Bond Jitters Hit Crypto As Bitcoin Slips Below $90,000 And Altcoins Whipsaw

Key Points

1. Bitcoin trades just under $90,000 after an overnight sell-off, with roughly 86% of tracked coins in the red.

2. Spot crypto ETFs are turning cautious, with November’s $3.4 billion pull from bitcoin funds contrasting with a 14-day streak of inflows into XRP products.

3. Altcoins stay a leverage playground, with Terra tokens surging up to 80% while Zcash and smaller names drop more than 20%.

Bitcoin began Saturday hovering around $89,600, down nearly 3%, as traders digested in-line US inflation data that still pushed 10-year Treasury yields sharply higher.

Futures volumes stayed heavy: BTCUSDT perpetuals saw roughly $4 billion traded, while ETHUSDT, at about $3,040, dropped more than 4%.

Solana slipped to $133, off about 5%, and XRP traded near $2.04, down almost 3%. Litecoin drifted around $80 after several sessions of smaller losses.

The move reflects a broader shift from “easy Fed” optimism to a cooler view that rate cuts in 2026 may be shallower than many hoped. That reassessment has slowed the earlier rush into spot bitcoin ETFs.

Bond Jitters Hit Crypto As Bitcoin Slips Below $90,000 And Altcoins Whipsaw

Investors pulled about $3.4 billion from these funds in November and more than $4.3 billion over the last month, although total net creations for 2025 remain a strong $22.3 billion.

Flows have turned selective: XRP spot ETFs have logged a 14-day inflow streak approaching $900 million, even as bitcoin products saw roughly $195 million leave in a single recent session.

Leverage added fuel to Friday’s slide. Around half a billion dollars in crypto futures positions were liquidated, mostly long bets, with Ether alone suffering over $300 million in forced unwinds after failing to hold above the $3,150 to $3,250 band.

Technically, bitcoin’s four-hour and daily charts now align on a short-term downtrend capped by resistance in the low-$90,000s.

The weekly picture still resembles a mid-cycle correction, with prices well above long-term support in the mid-$50,000s and major banks modelling a fair-value range between $85,000 and $98,000.

Against this backdrop, altcoins remain a high-beta sideshow: Terra Classic and LUNA surged roughly 80% and 40% in a day, while Zcash slid more than 11% and thinly traded names like XNY, LIGHT and SAPIEN fell 18–27%.