new year, the near term may remain choppy, but the bigger picture still points toward an ecosystem with growing liquidity, stronger infrastructure, deeper adoption, and more credible institutional participation.

If you are reading this, thank you for sticking through the noise. In markets like this, the people who stay engaged, manage risk, and keep showing up are usually the ones who end up being rewarded.