Bitcoin Eyes $100K as Analysts Downplay ‘Crypto Winter’; IBIT Emerges as Top U.S. ETF

The global cryptocurrency market is seeing renewed optimism as Bitcoin (BTC) reclaimed the $93,000 mark. Analysts are eyeing a move above the $100,000 level for the apex crypto after it reversed a slump to a $84,500 low on Monday.

BTC price bounced back 6% on Tuesday following a sharp sell-off over the weekend. The rebound has helped drive heavy inflows into crypto-related exchange-traded funds, especially U.S.-listed spot Bitcoin ETFs.

Bitcoin Targets $100,000 After Breakout Above $92,000, Reverses All Losses Suffered Over the Weekend

Michael van de Poppe, a prominent market analyst and founder of MN Fund, wrote in a Tuesday X post that bitcoin needed to break past the $92,000 area to test $100,000, setting it on the path to record a new all-time high before the end of the year.

“A great day on the markets,” he proclaimed.

Van de Poppe compared the current BTC price situation to its previous cycle, questioning whether its latest drop was the final shakeout. He noted that all market indicators had “overextended” to the downside during the crash, to a magnitude heavier than the crashes during the COVID, Luna, and FTX fiasco.

According to TradingView data, bitcoin hit a 24-hour peak of $93,040 on Coinbase in early trading on Wednesday. In the process, the “digital gold” managed to reverse all of its losses over the past two days from a leverage flush that wiped $8,000 off its price.

Bitcoin has lost over 18% of its value in the past three months, raising concerns about an impending crypto winter. Some analysts pointed to overall weakness in crypto equities as evidence that the broader market is breaking down.

American Bitcoin Corp., one of the world’s largest bitcoin treasury companies, saw its ABTC stock plunge over 40% on Tuesday. The Trump family-owned firm’s decline briefly spilled over into Hut 8 (HUT), the bitcoin miner that owns a majority stake in the company. Other Trump-linked digital asset companies and tokens have also fallen sharply, feeding a broader narrative that the sector has entered another prolonged bear market.

However, market structure data says otherwise.

Glassnode, Fasanara Dispel ‘Crypto Winter’ Fears as Bitcoin Sees Record Capital Inflows

In their Q4 Digital Assets Report, crypto market analytics firms Glassnode and Fasanara Digital noted that bitcoin has attracted more than $732 billion in new capital since the 2022 cycle low. They highlighted that the current market cycle has had more inflows than all previous cycles combined, pushing BTC’s realized capital to roughly $1.1 trillion while its spot price surged from under $16,000 to an all-time high of $126,000 in October 2025. 

Realized cap, a measure of the true invested capital, is historically one of the first indicators to contract during a market downturn, but that is not happening this time around.

Bitcoin’s volatility also tells a similar story. The report shows that one-year realized volatility fell from 84% to about 43%, with the decline attributed to catalysts such as deeper market liquidity, larger ETF participation, and increased cash-margined derivatives.

Crypto winters are often associated with rising volatility and falling liquidity, not when volatility is declining. Glassnode’s report suggests that this cycle is marked by popularity for call overwriting strategies in BTC and BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT). This has helped dampen volatility in the market cycle.

The report also argues that ETF activity contradicts the idea of the market hitting a cycle top. Spot bitcoin ETFs now hold about 1.36 million BTC ($126.22 billion), which represents roughly 6.9% of bitcoin’s circulating supply of 19.95 million coins. The investment products have contributed about 5.2% of new inflows since their launch in January 2024.

ETF flows are expected to turn negative and remain low during real crypto winners, especially as long-term holders reduce their exposure at that time. But neither condition is present today.

Crypto miner performance also diverges from previous winter patterns. The CoinShares Bitcoin Mining ETF (WGMI) is up more than 35% over the three months during which the BTC price was down. Typically, miners are among the first market participants to collapse ahead of a downturn as hash prices would deteriorate. The current divergence shows that miner weakness is not broad-based and stems from company-specific sell-offs, such as the one experienced by ABTC, which do not represent the mining sector.

Glassnode reported that the drawdown aligns more with a historically mid-cycle behavior rather than a full-scale trend reversal.

Bitcoin posted similar drops in 2017, 2020, and 2023, which were periods of leverage reduction or macro tightening, before continuing to move higher and register new ATHs. The October 2025 deleveraging event cited by Glassnode and Fasanara in their report matches this pattern.

In October, open interest fell sharply in a matter of hours, while spot liquidity absorbed billions of dollars in forced selling. Such events suggest a market repositioning rather than an end of the cycle.

Bitcoin price remains much closer to its yearly high of $126,000 than its yearly low of around $76,000. In every past winter, the market gravitated toward the bottom of this range and remained there as realized losses increased and long-term holders shifted their market behavior. The current setup does not reflect that environment.

BlackRock’s IBIT Surpasses Vanguard’s VOO To Become Most Traded U.S. ETF

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, IBIT was among the most traded U.S. ETFs. BlackRock’s BTC-backed investment fund saw around $3.7 billion in trading volume yesterday, surpassing Vanguard’s S&P 500 ETF (VOO) – currently the largest ETF in the world by assets under management, which recorded $3.38 billion. This puts the bitcoin fund in rare company, alongside one of the most liquid and widely held ETFs in the market.

IBIT performance is tied to bitcoin’s price recovery, and Vanguard, the $11 trillion Wall Street behemoth that has been a long-time critic of the crypto market, announced trading support for regulated digital asset products, such as ETFs and mutual funds, on its brokerage platform, starting December 2.

Despite its Wall Street debut less than two years ago, the iShares Bitcoin ETF has become BlackRock’s top-revenue-generating ETF. This is a remarkable achievement considering that the asset manager handles over 1,400 ETFs and has $13.4 trillion in AUM. According to SoSoValue data, IBIT alone holds $70.91 billion of the $119.59 billion total net assets managed by U.S.-listed spot bitcoin ETFs.

At the time of writing, Bitcoin (BTC) is trading at $92,939 – up 7.23% in 24 hours.