(Bloomberg) — Bitcoin’s rally is waning in the final days of a record year for the digital asset, as investors assess the remaining momentum from President-elect Donald Trump’s embrace of the cryptocurrency sector.
Bloomberg’s Most Read
The largest token changed hands at $96,200 at 6 a.m. Friday in London, partly paring a nearly 3% drop from the previous day. Smaller rivals, including Ether and Dogecoin, a favorite of the meme crowd, oscillated in tight ranges.
Trump is moving forward with a promise to create a cryptocurrency-friendly environment in the US and has backed the idea of establishing a national Bitcoin reserve. Traders are raking in some of the profits generated by the Republican’s crypto cheers and are waiting to see if the mooted reserve is feasible.
Options Expiration
The crypto market is also preparing for the expiration of a substantial number of Bitcoin and Ether options contracts on Friday, one of the largest such events in the history of digital assets, according to top broker FalconX.
The face value of Bitcoin contracts on the Deribit exchange, one of the largest for digital asset derivatives, exceeds $14 billion, while the equivalent figure for Ether is about $3.8 billion.
Sean McNulty, chief operating officer at liquidity provider Arbelos Markets, flagged the risk of a “chute market” amid expiring derivatives positions.
Microstrategy plan
Bitcoin is wavering even after MicroStrategy Inc. this week signaled the possibility of expanding its token purchase program. The company has gone from being a software maker to a Bitcoin accumulator and now owns more than $40 billion of the digital asset.
The original cryptocurrency is flirting with a decline in December, which would be its first monthly decline in four, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Bitcoin hit an all-time high of $108,316 on December 17 before retreating.
Investors withdrew a net $1.5 billion from a group of a dozen U.S. spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds in the four trading days through Dec. 24, the largest such outflow since the victory of Trump in the US elections on November 5.
Most Read Bloomberg Businessweek
©2024 Bloomberg LP