Ether is around $3,108, up roughly 0.7%, with AMBCrypto flagging a sharp swing back to net ETF buying—over $42M of inflows on December 11—after prior outflows. If these institutional flows persist, commentators see scope for renewed upside despite the broader risk-off backdrop.
XRP holds the line at $2 as institutional rails deepen
XRP trades near $2.03, slightly higher and tightly range-bound despite nearly $1B of cumulative spot ETF inflows and fresh capital rotation reported this week. TS2.Tech and other outlets highlight Ripple’s conditional U.S. OCC approval for a national trust bank and Hex Trust’s launch of wrapped XRP for DeFi as key structural bullish drivers that the market has yet to fully price.
Solana steady despite broader altcoin softness
Solana changes hands around $133, up about 0.7% on the day but still nursing losses after this week’s BTC-led selloff that hit Solana-linked ‘digital asset treasury’ stocks. News flow has been quieter versus XRP and ETH, and traders frame SOL’s move more as a beta reaction to Bitcoin than a story driven by chain-specific catalysts today.
Strategy (MSTR) remains the leveraged Bitcoin proxy to watch
Strategy Inc., the Bitcoin-hoarding ex-MicroStrategy, closed Friday near $176.60, down 3.7%, as Reuters and TS2.Tech note its extreme earnings and price sensitivity to BTC due to fair-value accounting and heavy leverage. The stock narrowly retained its Nasdaq-100 membership even as MSCI weighs excluding ‘digital asset treasury’ companies from its indices in January, leaving the name highly exposed to both Bitcoin volatility and index-eligibility headlines.
U.S. crypto policy: market-structure bill slips toward January
CoinDesk reports that Senate negotiations on a comprehensive U.S. crypto market-structure bill are likely to slide into January as lawmakers and industry continue to debate key provisions. The delay prolongs regulatory uncertainty for exchanges and token issuers, but also keeps the door open for a more industry-aligned compromise rather than a rushed year-end deal.
Crypto market stabilizes after sharp sell-off
Bitcoin trades around $90K–$91K, up about 0.1% on the session but still down roughly 2% over 24 hours after briefly plunging below $90K as AI-bubble worries hit tech stocks and risk assets. Ethereum shows a similar pattern, hovering near $3,100 with a 4–5% 24-hour loss despite a modest intraday uptick.
Risk-off sentiment tied to AI and tech weighs on Bitcoin
Coindesk reports that a 10% drop in Broadcom and broader concerns over AI-related overvaluation dragged the Nasdaq and crypto-exposed equities lower, spilling into BTC, which recently fell from record highs near $126K to about $90K. Fed official Goolsbee signaling openness to more cuts than the median for 2026 underscores macro uncertainty, adding to volatility rather than triggering a clean ‘risk-on’ bid.
Conflicting institutional signals on Bitcoin’s longer-term path
JPMorgan and others argue the Bitcoin bull cycle remains intact and maintain very high long-term targets (up to $240K) even as they acknowledge November’s drawdown and election-driven overvaluation. At the same time, Standard Chartered has trimmed its end-2025 forecast to ~$100K and sees treasury-company buying largely exhausted, shifting the focus to ETF inflows as the next key driver.
MicroStrategy-style treasury concentration draws regulatory index risk
Forbes highlights Michael Saylor’s warning that proposed MSCI rules could exclude companies with more than 50% of assets in crypto from major indices, potentially forcing up to $8.8B of outflows from his firm and similar ‘Bitcoin treasury’ plays. While Bitcoin itself is only modestly lower today, this additional overhang on crypto-equity proxies adds to the cautious tone around leverage and concentrated holdings.
Altcoins underperform as liquidity rotates defensively
Major alts like Solana and Cardano are down 3–5% over 24 hours, underperforming Bitcoin and reflecting a typical stress pattern where liquidity moves first into BTC and then partially back to fiat or stablecoins. XRP is comparatively resilient around $2.00–$2.03, with on-chain and sentiment data showing bulls and bears locked in a stalemate near this psychological level.