Crypto markets continued their December pullback on Tuesday, December 16, 2025, with traders dialing down risk ahead of fresh macro signals and thinner year-end liquidity. In Asian trading, Bitcoin fell toward $85,800, while Ether hovered around $2,930 and other major tokens—including XRP, Solana and Dogecoin—showed broad weekly declines that point to a market-wide retreat rather than any single-token shock. [1]
The move comes after a week of chop that followed last week’s Federal Reserve 25-basis-point rate cut, and it highlights a recurring theme for late 2025: policy easing has not been enough to restore sustained risk appetite, as investors increasingly prioritize capital preservation into year-end. [2]
Crypto market today: Bitcoin weakness spreads across majors
By early Tuesday, the market tone had shifted from “buy-the-dip” attempts to defensive positioning:
- Bitcoin: fell toward $85,800, down more than 4% over the past week. [3]
- Ethereum (ETH): slipped to roughly $2,930. [4]
- Broader majors: Solana, XRP and Dogecoin posted weekly losses above 5%, reinforcing that the pressure is market-wide. [5]
Reuters also showed crypto under pressure during Tuesday’s global session, with bitcoin around $86,205 and ether around $2,936 at the time of reporting—consistent with the “lower highs, lower lows” price action traders have been wrestling with since late November. [6]
Even the headline number that many investors watch first—the total market value of crypto—has become a psychological battleground. Total crypto market capitalization was cited near $3.06 trillion, down modestly on the day and more than 2% on the week, and the market has repeatedly defended the $3 trillion area in recent sessions. [7]
Why crypto is sliding: macro uncertainty meets thin December liquidity
The immediate catalyst on December 16 wasn’t a crypto-specific blow. Instead, markets reflected a familiar late-cycle pattern: risk assets soften ahead of key data, and crypto tends to amplify that caution.
According to CoinDesk reporting carried by Futubull, the decline tracked weakness across broader markets: Asian equities fell sharply, with the MSCI Asia Pacific Index down 1.3%, while U.S. equity futures softened ahead of Tuesday’s November jobs report, expected to show cooling labor conditions. [8]
Currency and central-bank expectations added another layer:
- The U.S. dollar was near two-month lows. [9]
- The yen strengthened toward ~155 per dollar ahead of a widely expected Bank of Japan rate hike later this week, a setup that can ripple across global risk positioning and funding markets. [10]
In plain terms: traders aren’t just reacting to crypto charts—they’re reacting to the cost of capital, the direction of global liquidity, and the risk of surprise macro prints.
And December matters. Market participants frequently note that liquidity thins into year-end, which can exaggerate intraday swings as funds rebalance, desks reduce exposure, and investors become less willing to “catch falling knives” without a clear catalyst. [11]
Sentiment check: fear is rising, and technical levels are getting louder
One of the clearest signals of the mood shift is sentiment data. The Crypto Fear & Greed Index dropped to 16, a level associated with “extreme fear” and the lowest reading in nearly three weeks, reflecting a market that is increasingly sensitive to downside momentum. [12]
From a technical perspective, traders are now focusing less on “when’s the next rally?” and more on “where does support realistically hold?”
- Bitcoin briefly slipped below $87,500 earlier in the week, then bounced back toward $90,000—but the broader technical structure has deteriorated. [13]
- Analysts at FxPro described $81,000 as a plausible “baseline scenario” level if downside pressure continues, even if the market sees a period of range-bound consolidation first. [14]
Another notable datapoint: prediction market pricing has turned cautious. On Kalshi, most users were cited as expecting bitcoin to finish 2025 below $100,000, with the probability of a move above that level around 23%. [15]
That doesn’t “predict” where bitcoin will end the year—but it does show how traders are pricing the odds of a year-end surge, and it highlights how optimism has cooled versus earlier in the quarter.
From “Bitcoin rises” to “extend losses”: what changed in 48 hours?
To understand Tuesday’s slide, it helps to look at how quickly sentiment faded at the start of the week.
On Monday, crypto markets were described as little changed, with sentiment slipping back into “extreme fear.” Bitcoin was cited around $89,900, recovering from roughly $88,000 on Sunday but still showing fragility after a post-Fed high near $94,300 following last week’s 25-basis-point rate cut. [16]
That “stabilization without conviction” showed up under the surface:
- The CoinDesk 20 Index was slightly positive, while the broader CoinDesk 80 was down—signaling ongoing weakness in smaller, riskier altcoins. [17]
- “Altcoin season” metrics remained depressed, with CoinMarketCap’s indicator cited around 19/100, far from earlier highs—another sign that traders were favoring “bigger, safer” tokens over speculative names. [18]
- Bitcoin dominance was reported as rising from 56.8% in September to 58.4%, reinforcing the same story: when uncertainty rises, liquidity concentrates at the top of the market. [19]
Derivatives positioning also suggested a market that wasn’t ready to go “risk-on”:
- DOGE open interest rose to 10.80 billion DOGE, the highest since Nov. 20, alongside moderately positive funding—pointing to bullish interest there even as the broader market softened. [20]
- XRP was described as threatening the $2 support, with open interest rising and funding near neutral—setting up a scenario where a break could attract more short interest. [21]
In other words: Monday wasn’t a confident rebound. It was a pause. Tuesday’s decline suggests that the pause resolved downward—at least for now.
The rate-cut backdrop: why easier policy isn’t automatically bullish for crypto
Another key context point is that crypto’s late-2025 narrative has been shaped by the Fed’s shift toward easing.
A December 12 market recap highlighted that the Fed had cut rates three times in three months, bringing the target range down to 3.5%–3.75%, while also signaling that additional cuts may not come quickly. [22]
At the time, bitcoin was cited near $90,250, down 2.6% over 24 hours, and the Fear & Greed Index was still stuck in fear territory—underscoring that investors were cautious even after a policy tailwind. [23]
That framework helps explain the market’s behavior now:
- Rate cuts can support risk assets, but if investors think the economy is cooling, liquidity is thinning, or volatility is rising, they may still choose to reduce exposure.
- In crypto specifically, late-year caution is magnified by leverage cycles and the tendency for correlations to rise during market stress.
All the key crypto news on December 16: regulation, stablecoins, and “buy-the-dip” equities
While prices grabbed most of the attention, December 16 also delivered major industry headlines that show the ecosystem’s institutional and regulatory arc continues—even during drawdowns.
UK regulation: FCA launches wide crypto rule consultation, October 2027 start flagged
The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority launched a wide-ranging consultation on proposed crypto rules, following government messaging that the industry would be regulated starting October 2027. The FCA said it is proposing rules that span token listings, market abuse controls (including insider trading and manipulation), platform standards, and broker rules, alongside consultations on areas such as staking risk disclosures and safeguards for crypto lenders and borrowers. [24]
Reuters also cited FCA research indicating the share of UK adults holding crypto fell from 12% to 8% over the past year, and noted that the UK is seeking to align its approach closer to the U.S. rather than the EU. [25]
Solana stablecoins: StraitX plans XSGD and XUSD on Solana for “on-chain FX” use cases
In a separate development with clear real-world-payment implications, StraitX/StraitsX announced plans to bring its Singapore-dollar stablecoin (XSGD) and U.S.-dollar stablecoin (XUSD) to Solana in early 2026, in collaboration with the Solana Foundation. The move aims to enable instant swaps between SGD and USD on-chain, positioning Solana more directly for cross-border settlement and payment rails. [26]
Futubull’s reporting cited:
- Market caps around $13 million (XSGD) and $50 million (XUSD) at the time of reporting,
- Over $18 billion in cumulative on-chain transaction volume for the two stablecoins,
- And that Solana already hosts about $15.7 billion in stablecoins, but had lacked a native SGD option. [27]
ARK Invest: Cathie Wood’s firm adds roughly $59M in crypto-related stocks amid the selloff
Even as tokens slid, “crypto equities” remained in focus. CoinDesk Japan reported that ARK Invest bought about $59 million worth of shares across major crypto-linked companies during the drawdown—citing allocations that included Coinbase, Circle, Bullish, Bitmine, and CoreWeave. [28]
The same report also described notable single-day declines in some of those names (including double-digit moves for Bitmine and Circle) and highlighted the scale of ARK’s existing exposure across the sector. [29]
What to watch next: the catalysts that could break the range
With crypto sitting at a crossroads between late-year deleveraging and macro-driven volatility, traders are likely to watch three near-term catalyst buckets:
- U.S. economic data (including the jobs report cited as the next immediate macro marker) and how it changes expectations for growth and policy. [30]
- Central bank moves in Asia, including the widely expected Bank of Japan decision and its impact on FX and broader risk appetite. [31]
- Liquidity conditions into year-end, where thinner books can accelerate both breakdowns and snapback rallies—especially if positioning becomes too one-sided. [32]
For now, the story of December 16 is straightforward: bitcoin and major altcoins are trending lower, sentiment is worsening, and markets are treating year-end as a time to reduce risk—not add it—even as regulation and infrastructure headlines show the industry continuing to mature. [33]
References
1. news.futunn.com, 2. www.xbo.com, 3. news.futunn.com, 4. news.futunn.com, 5. news.futunn.com, 6. www.reuters.com, 7. news.futunn.com, 8. news.futunn.com, 9. news.futunn.com, 10. news.futunn.com, 11. news.futunn.com, 12. news.futunn.com, 13. news.futunn.com, 14. news.futunn.com, 15. news.futunn.com, 16. www.xbo.com, 17. www.xbo.com, 18. www.xbo.com, 19. www.xbo.com, 20. www.xbo.com, 21. www.xbo.com, 22. investingnews.com, 23. investingnews.com, 24. www.reuters.com, 25. www.reuters.com, 26. news.futunn.com, 27. news.futunn.com, 28. www.coindeskjapan.com, 29. www.coindeskjapan.com, 30. news.futunn.com, 31. news.futunn.com, 32. news.futunn.com, 33. news.futunn.com
