Daily Crypto Signals: Bitcoin Holds $88K, Ethereum Reclaims $3,000 Amid Growing Network Activity
Bitcoin stabilizes around $88,400 following recent miner capitulation that historically signals bullish momentum, while Ethereum rebounds
Quick overview
- Bitcoin stabilizes around $88,400 after miner capitulation, historically indicating bullish momentum.
- Ethereum rebounds 16% to reclaim the $3,000 level, driven by whale accumulation and increased network activity.
- Major protocol upgrades, including Uniswap's fee switch and Metaplanet's capital restructuring, signal growing institutional adoption in the crypto space.
- Analysts predict continued price increases for Ethereum, with potential targets reaching up to $7,000.
Bitcoin BTC/USD stabilizes around $88,400 following recent miner capitulation that historically signals bullish momentum, while Ethereum ETH/USD rebounds 16% to reclaim the critical $3,000 threshold driven by aggressive whale accumulation and surging network activity. Meanwhile, major protocol upgrades including Uniswap’s fee switch and Metaplanet’s capital restructuring signal continued institutional adoption across the crypto ecosystem.
Crypto Market Developments
As more institutions start using cryptocurrencies and important protocols get big improvements, the market is going through big changes in its structure. Metaplanet, Japan’s biggest corporate Bitcoin holder with about 30,823 BTC worth $2.75 billion, approved a major change to its capital structure that lets the company raise money by selling dividend-paying preferred shares to worldwide institutional investors. The five approved proposals provide Metaplanet more options for issuing preferred shares, add floating and periodic dividend structures, and let outside institutional capital to invest, making the company the largest corporate Bitcoin treasury in Asia.
Uniswap’s widely awaited fee switch improvement, called “UNIfication,” is scheduled to become live in the decentralized banking sector after getting 40 million votes, which is the number needed to pass. As of early Monday, around 62 million people had voted in favor of the plan. If it passes, it will lead to the burning of 100 million UNI tokens from the Uniswap Foundation’s coffers and the creation of a Protocol Fee Discount Auctions mechanism to boost the profits of liquidity providers. After a two-day timelock period, the fee switches will turn on Uniswap v2 and v3 on the Unichain mainnet. This will make the supply and demand for the UNI token much better.
The crypto industry is still arguing about whether Bitcoin will be able to resist quantum attacks. Bitcoin Core engineer Jameson Lopp thinks that moving to post-quantum security standards could take five to ten years. This evaluation was made in response to venture capitalist Nic Carter’s worries about Bitcoin’s lack of a quantum security roadmap. It shows the ongoing disagreement between those who think quantum computing threats are decades away and developers who say quantum supremacy could happen in five years.
Bitcoin Holds Above $88,000, Ready for a Leg Higher?
According to VanEck analysts, Bitcoin miners are giving up, which could mean the market has hit its bottom. They point out that the network’s hashrate fell 4% through mid-December, which is the biggest loss since April 2024. The main reason for this drop was the closing of about 1.3 gigawatts of mining capacity in China. A lot of that power might be used to meet the growing demand for artificial intelligence infrastructure. VanEck thinks this tendency might cut Bitcoin’s total hashrate by as much as 10% if countries move energy resources around.
Based on past evidence, this miner capitulation could be good for the price of Bitcoin. When hashrate is compressed for a long time, positive forward returns likely to happen more often and be bigger. Bitcoin’s 90-day forward returns have been positive 65% of the time when 30-day hashrate drops since 2014. This is more than the 54% of the time when hashrate rises. The trend gets stronger over longer periods of time. For example, 77% of the time, negative 90-day hashrate growth is followed by positive 180-day returns, with an average increase of 72%.
Bitcoin is currently worth $88,400, which is over 30% less than its all-time high of $126,080 in October. However, the breakeven power price for popular mining rigs has dropped 36% from $0.12 per kilowatt-hour to $0.077. This could mean that prices will rise again and make mining profitable again. Even though there are problems in some areas, up to 13 countries, including as Russia, France, Bhutan, Iran, El Salvador, the UAE, Oman, Ethiopia, Argentina, Kenya, and Japan, still support Bitcoin mining.
Ethereum Reclaims Key $3,000 Level
Ethereum’s price went back up to the psychologically key $3,000 level on Monday, which was a 16% increase from the $2,620 multimonth low it set in late November. This recovery was caused by aggressive whale accumulation. Large investors currently control over 22 million tokens following six months of consistent buying, with each whale holding between 10,000 and 100,000 ETH. CryptoQuant’s data shows that major investors who have been buying a lot of crypto since 2024 are becoming more and more different from regular investors who have been selling crypto.
According to analyst CW, whale purchasing rates are at an all-time high, which means that the next rise could set new price records. This pattern of accumulation lines up with a 45% decline in ETH supply on centralized exchanges, which is the lowest level in nine years at 10.2 million ETH. This means that there is less supply accessible for selling right now as more tokens go to smart contracts or cold storage.
The basic parts of Ethereum’s network are getting stronger. In the past week, the number of active addresses went up by 22%, and the number of average monthly transactions went up by 16% to 11.3 million. In December, the number of new wallets created every day rose to an average of 163,000, up from 124,000 in July. This shows that more people are using them. The number of transactions on the network is still at an all-time high, showing that demand is still strong. Ethereum is getting ready for big scaling enhancements in January that will boost the network’s transaction throughput from 60 million to 80 million. The market may not have completely factored in this change yet.
Analysts think that the price will keep going up. MN Capital founder Michael van de Poppe said that Ethereum is “building up for a breakout upwards” and pointed out that the $3,100-3,200 resistance zone is very important. If ETH breaks over the 50-day exponential moving average at $3,150, it might move toward $3,450 and then $4,000. Some analysts think that long-term targets could be around $7,000 within the current expanding channel pattern.
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