Daily Crypto Signals: Bitcoin Breaks Post-Halving Tradition, XRP Struggles Despite Major Victories
The crypto market closed 2025 on a sobering note as Bitcoin ended the year in negative territory for the first time following a halving
Quick overview
- Bitcoin ended 2025 in negative territory for the first time after a halving event, dropping over 30% from its all-time high.
- Tether became the fifth-largest Bitcoin holder after aggressively accumulating 8,888 BTC, raising concerns about options strategies limiting Bitcoin's price potential.
- Despite positive developments, XRP struggled to reach its $5 target, with a significant drop in daily active addresses indicating weak organic demand.
- The popularity of options trading has sparked debate over whether it is suppressing Bitcoin's volatility, although data suggests the market remains balanced.
The cryptocurrency market closed 2025 on a sobering note as Bitcoin BTC/USD ended the year in negative territory for the first time following a halving event, while XRP XRP/USD failed to reach its $5 target despite resolving its SEC lawsuit and launching spot ETFs. Major developments included Tether’s aggressive Bitcoin accumulation, pushing the stablecoin issuer to become the fifth-largest BTC holder, and rising concerns about options strategies potentially capping Bitcoin’s upside potential.
Crypto Market Developments
The cryptocurrency market was quite unstable in 2025, with institutions buying up coins, regulations changing, and trading tactics changing. Tether became one of the most aggressive Bitcoin buyers, buying 8,888 BTC on New Year’s Eve to boost its total holdings to over 96,000 Bitcoin, which was worth about $780 million at the time. This purchase made Tether the fifth-largest Bitcoin address, behind only big exchanges like Binance, Robinhood, and Bitfinex. It also made Tether the second-largest privately owned corporate treasury.
As the cash-and-carry trade fell apart, traders had to change their techniques in a big way. This well-known arbitrage technique, which includes selling Bitcoin futures while maintaining similar spot positions, saw its premium drop from a consistent 10–15% in late 2024 to just 5% by November 2025. In response, institutional investors switched to covered call options strategies, which aim for annualized payouts of 12–18%. In December 2025, the total open interest in Bitcoin options rose from $39 billion to $49 billion. This made people wonder if these techniques were keeping prices down.
When Trust Wallet’s browser extension went down because of a problem with the Chrome Web Store, it made the news because it delayed the delivery of tools to help victims of a Christmas Day breach that stole more than $7 million in customer funds. The event showed how weak the infrastructure of crypto wallets still is, especially for hot wallets and browser extensions that are connected to the internet.
Bitcoin Options Market Gains Prominence in 2025
Bitcoin (BTC) made history in 2025, but not in the way most people thought it would. Bitcoin completed a post-halving year in the negative for the first time since the halving cycle pattern started. It was down more than 30% from its all-time high of $126,080 on October 6. This break from historical norms has put the widely held conviction in Bitcoin’s four-year cycle to the test. In the past, the cryptocurrency has always reached new highs in the year after each halving event. Previous halvings in 2012, 2016, and 2020 all led to excellent performances in the year after the halves. This makes the drop in 2025 stand out even more for market experts and traders who look for cyclical patterns.
As options trading became more popular, the argument over whether or not Bitcoin’s price was being held down became more heated. Some people say that the growing popularity of covered call strategies, especially those connected to the BlackRock iShares Bitcoin ETF (IBIT), has constructed an artificial ceiling that keeps Bitcoin from entering its next parabolic phase. IBIT options open interest jumped from $12 billion to $40 billion in late 2024. This led some people to think that experienced dealers are creating “sell walls” around popular strike prices that won’t go away.
But the data suggests that this story could be too simple. The put-to-call ratio has stayed below 60%, which means that the market is balanced. At the same time, implied volatility has dropped from 57% in late 2024 to 45%, which actually makes suppressive tactics less appealing. The options market doesn’t seem to be limiting Bitcoin’s volatility; instead, it seems to be the main place where people are making money off of it.
Can XRP Price Touch $5 in 2026?
In 2025, the XRP community had a year of bittersweet wins. The token reached almost every goal that the XRP Army has been working toward: In May, Ripple Labs settled its long-running lawsuit with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In November, several US-based spot ETFs were launched and saw a total of $1.06 billion in inflows over 24 consecutive days. In March, XRP was even named a candidate for the United States’ Digital Asset Reserve. Despite these positive factors, the price of XRP hit a high of $3.66 before dropping as much as 50% to a low of $1.58. The $5 target, which everyone wanted to accomplish, was still out of reach.
The fact that good news doesn’t affect prices shows that there are bigger problems with how the XRP market works. In March 2025, there were more than 600,000 daily active addresses on the XRP Ledger, but by mid-December, that number had dropped to just 38,500. This shows that there is weak organic demand, even though there is institutional interest through ETFs. XRP has broken through important technical support levels, including as the psychological $2 mark and the 50-week exponential moving average at $1.87. This has raised concerns for technical analysts. Peter Brandt, a veteran trader, cautioned that XRP might drop below $1 in the next few months because of a “potential double top” pattern.
This is similar to how the coin has lost more than 90% of its value within 12 months after prior peaks. Some analysts, like Chad Steingraber, are still hopeful that XRP could rise to $10 in 2026 since ETF inflows are still strong. However, the technical setup and network activity statistics show that XRP has a long way to go before it can even hit the $5 mark that it has been unable to accomplish so far.
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